Beyond Investment: Uncovering the Protective Dimensions of Parenting and Unequal Childhoods in Korea

• In Event: 30467 - Intensive Parenting Practices from Early Childhood to the Transition to Adulthood

Abstract

Sociologists and education scholars have stressed the importance of the protective side of parenting, especially safeguarding the emotional well-being of children. However, within the literature on family stratification, the protective dimensions of parenting continue to be regarded as residual or supplementary to the parenting agenda of investing and cultivating academic achievements. Furthermore, existing research exploring how parents safeguard their children's emotions focuses predominantly on upper-middle-class American parents, resulting in insufficient incorporation of cross-cultural and cross-class perspectives. To theorize the protective dimension of parenting, this study builds on the literature on cultural capital and family stratification and explores how mothers from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds in urban Korea approach and perform protective parenting. In-depth interviews and follow-up interviews with 100 Korean mothers reveal not only the salience and components of protective parenting but also demonstrate how emotional safeguarding is a class phenomenon that shapes everyday parenting strategies. Further applying the conceptualization of protective parenting, the case of making neighborhood decisions is utilized to demonstrate how diverging patterns of protective parenting across class lines result in the opportunity disparities children receive. In the end, this study offers conceptualization and application of an overlooked—yet consequential— process of protection labor that parents conduct differently across class lines.

Author

• Eunsil Oh, University of Wisconsin-Madison