Background to the event

One of the main insights informing the work of the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies is that ‘parenting’ is not simply another word for raising children. Rather, the transformation of the noun ‘parent’ into the verb ‘parenting’ has taken place through a socio-cultural process comprising, among others, the following features:

– The construction of the parent as ‘God like’, with what parents do represented as determining an individual child’s development, and also as the underlying cause of a wide range of social problems

– The construction of children, in general, as ‘vulnerable’ and so far more sensitive than was previously considered to be the case to risks impacting on physical and emotional development

– The growing validation of the idea that parents need to be trained in effective ways of managing and minimising the manifold risks to the child; the parent is thus viewed as being all-powerful but at the same time as unable to properly exercise power without expert guidance

– The extension of ‘parenting’ in this form backwards into pregnancy, and even into pre-pregnancy

– The development of growing gender-neutrality in this area as ‘fathering’ is more and more conceptualised as both a highly important but also problematic activity

– The emergence of ‘parenting’ as a policy problem and the concomitant emergence of an explicit family/parenting policy agenda in Britain, and elsewhere

– The increasing propensity to represent good parenting as a skill-set that can be both taught and learned through reference to scientific evidence about how to parent well

Over recent years, PCS has hosted a series of events and conducted and disseminated research that explores these features of contemporary parenting culture. We have also sought to encourage discussion that situates developments in British society in relation to those in other countries, and have devoted energy to exploring the ways in which parents relate to socio-cultural and policy norms regarding ‘parenting’ as they rear their children. Through our deliberations, our attention has increasingly been drawn to the way that parenting is now being ‘scientised’ in a new way. In almost every topic we have discussed or area we have recently considered we have been struck by the presence of claims suggesting that science, in particular neuroscience, prove that a particular parenting style is superior and can lead to better children and a better society. It is in this light that we aim over the coming months to initiate a socio-cultural enquiry into ‘parenting science’. See here for later work on this theme