Representations of parenting and the neo-liberal discourse: parents’ and professionals’ views on child-rearing practices in Italy

ABSTRACT

With neoliberal ideologies having inspired social policies for families across the world, the discourse on childrearing as the sole responsibility of individual parents has become dominant. The neologism ‘parenting’ refers more and more to a de-contextualized performance, with targets to be reached, and necessary competences to be learned. Currently, discourse on parenting thus entails what has been defined as ‘parental determinism’ which in turn leads to blaming parents, often described as incompetent and in need of guidance. It is, therefore, not surprising that parents’ voices have seldom been considered and systematically explored. This paper presents a qualitative study, carried out in a northern Italian province, which compared representations of childrearing in different contexts by mothers and fathers, on the one hand, and by practitioners involved in various capacities with parents, on the other. In total, 55 mothers and fathers and 49 professionals were interviewed. The resulting data enabled the identification of common views, as well as clashes in perspectives and instances of parental resistance to dominant discourses on parenting.

KEYWORDS:

• Intensive parenting ideology
• neoliberal discourse
• individualization
• parenting challenges
• childrearing practices
• parental authority

Acknowledgements

The data used for this article originate from the project ‘Dynamic patterns of kinship and child-rearing practices in South Tyrol’ financed by the University of Bolzano that I thank for the great opportunity provided. I am grateful to Prof. Lorenz for his support and inspiring suggestions, and to Farida Lardjane, Monika Linser, Nicoletta Trentini who participated in the project. I am also indebted to all the professionals and parents in the advisory board who significantly contributed to the research, and to Valentina Gobbet Bamber who patiently read the paper and helped me significantly with the English editing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Libera Università di Bolzano: [Grant Number BW2035].