Parenting at the croassroad oh hope, responsability and the future
Panel 35 / Quinto Convegno Nazionale SIAC “SPERARE / DISPERARE / DESIDERARE”
Matera, 25-27 settembre 2025
Proponenti: Ulderico Daniele (Università di Bergamo), Francesca Nicola (Ricercatrice indipendente)
Abstract
As socio-anthropological literature has shown, parenthood in contemporary Western societies is constructed as a “choice” (Shneider1981, Grilli 2019) and procreation is no longer given for granted (Solinas 2004); this implies an unprecedented effort to envision a possible and desirable future, along with the practices and strategies that can ensure its realization. This effort, which intertwines desire, hope, and despair, is evident in the diversification of reproductive trajectories, now interpreted as intentional parenthood. Likewise, the links between hope, desire, and despair can be explored by investigating the imaginaries, the practices and the strategies of what, from the perspective of “parenting culture studies” (Lee et al., 2014), has been defined as “intensive parenting” (Furedi 2001, Nicola 2017, Sità 2017). This notion refers to the way neoliberal societies configure the parental role as a “performance” requiring specific skills and laden with moral value: in a context of weakening kinship ties and growing distrust in public institutions, parents are seen as the primary agents and guarantors of their children’s present and future well-being. The panel aims at exploring diverse dimension of intensive parenting, because if parenting is by definition a choice that implies desire and hopes for a future perceived as possible and desirable, the current situation of uncertainty and instability, combined with changes in family structures, increasingly burden parents with exclusive responsibility for the rearing of their children, leaving them alone in facing crises and the risk of despair. The panel welcomes proposals based on ethnographic research investigating the diverse forms of intensive parenting such as parental activism in public spaces and in relations with healthcare and educational institutions, to the re-naturalization of the maternal role, and to the construction of new and involvend fatherhoods.
Keywords: Parenting, genitorialità intensive, Parenting Culture studies
Lingue accettate: Italiano / English
Per sottomettere un paper scaricare il seguente format e inviarlo a: ulderico.daniele@unibg.it; lafrenny@gmail.com
To submit a paper download the following format and please send it to: ulderico.daniele@unibg.it; lafrenny@gmail.com
