„Project Child“: Parents‘ constructions of the gendered child

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Michael Meuser; Professorin Dr. Ulrike Mietzner
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2019 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 428864246

The research project is situated at the intersection of gender, family and childhood studies. It focuses on the parents’ (gendered) images, concepts and interpretative patterns of what they see as a succeeding development of their child. It asks for parents’ images of childhood and gender in different familial gender arrangements and analyzes how these images are projected onto their children. It is assumed that images of gender and childhood are ascribed to a high degree within families notwithstanding that they are cultural patterns transported by media and adopted by parents. A core research question is to which degree and in which respect the parents’ concepts are influenced by gender typical expectations. This question is asked against the backdrop of the transformation of the (bourgeois) family into a ‘negotiation family’ and the accompanying change of the figure of the child towards a ‘project child’ whose development and future depends on the ‘right’ acting of the parents. In particular, it is asked whether in the course of the pluralization of the family and the erosion of traditional gender norms the image of a ‘new child’ emerges which is gendered in new ways. Do non-traditional familial gender arrangements (atypical division of work, involved fatherhood etc.) relate to not gender typical images of the child? Or takes a gendered framing of the child’s development place or the absence of such a framing independently from the familial gender arrangement? The parents’ construction of the child will be analyzed along the following dimensions: (1) in relation to the child’s gender, (2) in relation to the family’s form of life and (3) in relation to the social class affiliation of the family. Based on qualitative interviews and family photos, the parents’ explicit and implicit images of the child, circulating cultural gender concepts as well as discursively connected practices will be analyzed. With the exception of single parents, the parents will be interviewed together, and they will be asked for providing up to ten family photos. This research design gives access to verbally as well as to visually represented concepts.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants