A Field Theory of Parenting

• In Event: 21020 - Section on Sociology of Education Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 22: The Role of Family, Health, and Parental Engagement in Education and Well-Being

Abstract

Intensive parenting has become a salient phenomenon in many countries. Existing paradigms on parenting – human capital and cultural capital – are not well equipped to explain cross-regional or over-time variations in parenting practices. I propose that parents are bounded rationality actors strategizing against near-term rules, and that these rules emerge from the local fields of public schools and tutoring. Primarily drawing on 90 interviews in Beijing, I show that (1) parents strategize against near-term rules that vary across urban districts; (2) the tutoring field emerged as an offshoot of the public school field; and (3) the tutoring field demanded and cultivated new intensive parenting practices. Among Beijing’s urban districts, Haidian had the most fragmented local education governance, which facilitated the rise of the tutoring field and the development of new parenting practices. Over time, changes in the public school and tutoring fields reshape parenting practices. This paper manuscript adapts the field theory to analyze parenting.

Author

• Fangsheng Zhu, Duke Kunshan University