Conclusion

The conclusion puts the continued commodification of Victorian babyhood into a different perspective by re-examining nineteenth-century discourse on an expanding baby industry that included baby care products as well as contradictory advice on their purchase, right usage, and ongoing innovation. It explores this industry as a product of and an additional force in the contestations surrounding competing forms of infant care that sharpened the paradoxical relationship between the sentimentalization of the baby and the commercial possibilities of anxious parenting, the increasing professionalization of infant care, and altogether the growing contestations surrounding the right way to look after your baby in print media. The ongoing commodification of the baby does more than attest to the lasting power and the distorting appropriation of Victorian baby-worship. A critical discussion of the growing culture of baby products at the time also prompts us to examine the significance of this culture today. In understanding and discussing its continued influence, we might become enabled to regard contradictory parenting advice and baby care products as presented in the media with more critical self-awareness as well.

Representing anxious parents in China: A study of Parenting Science magazine 1980–2016

This article analyses the representation of parental practices in Parenting Science, the first and longest running parenting magazine published in China since 1980. Drawing on Foucault’s work on governmentality and biopolitics as well as their current development in cultural studies and sociology of health, this article critically investigates the cultural frames that surround parental practices relating to the health and development of young children. It explores how issues of medicalisation, intensive parenting, responsibility and self-management are represented in the magazine, ‘reflecting’ as well as ‘reinforcing’ dominant cultural ideas of parenting and childrearing in China. Based on a qualitative content analysis of 2295 items from 37 issues of the magazine (1980–2016), including editorials, feature stories, standard articles, Q&As, adverts and other short items, this article has identified three major frames of parental practices in monitoring and facilitating children’s health, development and wellbeing: (1) the medicalisation of children’s health problems, (2) the rise of expert authority and (3) the responsibilisation of parents. This article argues that these frames underpin the construction of an intensive and anxious parenting culture in China and serve as powerful tools of biopolitical control.

A systematic literature review of parenting behaviours exhibited by anxious people

IntroductionResearch shows anxiety clustering within families: a greater proportion of children with anxious parents develop symptoms of anxiety than children with non-anxious parents. Anxious children often describe their parents as over-controlling and intrusive, lacking in affection and warmth, with reports of decreased parental support.Objectives(1)to identify if parenting behaviors differ between anxious and non-anxious parents,(2)to discuss if these differences in behaviors can contribute to transgenerational transmission of anxiety.AimsIdentifying whether behaviour modification could reduce familial transmission rates of anxiety.MethodA search of OvidSP Medline, Google Scholar, and PubMed was performed, covering 1999 to 2010. Search terms used were: parenting, parents, maternal, paternal, or parental; and anxiety, PTSD, OCD, panic disorder, or phobia. 14 Papers were identified.ResultsWhile most papers identified differences in parenting between anxious and control parents, the conclusions were variable. Two observed increased amounts of controlling behaviour, 5 a decrease in sensitivity, 1 witnessed exageration of behaviours, and 5 a decrease in granting of autonomy or increased protectiveness.ConclusionThe most supported differences in anxious parenting are less granting of autonomy, and lower levels of sensitivity. Whilst in isolation they cannot explain how anxiety is transmitted, and appear to be reciprocally related to child anxiety and temperament, they give grounds for further research. In particular this review identifies the need to study the above behavioral components in longitudinal studies, to observe causal effects between parent behavior and child anxiety.