Intersecting Discourses of ‘Good Parenting’
Intersecting Discourses of ‘Good Parenting’: Parents’ positioning and agency within
knowledge networks
Jennifer Rowsell, Rutgers University, Sue Nichols, Helen Nixon, Sophia Rainbird,
University of South Australia
Abstract
This paper discusses the ways in which parents are differently positioned in regard to
how they access and use resources about children’s learning and development produced
by government agencies, commercial providers and other organizations and social actors.
It explores the findings produced by our methods of ‘network mapping’ which were
designed to analyze the networking practices of parents of young children as they source,
engage with, reflect on and circulate information resources about children’s early
development and literacy learning. Our network mapping is based on the multiperspectival analysis of interviews with parents and caregivers. It includes artifact
analysis of information sources discussed during interviews, and space-time analysis
which uses linguistic analysis and google-mapping to trace the time scales and spaces
across which resources travel to and from people, and from one place to another. I
demonstrate how our methods allow us to learn more about the ideas regarding children’s
learning and development that circulate through social networks and social spaces, and
the kinds of resources that are distributed and how. Our methods therefore enable us to go
beyond analyses of which people make up particular social networks, to also learn more
about the tangible and immaterial resources about children’s early learning that parents
access and circulate, and about the locality and mobility of these resources across time
and space. Interview data is featured in the paper alongside presiding themes such as
parents adopting sponsors of literacy; textual networks guiding household practices;
spaces shaping practices; and, personal stories as navigating parenting practices.
Introduction
The following paper discusses the ways in which parents are differently positioned in
regard to how they access and use resources about children’s learning and development
produced by government agencies, commercial providers, and other organizations and
social actors in Australia and the United States. In what follows, I explore the findings of
interviews with parents of young children in communities around Adelaide, Australia and
Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Our methods of ‘network mapping’ were designed
to analyze the networking practices of parents of young children as they source, engage
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Intersecting Discourses of ‘Good Parenting’
with, reflect on and circulate information resources about children’s early development
and literacy learning.
In this dimension of a larger, international research study of the circulation of
information on children’s development, resources consulted include interview analysis
and artifactual analysis of information sources discussed during interviews and spacetime analysis which uses linguistic and google-mapping to trace the timescales (Lemke,
2000) and spaces across which resources travel to and from people, and from one place to
parents/caregivers. In the paper, I discuss the kinds of disparities we found according to
the kinds of ‘geographies of opportunity’ that might be expected among parents living in
different economic circumstances and geographic locations (information-haves and haveless described by Cartier, Castells, and Qui, 2005). This paper focuses on interview data
with fifteen parents who live in the Adelaide and Princeton areas. There is a disparity in
the social-economic diversity and parenting practices taken up by parents that is shaped
by religion, race, personal stories, and by communities of practice. Themes foregrounded
in the data include such topics as sponsors of literacy (Brandt, 2002) as shaping parenting
practices; parenting practices and their relationship to time and space; disparate,
intersecting textual networks guiding ‘good’ parenting practices; and, personal stories
framing parenting practices.
Resources accessed by parents include textual information in multiple forms
(magazines; websites; books by gurus; parenting forums), material objects (such as
educational toys or dvds), social interaction (formal and informal), and observable
practices. To track their accessing of such information, the project as a whole considers
geographic, social, and virtual dimensions. The argument made in the paper is that
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Intersecting Discourses of ‘Good Parenting’
parents combine intersecting local/global/subjective discourse to construct a picture of
‘good parenting.’ Case studies featured in the paper depict a deliberate privileging of
certain discourses based on parent’ subjectivities and circumstances.
Theoretical Framework
Parent participants in the study harness their practices to actual or ideological
sponsors of literacy (Brandt, 2002). Sponsors, according to Deborah Brandt, are those
agents who make large-scale socio-economic forces present on a local level. Although
typically sponsors are individuals (e.g., a boss, a teacher, a family member), sponsors can
also include groups and even institutions (e.g., the church, a community organization, a
union). One particularly relevant idea for our study is that while people may be actively
pursuing the literacy skills their sponsors make available, these sponsors are also chasing
the individuals. This is because those pursuing literacy bear the ideological freights of
their sponsors as an often-invisible payment for access to their sponsors’ resources. As
our case studies will illustrate, this freight can be enabling – as when the individuals such
as Bill1 rely on his church to impart morals and appropriate literature to promote his
daughter’s acquisition of literacy. Or, sponsors can be more couched and ideological such
as Cassandra and Don whose vocations as a teacher and a police officer respectively
shape their parenting practices and how they understand their role as parents. Sponsors lie
beneath the surface of what constitutes ‘good parenting’ for a child. In the case study
presented later, Edward who lives in Adelaide uses the Gifted and Talented Association
as a sponsor for his two children.
1
Throughout the paper, we use pseudonyms to protect the identity of participants
involved in the study.
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Intersecting Discourses of ‘Good Parenting’
In The Languages of Edison’s Light (Bazerman, 2002), Charles Bazerman
examines not so much Edison’s inventions, but rather how his inventions, in particular
his invention of the incandescent light bulb, were far more than a technological
achievement. Rather, part of Edison’s genius is that he recognized that to make this new
technology a black-box technology (i.e., a technology immediately accepted and
therefore normed), he would need to gain rhetorical and material currency in networks as
diverse as the fledgling railroad newspaper industry as well as national and international
financial and scientific communities.
As Bazerman (2002) argues, “technologies emerge into the social configurations
of their times and are represented through the contemporary communicative media” (p.
3). These representations become meaningful by making something novel read as
intelligible in existing social intuitions. In his analysis, Bazerman looks at three
groupings of networks: human networks, documentary networks, and cultural stories.
These three categories are indeed quite broad. For example, in examining Edison’s
human network, Bazerman looked beyond Edison’s laboratory of men, his range of
benefactors, and his hostile scientific skeptics, to those Edison paid off in the media
business, those who spied on his competitors for him, and those he attempted to
manipulate in order to buy him more time or create a more stable representation of his
progress. We take Bazerman’s point about the need to see the multiple overlapping and
contradictory networks that must be made, shaped, and eliminated in order for what may
become a common sense idea – in our case, how parents combine intersecting at times
contradictory networks to take up the notion of ‘good parenting.’ Like Bazerman, we too
seek to account for salient networks coming together or breaking apart in order to
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understand how the conventions being formed about parenting are being black-boxed or
normed within everyday practice and vernacular discourse.
Each interviewee talked about their tie, both personally and professionally, to
networks. Within networks (human and rhetorical to use Bazerman’s terminology), there
are interactions within which information ecologies flourish. Case studies presented later
in the paper combine disparate networks in their pursuit to be good parents.
The Spaces of Parenting
Another body of theory drawn on in our study derives from critical discourse
analysis and work by scholars such as Scollon and Scollon on geosemiotics and
discourses in place. Information resources can be understood as signs or as compositions
of signs employing one or more of a range of modalities including language, visual
images, sound and materiality. Parents involved in our study read these signs not simply
at the level of basic decoding but interpretively, using their access to social and cultural
frameworks for construing meaning. In considering this aspect of our study, we have
drawn on the work of Scollon and Scollon (2003) who have developed, through their
comparative research on city spaces, the conceptual framework of geosemiotics. This
framework consists of three interacting systems: the interaction order (how people
interact in place), visual semiotics (how texts and images are ‘read’ in place), and
semiotics of place (how materiality and space is read). These three systems are brought
together in the concept of the semiotic aggregate. The way in which this functions in our
study, as profiled in a later case study, Simon has constructed his parenting around time
frames as markers of parenting moments alongside spaces for optimum learning events.
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Intersecting Discourses of ‘Good Parenting’
Drawing on James Paul Gee’s interpretative framework, we analyze cultural
models within artifacts and interview data that are textual, institutional, subjective, and
tied to social-cultural worlds. In addition to Gee, we pull on Fairclough’s work in critical
discourse analysis to locate hybridity in discourse and networks by accounting for
intersecting and converging models of parenting; hegemony or more powerful global
ideologies and discourses over more subordinate and hence less powerful local ideologies
and discourses; cultural mismatches between family practices and parent policing; and,
constructions of self through literacy which represents subjectivities that are channeled
into styles of parenting.
Jay Lemke’s notion of ‘timescales’ has been helpful in identifying more
embedded parenting practices tied to longer timescales – with longevity, durability, and
by extension more relevance to participants. Lemke used the example of a samurai sword
as carrying more history and importance due to the legacy and length of its history
(Lemke, 2000). In our study, timescales function both pragmatically as windows into
learning, but also, confirming Lemke’s longer timescales with parents such as Margaret
who eschews television because it indexes her childhood filled with tv and she does not
want to replicate that with her own children.
With all of this theory in mind, our study illustrates well Latour’s concept of
‘immutable mobile’ (Latour, 1987) as entities that move through networks without
changing their basic character. In our study, intersecting and at times contradictory
discourses and networks remain intact and are both tangible and palpable in the
households presented in the case studies.
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Textual Networks
Based on findings across the data, there were textual networks that preside over
parenting models. Two dominant textual networks in our data were Supernanny and Leap
Frog© as shaping notions of ‘good parenting.’ They are global rhetorical and human
networks that strongly impact parenting in the home. Cultural models that sit beneath the
surface of the Supernanny Discourse are ‘tough love’ and ‘parenting from the heart’ and
‘creating structures that are articulated and understood by children.’ Jo Frost, the
Supernanny character, enters the home – spends the first few days evaluating the situation
– sets a program – and watches implementation with a debriefing and return to
intervention and more often than not a feel-good conclusion. Each show is structured the
same way and the hegemony of the discourse grows out of Jo Frost as the authority on
parenting skills. Frost builds on hybrid Discourses in her interventions with an overall,
presiding notion of tough love. There is a whole world to Supernanny as seen in the
screen saver of the website.
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Figure 1: Screen Saver of Supernanny
Within the website Discourse, you see counseling Discourses to support parents
struggling with parenting. There is a preventative overlay with techniques of the week.
Niche topics are covered such as how to manage vacations with children or dealing with
teenagers. There are commercial networks tied to the show such as Purdue chicken
nuggets (which would contradict a Jamie Oliver approach to children’s diet for example).
There are forums, related articles and then more distant health Discourses with cultural
models about having a healthy lifestyle which feed into parenting practices and life
approaches. Beneath the hybridity and intersection of love and structured activities lies a
philosophy that some of our parent participants took up and that have become part of a
dominant notion of ‘good parenting.’
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Intersecting Discourses of ‘Good Parenting’
Leap Frog© and other educational texts were referred to for literacy development.
Like Supernanny, Leap Frog© carries a particular model of literacy premised on hearing,
touching and saying letter sounds. There are different mediums through which children
can practice these literacy skills – with a focus on independent learning and deductive
reasoning (a term which actually appears on their products for children as a category for
Figure 2: Leap Frog© Screen Saver
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them to practice). There are a series of leveled texts that students move through using
their leap pad with an electronic wand to follow along with written text. There are always
additional activities to accompany texts and to reinforce skills. In the screen saver from
the website, you see the domains that Leap Frog covers – advice for parents – advice
from teachers – contests for learning moments with leap frogs. Cultural models within
Leap Frog© include inspiring a love of literacy through technology. The variety of
mediums within their products/listings casts a wider net of ages, stages and types of
learners to promote their product line.
Personal Stories as an Epistemology for Parenting
What I found an unanticipated finding in our research was the powerful role of personal
stories in shaping philosophies of parenting. Take Simon for example who has been
partially deaf his whole life and whose son is also partially deaf which has shaped sets of
practices that he uses to parent Brad. Davies talks about the role of personal stories in
shaping our belief systems therein legitimizing and reinforcing practices:
We not only read and write stories but we
also live stories. Who we take ourselves to be
at any one point in time depends on the
available story lines we have to make sense
of the ebb and flow of being-in-the-world
along with legitimacy and status accorded
to those story lines by the others with whom
we make up our lives at any one point in
time. (Davies, 1993)
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Intersecting Discourses of ‘Good Parenting’
In this way, parents featured below as case studies interweave their personal stories with
other, intersecting discourses and these stories and subjectivities become a part of the
fabric of their parenting. In this way, stories can be interpreted as subjectivities that
position themselves as parents in certain ways.
Methodology
As part of our ecological survey, we have interviewed parent participants involved in
other aspects of the studies – such as parents who attend playgroups. Other papers in the
symposium explore other aspects of our methodology – ecological survey, observations,
artifactual/textual analysis – I explore initial findings from our interview data. We have
interviewed fifteen parents in the Australian and U.S. contexts so far. In this paper, I
present case studies illustrating themes in the data such as sponsors of literacy; textual
networks; the significance of space and time for participants; and finally, personal stories
as indexing parenting styles.
To conduct interviews, we follow the same interview protocol with such questions
as: Tell me about the ages and stages of your children; Can you tell us about, and if
possible show us, information you have collected or used relating to children’s learning
and development? How did you find this? Would you have recommended this to others?
What do you think of this? Does it relate to how you learned to read, write, development
in general? The interviews were informal and, as such, frequently we would follow the
tide of interviews. Interviews tended to occur in participants’ homes, which helped to
gain a full picture of the nature of the household and to fully interpret space as a
theoretical component of the research. To analyze interview data, we use a discourse
theory perspective described in terms of Fairclough’s (1992; 2003) model of critical
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discourse analysis (CDA) in which three levels of analysis combine to provide a rich
account of the productive workings of discourse: the level of text, the level of interaction
in the specific local (or online) context, and the level of discourse or, in other words,
knowledge that is circulating through society and reflecting broader cultural and political
agendas.
Parents profiled below represent case studies. We examine case studies that can
sketch a map of what might be representative instances of parenting practices.
Participants featured below are predominantly white, middle class parents, but we have a
sampling that represents racial and socio-economic diversity. Clyde Mitchell talks about
the ‘representativeness’ of case studies: “a case study supports an argument … to show
how general principles deriving from some theoretical orientation manifest themselves in
some given set of particular circumstances” (Mitchell, 1984: 239). We take up Mitchell’s
notion of representativeness in our research in that we feel that there are valid
connections between events and phenomenon as evidence of instances of intersecting
models of parenting.
To analyze data, we adopt Harry Wolcott’s method of identifying dominant
themes and using these themes to guide an analysis of accompanying texts (Wolcott,
1994). In the interview data, we identified patterned regularities in the data together and
separately and found certain presiding themes across interviews.
Case Studies of Intersecting Discourses of ‘Good Parenting’
Sponsors of Literacy: Edward (Adelaide, Australia, two children aged 7 and 8)
Edward is the profile of a parent who inhabits, quite strongly, one particular textual
network as a sponsor of literacy that carries the ideological freight of his parenting.
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Intersecting Discourses of ‘Good Parenting’
Edward works as an accountant and his wife, Sophie, studies part-time. They live in a
middle class community in the Adelaide area. Edward has two children who are seven
and eight and both children have an estimated IQ of around 170, so they are considered
exceptionally gifted. Both Edward and Sophie found existing material and pedagogy for
gifted children frustrating and limited, their exact words were that they felt “very let
down” by what existed and took on the cause themselves. What shapes their program and
parenting skills at home is information from academic sources alongside a very strong tie
to the Gifted and Talented Children’s Association. They use mainstream parenting books
strictly for practical information such as information on height and weight for their
children. Otherwise, they seek out their own information and pull significantly from
literature and Discourses tied to the Gifted and Talented Children’s Association.
There is a newsletter that comes out four times a year from the Gifted and
Talented Children’s Association and once a part of the network, you can then in turm
help other families in need of networks. The Gifted and Talented Association has
conferences wherein you meet other parents and take up their philosophy of parenting.
Edward spoke of networking at these conferences to understand a way of life with a
gifted child,
This is a whole lot of information that we picked through, there was
a Gifted Education Conference in Adelaide. There was a huge
amount of presenters from worldwide, and there were some different
sessions for parents, although most of the sessions were for
educators. But the information there was great, we’ve referred back
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Intersecting Discourses of ‘Good Parenting’
to this at different times to get more access points to both Australian
and international science.
The Gifted and Talented Organization offered a world for the family to inhabit and in
turn they took up their academic network philosophy as sponsors of their children’s
literacy.
Case Study of Time and Spaces of Practice: Simon (Princeton, USA, two
children aged 3 and 7)
Simon and his family recently moved to Princeton from Canada due to a job relocation.
They rent a townhouse in a community just outside of Princeton. Simon is the primary
caregiver in his household because his wife Kristine travels so much for work. Simon
describes his home as ‘a kind of a single parent household’ given that he is with the
children so much that he structures parenting around a single-parent model. Simon’s
parental world is filled with structure and timetabling. Each month they have a schedule
that frames their lives (see Figure 3). On the timetable, you see community events
featured and regular events – they exist within local discourse. In the excerpt below, you
see that time sets patterns in the household:
Get up at 7.30 and there is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to
eat, get dressed and be out there,’ but that’s not fair. The closer to
7.00 she’s (daughter Celia) sitting down, the less rush her breakfast
is and then from 7.30 to 8.00 she has time to get dressed and brush
her teeth and if she wants to do something else then that is fine.
During that time I make them their lunch and around 8.00 I’ll get
Brian dressed and we’ll probably head outside about ten after or
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Intersecting Discourses of ‘Good Parenting’
quarter after. That’s easy during the summer but during the winter
it’s probably going to be a little tighter with all the goods to get on.
I would then take Brendan to his preschool and he is usually there
about 9.00 and by the time I get back it should be quarter to 10 and
if I don’t come back to the house I will run some errands and try and
get some things done and lunch.
Time is intertwined with space in their household. That is, there are designated spaces for
learning and definite places and spaces for leisure.
Figure 3: Simon’s Timetable
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Intersecting Discourses of ‘Good Parenting’
Although Simon allows “down-time” for both children, he tries to maximize
hidden moments for learning such as driving from A to B:
As much as it might be considered a little too easy to have a DVD
player in the van, we don’t play Harry Potter and wild ‘Dungeons
and Dragons’ type of environmental stuff. We play a lot of
educational videos and I think that surprises people. So the DVD in
the van has been wonderful and they don’t have a choice because we
control it. Brian, on the way to school today, was watching an ABC
video.
Van time is learning time and kitchen time is about interactive activities such as making
scrambled eggs. In relation to Scollon and Scollon’s framework, timing and scheduling
within spaces is indexical of Simon’s single-parent household philosophy and subverting
problems through organization and maximizing education for both children, in different
situations. According to Scollon and Scollon, where events happen is tied to meaning
which corresponds to Simon’s household with its structuring of time and space to shape
parenting practices.
Case Study of Textual Networks: (Maggie, Princeton, USA, three boys aged 2,
4, and 6)
Maggie was a teacher for five years in Brooklyn, New York before marrying and staying
at home with three boys. Maggie has several textual networks in her household – all
shaped around the learning needs of her three boys – aged 2, 4, and 6. Hybrid discourses
in the house include Pokemon for her eldest son, Leapfrog© for her middle son, and an
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extensive number of picture books for her youngest child. The basis of our text analysis
in the project is Fairclough’s textual, interaction and discourse levels of analysis. On a
textual level, Maggie goes into detail about a particular episode of Supernanny as a focus
text and a hegemonic force in the household:
There was a time there was something on ‘Supernanny’ just a couple
of weeks ago. That’s one thing, I mean, I’ll sit down and watch it
but that’s something I’ll watch. There was this child with Attention
Deficit Disorder and the way she (Super Nanny) taught her (the
mother) to keep the house quiet and have the other children, because
she had two other children, have the other child in a room and have
a quiet time. I said to myself, ‘That is the way I need to be at home
to do their homework with them.’ James sits here, you know, he
walks and takes out so I don’t have to and he does it and there might
be something going on, but that’s for him. For Mark, I’m going to
need to read to him, I have books on how to make your kids more
responsive to your needs.
In the text of Supernanny there is evidence of intersecting discourses about ‘good
parenting’ but predominantly it pertains to parent power which is: parent in control; child
needs discipline; parents need to be shown how to take control; control can be overt or
covert depending on how this discourse intersects with other discourses of childhood
such as child-centredness. On the issue of Supernanny as a text, a family support worker
in Australia referred to the same textual network when she said,
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Intersecting Discourses of ‘Good Parenting’
It’s very easy and doable for parents to say “No, it’s naughtiness in
behaviour.” They wonder how teachers will react and respond to
their child. Supernanny: The family support workers of Adelaide are
like ‘Aagh!!’ and parents are like “I’m doing this now.”
There is something inherent to Supernanny discourse that is appealing to
parents.
On the level of discourse and interaction, Maggie spoke at length about
how the Leap Frog model strongly impacted her literacy work with her middle
child, Mark, who struggles with literacy. Together, they will listen to Leap
Frog and work through activities and levels. Maggie harnesses her own reading
practices before bedtime on the Leap Frog© model by saying “B-B-Bear” and
it all comes together for them.” The structure and scaffolding of concentrated
language work in Leap Frog© aligns well with Mark’s (middle child) struggles
with literacy.
Case Study of Personal Story: Bill (Princeton, USA, one child, aged 3)
Bill is from Buffalo and has since moved back there after living in Princeton for three
years. Bill is another at-home Dad who has opted to be at home with Amanda while his
wife pursues a career in the technology and communications industry. Bill and Lisa are
very involved with their church and place a high priority on protecting Amanda from the
trappings of new media and materialism. As a parental practice, they keep the
sensationalism of new media at bay. They plan to home-school for the first few years of
Amanda’s primary years (until grade 2). Part of their story is, like a parallel family in
Australia, to tie home-schooling to the church and to a set of activities that shield
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Intersecting Discourses of ‘Good Parenting’
Amanda from too much new media, technology, and popular culture. In his words, “I
think a commercial-free household avoids the stimulation of most television.”
Part of the discourse and parenting practices is fieldtrips to museums and cultural
centres so that Amanda has a strong sense of history and real-life events. At the same
time, Bill encourages Amanda to think imaginatively and to role play; as he says, “we do
a lot of role-playing and a lot of voices and a lot of characterizations.” Bill tries to do
something musical every day. With the family, there is a strong sense of creating a
parenting world for Amanda that is a cushion until she faces institutional education. Bill’s
own personal story guides this parenting model because he grew up with three brothers
and did not feel as protected as he would have liked to be. Bill went to boarding school
and had a very different experience of schooling than Amanda will have – which
provides some explanation for the explicit, particular nature of their parenting practices.
Intersecting Discourses tied to Subjectivities
Our research suggests that there are particular ‘triggers’ that propel some parents to adopt
positions of agency in relation to information resources. These triggers are disparate, yet
they seem to have a pattern based on a survey of interview data. One pattern, for
example, is personal connections to chosen discourses. Some parents operate as attractors
and energizers of information and promote rich networking practices among other
parents. In the paper, I demonstrated how our methods allow us to learn more about the
ideas regarding children’s learning and development that circulate through social
networks, to also learn more about the tangible and immaterial resources about children’s
early learning that parents access and circulate, and about the locality and mobility of
these resources across time and space.
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There are several theoretical strands at work in the study at once. On one hand,
there is geosemiotics wherein parents seek out and plan around spaces that align with
goals or their governing philosophy of parenting. On the other hand, parents seek out
networks shaped around the specificities of their children and their belief systems.
Perhaps the lynch pin is the notion of personal stories which brings together the notion of
sponsors of literacy and textual networks in parental efforts to take on the persona of
‘good parent.’ A surprising finding, to me, is the degree to which what Holland and her
colleagues (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, and Cain, 1998) call ‘histories in person’ or
personal stories shape household practices – whether it is an emulation or rejection of
their experiences of parenting.
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Holland, D, Lachicotte, W, Skinner, D & Cain, C (1998). Identity and Agency in Cultural
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