Centre for Parenting Culture Studies (CPCS)
Welcome to the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies (CPCS) newsletter. This goes to those who have attended events organised by CPCS, and others who have expressed an interest in the work of the Centre.
If for any reason you do not want to receive future mailings, let me know.
Ellie Lee, Director CPCS E.J.Lee@kent.ac.uk
Visit our Blog [http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/parentingculturestudies/] and ‘like’ us on Facebook to find out the latest [http://www.facebook.com/pages/Centre-for-Parenting-Culture-Studies/571325446220446]
CPCS in Print: Read our book Parenting Culture Studies
Order from Palgrave in the UK [https://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9781137304605] and in the rest of Europe [https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137304605]
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Welcome to our newsletter
- CPCS@10
Read and listen here for commentaries on the work of CPCS since we started out a decade ago [https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/parentingculturestudies/about/10-year-anniversary/past-future/]
Watch the book launch of The Corona Generation, by Jennie Bristow and Emma Gilland, held in February 2021 as our second book launch of our 10th Anniversary year, in collaboration with the Academy of Ideas [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt4TwjHmPOY&fbclid=IwAR0V8LO6wOwCoMWAUsnBMHQxufccrNfc8zt-J6OVSrtSRi_NtjJ2z9rf5sQ]
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Research News and Updates
Visiting Researcher
Despite the disruptions, we have been delighted to host Dr Edmée Ballif,
Swiss National Research Foundation postdoctoral fellow, as a Visiting Researcher with CPCS this year.
Edmée will be presenting about the project she has been working on during her stay in the Summer term: Parenting panic: Child veganism as a battleground between parents and experts
Date: 19th May
Time: 2-4pm
Abstract: In most European countries, in contrast with North America, a vegan diet is not recommended for children. Public health experts and paediatricians warn about risks of deficiencies associated with a vegan diet, which they regard as especially worrisome for growing children. Meanwhile, more and more children are born or become vegans every year. In this talk, I will present early results from an ongoing qualitative case study of child veganism in Switzerland. A controversy in ongoing in Switzerland, as in many European countries. Whereas mainstream health experts, medical associations and government agencies advise against child veganism, vegan associations and parents plead for normalizing child veganism. I analyse conflicting discourses on child nutrition among health experts and vegan parents by collecting nutritional guidelines and conducting interviews with key health experts and vegan parents.
I argue that controversies on child veganism form a moral panic, where both experts and parents emphasize potential risks and moral values to advocate for or against a vegan diet. In contemporary parenting culture, parent-expert relations can generally be qualified as “delegated biopolitics”: a power relationship where parents are tasked with close monitoring of their offspring under expert guidance. The moral panic over child veganism, I will argue, is fuelled by a mutual distrust between experts and parents and thus disrupts the usual mechanism of delegated biopolitics. I will also ask whether and how child veganism reinforces the “intensive mothering” culture by translating into more work for mothers. Finally, I will reflect on the construction of children’s bodies as vulnerable and discuss its consequences in light of contemporary reproductive politics.
Speaker bio: Edmée Ballif is a postdoctoral fellow of the Swiss National Research Foundation and a visiting scholar at the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies (University of Kent) and the Reproductive Sociology Research Group (University of Cambridge). Her research interests lie in the area of reproduction and parenting, social problems and social stratification based on gender, race, class or nation. She holds a BA in Social sciences and History of Religions, an MA in the sociology of religions and a PhD in social sciences. Read more about her research here [https://cambridge.academia.edu/Edm%C3%A9eBallif]
Further info and booking: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cpcs-forum-parenting-panic-tickets-145838196973
Zoom Link: https://ucl.zoom.us/j/99708234295?pwd=NFlXK0xMVUZXNVlkaHZQaHFJdVZDZz09
Find out about the latest updates to the following areas of our research
Pregnancy: After Choice: FASD and the ‘managed woman’ (collaborative project)
[https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/parentingculturestudies/research-themes/pregnancy/after-choice-fasd-and-the-managed-woman-collaborative-project/]
Cross Cultural Comparison: Childhood, well-being, parenting [https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/parentingculturestudies/research-themes/cross-cultural-comparison/childhood-well-being-parenting/]
Cross Cultural Comparison: Migrant Parents [https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/parentingculturestudies/research-themes/cross-cultural-comparison/migrant-parents/]
Congratulations to Charlotte Faircloth on joining the Editorial Board of Families, Relationships and Society.
Read the Special Issue she co-edited for FRS, Childhood, parenting culture, and adult-child relations in global perspectives [https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tpp/frs/2020/00000009/00000001]and her piece ‘When equal partners become unequal parents: couple relationships and intensive parenting culture’ [https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tpp/frs/pre-prints/content-frsd1800063r2;jsessionid=b85ia7eh68r1e.x-ic-live-02]
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FACT-Covid: Families and Community in a time of COVID-19
Charlotte Faircloth will be a keynote speaker at the BSA Human Reproduction Study Group Summer Event ‘‘Reproductive challenges in a post-Covid19 world’ on Thursday 20th May 2021, 2pm-4pm, with her paper ‘’Not the best time: Methodological and ethical challenges of researching parenting in a pandemic’.
Registration and fees
Please register in advance
Non-BSA member £15
BSA member £10
Concessionary (full-time student, retired, unwaged) £5
You can book here
Charlotte also appeared as a guest on BBC Radio 4’s PM programme this week (26 minutes in) talking about fertility decline and parenting during the pandemic, and drawing on the findings of the study. You can also read a recent blog from the project team about Single Mothers in Lockdown here
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Generations and Society
The interdisciplinary Generations Network, led by academics at Canterbury Christ Church University and the University of Surrey, has produced a guide to Talking About Generations. The guide presents five key questions to be considered by those working with the concept of generations, and three suggestions for avoiding the pitfalls of ‘generation talk’.
The guide is the result of a year-long project funded by the Wellcome Trust, designed to transform the ways that generation is discussed among scholars, and between academics and policy-facing organisations. It further aimed to transform the way that ‘generation’ is used in media and public policy discussions, promoting a more nuanced and constructive understanding.
The Generations Network has developed in partnership with the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies, the International Longevity Centre, and British Pregnancy Advisory Service. Over the course of the past year, academics and organisations from the UK, continental Europe and the USA have worked through the concept of generation in a series of workshops, on the themes of: generations in the family, generational identities, intergenerational relationships, generations and historical events and ‘generationalism’ and the problem of social policy.
Download Talking about Generations: 5 questions to ask yourself here
[https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/parentingculturestudies/files/2021/03/Talking-about-generations.pdf]
Find out more about the generations network here [https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/parentingculturestudies/research-themes/generations/generations-the-network/]
Contact generationswellcomenetwork@gmail.com if you would like to be involved in the network.
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Read on
Jennie Bristow writes for The Critic, on ‘Back to School: the urgent need for normality’ [https://thecritic.co.uk/back-to-school-the-urgent-need-for-normality/]
‘Growing Up in Lockdown’, an essay by Jennie Bristow in the Letters on Liberty series [https://academyofideas.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/jennie-bristow-letter-on-liberty-lockdown.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2GWRkjAloybXS7UGoLk5EpABRx3MJUXSCJmZ29vjoQOHabKicSwY67HmQ]