Contemporary culture of parenting: pedagogical implications

Abstract

The possibility of improving parenting practice in raising children became a very popular topic in the scientific literature during the last few decades. The focus is on raising children at an early age and the problem is thematised primarily from the psy discourse point of view. Within this framework, a modern parenting culture is established, which reduces family upbringing to dyadic parent-child interactions outside the context of social structures and values. The aim of this paper is a critical analysis of the pedagogical implications of contemporary parenting culture, considering two key characteristics. The first refers to the conceptualisation of parenting as a depersonalised individual competence. Raising children is understood as an individual competence of achieving predefined outcomes of child development, which neglects the complexity of education both as an intergenerational and as a personal relationship. Another characteristic is the scientification of parenting in the sense of referring to the evidence of empirical scientific research and relying on the so-called parental determinism model. Raising children is becoming a scientific endeavour, and parenting is the most important "profession" that shapes the future of the child and society. Neglecting the socio-historical dimension of education in terms of structural and ethical frameworks, articulated by the context and the goal of upbringing, makes the pedagogical voice irrelevant in the contemporary culture of parenting.