Parenting in Global Perspective: Negotiating Ideologies of Kinship,
Self and Politics, ed. Charlotte Faircloth, Diane M. Hoffman and Linda L.
Layne (London and New York: Routledge, 2013)
This is not so much a critical review of what is a
cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural volume on motherhood (and parenthood more
widely) as a comparative reflection on a project which would seem to have some
similarity, in terms of themes and aims, with the work of the Motherhood in
post-1968 European Literature Network. My reflections on this volume also lead
to reflections on our own network project and forthcoming publications.
First, though, a brief description of the Parenting in Global Perspective collection
of essays. The book’s fourteen chapters are divided into four parts – The moral
context for parenting; The structural constraints to ‘good’ parenting; Negotiating
parenting culture; and Parenting and/as identity – and there is a substantial
editors’ introduction, plus a Foreword (Frank Furedi) and an Afterword (Ellie
Lee). The contributors took part in a workshop at the University of Kent, where
contributions to the volume and associated methodologies were presented and
discussed. The academic field for the publication is identified as ‘parenting
culture studies’ and the project’s overall aim is to ‘foreground the experience
of parents as agents, recognising the important but neglected transformations
that affect them as situated within networks of kinship, material culture,
ideology and beyond’ (xviii). It involves researchers from both anthropology
and sociology, and takes in parenting situations from a wide range of national
and cultural contexts, from the UK and Europe to the US and South America,
including migrant, refugee and other transnational issues. Although the
declared focus is on parenting, and the volume includes some discussion of
fathers, here, as elsewhere, ‘the topic of “parenting” […] [often] euphemises
what is really “mothering”’ (54), and the majority of chapters are devoted to
the experiences of mothers.
The editors’ introduction sets out a series of research
questions for the volume, relating to the ways in which parenting in the
contemporary era is constructed through the discourses of various child-development
experts, what kinds of cultural assumptions and authoritative claims are made
by them and what kinds of parents they produce, as well as how parents
themselves negotiate and experience expectations about their parenting. These
questions are also linked into constructions of the self, kinship and political
relations, and how they affect the construction of gender, race, social class,
and nation. The individual essays are linked by means of the theoretical
concept of intensive parenting, largely drawn from sociologist Sharon Hays’s
work on the ideology of ‘intensive mothering’ in The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood (1996), a concept and
practice which, it is argued, is permeating internationally, and all the essays
make explicit reference to this text, albeit sometimes somewhat tangentially.
Another key concept (and text) for the collection is Frank Furedi’s Paranoid Parenting (2001), in relation
to parents’ sensitivity to discourses of risk and to political trends ‘where
parenting is increasingly understood as both the source of, and solution to, a
whole host of social problems’ (1-2). The volume demonstrates a tension between
commonalities in discourse, structure and experience, and a range of cultural,
regional and individual specificities. Indeed, rather than being part of ‘the new “parenting” culture’ in global terms
(1; my emphasis), the concept of intensive mothering actually seems to grow out
of and be in dialogue with specific historical and cultural ideologies: for
example, in Chile, intensive mothering is seen in policy discourse as a path to
upward mobility for families, but also fits in with traditional Chilean notions
of mothering; in Spain, the child-centred values of contemporary intensive
mothering echo the self-sacrificing notions of motherhood from Catholicism and
Francoism; likewise, the notion of motherhood as sacrifice is a traditional
ideal in Turkey. Plenty of examples of resistance to and creative negotiations
with the concept are evident: such as Dominican migrants in Madrid defining
themselves against the traditional Spanish model; Sudanese refugees in the US
modifying American concepts of child-centred parenting to maintain links with
their traditional culture and ethnic identity; and many of the parents in the
case studies seem to identify themselves against the mainstream.
Successful interdisciplinary work is stimulating but always
challenging; even more so when it also crosses cultures. Notions of methodology
and evidence, as well as cultural specificities, can disrupt discussion and
limit outcomes. As in our own work in the Motherhood in post-1968 European
Literature Network, which works across disciplines and cultures, the variables
here are immense. The concept of intensive parenting is, therefore, used as a
cohering principle for the broad-based set of contexts discussed in the Parenting in a Global Perspective collection.
In our own network, the focus on Europe is designed to fulfil a similar
function, especially since – within the EU at least – so many policy decisions
affecting families and parents are made at European level. And our emphasis on
European literature is designed to demonstrate that literary texts can offer
valid and valuable insights within multi-discipline studies on motherhood. In
both projects, a rich comparative forum has been produced, although, in the
book, there is a certain sense of ‘randomness’ about what contexts, situations
and case studies are included. Projects such as this are, however, dependent on,
and grow out of, what scholars are working on – and, importantly, on what they
can get funding to work on – at any one time.
My thoughts as I read through this book turned to how to produce
useful publications from the discussions we have had at our five workshops held
in 2012 and 2013, and will have at the forthcoming conference in October 2013. In
this book, Lee concludes in her Afterword that the project has produced a
series of alternatives rather than counter-narratives on parenting and has
probably raised more questions than it has answered, while opening up new areas
for research. This in itself is a highly successful and valuable contribution
of course but, even while we plan a series of journal special issues and
sections drawn from our workshops, we must not forget that, as Furedi suggests
in his Foreword to the Parenting in
Global Perspectives volume, the cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural
conversations we have had at our events are extremely valuable in themselves.
Podcasts from the workshops are available on the Network
website at http://modernlanguages.sas.ac.uk/research-fellowships/ahrc-motherhood-post-1968-european-literature-network/podcasts
. Please continue these conversations on this blog.
We are always open to suggestions for ways in which the
Network can continue to contribute to debates on motherhood in Europe.
Gill Rye
August 2013
