This article explores the manner in which the boundaries between state and family were negotiated in the course of parliamentary debates on school attendance legislation in the Irish Free State. Of particular interest are the representations of children and parents which informed competing ideas about the extent and limitations of state power over families. Representations of ordinary parents as ignorant and "careless" legitimized an authoritarian approach to the regulation of school attendance, albeit one in which compulsion was balanced with a degree of compassion and parents with the wherewithal to exercise choice were granted a high degree of autonomy.