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The parent-child relationship: The hidden normativity of developmental psychology

Boekbijdrage - Boekhoofdstuk Conferentiebijdrage

This paper starts from the concern that when it comes to child-rearing and the parent-child relationship, there is a growing sense in both policy and popular literature that the only relevant story that can be told is the one offered by developmental psychology. Concepts developed in the context of developmental psychological research, such as attachment theory, have entered into popular debate, e.g. allowing children to experiment with taking distance from their parents. In general, it has become quite normal to speak of things such as offering emotional support, enhancing well-being (of parents and children), accommodating children’s needs, creating stimulating contexts, enabling interactions between parents and their children, experimenting etc. in the context of child-rearing. In this paper we set out to do two things. First, we will show how developmental psychology, in Burman’s succinct phrasing, “both contributes to and reflects” normative assumptions about parenthood and upbringing, “both in structuring research agendas and in informing practice” (Burman, 2008, p. 117). We will do so by analysing recent prominent research on parenting and policies on parent support, in both the UK and Flanders. Second, we will address the ways in which developmental psychology in the area of parenting and upbringing holds a particular attraction in our current cultural context. In a post-enlightenment society, the traditional frameworks through which humans face and understand their existential condition are increasingly undermined by uncertainty and doubt. Drawing on the work of (among others) Zygmunt Bauman, we will show how developmental psychology is one of the instruments that contribute to breaking down our existential condition into a series of well-defined tasks (‘developmental tasks’) and categories (‘developmental stages’). In so doing it displaces rather than confronts the possibly limitless depth of the enormity of the reality of ‘being a parent’.
Boek: Proceedings of the 2010 Conference of the Research Community Philosophy and History of the Discipline of Education, Faces and Spaces of Educational Research., issue RC Leuven 2010: The attraction of psychology
Pagina's: 165 - 179
Jaar van publicatie:2010