Parenting as a performance: Parents as consumers and (de)constructors of mythic parenting and childhood ideals

Capturing discourses of parenting advice

In order to analyse the dominant discourse in Flanders, we selected a corpus of governmental parenting advice texts that are targeted at parents of young children (during the prenatal period to approximately 3-year-olds) and widely distributed among parents. The first text was the brochure Het ABC van baby tot kleuter (The ABC from baby to toddler), published by the government agency responsible for preventative health and childcare Kind en Gezin (Child and Family) and distributed to nearly all new parents by preventative health care services. Kind en Gezin’s brochures reach 95.8% of mothers (Kind en Gezin, 2011). The second text consisted of six Triple P magazines, distributed since 2009. These magazines were part of the ‘Positive Parenting Programme’ (Triple P), a multi-level, population-based preventative parenting programme (Sanders et al., 2003) that was introduced on a large scale in Flanders. Sixty thousand copies were distributed (Glazemakers and Deboutte, n.d.). The third text consisted of 23 files retrieved from the parenting advice website www.groeimee.be, which provides information and advice for parents with children from birth to 36 months. The website belongs to EXPOO, the government expertise centre on parenting support. In 2011, the website was visited 98,014 times by 73,162 individual visitors (Kind en Gezin, 2011).

Capturing discourses of parents: Zappy Baby

In order to capture discourses of parents, we explored the discussion board on a parental website in Flanders, www.zappybaby.be. Zappy Baby is the largest online community targeted at parents of young children (from the prenatal period to approximately 3-year-olds) in Belgium. At the time of the study, the discussion board had 116,067 members, most of them not registered (and thus anonymous). It contained 294,261 subjects and 2,910,841 messages (19 March 2012). It is owned by Sanoma magazines Belgium NV, editor of popular magazines and websites (Sanoma magazines Belgium NV, 2011). More than two-thirds of the visitors were younger than 34 years, around 70% were employed, 60% were female and most of them were highly educated (cs.sanomamedia.be). Zappy Baby contains both official advice texts and parents’ virtual dialogues; most of them about very young children. While the Internet seems to be an important source of informal parenting support (Drentea and Moren-Cross, 2005; Ellis and Heisler, 2008), interestingly, Zappy Baby is not considered by parent support policies as a tool for parenting support in Flanders. Indeed, the discussion board of this website does not include any professional input, which created an opportunity to analyse the everyday informal talk of parents. We selected conversations that were finished in the year 2011, categorized under the heading ‘13–36 months’ and the topic ‘opvoeden’ (parenting). The latter was chosen because it was the parents who categorized their items under this topic, thus this represents a reflection of their interpretation of what is considered as ‘parenting’. During 2011, this resulted in 64 conversations. Eight of these were omitted from the analysis because the conversations did not originate from parents (e.g. calls from students or commercials), leaving 56 conversations involving 489 messages of 180 individual participants. Based on the addressed topics and nicknames used in the selected conversations, it can be assumed that 96% of them were female. Nevertheless, the more gender-neutral term ‘parent’ was used, to do justice to the four fathers.

A directed approach to qualitative content analysis

The data were analysed by engaging in a qualitative content analysis, implying a research method that concentrates on ‘the subjective interpretation of the content of text data’ (Hsieh and Shannon, 2005: 1278), as a ‘sense-making effort that takes a volume of qualitative material and attempts to identify core consistencies and meanings’ (Patton, 2002: 453). We applied a directed approach to content analysis (Hsieh and Shannon, 2005), defined as a deductive or theory-driven coding that also includes newly emerging themes that are inductively identified. This directed approach to content analysis was elaborated using empirically based ‘feedback loops’ (Myring, 2000), which enabled us to support, question or expand our theoretical frame of reference. The three texts were thematically labelled and axially coded, inspired by the scholarly literature on the changing relations between children, parents and the welfare state and the ways in which children as well as parenting advice are constructed, as briefly outlined in the introduction section. The coding system resulted in the clustering of parenting advice into subthemes and the consequent elaboration of a codebook. Subsequently, the coding system that was elaborated on the basis of theory and the analysis of parenting advice texts was applied to analyse the discussions among parents on the website www.zappbaby.be, where the performative agency of parents proved to be a central theme throughout the findings.

Becoming autonomous

Our study confirms previous analyses of dominant discourses on parenting, in line with the ideal of the autonomous, entrepreneurial individual ready to function in a globalized, marketized and competitive world (Featherstone, 2006; Gillies, 2005; Vandenbroeck and Bouverne-De Bie, 2006). The goal of parenting, as stated in Kind en Gezin’s ABC brochure (2012: 1), is ‘the gradual growth to autonomy’. The importance of the growth to autonomy is also reflected in the different developmental topics, such as ‘toddler puberty’, ‘toilet-training’, ‘play’ and ‘fears’ (see Groeimee, 2012b, 2012d, 2012e, 2012f, 2012g; Kind en Gezin, 2012). Autonomy as the goal of parenting shows close resemblances to the construction of the child as ‘autonomous’ rather than a fragile being in need of protection (Depaepe, 1998; Vandenbroeck, 2009; Wyness, 1999). The advice in mainstream documents refers to choices and skills that are believed to be necessary for today’s society. Concerning punishment and rewards, Groeimee (2012e: 1) states:

Punishing and rewarding cannot be seen apart from upbringing as a whole. They are an important part of parenting. Your child learns what it can and cannot do. You guide your child in a specific direction. You teach it to respect your rules. You also teach it to respect the rules in our society. For example, you will tell your child that it is appropriate to say ‘thank you’ when it receives something.

The assumption is that a society is something that can and must be developed by humans and that the quality of this creation can be reduced to the people acting in it. This, however, can be criticized (Heyting, 1998), since it determines in advance what is considered as ‘good’ practice, without looking at actual practices in everyday life and without considering people’s meaning-making. As criticized in the literature (Mayall, 2002) this expert discourse entails a focus on the child’s alleged future rather than on the here and now. All advice is preceded or followed by an argument that is related to an alleged cognitive, social, emotional or physical developmental future. Concerning ‘nutrition’ for example, Kind en Gezin (2012: 72) states that feeding your child is an excellent opportunity to ‘build a good relationship with your child’. The advice is regularly legitimated by a child-centred perspective: ‘a child wants to be protected and be surrounded with love in a caring and loving family’ (Kind en Gezin, 2012: 1). This assigns a great deal of responsibility to parents, who have to ‘help and support’ their children in a ‘safe environment’ in order to enable them to become good and level-headed future citizens (Kind en Gezin, 2012: 8).

Our analysis shows that parents often prefer lay advice to expert advice. Indeed, many parents explicitly state that the support and recognition of peers is more valuable to them than expert advice: ‘Ladies, thanks for your reactions. It feels good to hear that we are doing it right.’ A frequently recurring statement is: ‘Your feelings are completely normal, I felt the same’, or ‘Oh, it’s good to see that there are other people with children like mine.’

Yet it is clear that the advice parents give to their peers remains strongly related to the expert advice in the official advice texts and shows close resemblance to the characteristics of today’s society. This is the case with advice like ‘explaining’, ‘teaching your child to choose’, ‘talking with your child and your partner’, or ‘becoming independent’. For example, Miet states: ‘Your daughter is at a difficult age. She is in toddler puberty and she is exploring her limits.’ Another parent argues: ‘Through this piece of mischief, your daughter is trying to become autonomous. Unfortunately she does this against the persons she loves and trust the most, you!’ The advice of this parent is clearly copied from the official brochure stating: ‘Your toddler is becoming an autonomous person. Toddlers often behave in a stubborn way towards persons with whom they have a safe relationship. That’s just a compliment for you’ (Kind en Gezin, 2012: 40). Parental advice in Zappy Baby is often a popular version of mainstream developmental psychology. For example: ‘There are indeed children who bite out of tenderness because they are still in the oral phase.’ The importance of science and experts becomes clear in: ‘Everything will be fine, it is a well studied and approved method to deal with sleeping problems with toddlers.’ Parents also explicitly refer to the expert text: ‘Maybe Kind en Gezin can give you some advice about Triple P. They also offer courses which may help your parenting. There is also a magazine. http://www.triplepmagazine.be/.’

In addition, contention with experts and peers often worries parents. Shima states: ‘The teacher says that she can’t sit still in class. At home I see this only at dinner time. But now I’m concerned, would she have a problem? Maybe ADHD?’ Supermom89 states: ‘I really thought that I was an exception = an abnormality = a bad mother.’ Niels2000 – who says that he allows his children to come into his bed when they wake up at night – presents an eloquent discussion on the ambivalent position (Perrier, 2012) between reproducing and contesting the autonomy discourse among peers. Most parents on the forum disagree with him and have recourse to expert advice and the autonomy discourse. Fun states, for instance: ‘Sorry, but children belong in their own bed, during the week as well as at the weekend.’ In contrast, Niels2000 considers the fact that his three children want to sleep in his bed as something temporary, perhaps because of a nightmare or the start of school. He does not consider this to be problematic. The examples show that peers are not necessarily a solution to the uncertainty caused by experts, but can also be a cause of uncertainty, especially when they reproduce the expert discourse. This suggests that parental uncertainty is not so much a problematic aspect of parenting, and that expert advice is not the remedy, as Triple P suggests (Tiggelovend, 2009). It rather suggests that parental worries are to a large extent provoked by the expert discourse that aims to solve it.

In a nutshell, it is notable that the lay advice (from peers) often explicitly reproduces the expert advice. The finding that parents use notions such as ‘right’, ‘abnormality, ‘bad mother’ refers to an alleged standard of experts (Blackford, 2004). One conclusion could be that parents faithfully follow what is prescribed in advisory textbooks. In that sense, however, the expert discourse on ‘becoming autonomous’ is inherently paradoxical. Whereas the ultimate focus lies on parents needing to be autonomous and independent, the expert cannot but assume that parents are depending on their advice, for ideally the autonomous parent would of course neglect the advisory textbooks. Paradoxically, ‘autonomous’ individuals will always be dependent on experts, making autonomy into an idealized and mythic parenting requirement (Blackford, 2004). In this context, Zappy Baby can be considered as a locus for experimenting with ‘good citizenship’ for parents, meaning both conforming with and contesting expert advice. We come back to this example of performative agency in the third theme.

Individual responsibility

All parent advice texts in this study acknowledge the importance of contexts. Yet every concrete piece of advice remains focused on the individual parent, rather than addressing the parenting context. They seem to agree that: ‘Most of the context factors cannot be influenced by parents, the only thing that can be done is to control the way you raise your child’ (Kind en Gezin, 2012: 14). Therefore, a behaviourist model is advocated, characterized by emphasis on punishment, rewards, ignoring deviant behaviour, time-out and modelling. The focus is on problems that can and must be solved in a positive, conscious and stepwise way by the parent (see Groeimee, 2012a, 2012c; Tiggelovend, 2010a). All texts state that parenting cannot be learned from a cookbook, yet they present positive parenting as the panacea. Considering for instance the development of anxieties in children, they state: ‘If a child panics, it is important that you teach it to say “STOP”. To help your child overcome its fears, it is important to support and reward it when it is confronted with a fearful situation’ (Kind en Gezin, 2012: 38). Also, the importance of negotiating and talking with children is stressed (see Tiggelovend, 2009, 2010b). This shows close resemblances to today’s ‘authoritative’ (or negotiating) mode of parenting (Vandenbroeck and Bouverne-De Bie, 2006). In short, parenting is reduced to a technical activity to govern or control problems, independently of the context.

In the dialogues on Zappy Baby, we find similar results. Often, parents refer to behaviourist principles:

Normally, we ignore such behaviour. When she calms down, I tell her that this behaviour is not done. And I offer her an alternative. Sometimes she goes over the top and then I put her in time-out for two minutes.

Sometimes, however, parents do refer to contexts, such as Skym, responding to Supermom83, who doubts herself because of problems with her 2-year-old daughter:

I am almost never alone with my daughter, so that is an important difference. I think that you may not underestimate the influence of your pregnancy and the recent death of your father. This may have made you less strong in difficult situations.

Usually, however, parents feel personally responsible for problems that arise with their child: ‘Maybe it’s just me’ or ‘I thought it was my fault’. Although context is considered important, when parents share advice, this is most often limited to the individual parent’s responsibility to initiate change. Unsurprisingly some parents show resistance, when the advice does not match their context. For example, the parenting guidebooks say: ‘If the baby or toddler doesn’t get to sleep, try not to react’ (Kind en Gezin, 2012: 103) and ‘ignore (gradually) the protesting and the shouting’ (Tiggelovend, 2011a: 8). Yet, on the Internet, Niels2000 responds: ‘I’ve already tried to put them just to bed, but this is not an option for the little one, since he starts to shout, so that everybody else is awake.’ With regard to toilet training and the formal advice not to force the child, Lena1984 responds:

@Helena72, I don’t want to force my daughter … but she starts school in November and they want children to be clean. If not, they forbid the children to spend all day at school. So yes, in that case I put some extra pressure, because I work full-time, so I can’t take care of her during the afternoon.

In this context, some parents resist elements of the expert discourse, when contexts are not taken into account. They use a specific piece of advice, not because it is in the books or because it is important for today’s society, but because they personally experienced it as appropriate. Other parents follow professional advice, but question it in actual childrearing practices:

Last night we let him scream … hoping that he will stop waking us up at 3.15 a.m. … but I feel such a bad mother!!! I would like to have your opinions about this approach. Are we doing it right, do you have some more tips, will this take a long time (because this is very heartbreaking, isn’t it?)

Trial, error and confession

In its first edition Triple P magazine states that parenting is something fascinating that you don’t want to miss. It also says: ‘Raising children is an adventure. A parent has to learn it by doing, by trial and error. Every parent has some questions about their child’s behaviour or development. Therefore, there is Triple P’ (Tiggelovend, 2009). A similar message is conveyed in the other advice texts. This advice functions as a ‘double bind’: although it is normal to make mistakes, these mistakes are problematic and need to be addressed with expert advice. One example of a ‘normal failure’ is ‘parental uncertainty’. As Kind en Gezin (2012: 14) states: ‘It is normal to have doubts or to have a tough time. Maybe it is a sign that you need some support. Talk with those around you, your doctor or your district nurse.’ It is assumed that ‘talking’ is the best remedy, and as Beck and Beck (1995) argue, the dominant discourse today is that we continuously need to scrutinize ourselves and openly discuss our feelings, thoughts, plans, desires and failures. Talking about problems is considered to be a good thing: a proof of commitment by parents (Gillies, 2005). As Triple P magazine (Tiggelovend, 2011b: 3) advocates: ‘and by trial and error, it is important to use the golden rules as well as possible: … and to confess that you make mistakes, regularly’. Foucault (1998) explains how this form of ‘pastoral’ power functions in subtle ways. The expert, like a shepherd, cares for the well-being and the survival of the flock. To be successful in this role, the shepherd needs to know what is going on in each individual’s mind and thus every individual needs to engage in introspection and confession. Only then is it possible for the shepherd to ‘govern’ and to care of the flock and of each individual member. The necessity for ‘self-examination’ and ‘guidance of conscience’ is not something that can be forced, but is seen as a status that is fed by a personal and mutual bond: without a shepherd, there is no flock, and vice versa (Foucault, 1998: 69). ‘Talking’ and ‘negotiating’ are important competences of autonomous, self-regulating, individuals. Yet, as we explained, reaching autonomy would imply complying with the expert advice and therefore is inherently contradictory. The desired autonomy is a status that paradoxically demands expert advice and thus parents are doomed to fail.

The act of making failures, questions and worries public is also present in the parenting section of Zappy Baby. Almost every conversation begins with a question or problem that a parent (usually a mother) raises about his/her child. This is most obvious in titles such as ‘I doubt myself as a mother’, ‘Am I doing it right?’, ‘Is this normal?’ These confessions are considered to be an indication of committed parenthood. As Nathalie7175 responds to Supermom83: ‘Don’t … You are a good mother!!!!! (a bad mother, would not question this).’ Another mother also applauds a performance: ‘Hurray for those parents of a child that bites, who dare to put their question on this discussion board.’ These public ‘confessions’ are illustrations of governmentality and therefore constitute ways in which parents concur with the dominant ideals, norms and standards. Or better still, considering their performativity (Butler, 1990), their statements may be ways in which they perform ideal parenthood. It is interesting to note that the mother who is very uncertain about her parenting capacities and feels guilty of being a bad mother adopts the nickname ‘Supermom83’. One interpretation is that parents realize the subtle distinction to be made about ‘us’ (the good parents) and ‘them’ (the others) and actively participate in the construction of this distinction. Another interpretation is that parents may feel a certain control that goes along with consulting experts or making something public, yet they also resist these subtle forms of disciplinary power by explicitly approving each other’s behaviour. As one parent realizes:

I haven’t got a clue where or whom I can consult, without making things worse! I would like to find a solution that helps my girlfriend as well as my son, without someone giving her the label of a ‘bad mother’!!!!!!.

This may help to explain why parents prefer the support of other parents (Miller and Sambell, 2003; Vandenbroeck et al., 2009).

There are also parents who show more explicit resistance to the dominant norm in today’s society. Whereas Ilona78 thinks that one should explain to a child why biting is not allowed, Zinzia replies: ‘It doesn’t fit the development of a child. Your suggestion considers children as little adults who are able to understand the explanation of their mum why they aren’t allowed to do something.’ Considering the dominant norm that children need to learn to sleep alone (and the many behaviourist tricks that circulate as advice to achieve this), one mother states: ‘There are cultures where it is “normal” to sleep all together in one bed, so why should children really belong in their own bed?’