These days as I walk across the opulent lawns of the private, liberal arts col­lege where I teach, most students passing by have a cell phone, seemingly glued to one ear. They are so deeply engaged in their conversations that they barely notice anyone around them, and they are startled when I call out a […]

I divide this investigation of parenting strategies into two parts. In part I, I demonstrate how parenting out of control emerges from the ways in which professional middle-class parents make sense of their position in the world. I show that although parents from the working and middle classes share some concerns with parents from the […]

My findings of intimacy and hovering combined with elastic constraint and covert surveillance are central to my dubbing the professional middle-class approach “parenting out of control.” Clearly intimacy and hovering lay the groundwork for control in the commonsense meaning of the word: parents are carefully guiding, shaping, and determining the contours of their chil­dren’s actions. […]

When I began this research, I assumed naively that the hovering professional middle-class parents would opt for all the help technology could offer to help them keep track of and even spy on their children. In fact, I began this project in part because I thought that it would allow me the fun of exploring […]

It would be thrilling to announce that I had found a single reason for the new approach to rearing children among the professional middle class. But no single cause could possibly explain such a complex shift in orientation toward parenting; moreover, particular aspects of this new approach in all likeli­hood have multiple and overlapping causes. […]

When I compared parenting styles among the professional middle-class respondents with those of their less privileged peers, I found quite distinc­tive differences. Among the former, parenting includes a lengthy perspec­tive on children’s dependency without a clear launching point for a grown child, a commitment to creating “passionate” people who know how to find a “proper” […]

Curious about the hovering and curious about its possible link to new tech­nology, I designed a research project that would allow me to explore and explain the roots, dynamics, and class location of a style of child rearing that I have come to call “parenting out of control” as it affects attitudes toward and behaviors […]

No Playpen W hen I was raising my children in the 1970s, there were no baby moni­tors to help me hear them cry in the middle of the night, no cell phones to assist me in keeping track of their whereabouts at every moment, and no expectation that I would know any more about their […]

I t is always a delightful moment to turn to this part of a manuscript. Not only is this an indication that yes, at last, the process of writing is almost complete, but it is also a time to offer thanks rather than simply to accumu­late debts. And so, with a great sense of relief, […]