Being a parent: From practice to profession

The aim of this workshop is to present a draft proposal for a series of research seminars drawing together several strands of contemporary research on issues related to the parent-child relationship from a variety of perspectives (philosophical, historical, sociological), in an international context. We want to pursue the following strands of research. 1. It is possible to acknowledge the importance of insights regarding parental rights, responsibilities and duties, while at the same time offering a richer philosophical account? To put this more sharply: Is it the case that the kind of analytical, rights theorising, while indispensable, is easily supplemented with a richer, phenomenological account; or is it rather the case that this analytical account betrays something crucial in the aspect of human experience we are describing, and thus undermines our ability to think and talk about it in other terms? 2. A rather obvious candidate for helping us to develop an alternative conceptual apparatus with which to talk about the parent-child relationship is the Ethics of Care approach. In our view, however, there is something missing in this approach. The "care" idea does not seem to capture the educational, or pedagogical, aspects of the relationship to which recently much attention has been paid (e.g. in terms of educationalisation). Rather than envisaging a tension between the "caring" and the "pedagogical" aspects of being a parent, our concern is to try to articulate the sense that it is the complex interaction between these aspects that constitutes being a parent. 3. What are the historical, cultural and political origins of the "parenting" discourse reflected in contemporary policies and more particularly in research institutes informing these policies? We are thinking here, for example, of the Flemish "Hoger Instituut voor Gezinswetenschappen" (Higher Institute for Family Studies, see http://www.hig.be/,), which, among other things, has developed the idea of a parenting contract, and of the UK government's "provision for parenting practitioners" in Every Child Matters (DfES, 2006). 4. Can we accommodate an acknowledgement of the political and social aspects of bringing up children, alongside a rejection of the idea that there should be some sort of publicly accountable standards of "good parenting"?status: publishe