From the start, we have held regular forums to discuss new research ideas and publications we have found inspiring.<\/p>\n
In Spring Term 2026 we are taking a fresh look at intensive motherhood, with the help of early career colleagues based in Spain and Belgium<\/p>\n
Join us 3-5pm on Zoom:<\/p>\n
Sandra Obiol-Franc\u00e9s from the Universitat de Val\u00e8ncia will share findings about her research with mothers raising children in Spain.<\/p>\n
The concept \u2018intensive motherhood\u2019 and much research using it has focussed on the Anglo-American context. In this seminar we are delighted to welcome Sandra Obiol-Franc\u00e9s from the Universitat de Val\u00e8ncia, to share findings about her research with mothers raising children in Spain.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n In Spain, the school timetable has been largely confined to the mornings since the 1990s. The school day was shifted from a schedule that included a lunch break to one that no longer does. One of the main arguments for this change has been to limit school hours in the mornings, which could allow children to spend more time with their families and take part in extracurricular activities. This transformation should affect how the children\u2019s care is organized; however, no research has examined this issue, as attention has been focused on academic outcomes. Our purpose has been to evaluate this educational policy from a family perspective.<\/p>\n The aim of this seminar is to present the first results of our analysis on the impact of the continuous school day on family and care arrangements, and, by extension, on women’s available time. Through discussion groups with mothers and teachers, as well as in-depth interviews with mothers, we have observed the various family strategies for managing care on a continuous school day. Across mothers\u2019 narratives, the ideal of good parenting emerges as an endless investment of time, financial, and emotional resources. The ways in which this ideal takes shape are strongly influenced by social class.<\/p>\n Sandra Obiol-Franc\u00e9s<\/strong> is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the University of Valencia. Her research interests include families, mothering, care policies, and subjectivities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n You can watch a recording of Sandra’s lecture here<\/a><\/p>\n Introduced by Ellen Mertens (Ghent University), with Dr Rebecca Steinfeld as discussant<\/p>\n Research about parenting cultures has often found a focus in the question of identity-work associated with feeding babies. Join us to revisit this issue with Ellen Mertens (Ghent University) who will share in insights about momfluencers, motherhood and infant feeding.<\/p>\n Ellen\u2019s research explores how digital motherhood cultures shape contemporary experiences of infant feeding. Combining netnographic analysis of infant feeding-related content shared by momfluencers with qualitative diary data from pregnant women and first-time mothers, she examines both the messages circulating online and how mothers interpret and respond to them. Drawing on theories of neoliberal intensive parenthood and risk culture, her research explores how momfluencers frame breastfeeding as an individual responsibility, a site of risk management, and a marker of maternal competence, while the diary accounts reveal how mothers negotiate the emotional and identity-related tensions that arise when engaging with these idealized representations of motherhood and infant feeding. Together, these findings provide insight into the dynamic interplay between online content and maternal experiences, highlighting how digital narratives shape, constrain, and are interpreted within everyday parenting practices.<\/p>\n Ellen Mertens is a doctoral researcher in the Department of Communication Sciences at Ghent University. She studies contemporary motherhood in digital media, focusing on the role of momfluencers in an increasingly digital parenting culture.<\/p>\n Dr Rebecca Steinfeld is a political scientist and campaigner for reproductive choice. Her website is at:\u00a0http:\/\/www.rebeccasteinfeld.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n You can watch a recording of the presentation here<\/a><\/p>\n Central to the propositions of Parenting Culture Studies is that the rise of \u2018parenting\u2019 and the expansion of the parental role is inseparable from changing constructions of childhood. Assumptions about risk and vulnerability have reshaped cultural norms about what growing up is taken to be with, in turn, profound effects for the parental role. This has been described as the intensification of parenting, and the impacts of intensive parents for the task of socialising children continue to shape thinking and research. Evidence, suggests, though that much about long held conventions surrounding childhood and adulthood are now manifestly in flux in news ways. Even accomplishing the status of \u2018adult\u2019, for example, now has its own term, \u2018adulting\u2019. A great deal of confusion shapes social and cultural understandings of what parents, as adults, need to do, to raise their children, when adulthood itself is so unsettled. Through 2024-2025 we held a discussion series about these issues which you can read about below.<\/p>\n Professor Keith Hayward<\/strong><\/p>\n Have you ever noticed that in areas of everyday life, rather than being addressed like a mature adult, you\u2019re increasingly treated like an irresponsible child in constant need of instruction and protection? Noticing society\u2019s creeping descent into infantilisation is one thing, however understanding the roots and causes of the phenomenon is not quite so easy. In this topical and vitally important new work, cultural theorist and academic, Dr Keith Hayward, exposes the deep social, psychological and political dangers of a world characterised by denuded adult autonomy. Infantilised is no one-dimensional, unsympathetic critique. Brimming with anecdotes and examples that span everything from the normalisation of infantilism on reality TV to the rise of a new class of political \u2018infantocrat\u2019, this comprehensive book also offers an insightful and at times humorous account of infantilism\u2019s seductive appeal and details some suggestions for avoiding some of the pitfalls associated with our increasingly infantilised world.<\/p>\n Dr Keith Hayward is Professor of Criminology at the University of Copenhagen. He has published widely on matters relating to crime, terrorism, and popular culture. He lives in Copenhagen.<\/p>\n Professor Talia Welsh\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Talia is Professor and Chair of Women\u2019s and Gender Studies at the University of Alberta. She researches Maurice Merleau-Ponty\u2019s work in child psychology and philosophy. Her books include the translation of Merleau-Ponty\u2019s lectures in child psychology and pedagogy in the volume\u00a0Child Psychology & Pedagogy: Maurice Merleau-Ponty at the Sorbonne<\/em>\u00a0(Northwestern University Press, 2010),\u00a0The Child as Natural Phenomenologist: Primal and Primary Experience in Merleau-Ponty\u2019s Psychology<\/em>\u00a0(Northwestern University Press, 2013),\u00a0Feminist Existentialism, Biopolitics, and Critical Phenomenology in a Time of Bad Health<\/em>\u00a0(Routledge, 2022), and the co-edited volume\u00a0Normality, Abnormality, and Pathology in Merleau-Ponty<\/em>\u00a0(SUNY Press, 2022). She\u2019s applied her ideas to critique the idea of the \u2018Helicopter Parent\u2019 in her essay \u2018Meta-Helicopter Parenting: Ambivalence in a Neoliberal World\u2019.<\/p>\n Background Reading:<\/strong><\/p>\n https:\/\/www.researchgate.net\/profile\/Talia-Welsh\/publication\/338836707_Meta-Helicopter_Parenting_Ambivalence_in_Neoliberal_World\/links\/5e2ee333299bf10a65976901\/Meta-Helicopter-Parenting-Ambivalence-in-Neoliberal-World.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n A recording of the event can be found\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n Matilda Gosling and Dr Ashley Frawley<\/strong><\/p>\n Ashley Fawley has written extensively about therapy culture and the shifting boundaries between mental illness and normal emotion. Her most recent book is\u00a0Significant Emotions<\/em>\u00a0(2023) and she is a Visiting Researcher with CPCS at the University of Kent. Matilda Gosling is a social scientist and independent researcher with more than 20 years\u2019 experience, including 12 years running an international social research consultancy. Her work covers education, skills and child development, as well as social psychology and analysis of belief systems.\u00a0She is the author of\u00a0Evidence-Based Parenting\u00a0<\/em>(2024), and\u00a0Teenagers: The Evidence Base<\/em>, in which she addresses the climate in which mental health conditions start to flourish, will be published in 2025.<\/p>\n Background Reading:<\/strong><\/p>\n https:\/\/www.matildagosling.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/parentingculturestudies\/about\/visiting-fellows\/<\/a><\/p>\n https:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/doi\/full\/10.1177\/13607804231215943<\/a><\/p>\n A recording of the event can be found\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n Jennifer Kent is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sydney, Australia<\/p>\n Dr Jennifer Kent is a Senior Research Fellow in Urbanism at the Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning. Jennifer\u2019s research interests are at the intersections between urban planning, transport and human health. She specialises in combining quantitative and qualitative data with understandings from policy science to trace the practical, cultural and political barriers to healthy cities. Key issues examined to date include parenting and private car use, the links between health and higher density living, the interpretation of health evidence into urban planning policy, the health impact of extended commute times, and cultural and structural barriers to sustainable transport use.<\/p>\n Background Reading:<\/strong><\/p>\n https:\/\/www.sydney.edu.au\/architecture\/about\/our-people\/academic-staff\/jennifer-kent.html<\/a><\/p>\n A recording of the event can be found\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n This series of discussions was held on Zoom and highlighted work by early and mid-career colleagues who have made use of ideas set out in Parenting Culture Studies<\/em> within their work.<\/p>\n Sunna is an Adjunct Lecturer and post-doc at the University of Iceland. She is currently joint PI of the\u00a0FIBI project<\/a>\u00a0– Fertility intentions and behaviour in Iceland: The role of policies and parenting culture<\/em>\u00a0that received a Grant of Excellence from the Icelandic Research Fund. Sunna\u2019s research focuses on fertility intentions and behaviour in Iceland. The goal is to understand the decision-making process underlying the choice to have a child and explore how gendered parenting ideologies and circumstances affect decisions regarding the timing and number of children.\u00a0 The ongoing study will shed light on how individuals and couples make decisions on becoming parents and family size and what they perceive as the rewards or deterrents of parenthood. The study will also explore how parenting culture influences the fertility choices of individuals and how dominant discourses of motherhood and fatherhood are constructed and negotiated.<\/p>\n A recording of the event can be found here<\/a><\/p>\n Background reading: <\/strong><\/p>\n https:\/\/fibi.hi.is\/<\/a><\/p>\n At this event John is going to talk about his research which links the ‘intensification of parenting’ and what he terms the ‘generational fracturing of spontaneous physical activity from childhood play’. John is a Lecturer in the School of Health and Social Care at the University of Essex, where he co-leads research training for the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology. He began his research career in Kent, researching his PhD at Canterbury Christ Church University, and before taking up his current post, was the Research Manager at Healthwatch Essex, where studies conducted by the research team that he led were funded by the UKRI, Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust and the National Lottery Community Fund. His research interests include generational and family sociology and his work in part has considered how changes in parenting culture influences childhood especially around play. Lenore Skenazy has spent now more than 15 years writing and campaigning around childhood independence. She is the founder of the Free Range Kids movement, author of a book of the same name, and more recently a co-founder of Let Grow, the US-based non-profit that works to \u2018make it easy and normal for parents to give their kids back a childhood\u2019.<\/p>\n Background reading: <\/strong><\/p>\n https:\/\/www.essex.ac.uk\/news\/2023\/08\/31\/children-lacking-spontaneous-play<\/a><\/p>\n https:\/\/letgrow.org\/<\/a><\/p>\nWednesday 18 March<\/h2>\n
Navigating motherhood online: understanding the role of momfluencers in the infant feeding journey of first-time mothers<\/b><\/h2>\n
Parenting Culture and Growing up (2025)\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Infantilised: How Our Culture Killed Adulthood<\/em><\/strong><\/a>. In person seminar, as part of the SSPSSR Seminar Series, at the University of Kent.<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Helicopter Parents and \u2018Meta-Helicopter Parenting\u2019\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Is there a teenage mental health crisis?\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Parenting the emerging adult and caring through the car <\/strong>Dr Jennifer Kent<\/strong><\/h2>\n
New Directions for Parenting Culture Studies (2024)\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Parenting Culture and declining fertility rates\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Sunna S\u00edmonard\u00f3ttir\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\u00a0<\/strong>Intensive parenting, childhood independence and playing out <\/strong><\/h2>\n
John Day, Lenore Skenazy as respondent<\/strong><\/h3>\n