{"id":2147,"date":"2013-12-12T08:11:39","date_gmt":"2013-12-12T08:11:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/parentingculturestudies\/?page_id=2147"},"modified":"2025-09-15T11:03:05","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T10:03:05","slug":"cpcs-books","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/parentingculturestudies\/resources\/cpcs-books\/","title":{"rendered":"CPCS Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

On this page you can find details of books by founding members of CPCS. Together, these set out the central themes and ideas that drive the work of CPCS and which we aim to develop further.<\/strong> Our book Parenting Culture Studies<\/a><\/em> (2014\/2023) brings together many of our ideas in one place.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Parenting Culture Studies (2023)\"\"<\/a><\/h2>\n

Updated Second Edition now out<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why do we live at a time when the minutiae of how parents raise their children \u2013 how they feed them, talk to them, play with them or discipline them \u2013 have become routine sources of public debate and policy making? Why are there now so-called ‘parenting experts’, and social movements like Attachment Parenting, telling us that ‘science says’ what parents do is the cause of and solution to social problems?<\/p>\n

Parenting Culture Studies<\/i> provides in-depth answers to these features of contemporary social life drawing on a wide range of sources from sociology, history, anthropology, psychology and policy studies to do so, covering developments in both Europe and North America. Key chapters cover the ‘intensification of parenting’, the rise of the ‘parenting expert’, the politicizing of parent-child relationships, and the weakening of bonds between generations.<\/p>\n

Five essays detail contemporary examples of obsessions with parenting, discussing drinking and pregnancy, attachment theory, neuroscience and family policy, fathering, and ‘helicopter parenting’. The Introduction situates parental determinism in the wider context of risk consciousness and the demise of social confidence about how to approach the future. Comprehensive in scope and accessibly written, this book will be an indispensable resource for students, researchers, policy-makers and parents seeking a deeper understanding of the debates surrounding parenting and society today.<\/p>\n

Now in its second edition, the book also features a new third part discussing parents dealing with risk assessment, school closures, contradictory care arrangements, and vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

Read reviews and order from the publisher<\/a><\/strong> here. To order in the US use Amazon US<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Reviews<\/em><\/h3>\n

Cieo Labour\u2019s nannying will undermine families \u2013 Cieo<\/a><\/p>\n

Sociological Review https:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/doi\/full\/10.1111\/1467-954X.12299<\/a><\/p>\n

Further reviews are online here<\/a><\/p>\n

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Couples’ Transitions to Parenthood: Gender, Intimacy and Equality<\/h2>\n

Charlotte Faircloth (2021)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Charlotte\u2019s book Couples\u2019 Transitions to Parenthood: Gender, Intimacy and Equality<\/a>\u00a0has also recently been published by Palgrave.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>This book argues that new parents are caught in an uncomfortable crossfire between two competing discourses: those around ideal relationships and those around ideal parenting. The author suggests that parents are pressured to be equal partners while also being asked to parent their children intensively, in ways markedly more demanding of mothers. Reconciling these ideals has the potential to create resentment and disappointment. Drawing on research with couples in London as they became parents, the book points to the social pressures at play in raising the next generation at material, physiological and cultural levels. Chapters explore these levels through concrete practices: birth, feeding and sleeping\u2014three of the most highly moralised areas of contemporary parenting culture.<\/p>\n

Generational encounters with higher education: The academic\u2013student relationship and the university experience<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Jennie Bristow, Sarah Cant and Anwesa Chatterjee (2021).\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The 21st century has witnessed significant changes to the structures and policies framing Higher Education. But how do these changes in norms, values, and purpose shape the generation now coming of age?<\/p>\n

Employing a generational analysis, this book offers an original approach to the study of education. It explores the qualitative dimensions of the relationship between academics and students, and examines wider issues of culture and socialisation, from tuition fees and student mental health, to social mobility and employment.<\/p>\n

This is a timely contribution to current debates about the University and an invaluable resource for those interested in education, youth, and intergenerational relations. More info here<\/a><\/p>\n

The Corona Generation: Coming of age in a crisis \"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n

Jennie Bristow and Emma Gilland (2020)<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is already clear that the COVID-19 crisis will have huge social and economic implications. The Corona Generation considers its effect on the generation currently coming of age: the demographic currently known as \u2018Generation Z\u2019. A generation that was already considered to be teetering on the brink of an uncertain political, economic, and environmental future now finds itself entering an adulthood in which nothing can be taken for granted; where continuous crisis management is already presented as the \u2018new normal\u2019.<\/p>\n

More info<\/a><\/p>\n

Stop Mugging Grandma:\u00a0The \u2018Generation Wars\u2019 and Why Boomer Blaming Won\u2019t Solve Anything
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Jennie Bristow (2019)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Millennials have been incited to regard their parents\u2019 generation as entitled and selfish, and to blame the Baby Boomers of the Sixties for the cultural and economic problems of today. But is it true that young people have been victimized by their elders?<\/p>\n

In this book, Jennie Bristow looks at generational labels and the groups of people they apply to. Bristow argues that the prominence and popularity of terms like \u2018Baby Boomer\u2019, \u2018Millennial\u2019 and \u2018snowflake\u2019 in mainstream media operates as a smoke screen \u2013 directing attention away from important issues such as housing, education, pensions, and employment. Bristow systematically disputes the myths that surround the \u2018generational war\u2019, exposing it to be a tool by which the political and social elite can avoid public scrutiny.<\/p>\n

Buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

Feeding Children Inside and Outside the Home: Critical perspectives<\/h2>\n

Vicki Harman, Benedetta Cappellini and Charlotte Faircloth (Eds)\u00a0 (2019)<\/strong>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This cross-disciplinary volume brings together diverse perspectives on children\u2019s food occasions inside and outside of the home across different geographical locations. By unpacking mundane food occasions – from school dinners to domestic meals and from breakfast to snacks –\u00a0Feeding Children Inside and Outside the Home<\/em>\u00a0shows the role of food in the everyday lives of children and adults around them. Investigating food occasions at home, schools and in nurseries during weekdays and holidays, this book reveals how children, mothers, fathers, teachers and other adults involved in feeding children, understand, make sense of and navigate ideological discourses of parenting, health imperatives and policy interventions.<\/p>\n

Buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

The Sociology of Generations: New directions and challenges\"sociology-generations\"<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n

Jennie Bristow (2016)<\/strong><\/p>\n

This book suggests that the enduring problem of generations remains that of knowledge: how society conceptualises the relationship between past, present and future, and the ways in which this is transmitted by adults to the young. Reflecting on Mannheim\u2019s seminal essay \u2018The Problem of Generations\u2019, Bristow explores why generations have become a focus for academic interest and policy developments today. She argues that developments in education, teaching and parenting culture seek to resolve tensions of our present-day risk society through imposing an artificial distance between the generations.<\/p>\n

More info here<\/a><\/p>\n

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Neuroparenting: The Expert Invasion of Family Life\"neuroparenting\"<\/h2>\n

Jan Macvarish (2016)
\n<\/strong>Neuroparenting: The Expert Invasion of Family Life traces the growing influence of \u2018neuroparenting\u2019 in British policy and politics. Neuroparenting advocates claim that all parents require training, especially in how their baby\u2019s brain develops. Taking issue with the claims that \u2018the first years last forever\u2019 and that infancy is a \u2018critical period\u2019 during which parents must strive ever harder to \u2018stimulate\u2019 their baby\u2019s brain just to achieve normal development, the author offers a trenchant and incisive case against the experts who claim to know best and in favour of the privacy, intimacy and autonomy which makes family life worth living.<\/p>\n

The book will be of interest to students and scholars of Sociology, Family and Intimate Life, Cultural Studies, Neuroscience, Social Policy and Child Development, as well as individuals with an interest in family policy-making.<\/p>\n

More info here<\/a>
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Baby Boomers and Generational Conflict\"baby-boomers\"<\/h2>\n

Jennie Bristow (2015)
\n<\/strong>The dominant cultural script for Baby Boomers is that they have \u2018had it all\u2019 \u2013 the benefits of a booming economy, the welfare state, and personal freedoms \u2013 thereby depriving younger generations of the opportunity to create a life for themselves. Bristow provides a critical account of this discourse by locating the problematisation of the Baby Boomers within a reductive \u2018demographic consciousness\u2019, and an ongoing ambivalence about the legacy of the Sixties.<\/p>\n

At the heart of generational conflict is the mediation between past, present, and future: where society is preserved and made anew by the interaction between emerging adults and the existing cultural heritage. However, this process of cultural renewal is situated within people, who also exist within intimate relationships. This book critiques the troubling consequences of \u2018Boomer blaming\u2019 for the construction of knowledge, the focus of social policy, and the experience of generational contact.<\/p>\n

More info here<\/a><\/p>\n

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Parenting in Global Perspective: Negotiating ideologies of kinship, self and politics\"global-perspective\"<\/a><\/h2>\n

Charlotte Faircloth, Diane Hoffman and Linda Layne (Eds), (2013)
\n<\/strong>Drawing on both sociological and anthropological perspectives, this volume explores cross-national trends and everyday experiences of \u2018parenting\u2019.
\nParenting in Global Perspective examines the significance of \u2018parenting\u2019 as a subject of professional expertise, and activity in which adults are increasingly expected to be emotionally absorbed and become personally fulfilled. By focusing the significance of parenting as a form of relationship and as mediated by family relationships across time and space, the book explores the points of accommodation and points of tension between parenting as defined by professionals, and those experienced by parents themselves. Specific themes include:<\/p>\n