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By retracing the way in which maternal and parental work is supervised by a whole series of experts, this quartet of researchers lifts the veil on what parenting means today. The first edition, published a decade ago, was already a masterpiece and influenced the work of many. This updated edition is essential for anyone interested in the politicization of parenting issues. Claude Martin, Emeritus Research Professor, National Centre for Scientific Research, France Future historians will wonder why more researchers were not documenting and refuting the idea that today's kids are more fragile and helpless than any before them, and ditto, their parents. These authors peer behind the endless parenting advice, warnings and best practices to show us what is really going on when it comes to childhood, love, humanity, and the family. Lenore Skenazy, President, Let Grow, USA, and Author of Free-Range Kids Now in its second edition, Parenting Culture Studies seeks to understand how parenting is taken as a particular mode of childrearing that reflects broader social trends. Ten years after the initial volume's groundbreaking publication, the authors once again closely examine how the main aspects of parenting have been established, explored, and critically evaluated. Chapters revisit phenomena such as intensive parenting and politics around parenting, as well as controversial issues including policing pregnant women's bodies and parental determinism. In addition to updates throughout the volume, including those addressing literature that has built from the books original publication, the book features a new third part discussing parents dealing with risk assessment, school closures, contradictory care arrangements, and vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ellie Lee is Director of the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies and Professor of Family and Parenting Research at University of Kent, UK. Jennie Bristow is a Reader in Sociology at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK. Charlotte Faircloth is Associate Professor of Social Science in the UCL Social Research Institute at University College London, UK. Jan Macvarish is Visiting Research Fellow in the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies at the University of Kent, UK

Why have the minutiae of how parents raise their children become routine sources of public debate and policy making? This book provides in-depth answers to these features drawing on a wide range of sources from sociology, history, anthropology and psychology, covering developments in both Europe and North America.

Chapter 1: Introduction -- Chapter 2: Intensive Parenting and the Expansion of Parenting. - Chapter 3: Experts and Parenting Culture -- Chapter 4: The Politics of Parenting -- Chapter 5: Who Cares for Children? The Problem of Intergenerational Contact -- Chapter 6: Policing Pregnancy: The Pregnant Woman Who Drinks -- Chapter 7: The Problem of Attachment: The Detached Parent -- Chapter 8: Babies Brains and Parenting Policy: The Insensitive Mother -- Chapter 9: Intensive Fatherhood? The (Un)involved Dad -- Chapter 10: The Double Bind of Parenting Culture: Helicopter Parents and Cotton Wool Kids -- Chapter 11: Parenting' after Covid-19: When the Quantity of 'Quality time' Becomes Untenable -- Chapter 12: From Safeguarding to Childism? Covid-19 and the School Closures Debate -- Chapter 13: Pregnancy and Vaccination: The Precautionary Principle and Parenting Culture in Covid Times -- Chapter 14: Conclusion. .