Parenting After the Century of the Child

"Parenting After the Century of the Child" provides a timely intervention into scholarship surrounding childhood and parenthood, bridging the gaps between those studies that are oriented around childhood and its 'globalisation' and those focused on parenthood. Exploring in depth negotiations of travelling ideals on childhood it shows the power of institutional implementations to effect change in parenting practices. Drawing on the latest research conducted in Europe, North and South America, Africa, and South East Asia, this truly international book examines ideas currently travelling across the globe as translated through institutional settings, providing new insights into the dynamics and ambivalences involved in the simultaneous reframing of childhood and parenthood. Through detailed analyses of situations in which norms and practices of childcare are confronted and negotiated, it reveals the trickling down of norms in various institutional settings, demonstrating the great variation in solutions to childcare challenges existing across the globe. Addressing questions surrounding family forms and gendered parenting; the primacy that is increasingly accorded to close biological relations at the expense of other bonds; responsibilities in education and child welfare institutions; and, the translation to local settings of international legislation, "Parenting After the Century of the Child" will appeal to anthropologists and sociologists with interests in gender, childhood studies and the sociology of the family.