Pedagogy of the encounter? Philosophical notes on the idea of ‘meeting places’ as forms of parent support

Recently, the idea of meeting places for parents and their children has increasingly gained importance in the context of parent support in Belgium. Meeting places for parents and their children have existed for a long time already in other countries (e.g. the “Maison Vertes” in France, and the “spazio insieme” in Italy) and these have been an important source of inspiration for the Belgian cases (see e.g. Vandenbroeck et al., 2007, 2009a). Meeting places usually are houses – frequently called “open houses” – that are reorganized in such a way as to allow a number of parents and their children to come by and spend some time there. The interest in meeting places is to be understood as a reaction to formal kinds of support for parents (c.q. mostly professional advice in institutionalized settings) and, connected to this, in response to what parents themselves have expressed as being in need of in a number of surveys (see e.g. the research rapport by Buysse, 2008, which is frequently being referred to in Flanders in this context). Parents themselves have indicated a lack of informal networks, and wish to have the opportunity to share their concerns and worries with likeminded people (i.e. other parents, more of less sharing the same experiences) instead of talking about (bringing up) their children with professionals. Meeting places for parents and their children are said to offer this opportunity for informal social contacts; places where parents can find emotional and social support for what can sometimes be the very tough task of bringing up their children. In the literature, this idea of meeting places is connected to the idea of a pedagogy of the encounter. This paper is a first attempt at critically discussing what is entailed in these ideas of meeting places and encounter . It is important to keep in mind that I will only focus here on the Flemish cases, c.q. on how the idea of meeting places for parents and their children has been conceptualized here until now. To provide some background, I will first go into how parent support is most commonly understood in Flanders (1.). In the second section I will highlight some characteristic features of meeting places. I will not go into detail, but only focus on those aspects which are most relevant for this paper, c.q. the relation to socialization, to the idea of encounter, and to the idea of relational citizenship (2.). Third, I will discuss some difficulties which I think are connected to the current understanding of meeting places. My purpose is to try to show the “conceptual struggles”, so to speak, related to the development of what is undeniably, at least in my opinion, an interesting and promising social practice seeking to support parents in bringing up their children in a societal context that is markedly different from that of a few decades ago. In the concluding section (4.), I will, in a very preliminary way, try to sketch the outlines of an alternative conceptualization of what can be entailed in the idea of meeting places for parents and their children, in order to open this up for further discussion and investigation.status: publishe