Overview
- Provides original empirical evidence around couple relationships in an era of intensive parenting
- Makes a much-needed contribution to the field of Parenting Culture Studies
- Points to some of the unrealistic pressures placed on parents in raising the next generation
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Part I
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Front Matter
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Part II
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
This book argues that new parents are caught in an uncomfortable crossfire between two competing discourses: those around ideal relationships and those around ideal parenting. The author suggests that parents are pressured to be equal partners while also being asked to parent their children intensively, in ways markedly more demanding of mothers. Reconciling these ideals has the potential to create resentment and disappointment. Drawing on research with couples in London as they became parents, the book points to the social pressures at play in raising the next generation at material, physiological and cultural levels. Chapters explore these levels through concrete practices: birth, feeding and sleeping—three of the most highly moralised areas of contemporary parenting culture.
Reviews
"A sensitive analysis that shines a light on the acute difficulties in translating the ideals of parenting equality into reality.”
—Esther Dermott, Professor and Head of School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol, UK, and author of Intimate Fatherhood (2008)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Charlotte Faircloth is Associate Professor of Social Science in the UCL Social Research Institute, UK. Her work focuses on parenting, gender and reproduction using qualitative and cross-cultural methodologies from sociological and anthropological perspectives. Her research has explored infant feeding, couple relationships, intergenerational relations and the impact of COVID-19 on family life.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Couples’ Transitions to Parenthood
Book Subtitle: Gender, Intimacy and Equality
Authors: Charlotte Faircloth
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77403-5
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-77402-8Published: 11 July 2021
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-77405-9Published: 12 July 2022
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-77403-5Published: 10 July 2021
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XV, 157
Number of Illustrations: 2 b/w illustrations
Topics: Sociology of Family, Youth and Aging, Children, Youth and Family Policy, Gender Studies, Social Policy, Politics of the Welfare State, Social Work and Community Development