Two sides of intensive parenting: Present and future dimensions in contemporary relations between parents and children in Spain

The perception of social change and emerging risks

A perception widely shared among the participants in this study is that relationships with children have changed, increasing in intensity and depth. Adults, and even children, value the improved level of attention and care given to children and the importance that families and institutions give to defending their interests; and they contrast this with the way things were in the past, reflected in aspects such as the limited supervision of children. Control over children (and families) is now considered a sign of progress.

Paradoxically, however, an essential aspect of this social change consists of the growing exposure of children to different risks. For this reason, although child-rearing is seen as a very positive experience for parents and as a source of personal fulfilment, it is also cause for considerable concern. ‘Fear’, ‘anguish’ or even ‘panic’ are common descriptions used by parents to transmit the emotions that raising children generates. In fact, it is accepted that parents’ relationships with their children develop within a climate of more or less constant fear in contemporary societies. The possibility of an undesirable event occurring (for example, related to health as mentioned in the story below) leads to the existence of feelings of anxiety alongside those of satisfaction:

I think that for a child . . . panic. I don’t know if you have children but it is the greatest thing that can happen to you. My son, J. was really ill with gastroenteritis . . . and he couldn’t stand up . . . and he fell on me . . . I am there 24 hours: at their side, at their side. It’s very frightening. (Domingo, father, LM-U) ³

Fear of rape, of abuse . . . not that they didn’t exist before but they were minor worries. You say ‘My god, what kind of world are our children living in?’ You are afraid of a world that you don’t have any control over. It is a lot of different fears: drugs, unemployment, or low-paying jobs, violence in the streets, in the classroom, the dangers of the Internet, child pornography. (Luis, secondary school teacher, LM-SU)

Sometimes, concerns about safety become particularly pronounced; the mere possibility of something terrible occurring and destroying normal family life produces anguish. As a result, atypical and unfortunate events, such as the disappearance of a child, are commonly mentioned by adults to express these fears. Given the great unlikelihood of such events, it is striking how plausible their occurrence seems to be. Whether due to media coverage or for other reasons, it is clear that these events seem to have significant impact on parents’ perceptions of children’s safety, resulting in declining trust and greater restrictions on freedom (Darbyshire, 2007):

Interviewer: Are you afraid of your daughter going out alone?

Very much so, I’m afraid of someone kidnapping her. . . Maybe parents are afraid because of the horrible things we see on TV or we read in the paper. It’s like the whole society is worried about this because of the way the media get everybody worked up. (María, mother, LM-U)

There have been a lot of kidnappings of children by perverts, all kinds of things. The way things are today you have to be careful. It’s only one in a million but it could happen to you. (Javier, father, LM-U)

The abduction of a child calls to mind a situation of extreme suffering for parents, given the gratuitousness, preventability and uncertainty accompanying such occurrences. Thus, there is strong empathy for parents who are victims of these events; yet simultaneously they can be subject to reproach because of their lack of diligence in carrying out their parental responsibilities. It would appear that abduction is an apt metaphor for the relationship between parents and their children in the contemporary world, as it is symbolic of the existence of risks embodied in a potential enemy – always ready to produce the most terrible harm – who must be kept at a distance, and who cannot be given the slightest opportunity to act.

Issues related to safety (theft, violence or threats) also raise concerns among children. As with adults, they realize that their daily lives are conditioned by these concerns and that it would not be prudent to act without recognizing their importance. ‘Danger signs’ (Gubrium, 2005) are communicated to them in their homes through stories often drawn from the news. In addition, stories are communicated among peers (Corsaro, 2005) – which was evident in the focus groups – that contribute to strengthening the perception of vulnerability, which in turn, encourages fears among adults, in a vicious circle:

They don’t let me go out but besides, I don’t want to go out. I’m afraid to go out alone. (Clara, girl, private school, UM-U)

Sometimes they exaggerate. When you go out they say: ‘Be careful crossing the street, so you don’t get hit by a car’. As if they assume we aren’t careful! (Julio, boy, public school, LM-U)

Given parents’ perceptions of reality, adopting multiple forms of control appears to be justified. In this sense, instilling fear in children (defined as being prudent) is deemed to be the price that must be paid if security is primary. In any case, how risks are defined is negotiable and circumstantial, based on their nature and perceptions regarding age and parental criteria regarding what is an acceptable level of freedom for children (Backett-Milburn and Hardin, 2004):

I don’t like them having to be afraid but I am concerned that there are a lot who aren’t. (Carlota, mother, LM-U)

The references to a past that adults see as having been better for children become more frequent. In other words, discourses appear among adults that are based on nostalgia about the experience of parenting in the past, which is perceived as having been a better time, in particular in terms of the seriousness of dangers (a discourse of negative change). A different discursive logic accentuates the importance of the generational dimension. In this case, a certain degree of structural uncertainty in any adult generation regarding the younger generation is accepted, so that the uncertainty that the current period generates is not something new, although the elements of this uncertainty vary from those of the past (a discourse of generational change). As mentioned by the participants below, in the past parents also had persistent fears, but they were based on very different realities. Concretely, one fear from the past that stands out and contrasts with those of today was the fear of the breakdown of traditional practices:

Given how life is . . . I didn’t want to have children. The truth is that it’s very scary. Them growing up scares me, when they get older. (Marta, mother, UM-U)

I don’t think that previous generations are different. It’s just that the reasons why we are afraid have changed. I remember that my mother was afraid if I was a little bit late or if she would see me with a boy when I was 13 or 14 years old. That would be a scandal in the village. (Violeta, mother, UM-U)

Fear related to your child’s freedom has always existed, generally speaking. I don’t think that has changed much, well, maybe in how it is expressed. (Fernando, counsellor, LM-SU)

Mechanisms for reducing uncertainties can be focused on the present dimension through efforts to control immediate safety and well-being, or focused on the future dimension through the anticipation and prevention of future risks with the aim of ensuring that children achieve adult aspirations. The following sections focus on these two dimensions.

Intensive parenting ‘for the present’

Intensive parenting focused on the present is particularly concerned with safety, and this is especially visible in urban environments where there is a clear tendency for children to be confined in the home. As we have said, abduction is the most extreme form of the different fears that exist regarding safety; however, there may be multiple sources of danger. The outside world is seen as an unsafe space, and the only safe alternative is for children to remain at home, in school or participate in supervised extra-curricular activities, which, along with other functions, provide control over space. This reality is talked about with a certain sense of guilt on the part of our adult participants, who realize that although these practices may be necessary, they are far from optimal:

We’d rather have them stuck playing at home than being on the street with other children. (Luisa, mother, LM-U)

[In reference to school and extra-curricular activities] I bring the kids to the school. They bring their toys and they play there . . . in this enclosed area they play football, hide-and-seek . . . I feel more comfortable here because the kids are under control, but they only want to play in the street. (Domingo, father, L-U)

If you have a kid playing inside all day on the Playstation, when they go outside they feel strange. But if they participate in an after-school activity with their friends, they relate to others, and they are more communicative. (Javier, father, LM-U)

In certain middle-class environments, an alternative solution of ‘restricted’ streets is possible. Children’s aspirations can be satisfied if there is an opportunity to share a space (outside) with other children. This happens in ‘gated communities’ where outdoor space is restricted to those who live in the community. It is interesting to note that children in these communities define the ‘street’ as any outdoor space (including playgrounds and spaces closed off to public transit in their communities) and not in the more conventionally understood sense. In the case of children from more disadvantaged homes, access to the street is much more common despite the difficulties that must be faced there:

The street isn’t dangerous depending on where you go. There are areas that are fenced in and no one from outside can get in. (Carlos, boy, private school, UM-U)

The threat of physical abduction and other dangers of urban life (accidents, delinquency, drugs or simply bad relationships) are leading to a form of ‘abduction’ of children’s freedom in the name of protecting them from dangers. As Doherty (2005) has shown, in the United States, from 1981 to 1997, children’s free time declined by 12 hours per week and playtime by three hours per week. Furedi has highlighted the paradox of the enormous political and intellectual ferment regarding the rights of children ‘[coinciding] with the continuous erosion of the freedom that children have to play with each other’ (2002: 115). In one form or another, children’s freedom to be outside or to enjoy free time has been reduced.

However, intensive parenting for the present is not only concerned with purely physical protection; it also extends to other aspects of children’s lives such as the pursuit of emotional well-being. Parenting is oriented towards the satisfaction of more than just material demands, responding to children’s needs that emerge from emotional, psychological and even relational dimensions. In the expansion of the expectations regarding parenting, deficits in supervision (in the family or at school) tend to be perceived as a risk to the safety and well-being of children and, in a certain manner, as a threat to the very social order (Edwards, 2001). Different forms of control are considered necessary and unavoidable. In concrete, the intensification of family control is accepted as essential for children’s well-being and future development.

Intensive parenting ‘for the future’

Intensive parenting focused on the future has the aim of optimizing children’s future possibilities. The role of education is therefore crucial. However, parental action does not end with the delegation of education to schools; rather it also involves monitoring and helping children with their school work, which often implies a high level of involvement.

Among the professional middle class, this task acquires a great deal of importance. An issue that emerged in the discussion groups was establishing mechanisms for organizing children’s daily activities at home, in school and after school. One of the mechanisms referred to in the fieldwork is the use of day planners to help children better organize their time. While some see this type of instrument as a means to promote individual responsibility, others consider it excessive and even ridiculous:

Also among the adults we find discourses that are critical of what some consider to be the ‘over-programming’ of children’s lives. These discourses refer to the high degree of organization in children’s lives, which gives priority to learning over fun and recreation, without recognizing children’s natural need to play with no aim other than just having fun. The following participant explains it in this way:

And at seven years old the child has activities all week. And if it is like that, when does she play, when does she relax? The parents say that the more they learn now, the better it is for them in the future. I think that a six or seven year old child needs to play. Don’t leave them alone, but you have to give them a little bit of freedom, a little bit of a break. (Javier, father, LM-U)

Concern about the possibility of their children failing in school and, as a consequence, falling victim to economic precariousness, exploitation or underemployment are, without a doubt, important motives for exercising intensive parenting (Gil Calvo, 2009). Parents are motivated by the fear that their children may lack opportunities that adequately prepare them for the future in societies which are increasingly based on merit, as measured by educational credentials. In other words, they are afraid that their children’s future freedom will be ‘abducted’, meaning the loss of the ability as adults to make choices and decisions which are linked to access to the profitable segments of the labour market:

Aside from drugs, parents face a lot of uncertainty; dropping out of school is seen as failure with lifelong impact; you are afraid that if they don’t finish school. . . Before it was, ‘if they don’t want to study, they can work’. Now there is a different understanding: they see the possibility of poorly paid jobs. . . Parents are overly worried. (Luis, secondary school teacher, LM-SU)

And my youngest, I’m afraid when she has to go to high school in a couple of years things could change. (Victoria, mother, LM-U)

To counter these uncertainties and as a way of managing the future, investing in both ‘cultural’ and ‘social’ capital becomes essential (defined respectively as the totality of acquired knowledge and as all of the contacts the individual has created throughout his or her life [Bourdieu, 2000]). Thus, children’s relationships with peers are an important aspect of intensive parenting for the future. Parents, conscious of the influence that their children’s peers have on them (Harris, 1999), feel it is important for their children to be well integrated in their relational environment. However, they allude to the concerns they have about the influence that friends can have and consider it essential that their children’s friends share similar values. In a certain way, a fear of the ‘abduction’ of the family identity appears. Parents are afraid that through peer influence, their children will disconnect from the traits of family identity internalized in their socialization; as a result, potential friendships become an important factor in parents’ attempts to achieve their aspirations for their children. Above all, when they believe that these relationships can have negative effects on their children’s future (in other words, another form of abducting their freedom), parents develop preventative strategies, something which is most often seen among the privileged classes:

She has a group of very good friends but if I see something bad I try to separate her from it, but without her realizing it. (Luisa, mother, LM-U)

Friends are an important influence . . . and of course they can be very negative. (Pablo, father, LM-SU)

The group will be what dominates in her mind, no matter what I was able to do up until now. . . If these friends have similar characteristics as her, I mean in regard to education . . . I mean good people, that’s what I want. (Violeta, mother, UM-U)

In the focus groups with children, conflicting opinions regarding the pijo and cani subcultures emerge. ⁴ In a similar manner to the conflict between ‘ear’oles’ and ‘lads’ that Willis (1981) analyses in Learning to Labour, antithetical discourses appear between both subcultures. In particular, in the discourses of those from lower socioeconomic circles there is a rejection of the values, aesthetic and behaviour of those who are contemptuously identified as pijos. They are characterized as excessively formal in their dress and speech and as having a certain pro-adultism. This contrasts with the youth subculture that is here referred to as cani, the characteristics of which are seen as positive among these children who refer to the cocky, thuggish or even violent attitudes of this subculture.

In short, there is a high degree of importance attached to the values of these subcultures (both in a positive and negative sense) among the children interviewed. Although we find a higher level of support (or at least justification) for the cani subculture in less privileged circles, even in predominantly upper middle-class schools we find conflicting opinions. In other words, there is a certain porosity in the penetration of pro-pijo and pro-cani discourses among the different groups of children that goes beyond the class boundaries that tend to be associated with these subcultures. This adds another element to the climate of fear of symbolic contagion among middle-class parents who are trying to avoid, at all costs, any anticipatory symptoms of downward social mobility.

Actions aimed at protecting children from what are understood to be negative influences abound in processes of differentiation and to a certain extent, the segregation of school and extra-curricular spaces. Parents see their children’s potential friends as one of the key factors in academic success, and as a result, they tend to choose schools accordingly. Hence, they look for schools in which not only teachers but also peers can be a good influence on their children, based on their criteria regarding acceptable behaviour. Thus, the decision regarding which school their children will attend is influenced by the student body of the schools (associated with a neighbourhood, a lifestyle) particularly among parents that follow an intensive parenting model.