Good parenting in post-socialist Serbia: too much parental care or too many children’s needs? Anthropological reflections

Abstract

The topic of this paper is the phenomenon, well known in sociological literature, of “prolonged youth” in contemporary post-socialist Serbia. Anthropological accounts, however, remain largely absent. We are interested in cultural representations of parenting and raising children in Serbia, in comparison to Western, mainly EU, parenting models. Therefore, we have conducted twelve semi-structured open-ended interviews with female EU citizens and Serbian parents living in Belgrade, on how their experiences of living in Serbia and/or different EU countries influence their cultural perceptions of being a good parent and having a good parenting style. We show that cultural representations of parenting and child-rearing and related practices influence family dynamics and the process of growing up in Serbia. Our results show that Serbian parents favour the “Western” parenting model even though they do not practice it. They find justification for being forced into “abnormal“ parenting in the current political and economic situation.