Suissa, J; Ramaekers, S; (2016) Writing philosophically about the parent-child relationship. In: Fulford, A and Hodgson, N, (eds.) Philosophy and theory in educational research: Writing in the margin. Routledge: London, UK.

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Abstract

The discussion in this extract is illustrative of the approach we adopted in our initial conversations that led to the preparation of the book proposal, and later throughout the whole process of writing the book. In collecting material throughout this process, we often found ourselves sharing examples of descriptions of parenting (for example, in magazines and websites aimed at parents, in parenting guides and self-help books, or in policy documents and media reports on the role of parents), and expressing our frustration at the sweeping generalisations that seemed typical of such accounts (e.g. the tendency to make statements beginning with ‘Children are...’, ‘Parents should...’ or ‘Research shows that...’). In trying to express this frustration, we found ourselves reaching towards an articulation of what it was that these kinds of accounts left out in their depiction of the experience of being a parent, and how they seemed to be failing to do justice to the complexities of the daily lived experience of being a parent. At the same time, we found ourselves drawn to first-person accounts of the experience of being a parent that we encountered in novels, magazines, or simply in the process of talking to other parents and to each other about our own experiences. Our actual writing process, then, often began with simply describing such experiences and sending our descriptions to each other so that we could comment on what we thought was significant or valuable in them, and then seeing how they fitted in with the general critical view we were in the process of developing. So, for example, in the above extract, imagining the scene of a mother with a screaming toddler in the supermarket, which we describe in everyday language, allowed us to make the conceptual points about the irreducibly ethical significance of parents’ daily interactions with their children, and the impossibility of imposing any definitive model of choice or closure on the ways in which parents respond to such situations, in a concrete and accessible manner.

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