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Faircloth, Charlotte Rosemary

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Grant Type: 
Conference & Workshop Grant
Insitutional Affiliation: 
Kent, U. of
Status: 
Completed Grant
Approve Date: 
August 31, 2011
Project Title: 
Faircloth, Dr. Charlotte R., U. of Kent, Kent, UK - To aid workshop on 'What's New about 'Parenting'? Comparative Studies in Kinship, Self and Politics,' 2012, U. of Kent, in collaboration with Dr. Diane M. Hoffman

Preliminary Abstract: Drawing on perspectives from the new kinship studies, medical anthropology and reproduction, this workshop will discuss the nascent 'anthropology of parenting'. A trend towards 'intensive' parenting has been widely noted by a range of social scientists working in middle class milieux across the UK, US, Australia and Canada, yet the ways in which parents' and families' experiences have been affected by this shift -- in short, the transformation of 'parent' from a noun to a verb, 'parenting' -- is not a topic, so far, that has been explored significantly within anthropology. This workshp therefore develops a 2010 AAA panel, 'What's new about parenting?' by seeking to examine the sociocultural significance of 'parenting' as a subject of professional expertise, and activity in which adults are increasingly expected to be emotionally absorbed and find personally fulfilling. Selected contributors to that panel, in conjunction with other invited authors, are working to formalise this new 'anthropology of parenting' via a foundational collection of essays, that we intend to discuss at this workshop. (Our proposal is currently under review with Berghahn Books). The workshop would help locate 'parenting' as a central and contested site where parents' and children's personhood, family ties, and unequal political economic relations are (re) produced. Whilst this 'intensive parenting' ideology has emerged from specific (middle-class) settings, it nevertheless has far-reaching implications both within and beyond these settings. We would therefore include discussion of issues around parenting, class and race, in a range of ethnographic locales, from Europe, Canada and the US, as well non-Euro-American settings (including Turkey, Chile and Brazil). In enabling us to come together at the University of Kent in 2012 to discuss this proposed volume, this workshop grant would foster an international community of scholars, and help establish the 'anthropology of parenting' as a discrete and critical anthropological field.