128
The Culture of Parenthood. Part I

Tuesday, 17 July 2018: 08:30-10:20
Location: 714A (MTCC SOUTH BUILDING)
RC06 Family Research (host committee)

Language: English

The focus of this session is on historical and contemporary cultural understandings of motherhood and fatherhood. Current understandings of proper parenthood and children’s needs in Western societies emphasize intensive, child-centred parenting that focuses in particular on brain development and the future intellectual potential of children. Children today are viewed as more passive, more vulnerable, and more dependent on parents for longer periods of time than in the recent past. Their needs have also been increasingly positioned in opposition to parental needs. The family as several authors have suggested has become understood less as an integrated system of relationships among members and more as an ecosystem for a developing child. Several inter-related and powerful discourses came together over the course of the 20th and 21stcenturies to contribute to these understandings. These include the cultural understandings fostered by developmental psychology, child-rearing experts’ co-optation of neuroscience, neoliberal politics and rationality, risk discourse and gendered and classed understandings of proper parenthood.

This session welcomes papers that address the development and/or manifestations of contemporary cultural understandings of motherhood, fatherhood and childhood as well as those that examine the implications these understandings have for issues of class and gender equality, social policy formation and contemporary family experiences.

Session Organizers:
Glenda WALL, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada and Gillian RANSON, University of Calgary, Canada
Chairs:
Glenda WALL, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada and Gillian RANSON, University of Calgary, Canada
Oral Presentations
Good Mothering and the Provision of Family Meals: Public Health Discourse Vs Contemporary Realities
Jo LINDSAY, Monash University, Australia; JaneMaree MAHER, School of Social Sciences, Monash University, Australia; Claire TANNER, Centre for Stem Cell Systems, The University of Melbourne, Australia; Deana LEAHY, Education, Monash University, Australia; Jan WRIGHT, School of Education, University of Wollongong, Australia; Sian SUPSKI, School of Social Sciences, Monash University, Australia
Middle-Class Indian Immigrants and Transcultural Parenting
Pallavi BANERJEE, University of Calgary, Canada
Intensive Grandparenting? Exploring the Changing Nature of Grandparenting in the UK
Vicki HARMAN, University of Surrey, United Kingdom; Michelle WEBSTER, Royal Holloway, University of London, United Kingdom; Benedetta CAPPELLINI, Royal Holloway, University of London, United Kingdom
Parenting As a Risky Venture: A Narrative Analysis of the Parental Experience in Non-Engaged Youth’s Life and Career Development
Siu-ming TO, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong; Yuk-yan SO, Department of Social Work, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Distributed Papers
Hip Children, Good Mothers – Constructing Proper Parenthood By Means of Appearance
Erica ÅBERG, University of Turku, Finland; Tero PAJUNEN, University of Turku, Finland
See more of: RC06 Family Research
See more of: Research Committees