Summary
More time and money is being spent on children than ever before. And it's a global trend. Professor Tina Miller, who has studied how parenting styles have changed over several decades, considers what this investment in our sons and daughters tells us about the modern world. She considers whether the gold standard of educational achievement goes hand in hand with rising inequality and individualism. What might the unintended consequences be and how difficult is it for parents to opt out? Contribuors: Professor Rebecca Ryan, Professor Matthias Doepke, Frederick De Moll and Jan Macvarish. Producer: Rosamund Jones Editor: Jasper Corbett
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.6 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.4 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable |
| 0:14.3 | experts and genuinely engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC |
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| 0:36.0 | BBC Sounds. |
| 0:38.0 | BBC Sounds, Music Radio Podcasts. |
| 0:41.0 | Hello. Thanks for listening to analysis. podcasts. Miller takes a look at intensive parenting, what it is and why it's on the rise. |
| 0:55.0 | This programme is about parenting, but I'm certainly not offering advice. |
| 1:05.0 | What I'm interested in is how the concept of good parenting has shifted |
| 1:10.0 | and crucially what those changes tell us about the society we live in. |
| 1:14.4 | I'm Professor Tina Miller and I've been studying parenting and family life for the past 25 years. |
| 1:29.0 | We all probably have views on parenting. If we aren't parents ourselves, we've definitely all been |
| 1:34.4 | parented. But we don't often stop to think about the reasons why parenting practices change over time. |
| 1:41.8 | And that's the focus of my research. I interview men and women as |
| 1:45.6 | their parenting journeys unfold. In my first study which began back in the mid |
| 1:52.4 | 1990s it seemed that most of the concerns mothers had were to do with their baby reaching early milestones, teething and crawling, and then producing the sociable child, achieved they often thought through spending |
| 2:06.1 | quality time together. This was how one of the mothers, Diana, spoke quite typically describing a day with her baby son in the mid-1990s. |
| 2:16.3 | At the weekends rather than sort of think right now I must play with him you know I sort of |
| 2:21.8 | try and get on with my own life. I'll try and do the |
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