Monitoring parents:

 

This event, hosted by the School of Social Policy , Sociology and Social Research at the University of Kent, will take place on 21 st and 22nd May 2007.

Some themes and issues for the conference are:

• The 'medicalisation' of motherhood
• Parents as risk managers
• Gender and parenting: has there been an 'intensification' of fatherhood?
• The emotional management of parents and the sacralisation of 'bonding'
• The politics of parenting culture
• The regulation of pregnancy and childbirth
• Reproductive choices
• Infant feeding: breast and formula feeding
• Childcare in the early months

The event will feature contributions from the following, amongst others:

Dr Susan Douglas, Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Michigan . Co-author of The Mommy Myth

Prof Frank Furedi, Professor of Sociology, University of Kent . Author of Paranoid Parenting and Culture of Fear

Stephanie Knaak, University of Alberta . Author of 'Breast-feeding, bottle-feeding and Dr. Spock: The shifting context of choice'.

Dr Rebecca Kukla, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Carleton University at Ottawa . Author of Mass Hysteria, Medicine, Culture and Women's Bodies

Dr Ellie Lee, Senior Lecturer in Social Policy, University of Kent . Author of 'Infant feeding in risk society', and Abortion, Motherhood and Mental Health: Medicalizing reproduction in the US and Great Britain

Dr Elizabeth Murphy, Professor of Medical Sociology, University of Nottingham . Author of 'Images of Childhood in Mother's Accounts of Contemporary Childrearing', and Qualitative Methods and Health Policy

The main outcomes of the event are intended to be:

• Development of a network of researchers with an interest in parenting culture
• Opportunity for the emergence of collaborative research agendas and projects
• Written outputs, possibly in the form of an edited book / special issue of a journal to report papers from the conference.

For further details and information, follow the links on this webpage.

 

© University of Kent, 2.2.07