Parenting in a globalised world

1
Parenting in a globalised world

• Dr Charlotte Faircloth
• University Roehampton, London
• Charlotte.Faircloth_at_Roehampton.ac.uk

2
Outline

• The specific construction of the child in the new
  parenting culture
• How this idea travels cross-culturally, in a
  globalised world

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Imagining childhood

• As distinct from biological immaturity, is
  neither a natural nor universal feature of human
  groups but appears as a specific structural and
  cultural component of many societies In other
  words, though biological immaturity may be
  natural and universal, what particular societies
  make of such immaturity differs throughout time
  and between different cultures. So we say that it
  is socially constructed. (Hendrick, 1997, p.9-10)
   

• On the one hand, there is an increasing tendency
  to see children as individuals with a capacity
  for self-realisation and, within the limits of
  social interdependency, autonomous action on the
  other, there are practices directed at a greater
  surveillance, control and regulation of children.
  (Prout, 2000, p.304)

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The child at risk

• 1) The child is set apart as different from
  adults (see also Elias 1998)
• 2) The child is said to have a special nature,
  and be associated with nature
• 3) The child is innocent, but corruptible
• 4) Today, the child is vulnerable and at risk
  (Cunningham 2006)

• What is believed to be essential for mental
  health is that the infant and young child should
  experience a warm, intimate and continuous
  relationship with his mother (or permanent
  mother-substitute) in which both find
  satisfaction and enjoyment A state of affairs in
  which the child does not have this relationship
  is termed maternal deprivation. (Bowlby, 1995
  1952)

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Cross-cultural perspectives

• Intensive parenting as an important cultural
  script
• A global perspective parenting as a globalizing
  set of ideas and practices that cannot be
  separated from considerations of global power
  inequities
• This reveals assumptions and tensions within
  parenting that enhance our practical and
  theoretical understanding of the phenomenon.

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Part I The moral context for parenting

•  1. Where are the parents? Changing parenting
  responsibilities between the 1960s and the 2010s
   
• Rosalind Edwards and Val Gillies
•  
• 2. Building a Stable Environment in Scotland
  Planning Parenthood in a Time of Ecological
  Crisis
• Katharine Dow
•  
• 3. Creating Distinction Middle-Class Viewers of
  Supernanny in the UK
• Tracey Jensen
•  
•  

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Part II Power and inequality the structural
constraints to good parenting

•  4. Negotiating (Un)healthy Lifestyles in an Era
  of Intensive Parenting Ethnographic case
  studies from North West England, UK.
• Denise Hinton, Louise Laverty and Jude Robinson
• 5. Problem Parents? Undocumented Migrants in
  Americas New South and the Power Dynamics of
  Parenting Advice
• Nicole Berry
•  
• 6. Nurturing Sudanese, Producing Americans
  Refugee Parents and Personhood
• Anna Jaysane-Darr
•  

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Part III Negotiating Parenting Culture

•  
• Intensive motherhood in comparative
  perspective Feminism, full-
• term breastfeeding and attachment parenting in
  London and Paris
• Charlotte Faircloth
•  
• 8. Intensive Mothering of Ethiopian Adoptive
  Children in Flanders, Belgium
• Katrien De Graeve and Chia Longman
•  
• 9. Staying with the baby intensive mothering
  and social mobility in Santiago de Chile
  
  
• Marjorie Murray
•  

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Part IV Parenting and/as identity

• 10. Spanish people dont know how to rear their
  children! Dominican womens resistance to
  intensive mothering in Madrid
• Livia Jiménez
•  
• 11. Becoming a mother through postpartum
  depression Narratives from Brazil
• Maureen ODougherty
•  
• 12. Sacrificial Mothering of IVF-pursuing Mothers
  in Turkey
• Merve Göknar
• 13. Intensive Parenting Alone Negotiating the
  Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood as a Single
  Mother by Choice
• Linda Layne
•  
• 14. Power Struggles The Paradoxes of Emotion and
  Control Among Child-Centred Mothers in Privileged
  America
• Diane Hoffman

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Conclusions

• The papers show how parenting maps onto different
  societal and cultural contexts, sometimes
  generating resistances and sometimes building on
  pre-existing indigenous notions of mothering
  (such as sacrificial mothering) to create hybrid
  ideologies.
• They present a diverse and deepened view of
  pedagogy in relation to parenting.
• They deepen our understanding of how
  parentingeven when ostensibly child-centeredis
  also just as importantly about parental
  identities.
• They highlight the politics of parenting in
  transnational spaces.
• In drawing attention to the multiple meanings of
  parenting in complex societies, then, this kind
  of work has articulated the need for a closer and
  more refined inquiry into a set of cultural
  practices and ideologies central to the emergence
  and maintenance of communities, societies, and
  nations.
• Parents attend a workshop in healthy
  lifestyles
• at the Miami-Dade Parent Academy, TIME 2009

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Future directions?

• The globalization of intensive parenting. Is risk
  conscious-parenting an increasingly globalized
  phenomenon? How do parenting norms characteristic
  of intensive parenting diffuse between countries?
  What does comparative research reveal about any
  limits to the development of intensive parenting
  culture?
• Differentiation, parenting policy and parenting
  experts. How do policy frames, and parenting
  education and training interventions (in the form
  of text or expert and professional practices)
  intersect with class, gender and migration
  background?  
• The lived experience of intensive parenting. How
  does risk-consciousness operate differentially as
  parents parent? What makes some parents resist
  dominant parenting norms? To what extent is
  intensive parenting democratised?