Parenting Culture Studies

Why do we live at a time when the minutiae of how parents raise their children – how they feed them, talk to them, play with them or discipline them – 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?

Parenting Culture Studies 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. 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.

Ellie Lee is Reader in Social Policy and Director of the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies at the University of Kent, UK. She has previously published Abortion, Motherhood and Mental Health.
Jennie Bristow is a journalist and PhD Candidate at the University of Kent, UK. She has previously published Standing up to Supernanny (with F. Furedi) and Licensed to Hug.
Charlotte Faircloth is a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow at the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies, University of Kent, UK. She has previously published Militant Lactivism? and co-edited Parenting in Global Perspective.
Jan Macvarish is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Health Services Studies at the University of Kent, UK.