Abstract
While the literature has documented a general increase in parental investment in children, both in terms of financial and time investment, the motives for this increase remain unclear. This paper aims at shedding light on these motives by examining parents’ own narratives of their parenting experiences from the vantage point of three theoretical perspectives. In doing so, the paper brings side-by-side the goal of providing children with human and social capital to improve their future labour market prospects, the pressures on parents to conform to new societal standards of good and intensive parenting, and the experience of parenting as part of self-development. The data come from a qualitative study of middle-income parents in Canada and the USA. The results provide some support for each of these perspectives, while also revealing how they jointly help explain parents’ large investment in their children as well as the tensions and contradictions that come with it.
Highlights
While the literature has documented a general increase in parental investment in children, both in terms of financial and time investment, the motives for this increase remain unclear
While the empirical literature provides solid evidence regarding the increase in parental investment into children, the actual explanations remain segmented into distinct theoretical perspectives, each pointing to different drivers and mechanisms
The qualitative material was viewed in light of the different theoretical perspectives to investigate to what extent the findings empirically underpinned the main premises of each perspective, as well as the interconnections between them
Summary
While the literature has documented a general increase in parental investment in children, both in terms of financial and time investment, the motives for this increase remain unclear. Today’s parents, spend more money on their children than in the past, and devote more time to them (Bianchi, Cohen, Raley, & Nomaguchi, 2004) This increase in parental investment into children has been observed in a wide number of different countries and contexts, suggesting the emergence of a new global trend (Cornwell, Gershuny, & Sullivan, 2019). The aim of this paper is to examine the different perspectives and investigate to what extent each of them figures prominently in the discourse of parents as a way of justifying their investment in children. By bringing these three perspectives sideby-side, the paper reveals important interconnections between them. This way, we aim at a more comprehensive understanding of parental investment into children
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