{"id":1672,"date":"2012-06-26T14:55:43","date_gmt":"2012-06-26T14:55:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/parentingculturestudies\/?page_id=1672"},"modified":"2025-09-15T11:11:48","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T10:11:48","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/parentingculturestudies\/about\/","title":{"rendered":"About us"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Centre for Parenting Culture Studies (CPCS) was founded in the School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Research<\/a> at the University of Kent.\u00a0The idea for the Centre first emerged at a conference Monitoring Parents: Childrearing in the age of \u2018intensive parenting\u2019<\/a> held at the University of Kent in 2007, and we have carried on our collaborations since then.<\/p>\n

CPCS associates work in different disciplines but our common view is that child-rearing as a social activity needs to be distinguished from \u2018parenting\u2019 and the culture that surrounds it. One of the achievements of our network has been to establish the study of \u2018parenting culture\u2019 as an important enterprise in its own right and we seek to explore and illuminate the dimensions and problems of this culture.<\/p>\n

Through our work we show how the role and meaning of parenthood has changed; child-rearing has expanded to encompass a growing range of activities that were not previously seen as an obligatory dimension of this task. We have identified this trend as exercising a decisive impact on the constitution of mothering and fathering identities and the relationship amongst parents. How mothers and fathers manage and perform these identities is one a theme running through our work. The expansion of the child-rearing role has also encouraged the belief that \u2018parenting\u2019 is a problematic sphere of social life. Indeed, \u2018parenting\u2019 is almost always discussed as a social problem. Many social actors have sought in this context to turn child-rearing into an object of policy making, encouraging the emergence of the activity \u2018parenting\u2019. The causes and effects of this policy turn is another central area of our research.<\/p>\n

Read an article about the beginnings of CPCS<\/a>\u00a0or this feature in Kent Magazine<\/a> You can also watch some films of us during the early years of the Centre here<\/a> and also discussing key themes in intensive parenting here<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some key themes and areas for our research and discussions are<\/strong>:<\/p>\n