Table Of ContentParenting After the
Century of the Child
Travelling Ideals, Institutional Negotiations
and Individual Responses
Edited by
Tatjana Thelen and Haldis Haukanes
Parenting after the Century of the Child
For Mai Bente Snipstad and Georgia Kretsi
both of whom passed away too early.
Parenting after the Century
of the Child
travelling ideals, institutional negotiations
and individual responses
Edited by
tatjana thelen
University of Zurich, Switzerland and
Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany
haldis haukanes
University of Bergen, Norway
© tatjana thelen and haldis haukanes 2010
all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise
without the prior permission of the publisher.
tatjana thelen and haldis haukanes and have asserted their right under the Copyright, designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.
Printed with the support of the Max Planck institute for social anthropology and the university of
Bergen.
Published by
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Parenting after the century of the child : travelling
ideals, institutional negotiations and individual
responses.
1. Parenthood--Cross-cultural studies--Congresses.
2. Child rearing--Cross-cultural studies--Congresses.
3. Child care--Cross-cultural studies--Congresses.
i. thelen, tatjana. ii. haukanes, haldis. iii. european
association of social anthropologists. Conference (9th. :
2006 : Bristol, england)
306.8'74-dc22
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Parenting after the century of the child : travelling ideals, institutional negotiations and individual
responses / edited by tatjana the len and haldis haukanes.
p. cm.
includes bibliographical references and index.
isBn 978-1-4094-0111-7 (hardback) -- isBn 978-1-4094-0112-4 (ebook)
1. Childhood--Cross-cultural studies. 2. Parenting--Cross-cultural studies.
3. Parent and child--Cross-cultural studies. 4. Childhood--Cross-cultural studies.
i. thelen, tatjana. ii. haukanes, haldis.
hQ769.P2715 2010
306.87409'04--dc22
2009040127
isBn 9781409401117 (hbk)
isBn 9781409401124 (ebk.I)
Contents
Notes on Contributors vii
Acknowledgements xiii
1 Parenting after the Century of the Child: introduction 1
Tatjana Thelen and Haldis Haukanes
2 Parenthood and Childhood: debates within the social sciences 11
Haldis Haukanes and Tatjana Thelen
PART I: TRAveLLINg IDeALs ABouT ReLATeDNess, FAmILy
AND PAReNTINg oBLIgATIoNs
3 What is a good Mother? historical shifts, divergent Models in
urban japan 35
Susan D. Holloway, Yoko Yamamoto and Sawako Suzuki
4 no school without foster families in northern Benin:
a social historical approach 57
Erdmute Alber
5 growing up nuclear? young Czechs’ and tunisians’ Visions
of family, Parenting and gender roles 79
Haldis Haukanes and Marit Tjomsland
PART II: NegoTIATINg ResPoNsIBILITIes IN eDuCATIoN AND
CHILD WeLFARe INsTITuTIoNs
6 Child Welfare, Biopower and Mestizo relatedness in
Quito, ecuador 103
Esben Leifsen
7 ‘in the Best interests of the Child’: intergenerational legacies of Past
aboriginal Child removal Policies in australia 123
Tiffany McComsey
vi Parenting After the Century of the Child
8 Privatizing Parenthood – Modernizing Childhood? Paradoxes of
school reform in eastern germany 141
Tatjana Thelen
9 representations of Parenting Practices of native and immigrant
families in institutional Care service settings in Barcelona 163
Marta Bertran
PART III: TRANsLATINg INTeRNATIoNAL LegIsLATIoN To
LoCAL seTTINgs
10 Custody and Coming of age: three american Cases 185
Randy Frances Kandel and Anne Griffiths
11 Child rights or Wrongs: dilemmas in implementing support
for Children in the kilimanjaro region, tanzania, in the era of
globalized aids approaches 205
Mai Bente Snipstad, Gro Th. Lie and Dagfinn Winje
Index 223
notes on Contributors
erdmute Alber is a professor of social anthropology at the university of
Bayreuth, germany, and has conducted research in latin america and africa.
originally specializing in Political anthropology, she has worked on childhood
and child fosterage in northern Benin since 1998. in Bayreuth, she headed a
research project on changing family structures in ghana, togo and Benin, and
currently heads a project on changing intergenerational relations in West africa.
she is a leading member of the Bayreuth international graduate school of african
studies at the university of Bayreuth and editor of the journal Sociologus. among
her publications are: 2003, denying biological parenthood – Child fosterage in
northern Benin; Ethnos 68/4, 2004, Grandparents and Grandchildren. edinburgh:
edinburgh university Press (with susan Whyte and Wenzel geissler); 2008,
Generations in Africa. Berlin: lit Verlag (with susan Whyte and sjaak van der
geest).
marta Bertran gained her Ph.d. in social anthropology at universitat autònoma
de Barcelona (uaB). her dissertation was entitled Childhood and Maternity in
Barcelona: From Expectations to Relations in a Context of Diversity and Social
Change. she currently lectures in the social and systematic Pedagogy department
in uaB and is a researcher in the eMigra group (childhood, migration, school)
of the anthropology department dealing with projects on school and integration.
she is also involved in a research project on transnational families.
Anne Griffiths holds a personal chair in the anthropology of law at the school
of law in edinburgh university. her research focuses on the anthropology of law,
comparative and family law, african law, gender, culture and rights. her most
recent project involves a un study on informal justice. over the years she has
held visiting appointments at various institutions including distinguished Visiting
Professor, faculty of law, university of toronto, the Max Planck institute for social
anthropology, halle/saale, germany, the international institute for the sociology
of law oñati – gipuzkoa, spain, the university of texas at austin: school of law,
and the southern and eastern african regional Centre for Women’s law at the
university of Zimbabwe. she is currently President of the Commission on folk
law and legal Pluralism, a branch of the international union of anthropological
and ethnological sciences.
viii Parenting After the Century of the Child
Haldis Haukanes holds a doctoral degree in social anthropology from the
university of Bergen, norway. she is currently associate professor and head of the
MPhil in gender and development at the research Centre for health Promotion,
university of Bergen. her research interests include gender and feminist theory,
oral history and biography, community studies, food and risk, and youth studies.
she has published widely on the above-mentioned topics in books and journals.
she is editor and co-editor of several volumes, including Memory, Politics and
Religion: The Past Meets the Present in Contemporary Europe (Münster, lit
Verlag 2004, with f. Pine and d. kaneff). she is also the author of the book
Velká Dramata – Obyčejné životy. Postkomunistické zkušenosti českého venkova
(grand dramas, ordinary lives. Post-communist experiences in the Czech
Countryside), Praha, slon 2004.
susan D. Holloway is a faculty member of the graduate school of education at
the university of California, Berkeley. she received her doctorate from stanford
university in 1983, where her studies focused on early childhood development
and education. her research examines parenting in cultural perspective, often
exploring the connection between family processes and children’s achievement
in school. she recently completed a cross-national study examing the factors
conditioning student engagement during the transition to high school in low-income
communities. she is currently conducting research on the ways that families in the
usa and japan accommodate to having a child with a cognitive disability. her
publications include a book on japanese preschools entitled Contested Childhood:
Diversity and Change in Japanese Preschools (2000). her forthcoming volume is
titled Women and Family in Contemporary Japan.
Randy Frances Kandel has a j.d. from new york university school of law and
a Ph.d. in anthropology from the City university of new york. she is a part-time
associate professor in the department of anthropology at john jay College of
Criminal justice and an administrative law judge for new york City. she has
published numerous articles and chapters, many with her colleague Anne Griffiths,
about children and the legal process in the us and scotland.
esben Leifsen obtained his dr. polit. title at the university of oslo and currently
holds a senior lecturer position at the department of international environment
and development studies at the norwegian university of life sciences, Ås. he
has carried out extensive research in the rural and urban areas of the northern
andes and recently worked with latin american labour migrants in spain. his
research interests span the indigenous economy and global integration, child
abandonment, adoption and fosterage, the governance of reproduction, child care
and relatedness, child trafficking, and children in transnational migration. Leifsen
participated in and coordinated the project ‘informal Child Migration in europe’,
an inter-institutional research cooperation financed by the Norwegian Research
Council. leifsen takes the anthropological approach to childhood studies and his
Notes on Contributors ix
recent, ongoing writing focuses on international adoption, child trafficking, child
welfare and governance and child care and iCt.
gro Therese Lie, Ph.d., is a social and community psychologist and professor
of development-related health Promotion at the research Centre for health
Promotion (heMil), university of Bergen, norway. she has worked for twenty
years in joint tanzanian/norwegian research projects with the university of dar
es salaam on hiV/aids-related challenges in selected tanzanian communities.
lie has headed several multidisciplinary research projects. she has also worked in
several other eastern, Western and southern african countries, as well as in europe
and latin america. she has extensive experience of working with grassroots-
initiated organizations in participatory evaluation and action research. Currently
she is head of a multidisciplinary thematic research group ‘Multicultural Venues
in health and education: applying local Cultural Perspectives on global social
Challenges’ http://www.uib.no/rg/hemil/research/mc-venues.
Tiffany mcComsey is a Ph.d. candidate in the department of social anthropology
at the university of Manchester. she is in the process of writing her dissertation,
which is based on fieldwork conducted in Redfern, an inner-city suburb of Sydney,
Australia. Her fieldwork (2005–2007) was undertaken at a particular moment in
the redevelopment of this inner-city area. a considerable amount of her research
examines these processes specifically in relation to the Aboriginal community of
redfern.
mai Bente snipstad (1960–2008) was a chief psychologist and lecturer at the
Centre for Post-graduate studies in Child Welfare, and a researcher at the faculty
of Psychology, university of Bergen, norway. her research is linked to the research
group ‘Multicultural Venues in health and education’ at the research Centre for
health Promotion. her most recent research project focused on the consequences
of the hiV/aids epidemic for orphaned and vulnerable children in tanzania and
on how to meet these children’s psychosocial needs. snipstad had experience of
working as a psychologist for unicef in former yugoslavia and sudan. her recent
publications included the article ‘What do tanzanian children worry about?’
(M. snipstad, g.t. lie and d. Winje, African Journal of AIDS Research 2005,
4(3): 183–193).
sawako suzuki obtained her Ph.d. at the university of California, Berkeley,
in human development and education. she is now an assistant professor of
educational research in the educational leadership Program at saint Mary’s
College of California. her research interest lies in the intersection of family, school
and culture. she is currently conducting a study on the impact of parental beliefs on
asian-american high school students’ academic performance and college/career
choices. she is also studying the developmental changes of japanese mothers’ self-
efficacy beliefs with Susan Holloway. She has presented her work both nationally
