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26 MAY 2008
NO 1301
Parenting
The essential character of residential work for children is that it takes over a more or less substantial part of responsibility for 'parenting'.
The rather clumsy word `parenting' covers the arrangements which any society makes for its children to be reared, learn the accepted cultural patterns and reach toward expected standards of adult individuality and responsibility. Such arrangements are made in all societies, though they may depend primarily on the biological parents, or on some other social grouping of adults. In all cases the parents share the parenting function with the extended family, teachers, priests etc. To use the term here makes it clear that parenting can never be taken over entirely by the residential unit. Its use also avoids the difficulties of talking of substitute parents or a substitute home. Such difficulties can be eased to some extent if we think of residential care as a 'stand-by', seeing the child through a particular emergency perhaps and not taking on responsibilities beyond that. But over a long period, or in the absence of a clear-cut emergency, even 'stand-by' becomes unsatisfactory and a share in parenting has to be acknowledged. The term also implies 'mothering' and `fathering' functions which can be carried on by adults other than the child's own parents and which are similar to, but not identical with, the emotional-social relationships between mothers and fathers and their children. It thus lightens some of the inevitable emotional load of `mother' or `father' whilst acknowledging that the 'parenting' relationship may very often be intensely personal. Finally the use of the participle `parenting' rather than being a `substitute' or 'stand-by parent' can imply an objectivity about the purpose of the relationship, i.e., thinking and feeling about the task of being a 'stand-by' or having a share in `parenting' rather than being overwhelmed (as parents often are) by the situation that this is my child. Biological parents can share 'parenting' with others – they can never really share except between the two of them, 'being parents'.
Some useful lines of thought arise from the idea of a share in parenting:
First, what constitutes
parenting?
Second, in what ways can parenting be shared among different
individuals and social organizations?
Third, for which children and in what circumstances, is it
essential? When is its place taken by relations of equal responsibility
between individuals of the same age (peers), or older children or
adults, at the same or later developmental stages?
Fourth, to what extent and in what circumstances are adults
useful to children not primarily as `parenting' figures but as other
human beings just alongside them as " individuals?
CHRISTOPHER BEEDELL
Beedell, Chsristopher. (1970). Residential Life with Children. London. Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd. pp. 17-18.
