Bad Parents Research Articles

“Mommy Killed Him”: Gender, Family, and History in Wes Craven’s <em>A Nightmare on Elm Street</em> (1984)

Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) tends to have been read as either a showcase of female agency, or as a celebration of misogyny. We argue that this film is significant in the history of gender in horror cinema, and that ascertaining this importance means moving beyond those polarised readings. Specifically, we read Craven's film in the context of the socio-political environment in which it was produced. A Nightmare on Elm Street was released during the height of Ronald Reagan's presidency. Reagan (like his counterpart, Margaret Thatcher, in Britain) championed a traditional, middle-class, white, heterosexual and heterosexist model of the nuclear family. Within this family model, women were seen as passive reproducers of the nation. Women were responsible for raising the children, who were figured as being similarly docile. We argue that this film both contests and endorses the sexual politics of Reagan's idealised family. Nightmare's so-called 'final girl', Nancy, does indeed have agency; she retaliates against familial authority (both that of her morally ambiguous parents and the sinisterly paternalistic Freddy Krueger). Yet, Nancy also becomes a kind of mother figure; in being assigned (by the script) the task of destroying Krueger, she becomes responsible for protecting the youth-and, yes, the families- of Elm Street; of continuing the job started by her parents. The future of Middle America lies in this final girl's hands.

Fantasies of Neglect: Imagining the Urban Child in American Film and Fiction by Pamela Robertson Wojcik

Reviewed by: Fantasies of Neglect: Imagining the Urban Child in American Film and Fiction by Pamela Robertson Wojcik Dewar MacLeod Fantasies of Neglect: Imagining the Urban Child in American Film and Fiction. By Pamela Robertson Wojcik. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2016. x + 256 pp. Cloth $90, paper $27.95. Fantasies of Neglect explores the shifting mythologies of childhood through film and literature in the twentieth century. Pamela Wojcik places the urban imaginary alongside the traditional rural "cult of rusticity" that frames much of children's literature. The more modern urban myths similarly evoke images of nostalgia for a more innocent and free time. The images of urban childhood she explores depend upon dual (and often contradictory) fantasies of neglect (usually by the mother) and freedom (especially special mobility) that derives from neglect. Drawing upon a wide range of scholars from history, literature, film studies, and critical theory, Wojcik situates her valuable work in a deep dialogue with critics and advocates for children with the specific goal "to recover a different way of imagining kids in the city" (171). Wojcik examines how the texts serve to negotiate the anxieties of a given era, giving expression to contradictory discourses. During the Great Depression, films starring the Dead End Kids depicted children in the city that was both the dangerous terrain of social problems and a site for freedom, mobility, and community that was not available within the disintegrated family. While the movies often addressed the specific conditions of urban life in the Depression, they also spoke to the larger contradictions of modernity, balancing "social miserabilism" with "a sense of mobility, spatial freedom, and play" (40). One of the strongest sections of the book is the chapter on "Shirley Temple as Streetwalker," where the author depicts the child star's city films as offering a benign urban vision for the powerful and liberated "new girl" who can approach men in the street, go off alone with them, and end up reforming and rehabilitating these men (62–69). While Temple was in many ways an exceptional (and unusual) actress and character, Wojcik considers her "within potentially contradictory discourses about urban girlhood in the period related to sexuality and risk, on the one hand, and girls' mobility and freedom, on the other" (69). Whereas traditional myths of children invoke the city as a danger to their inborn purity, Temple's innocence depends upon her knowingness. From the perspective of the twenty-first century (and even to some critics at the time), Temple's encounters with men in the city cannot but seem disquieting, even creepy. Wojcik demonstrates how they navigate modern crises of both [End Page 464] femininity and masculinity through the agency of a girl. Similarly, Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz reinforces the "potent and prevailing fantasy of the urban girl as mobile, free, and powerful, an adventurer rather than a victim" (99). Midcentury films and books shifted the perspective from the social causes of neglect to "individual personality and psychological well-being" (101). Heavily influenced by Erik Erikson's stages of development, the postwar discourse placed the impossible burden on mothers to do neither too much nor too little, lest they damage the child's psyche. The author astutely examines The Champ (comparing the 1931 and 1979 films), Mary Poppins (book and movie), Kramer vs. Kramer, Little Fugitive, and Harriet the Spy, demonstrating how "children's texts are generally double-voiced, speaking both a child's perspective and an adult's at the same time" (137). However, the choice of texts feels forced and not fully coherent, and the chapter is a bit too diffuse, as the city comes in and out of focus. In the chapter on black urban boyhood, the author shows how the fantasy of neglect in this case "locates the problems of the black community within the black community itself, as a self-perpetuating cycle of misery caused by weak family structures and bad parenting" (145). Wojcik offers fascinating analyses of films that complicate and challenge the mainstream discourse. The texts, produced largely within the African American community, present "archives of unhappiness" that articulate anger but offer little hope. The Planet of Junior Brown, however, counters the...

Perceptions of nursery staff and parent views of healthy eating promotion in preschool settings: an exploratory qualitative study.

BackgroundIn the UK just over a fifth of all children start school overweight or obese and overweight 2–5 year olds are at least 4 times more likely to become overweight adults. This can lead to serious future health problems. The WHO have recently highlighted the preschool years as a critical time for obesity prevention, and have recommended preschools as an ideal setting for intervention. However, existing evidence suggests that the preschool environment, including the knowledge, beliefs and practices of preschool staff and parents of young children attending nurseries can be a barrier to the successful implementation of healthy eating interventions in this setting.MethodsThis study examined the perceptions of preschool centre staff and parents’ of preschool children of healthy eating promotion within preschool settings. The participants were preschool staff working in private and local authority preschool centres in the North East of England, and parents of preschool children aged 3–4 years. Preschool staff participated in semi-structured interviews (n = 16 female, 1 male). Parents completed a mapping activity interview (n = 14 mothers, 1 father). Thematic analysis was applied to interpret the findings.ResultsComplex communication issues surrounding preschool centre dietary ‘rules’ were apparent. The staff were keen to promote healthy eating to families and felt that parents needed ‘education’ and ‘help’. The staff emphasised that school policies prohibited providing children with sugary or fatty snacks such as crisps, cakes, sweets and ‘fizzy’ drinks, however, some preschool centres appeared to have difficulty enforcing such guidelines. Parents were open to the idea of healthy eating promotion in preschool settings but were wary of being ‘told what to do’ and being thought of as ‘bad parents’.ConclusionsThere is a need to further explore nursery staff members’ personal perceptions of health and how food policies which promote healthier food in preschool settings can be embedded and implemented. Family friendly healthy eating strategies and activities which utilise nudge theory should be developed and delivered in a manner that is sensitive to parents’ concerns. Preschool settings may offer an opportunity for delivery of such activities.

Lost in translation: a focus group study of parents’ and adolescents’ interpretations of underage drinking and parental supply

BackgroundReductions in underage drinking will only come about from changes in the social and cultural environment. Despite decades of messages discouraging parental supply, parents perceive social norms supportive of allowing children to consume alcohol in ‘safe’ environments.MethodsTwelve focus groups conducted in a regional community in NSW, Australia; four with parents of teenagers (n = 27; 70 % female) and eight with adolescents (n = 47; 55 % female). Participants were recruited using local media. Groups explored knowledge and attitudes and around alcohol consumption by, and parental supply of alcohol to, underage teenagers; and discussed materials from previous campaigns targeting adolescents and parents.ResultsParents and adolescents perceived teen drinking to be a common behaviour within the community, but applied moral judgements to these behaviours. Younger adolescents expressed more negative views of teen drinkers and parents who supply alcohol than older adolescents. Adolescents and parents perceived those who ‘provide alcohol’ (other families) as bad parents, and those who ‘teach responsible drinking’ (themselves) as good people. Both groups expressed a preference for high-fear, victim-blaming messages that targeted ‘those people’ whose behaviours are problematic.ConclusionsIn developing and testing interventions to address underage drinking, it is essential to ensure the target audience perceive themselves to be the target audience. If we do not have a shared understanding of underage ‘drinking’ and parental ‘provision’, such messages will continue to be perceived by parents who are trying to do the ‘right’ thing as targeting a different behaviour and tacitly supporting their decision to provide their children with alcohol.

Zainteresirani roditelji uvijek nađu vremena za dolazak u školu! Suradnja obitelji i škole u kontekstu reprodukcije društvenih nejednakosti

In the last several decades in theoretical debates and educational practice the cooperation between families and schools has been widely recognized as one of the most crucial factors for ensuring a child's academic achievement and integral development, thus becoming an indicator of the quality of teachers' work, but also of parents' interest in the child. This has created a fertile ground for the reproduction of the existing social inequalities because many parents, due to their personal characteristics or the characteristics of their families, simply cannot answer to this imperative requirement for cooperation, hence risking to be labeled as indifferent, negligent or even as bad parents. Proceeding from this fundamental ambiguity of cooperation, contextualized within school as a site of social reproduction, the central part of the paper analyzes elements of the pluralism of contemporary families that can act as potential factors of oppression of parents in their cooperation with schools. The concluding part of the paper discusses how schools can respond to the analyzed situation and avoid perpetuating the inequalities they initially seek to eliminate through cooperation with parents.

Beliefs and ideologies linked with approval of corporal punishment: a content analysis of online comments.

This study employs a novel strategy for identifying points of resistance to education efforts aimed at reducing rates of child physical abuse and use of corporal punishment (CP). We analyzed online comments (n = 581) generated in response to media coverage of a study linking CP with increased child aggression. Most comments (71%) reflected approval of hitting children for disciplinary purposes. Reasons for this approval were rooted in beliefs linking the use of CP with positive or neutral outcomes such as: 'I was spanked and I am okay', spanking improves child behavior, spanking is more effective than other forms of discipline and spanking is not abuse. However, also linked with approval were more macro-ideological beliefs about society such as: today's generation is worse off than previous ones, outside interference with parenting is wrong, one cause leads to an outcome, justifications for hitting children rooted in religious doctrine, bad parents cannot control their children and children have too much power. Our results suggest a need to better translate and disseminate empirical findings regarding the negative effects of CP to the public in a way that is highly sensitive to parents' needs to feel in control and effective when parenting.

Good parents, bad parents: Rethinking family involvement in juvenile justice

This article proposes a new theoretical model for studying family involvement in youth delinquency cases in juvenile court. It argues that before we can assess the family’s effect on case outcomes, we must first have a clearer understanding about the process by which family involvement is formed to consider the myriad factors that go beyond the idea of a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ parent. Based on qualitative data on families in New York City Family Court, this article shows how family involvement is not a predetermined factor but rather, the result of the institutional process itself as shaped by the family’s interactions with court staff as well as the youths’ behaviors and interactions with parents and staff.

Diabolical Rage? Children, Violence, and Demonic Possession in the Late Middle Ages

In the medieval world, demons were considered to be active agents in daily life. They could entice people to sin, but also possess an innocent victim’s body. Demoniacs—such possessed people—were often out of their mind, violent, and aggressive. This article explores specific cases of demonic possession—those of children attacking their parents, as reported in medieval canonization processes—and argues that religious rhetoric offered a means to explain the children’s violence. In addition to providing an explanation, religion provided an outlet in an unbearable situation: attacking one’s parents was a sign of the utmost disrespect to the social hierarchies and moral teachings; blaming a demon offered a remedy without blaming the child (or the parents for bad parenting). Child demoniacs were often treated harshly: they were tied up and sometimes beaten, but they were not abandoned. Like the affliction, the cure was also spiritual: parents invoked the help of a saint, which restored the harmony and hierarchy of family life.

“I…don’t want to see you flashing your bits around”: Exhibitionism, othering and good motherhood in perceptions of public breastfeeding

Stigma and concern about public breastfeeding have been identified as contributing towards low breastfeeding rates in high-income countries. Despite this, very little research has examined public perceptions of breastfeeding. Among existing studies, lack of familiarity with breastfeeding, sexist views and hyper-sexualisation of the breast were identified alongside discomfort at viewing breastfeeding by strangers. During 2014, in the United Kingdom (UK), several cases of women being criticised for breastfeeding in public appeared in national newspapers. A Critical Discourse Analysis approach was used to theoretically frame analysis of 884 naturally occurring comments relating to a protest supporting women’s right to breastfeed in public from the UK’s most popular online news site, Mail Online. Findings are discussed in relation to mothers’ roles as citizens and sexual beings, with a particular focus on the visibility of breasts in public space. Women who breastfeed in public were viewed as unattractive, lazy, bad parents and lacking in self-respect. More specifically, women who breastfed in public were viewed as exhibitionist. This was contrasted with the desirability of breastfeeding within the home, which was seen as an appropriate way to feed an infant. The undesirability of public breastfeeding was inherently linked to sexuality, with breastfeeding women viewed as sexual aggressors (“flashers”) or inviting sexual contact from men. It is argued that these views originate in unequal gender relationships in society and the framing of breasts as sexual rather than nurturing. These discourses are played out in public space in which mothers are marginalised in a patriarchal society.

Minority Voices and Dominant Structures: The Case of Amos Yee

The sacralization of the death of Singapore’s ‘founding father’, Lee Kuan Yew, and the strong unification of the community during the week of national mourning that followed gave rise to a degree of friction between the dominant response and counter-voices. During this period a teenager named Amos Yee posted a YouTube video insulting Lee Kuan Yew and Christianity, and was subsequently arrested. This article examines the reactions by Singaporeans and critics from abroad, and proffers an interpretation of the episode that goes from issues of bad parenting to state victimization. Yee is both a ‘floating signifier’—bearing different meanings to different people—and a symbol of Singapore’s progress and associated challenges. The juxtaposition of the dominant rituals and the rupture caused by Yee suggests a future where increased minority representation and alternative voices may be expected in Singapore.

Highlights--Does Methylation Make the Parent? A First Dive into the Genetics of Social Beetles.

Highlights--Does Methylation Make the Parent? A First Dive into the Genetics of Social Beetles.

Adolescent Pregnancy, A Social Stigma

In many communities adolescent pregnancies especially the unmarried teen pregnancies carries a social stigma because most of their pregnancies are unwanted and unplanned. It is happening in every socioeconomic group. In developing countries early pregnancies are commonly associated with poverty and lower educational levels. The teen mothers have more obstetric complications due to their underdeveloped pelvis. Adverse childhood environment, bad parenting and lack of proper education are the leading causes behind the teen pregnancy. Media also have a major influence on early pregnancy. Adolescent mother are more likely to drop out high school and due to lack of job skills unemployment is a common problem among them. Most of the babies of the adolescent mother are premature and low birth weight which is associated with the lifelong complications of the babies. By getting early and regular antenatal check up, taking healthy diet and living healthy life and also by raising public awareness and social mobilization the incidence of early pregnancy and their obstetric complications can be reduced.

Family Conflict and Resilience in Parenting Self-Efficacy Among High-Risk Mothers.

Mothers with a history of institutional care in adolescence are often involved in high-conflict partner relationships, which may undermine relationships with children and confidence in oneself as a parent. Not all mothers think of themselves as bad parents under these circumstances. We turned to psychological resources as an explanation, focusing on mothers' trait self-control. The negative association between family conflict and parenting self-efficacy was tested for moderation by self-control among 104 mothers with a history of institutionalization for behavioral problems and delinquency during adolescence. We found a negative association between current family conflict and parenting self-efficacy among mothers with low self-control, and no significant association among mothers with high self-control. This study draws attention to the needs of high-risk mothers in their parenting role and demonstrates that self-control is a potential resource for mothers to balance the load presented by conflict in their families. The findings suggest new avenues for intervention.

Model intervensi perkongsian pintar sekolah-keluarga dalam pendidikan kanak-kanak

This conceptual paper reviews about cooperation between family and school to produce resilient children with high aspiration and motivation towards education. Discussion was based on the assumption that the best chance for children to grow and thrive is to empower and connect their family and school. Problems, which many children faced today, are not only because of bad parenting, but also due to the environment factor to either help or deterrent parents to create harmony and strength in the family. Healthy and positive relationships between family and school can improve children’s academic competence and performance, behaviour and social skills, reduce problem related behaviours in children as well as increase parent’s involvement with respect to children’s performance and relationship with teachers.

Clinical implications of biological factors in personality disorders.

Personality disorder (PD) describes mental abnormalities that reflect long-term changes in cognition, emotion, and behaviour that affect mental functioning. PDs have been shown to be heritable, although research has not identified any consistent biomarkers associated with them. Biological research on PD is in a very early stage, and cannot be used as a basis for biological treatment. Current practices that favour aggressive drug therapy are not justified by the current state of research. Moreover, medications are often not effective for this patient population, while specific forms of psychotherapy have much better established efficacy.Keywords: personality disorder, heritability, neuroimaging, psychopharmacologyResumeLe terme « trouble de la personnalite » (TP) renvoie a des anomalies mentales attribuables a des changements a long terme dans la cognition, les emotions et les comportements qui nuisent au fonctionnement de l'esprit. Il a ete montre que les TP peuvent etre hereditaires, bien que les recherches n'aient pas cerne de biomarqueurs leur etant associes. Les recherches biologiques sur les TP en sont a leurs debuts et ne peuvent servir de base a un traitement biologique. L'etat actuel de la recherche ne justifie pas les pratiques favorisant la pharmacotherapie energique. De plus, la medication se revele souvent inefficace pour les patients souffrant de TP, alors que l'efficacite de certaines formes de psychotherapie a ete etablie.Mots-cles : trouble de la personnalite, heritabilite, neuroimagerie, psychopharmacologie.All mental disorders have neural correlates, and personality disorder (PD) is no exception. All mental disorders are also associated with heritable risk factors that play a role in their etiology (for a review, see Jang, 2005). Behaviour genetic methods compare concordance rates in monozygotic and dizygotic twins, allowing for quantitative estimates of heritability. They show that genes account for about half the variance in personality traits, as well as in PDs (Plomin, DeFries, Knopik, & Neiderhiser, 2012).The heritability of PDs has been demonstrated by large scale behaviour genetic studies (Reichborn-Kjennerud, 2010; Torgersen et al., 2002; Torgersen et al., 2012). Thus, borderline personality disorder, for example, which was long thought to be an environmental condition, has a single heritable factor that accounts for 55% of the variance in all nine of its DSM-5 criteria (Reichborn-Kjennerud et al., 2013). These studies also showed that the level of genetic influence is in much the same range as for personality traits. The precise nature of these heritable factors remains unknown.These findings confirm that PD is not a simple, direct consequence of bad parenting or child abuse, but is rooted in interactions between an abnormal temperament and an adverse environment. Even when a disorder is heritable, it does not necessarily develop unless environmental stressors are also present (e.g., Rutter, 2006). Thus, the effects of biology always have to be understood in the light of their interactions with a psychosocial context: Genes bend the twig, but do not determine the shape of the tree.Genetic influences can also be measured by temperament, defined as the heritable aspect of personality, present a birth, which is then shaped by experience into stable traits, and can be amplified to pathological levels by psychosocial adversity (see Rutter, 1987). A vulnerable temperament tends to make the development of a PD more likely, and determines the type of PD that can develop. This principle applies to all PDs: For example, highly introverted people will rarely develop narcissistic PD, and a highly extraverted person would not develop avoidant PD (Paris, 2003).Some of the most important effects of heritable factors in psychopathology lie in individual differences in susceptibility to environmental risks. People who are highly resilient can be surprisingly unaffected by serious life adversities (Rutter, 2012). …

Governing the souls of young women: exploring the perspectives of mothers on parenting in the age of sexualisation

The sexualisation of young women has emerged as a growing concern within contemporary western cultures. This has provoked adult anxieties that young women are growing up too fast by adopting inappropriate sexual practices and subjectivities. Psychological discourses have dominated, which position sexualisation as a corrupting force that infects the ‘true self’ of young women, so they develop in abnormal ways. This in turn allows psychological practices to govern how to parent against sexualisation within families. To explore this further, six mothers each with daughters aged between 8 and 12 took part in one to one semi-structured interviews designed to explore how they conceptualised and parented against the early sexualisation of young women. A Foucauldian inspired discourse analysis was employed, which suggested that the mother's talk was situated within a psychological discourse. This enabled sexualisation to be positioned as a corrupting force that disrupted the natural development of young women through deviant bodily practices (e.g. consuming sexualised goods), which prevented them from becoming their ‘true self’. Through the disciplinary gaze of psychology, class inequalities were reproduced where working class families were construed as ‘chavs’ who were bad parents and a site of contagion for sexualisation.

Becoming Pregnant

This article considers the implications of the presence of Juno's pregnant girl body in the film Juno (2007). The narrative follows the high school student Juno's pregnancy, her decision to have the baby adopted, and its birth as she attempts to determine her feelings for her friend Bleeker. As a pregnant girl, Juno persists in a state of liminality and disrupts linear ideas of becoming: becoming woman, becoming mother, becoming feminist. Having considered contemporary discourses of pregnancy, I explore Juno's representation of the pregnant body as both abject and humorous, recognising the restrictions upon girls' sexuality and moments in which they are contested. I then move to consider Juno in relation to discourses of risk and responsibility, acknowledging the ways in which the film simultaneously perpetuates and critiques the presumption that teenagers make bad parents. I argue that analysing the juncture of girl and pregnancy represented in Juno enables a move beyond simplistic expectations of “normal” feminine girlhood to recognise it as complex and messy.

Parenting ideals and (un-)troubled parent positions

This paper examines how some Swedish parents constructed meanings of parenthood. The parents had completed a state-sponsored parenting programme and were interviewed about their experiences of the programme, their everyday lives, their need for support, ideas about the societal context, and their understandings of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ parents. The study was grounded in a discourse-analytical tradition and concepts from discursive psychology guided the analysis. When the interviewees described good parents as responsible and engaged, they related to dominant discourses where middle-class values of involvement and ideals of intensive motherhood intersect. The descriptions of bad parenting were also classed and gendered, representing bad parents as irresponsible and uncaring, as not setting limits, and as not spending enough time with their children. The parents represented themselves in various ways as responsible parents, i.e. an untroubled subject position, but also handled troubled parent positions related to notions of gender and social class.

Book Review: Shakespeare on Love: Seeing the Catholic Presence in Romeo and Juliet

Shakespeare on Love: Seeing the Catholic Presence in Romeo and Juliet. By Joseph Pearce. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2013. ISBN-13 978-1-58617-684-6. Pp. 179. $14.95. Like Pearce's other books on Shakespeare, Shakespeare on Love views Shakespeare's life and writing from a Catholic perspective. Pearce provides a brief preface that reviews evidence for Shakespeare's Catholicism, including references to classic and recent scholarly works that support his perspective. However, the majority of the text focuses on Pearce's interpretation of Romeo and Juliet. The prologue to the text questions how the couple's love fits with the great love affairs of literature, setting up an explicitly Christian frame by noting that love can be right or wrong, heavenly or hellish (16). Though subsequent readers have seen Romeo and Juliet's story as the height of romanticism, Pearce doubts that Shakespeare would have shared that view. The first chapter of Shakespeare on Love focuses on Shakespeare's revision of his sources and on the misreading of Romeo and Juliet that Pearce sees in much of the play's criticism. Pearce believes Shakespeare frequently chose sources that demonstrate marked anti-Catholicism in order to [correct] their anti-Catholic biases with modes of expression more conducive to his own beliefs (18). Thus in Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare softens the Puritan stance of Arthur Brooke's The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet by changing the development of the play's characters and removing anti-Catholic commentary. Moving quickly to discuss the play itself, Pearce claims that scholars interpret the play in one of three ways: as an illustration of fatalism, in which the lovers are helpless before the crushing whims of fate; as a romantic dream, in which the lovers' true passion sets them apart from their hateful families, who ultimately cause the tragedy; or as a tale, in which the actions of the principal characters produce consequences that together form a moral picture. In Pearce's judgment, only the third option results in a correct reading of the play. Following the introductory chapters, Pearce walks through the play, act by act and scene by scene, building the moral picture that arises from his cautionary tale reading of the text. Pearce begins with two sets of paired chapters; in each set, he discusses first Romeo, then Juliet, examining their attitudes and behaviors before and during the Capulets' party and then in the balcony scene. Pearce claims that Romeo's passionate nature is based wholly on the physical and expresses itself through trite cliches. According to this argument, Romeo loves Juliet because the first object of his passion, Rosaline, is unavailable to his desires. Rather than truly loving Juliet in a meaningful way, Romeo desires her because he finds her more amenable to his will. This fickle approach to love is possible because Romeo is a sonnet lover who loves in the tradition of Petrarchan sonnets rather than according to Christian morality. As such, Romeo is morally an idolater who makes women his goddesses. In discussing Juliet, Pearce first emphasizes her youth. In the sources, Juliet is either fifteen or seventeen, yet those texts refer to her as too young to marry. Shakespeare alters her age to an even younger thirteen, even though, as Pearce demonstrates, less than ten percent of women in Shakespeare's lifetime married before age fifteen, and most women actually married in their early to mid-twenties. Therefore, Juliet's father's willingness to marry her to Paris before her fourteenth birthday would have shocked the Elizabethan audience. Because of Shakespeare's insistence on Juliet's youth and her father's increasing hurry to marry her off, Pearce reads this play in part as a demonstration of bad parenting. Regarding Juliet's character, Pearce claims that she begins as an innocent who is respectful of religious belief and imagery, but quickly falls into sensualism under Romeo's corrupting influence. …

The History of Mum and Dad: Recent Historical Research on Parenting in England from the 16th to 20th centuries

AbstractParenting has a complex but only recently examined history. This article surveys this scholarship, which is driven by the histories of gender, emotions, medicine, bodies, material culture, class and deviance to uncover how parenting is socially and culturally constructed and therefore changes over time. It traces several significant arguments. First, shifting gender constructions have reshaped expectations about mothers' and fathers' roles. Thus, while paternal breadwinning and maternal care is always important, at times fathers have been commended for caring for infants and mothers for economic provision of offspring. Secondly, the material aspects of life have powerfully affected parenting. Until relatively recently, parents struggled against implacably high rates of infant and child mortality: nursing children, preparing them for death and the afterlife, and coping with grief. Therefore, although the depth of feeling over this remained consistent, varying emotional regimes have influenced forms of parental expression and practice. Parents' responsibilities for their children's health at times of inadequate medical treatment often left them physically and mentally exhausted and woefully disempowered. Other limitations or freedoms were imposed on mothering and fathering by the objects and spaces associated with bringing up children. Thirdly, levels of wealth and social class affect parenting, with working‐class, poor and lone parents especially vulnerable to family disruption due to poverty, ill‐health and under‐ or unemployment. Fourthly, the parameters of bad parenting shift over time, and even those mothers and fathers who killed their children were viewed differently over time and place as cultural sensibilities shifted. Finally, the article concludes with some suggestions for the further development of this exciting new field.