Introduction
At present, there is a heightened focus on the importance of early childhood within discussions of education policy. Across the globe, these discussions reference the economist James Heckman's argument that investing in early childhood education gives a far greater return than investments later in the life cycle (Heckman, Reference Heckman2008). This has resulted in renewed focus on early childhood education and care (ECEC) and reinvigorated a mindset that can be characterised as childhood determinism (Furedi, Reference Furedi2002; Bach, Reference Bach, Gilliam and Gulløv2017). The rational basis for this way of thinking is that anything of any importance in a person's life is determined during childhood. If the quality of early childhood determines people's lives and whether they, in an economic perspective, become healthy and productive members of society or an economic burden, ECEC institutions have a fundamental role to play. It would seem to be here – as well as within the young child's family – that the foundation is laid for all that is to come. It has therefore also become a political mantra in many countries across the globe that a well-functioning partnership between parents and ECEC institutions is a necessity (Bach, Reference Bach, Sparrman, Westerling, Lind and Dannesboe2016). Numerous studies have shown how parents are increasingly expected to play an active role at their children's schools (Dannesboe et al., Reference Dannesboe, Kryger, Palludan and Ravn2012; Akselvoll, Reference Akselvoll2016), and this now seems to apply to ECEC institutions as well.
Unlike many other countries, Denmark has a long tradition of both schools and ECEC institutions working in close collaboration with parents (Bach and Christensen, Reference Bach and Christensen2017). The relationship between ECEC institutions and parents in Denmark must be seen in light of the social democratic welfare state's expansion of institutionalised childcare, commencing in the 1960s. With this development, institutionalised childcare was extended to such a degree that today 97.5 per cent of all three-to-five-year-old children are enrolled in public day care, spending an average of 7.5 hours there each day (Gilliam and Gulløv, Reference Gilliam and Gulløv2017). As such, pedagoguesFootnote 2 have assumed partial responsibility for the task of childrearing previously situated within the family (Rasmussen, Reference Rasmussen and Højlund2009), which can be described as a process of ‘defamilisation’ (Ellingsæter and Leira, Reference Ellingsæter and Leira2006). However, this centrifugal movement has been accompanied by a growing political interest in improving childrearing practices within the family and holding parents responsible for the education of future citizens (Kryger and Ravn, Reference Kryger and Ravn2009); in other words, a simultaneous process of ‘refamilisation’ (Ellingsæter and Leira, Reference Ellingsæter and Leira2006).
In the past, political interest in the family was primarily concerned with enabling parents to return to the labour market and ensuring children were kept safe and sound while their parents worked. As recently as the mid-1990s, the dominant political agenda was centred on increasing capacity and ensuring the availability of childcare for all. The focus then shifted to matters of quality and content. The Social Assistance Act of 1976 stated that the content of ECEC should be determined by staff in partnership with parents. This rather loose political approach shifted with the Social Service Act of 1998, the Act on Pedagogical Curricula in Day-Care of 2004, and the Day-Care Facilities Act of 2007 where ECEC content became formalised through a heightened focus on children's learning (Kjær, Reference Kjær and Smidt2003, Reference Kjær, Gustavsson, Henningsen, af Klintberg, Skjelbred and Amundsen2013; Kristensen and Bayer, Reference Kristensen and Bayer2015). At the same time, an even greater emphasis was placed on the importance of staff-parent collaboration. While the legal framework mentions cooperation between parents and ECEC institutions regarding children's care and development and a good transition to school, it does not stipulate how this cooperation should take place (Day-Care Facilities Act of 2016 [2007]).
With the Ministry of Social Affairs’ evaluation of the legislation's stated aims for ECEC in 2002–2003, the ideals, expectations, and difficulties concerning the collaboration between parents and institutions were documented for the first time (Kjær, Reference Kjær and Smidt2003). This evaluation showed that collaboration with parents is considered crucial. Furthermore, it indicated that such partnerships are characterised by ideals of equal status and consensus while demonstrating that collaboration with parents is strongly influenced by an understanding of parents as either good and proper or bad and improper. This dichotomous way of thinking exists among ECEC staff, policymakers and parents themselves. The evaluation suggests that parents are highly conscious of the risk of being categorised as bad parents (Kjær, Reference Kjær and Smidt2003).
Regardless of the heightened political interest in the family, staff at Danish ECEC institutions have long shown an interest in the parents of the children in their care (Kristensen and Bayer, Reference Kristensen and Bayer2015: 291). There has been a focus on establishing relationships with parents: partly in the form of a general belief in the value of building bridges between the different spheres of children's lives; partly in the form of targeted efforts to support families at risk. In this article, we discuss the relationship between parents and ECEC institutions in a contemporary Danish context, with a particular focus on preparing for the transition from ECEC to primary school, and show how the general and specific tendencies have merged. We focus on how ECEC staff deal with parenting issues: their discussions with colleagues about the parents of the children in their care and their way of talking to parents about their performance of the task of parenting. We are interested both in the guidance ECEC staff offer parents and in how parents respond to and are influenced by this guidance in their approach to parenting.
Theory and method
To understand parenting in a contemporary Danish context and the role pedagogues play, we draw on Parenting Culture Studies (Lee et al., Reference Lee, Bristow, Faricloth and Macvarish2014). Inspired by sociologist Frank Furedi, Ellie Lee et al. (Reference Lee, Bristow, Faricloth and Macvarish2014) have pointed to the emergence of a new global parenting culture, although their primary focus is on the UK and the US. This parenting culture is not only characterised by a childhood determinism mindset, but also by parental determinism whereby everything parents do is seen as determinant of their child's development and future, urging intensive parenting (ibid). This parenting culture is furthermore affected by an environment which, to an ever greater extent, leaves parenting and the responsibility for children to their parents rather than, as previously, ‘the village’ (Faircloth, Reference Faircloth, Lee, Bristow and Macvarish2014: 36). The focus on the role of parents in their child's development is linked to an inflation of risk with regard to what can go wrong during childhood. Parental determinism means that not only are parents believed to be of the utmost importance in raising well-functioning future citizens, they are also seen as constituting a potential risk to their child's development if they do not parent in the ‘right’ way. This creates a situation where expert knowledge is seen as crucial to parenting. In short, the British researchers (Lee et al., Reference Lee, Bristow, Faricloth and Macvarish2014) describe how childrearing has gone from being a shared responsibility of the local community to solely the task of the individual child's parents based on the advice given to them by experts (Faircloth, Reference Faircloth, Lee, Bristow and Macvarish2014: 36). This changes the social position and self-image of parents as well as their notions of who to lean on for support and competence.
The question is whether the logic of parental determinism is at stake in a Danish welfare societal context. As mentioned, Denmark has a high degree of institutionalisation of young children's lives and a tradition for collaboration between ECEC staff and parents. Therefore, we ask if and to what extent the logics of childhood determinism is related to parental determinism or rather a kind of ‘pedagogue determinism’. We explore if and how risk awareness is related to these determinisms and what is at play in relations between parents and ECEC staff. We examine whether the collaboration between parents and ECEC staff places the responsibility of childrearing on parents, on pedagogues, or on both parties.
In order to discuss these questions regarding the collaboration between families and educational institutions, we draw on American sociologist Annette Lareau's concept ‘concerted cultivation’ (Lareau, Reference Lareau2003: 161). Concerted cultivation is defined in contrast to a natural growth child rearing strategy perceiving children's development as a natural process without the need for adult intervention. Instead, concerted cultivation comprises a deliberate and collaborative effort between family and school to stimulate children's development and maximise their potential. Children are to be intensely cultivated by adults. To understand the Danish case we explore existing notions of childrearing, and we offer an understanding based on conceptualising cultivation as a manifold process, where pedagogues cultivate children as well as parents to make them cultivate their children in proper ways.
Lareau locates these concepts within a class perspective and links them to the childrearing strategies of different groups, with working-class parents subscribing to natural growth and middle-class parents to concerted cultivation (Lareau, Reference Lareau2003: 1–4). However, Lareau's distinction between classes seems to ignore possible similarities in parenting strategies across class (Dannesboe, Reference Dannesboe2012). Based on our study, we suggest that both strategies can be identified across class in a Danish context. We do not wish to ignore class differences, but our empirical material indicates that certain approaches to parenting dominate the collaboration between ECEC staff and parents, and that these parenting strategies seem to be shared by parents with different socio-economic backgrounds. In line with Carol Vincent (Reference Vincent2017), we argue that a ‘normalisation’ of concerted cultivation seems to have occurred, in the sense that concerted cultivation strategies seem to be applied by parents regardless of socio-economic background, as well as by ECEC staff.Footnote 3
The analysis in this article is based on empirical data from an ethnographic study conducted in three Danish ECEC institutions in 2016–2017. The three ECEC institutions are situated in three different socio-economic environments. We chose this diversity of settings to investigate whether the guidance offered to parents by pedagogues in terms of preparing their children for school differed according to the parents’ socio-economic background. We did, in fact, identify such differences, but far more striking are the similarities. In this article, we have chosen to focus on these similarities across socio-economic settings. During our fieldwork, we have participated as children are dropped off and picked up by their parents, in social events for parents, in activities of both a general nature and those explicitly preparing children for school, and in parent-pedagogue conferences focusing on school readiness. Field notes recorded these observations of collaboration between parents and pedagogues. Additionally, we interviewed approximately forty parents, in some cases both prior to and after their child starting school, and interviewed and held a workshop for thirty-two ECEC staff members. We have transcribed all interviews, and analysed our empirical material, first through an open and explorative reading and then through more focused thematic readings.
Gaining parents’ support
Danish pedagogues describe the collaboration with parents as relational work and regard it as extremely important. They consider parental support for their work in the institution crucial. Parents are prompted to submit to institutional routines and take care of practicalities. Furthermore, they are expected to align family life and activities at home to institutional values and norms. This is considered crucial in enabling pedagogues to perform their job of cultivating children at the institution (Kjær et al., Reference Kjær, Albertsen, Limborg and Fournaise2015). This implies a seamless transition between the pedagogical work with children and the task of guiding parents. As such, the cultivational work is also directed at parents; they are not only partners but also targets for pedagogical intervention.
In the three ECEC institutions in our study, parents are constantly reminded to ensure that a number of practical matters are taken care of, such as placing slippers, wellington boots and raincoats in the cloakroom, remembering to notify staff about holidays, updating contact information, dropping off their child before assembly etc. Parents are seldom able to fully meet all these expectations, for example ensuring that their child has the necessary items of extra clothing at all times. The staff's criticism of any such failings becomes a legitimate way for pedagogues to express their frustration at not being able to undertake important work with the children due to what they experience as a lack of parental support. Do you really want us to spend time on this instead of on your children? was a typical question from staff to parents in one of the three ECEC institutions. As such, taking care of practical matters is not regarded as part of the pedagogical task, but as something which wastes time that could otherwise be used on pedagogical activities.Footnote 4 The pedagogues therefore consider it important to educate parents as to how they, in this and other ways, can support the institution's pedagogical efforts. Even though Danish children spend many hours each day in institutional care suggesting an overwhelming tendency towards defamilisation, parental support regarding seemingly banal practical matters is considered of such importance that we interpret it as a sign that something larger is at stake; namely a simultaneous tendency of refamilisation, which we explore below.
Educating parents to cultivate the social
In Danish ECEC institutions, cultivational work with children is focused on what staff refer to by using the catch-all term the social (cf. Gilliam and Gulløv, Reference Gilliam and Gulløv2014); that is, children's social competences including their coping abilities. This is not self-evident as early childhood education in other parts of the world is more explicitly academically oriented. Nevertheless, it should be noted that pedagogical work focusing on learning – and specifically school readiness – is an integral part of Danish ECEC culture and tradition, even though such efforts are not perceived as being academic, but as part of what is understood and narrated as the social. The aspects that are defined as the social are thus dominant in the stories pedagogues tell and the arguments they make; most likely because they perceive increased expectations from politicians and parents that they focus on what are framed as academic activities preparing children for school as a threat to their traditional professional identity. As such, while we hear pedagogues say that they focus on the social, we also see them cultivate specific academic competences and, to a certain extent, interpret children's institutional/school competences as life competences in a broader sense.
In terms of cultivating parents, the ECEC staff in our study are first and foremost preoccupied with convincing parents that the social is what ECEC and school readiness are all about. Parents are not only expected to accept the social as the educational focus of ECEC, they are also expected to actively support it by following advice given to them by the pedagogues on how to cultivate their children's social competences and how to support the development of the wider group of children at the institution. Such advice is part of the daily exchange of information, concerns, and strategies regarding a successful transition to school which takes place when parents drop off and pick up their child from ECEC. Furthermore, as this transition approaches, parents and pedagogues discuss the individual child's school readiness in a dialogue meeting. As Danish ECEC prioritises training the social, this meeting is not focused on a narrow assessment of the child's academic knowledge. Instead, it is a holistic assessment focused, in particular, on social competences and the child's ability to fend for him/herself. These dialogue meetings therefore often discuss whether the individual child will be able to cope with the social landscape of the school, make friends, prosper during breaks and in the playground, and sit quietly and listen to the teacher during lessons.
In the following case, it is evident how parents are guided towards the social. The pedagogues argue for delaying five-year-old Josef's school entry so that he can become more robust and thereby able to deal with social life in school, while his parents are focused on preparing their son academically, believing this would make the delay unnecessary. The pedagogues describe how these parents:
were really focused on this language stuff. . . like, you know, “he needs to know the alphabet” and so now they were going to go home and practice the alphabet with him. And then we said: “That's not what it's about at all. Josef needs to. . . become a bit more robust. He is the quietest of all the children and he's taken a few beatings, so it's about making him a bit more robust, giving him a bit more drive and the capacity to stick to his guns.”
The recommendation to delay Josef's transition to school and the guidance to make other parental priorities were motivated by concerns about Josef's social vulnerability, as the pedagogues further explained:
. . . if a child has walked over and given him a slap – which he hasn't reacted to at all. Then you think: who's going to see that in a school playground?!
We often see this kind of concern prior to the transition to primary school. The rationale is that, if the child is not able to protect his/her boundaries, he/she will not be able to become integrated in the school's social environment. To some extent, all children are therefore seen as being at risk in terms of the transition from the secure confines of ECEC to the tougher school environment.
In the ECEC institutions we visited, we identified a basic narrative concerning the child's significant progress during the final six months before starting school. The crux of this narrative is that, six months before the child is due to start school, he/she is not considered to be entirely ready, whereupon, both parents and pedagogues feel that he/she becomes ready at the last moment. Both parties interpret this as the successful result of their concerted efforts. This reflects a relatively new tendency. Previously, the narrative was more that the child developed and matured ‘by him/herself’; in other words, changes in children's behaviour were interpreted more in terms of notions stemming from classic developmental psychology (cf. Kjær, Reference Kjær, Søren and Smidt2002, Reference Kjær and Smidt2003). This can be seen as a change from a natural growth perspective to a strategy of concerted cultivation. Fifteen or twenty years ago, it was common to hear pedagogues say: he'll get there; just give him some more time to play. Nowadays, however, they are more likely to say: if we do this at the kindergarten and you do that at home, then he'll get there. This illustrates an increased focus on the importance of parents and parenting and a perceived need for pedagogues to guide parents. Hence, we see how a process of refamilisation has emerged and coexists with defamilising tendencies. Both tendencies seem to reflect that cultivating the social child is a concerted task. Refamilising processes also seem to be linked to a presence of both childhood and parental determinism. The collaborative effort to make children social is considered necessary to avoid a problematic development affecting children in school and later on in life. This illustrates a logic of childhood determinism focusing on the development of the social human being. However, cultivating the social is perceived as of such importance that it cannot be left to the parents. Rather, they are considered in need of guidance to ensure that they do proper parenting. In this sense, a parental determinist logic also prevails. As we will explore below, this is a logic highlighting parents as crucial for their children's development, but also as a possible risk factor if they do not manage or prioritise making their children social.
Risk awareness in making children social
In a Danish context, ECEC staff establish collaboration with parents and guide them to mitigate the risk posed by parents, establishing the cultivation of children as a shared task. One of the ways in which pedagogues guided parents at the ECEC institutions in our study was by giving them advice about parenting issues. Most of the parents we spoke with had received advice regarding things they can do at home to cultivate their children's social competences, and thereby their school readiness in a broad sense. This advice may or may not have been solicited by the parents themselves, but was usually gratefully received. That such guidance is regarded as both positive and important by parents and pedagogues alike can be linked to the risk awareness among both parties (cf. Lee et al., Reference Lee, Bristow, Faricloth and Macvarish2014). Young children's development is increasingly believed to involve a risk that they will not prosper at school or later in life
As we will illustrate below, our observations and analysis of the advice given to parents show that the ECEC institutions seek to cultivate children that will become well-balanced, social human beings. The behaviour of such children is positioned between the extremes of being too much or too little as measured on a number of parameters. For example, properly social children are seen as neither:
• Too quiet nor too wild
• Too sensitive and empathetic nor too robust and unempathetic
• Too nerdy nor too playful
• Too shy and introverted nor too extroverted and overly social
• Too dutiful nor too selfish
• Too responsible nor too irresponsible
These dichotomies are analytical and implicit in social interaction. Nevertheless, they emerge as having important cultural resonance in everyday practice and discourse as they clearly influence adults’ concerns about children's development. Furthermore, this risk scenario is embedded in a so-called diagnostic culture, where deviancy and behavioural problems are increasingly understood as expressions of neurological dysfunctions and pathology (Rosenberg, Reference Rosenberg2002; Horwitz and Wakefield, Reference Horwitz and Wakefield2012; Brinkmann and Petersen, Reference Brinkmann and Petersen2015). Risk awareness is therefore influenced by diagnostic categories in the form of a spectrum of character traits that at one extreme are associated with ADHD and at the other with autism. It is this risk and these types of children that parents and pedagogues implicitly or explicitly fear and these types of behaviour they seek to correct. It is striking that every child in our study was, to some degree, seen as at risk in this sense if parents and pedagogues did not make a concerted effort to adjust the child's behaviour as appropriate. Diagnostic categories thus exist as forms of shadow categories, implicitly shaping notions of normality and deviance and leaving very little space for what is perceived as appropriate behaviour.
The proper or ‘normal’ child is the child who masters the social and is capable of acting in ways that are balanced on all parameters, thus avoiding the troublesome and worrying extremes. In our study, when a child was seen as proper, this was interpreted as a result of the child's neurological profile, but also of the concerted cultivational work of parents and pedagogues. Consequently, when a child was considered at risk, it was often understood as an expression of the child's neurological profile and/or of the parenting practices at home not being aligned with those of the ECEC institution. Guiding the activities of parents is therefore considered of the utmost importance by ECEC staff, implying a form of refamilisation in the shape of advice on how to live and structure family life. This advice is related to both the aforementioned dichotomies and to the shadow categories looming behind them.
To illustrate this, we will present some examples from our study. On the one hand, Anne, was advised to give her son Albert more chores to do at home so he would become more responsible. The pedagogues believed that this would help him feel a greater sense of ownership in relation to communal activities at the ECEC institution, where he was also given similar chores. On the other hand, Ella's parents were advised not to give Ella too much responsibility for other children and adults. The feeling was that she was a very sensitive and thoughtful child who was overly social and too empathic and considerate. Meanwhile, Marie's parents were advised to arrange play dates with other children to combat her shyness. Furthermore, Marie's mother, on her own initiative, employed a pedagogical method called the Second Step at home to make her daughter more socially aware – a method that is well known in Danish ECEC institutions (Gilliam and Gulløv, Reference Gilliam and Gulløv2017). Ayo's mother, by contrast, was told that Ayo was too extroverted and overly social. She was therefore advised to teach her daughter to be less ingratiating towards strangers. It was suggested to Jakob's parents that they ought to spend time doing jigsaw puzzles with him, helping him practise writing his own name, and working with exercises to improve his motor skills. Meanwhile, Simon's parents were encouraged to work with ’social stories’ and other special educational tools aimed at improving his social competences and reducing his nerdy behaviour. Simon's father was eager to do this and explicitly told us that he did not want his son to be labelled autistic. Likewise, Daniel's mother was told that her son was anti-social, leading her to spend almost a year seeking out all the information she could find regarding autism as she feared that her son would fall into that category.
These examples reveal an underlying rationale where risk awareness goes hand in hand with diagnostic categories and notions of normality. The normal child is the well-balanced, social child that is in no way associated with either ADHD or autism. This logic influences both pedagogues’ and parents’ way of thinking about children and the concerns they have. It creates a situation where the practice of parenting involves risk management and a need for expertise. Whereas risk was previously a matter of calculating the probability of something that you knew could go wrong occurring, risk has become ‘possibilistic’ (Lee et al., Reference Lee, Bristow, Faricloth and Macvarish2014: 11); in other words, it seeks to address the possibility of an unwanted outcome occurring. Children are thereby increasingly defined as de facto at risk, but precisely what is at risk often seems undefined or unknown (Ibid: 11). This risk awareness is linked to the logics of both childhood and parental determinism, viewing parents’ management of the early childhood years as pivotal for the child's development and life course. These logics produce refamilisation processes, emphasising parental responsibility.
Concerted work or disciplining guidance?
As the transition to school approaches, pedagogues play a particularly important role for parents in terms of assessing their child's school readiness. Parents place great cachet in the pedagogues’ assessment and ask them whether there is anything they can do at home to help prepare their child. As one father puts it:
It's really nice to be told by some professionals whether or not they think he would be able to cope with school. . . We wanted to know if there were something we ought to work on at home. Where I said: ‘is there anything we can do as parents?’
As such, parents seek an expert's judgement and expert advice, demonstrating their willingness to support the pedagogues’ appraisals and the refamilisation agenda. The way that parents regard pedagogues as experts and draw upon their expertise in their own parenting will be explored below, where we present two cases from our study in greater detail – Jakob's parents and Albert's mother. The former are young parents; the latter a more mature, well-educated mother.
Jakob's parents feel as though they have passed a sort of examination when their assessment of their child matches that of the pedagogues. They are also extremely conscious of what they think the pedagogues would like them to do and cultivate at home:
We had to fill out a questionnaire about how well we knew Jakob. And apparently it was. . . it was like they thought we'd copied theirs, because it was pretty much identical. There was nothing wrong at all. So I guess we knew him really, really well! (Jakob's father)
It was Dad who went to that meeting. And they [the pedagogues] were like completely. . . it had been a long time since they'd seen that. Those are parents who know their child. And when Dad came home and told me, I could feel. . . then you're doing something right, aren't you! (Jakob's mother)
In the example above, we see the emphasis the parents place on their appraisal matching that of the pedagogues. In this context, they position the pedagogues as experts – not only on children, but also on parenting – regarding the pedagogues’ testimony as evidence that they are doing a good job as parents. The fact that the pedagogues share their opinion gives a sort of truth value to the parents’ experiences; a seal of approval and verification of their parenting abilities by experts. This is not a unique example. In general, we found that parents, regardless of socio-economic environment, have great faith in the pedagogues’ assessments, even when they differ from their own. This is also true of Jakob's parents, whose parenting is also problematised by the pedagogues, who question some of their activities at home. Jakob's father explains:
They asked whether Jakob was capable of doing a jigsaw puzzle at all. And then we said: “Actually, we've never really tried. We haven't really made the effort because there's so much other stuff with him”. And then we sat down and spent a few hours on it. And then it was sorted straight away [. . .] After that, they made a few pointed remarks now and then. Now he needed to learn to write his own name, for example, or now he needed to do a jigsaw, or “what about drawing? What about staying inside the lines?” That kind of thing. ”Have you tried practising it with him?” And then we just felt our way. And he couldn't really write his own name, but it's getting better now, you know [. . .] We listened to them and we acted accordingly when they said something.
This case illustrates how parents navigate ambiguous demands concerning school readiness. Even though the ECEC institution's main agenda is the social – and as we saw in the case of Josef, parents are blamed if they seem overly focused on academic matters – the reality is less clear-cut. Academic competences are an implicit and self-evident element of the ECEC curriculum and, consequently, part of what parents are expected to work on at home. Pedagogues are positioned as experts, both regarding to what is important in relation to school readiness and how to cultivate it at home and in the ECEC.
Jakob's parents take the pedagogues’ words seriously, even though they can be seen as critical of them as parents. They act in accordance with the advice they receive; as such, what the pedagogues have to say has an impact on their everyday lives. That the pedagogues’ recommendations have a lot of sway seems to be a general tendency in our study. In several cases, we asked parents what they would have done if the pedagogues’ assessment of their child's school readiness had differed from their own. Many of them replied that they would have followed the pedagogues’ advice regarding a delayed or early start at school, even if they had previously been opposedFootnote 5.
In our second case, for instance, the pedagogues do not fully share Anne's optimism regarding Albert's school readiness. The pedagogues consider Albert at risk in a number of ways: he is unable to verbalise his feelings and cannot sit quietly during circle time or mealtimes. Anne is advised to work with these issues at home. As she told us: They [the pedagogues] said that he was really good when given chores to do, so they thought that he should have a lot of household chores.
Anne was also advised to establish routines and have a more structured everyday life. Despite not fully agreeing with the pedagogues’ assessment of Albert, she follows their advice. Doing so has a major impact on everyday life in her household. This impact is supported and emphasised by her own concepts of what constitutes proper behaviour in institutional settings. She reviews her daily routine to identify situations that resemble those in ECEC and at school. Having identified such situations, she adapts them so that Albert can better adjust to institutional life. Anne even draws up schedules for late afternoon and evening activities at home to mimic the organisational structure of the educational institutions that Albert and his brother attend. She explains that, without such schedules, they risk spending the whole evening relaxing and listening to music, going to bed too late and being tired the next morning.
These two cases, Albert's mother and Jakob's parents, are clear examples of refamilisation processes. They illustrate how comprehensively family life can be affected by the guidance parents are given by pedagogues. Both Jakob's parents and Albert's mother submit to the pedagogues’ agenda. Anne's views in particular are marginalised and considered invalid – by both pedagogues and herself. When cooperation between parents and ECEC institutions is established through soft pastoral power and disciplining guidance (cf. Foucault, 1978/Reference Foucault and Faubion2002), as is the case here, the question is whether it makes sense to describe it as concerted childrearing. In Lareau's work concertedness seems to imply a kind of equal status between parents and teachers. However, our findings suggest that the collaborative relation between parents and pedagogues is asymmetrical, albeit often productive in the sense that parents must submit to the educational agenda if their views are to be considered relevant and they are to be regarded as competent parents.
Conclusion
In many countries, especially the Nordic welfare societies, a process of defamilisation has taken place (Ellingsæter and Leira, Reference Ellingsæter and Leira2006). This process has gained pace following the expansion of institutionalised ECEC in the 1960s, whereby young children spend an increasingly large part of their childhood outside the family. Nevertheless, parents, and not pedagogues, are seen as the key figures in children's childhood and as having the primary responsibility for the quality of it. We have shown that parents are not only held responsible for their children's lives at home, but also for ensuring pedagogues are provided the optimal conditions for supporting the child's development at ECEC institutions. This is expressed in the form of an expectation that parents support the institution's pedagogical work – both by ensuring practical matters are taken care of and by giving their backing to the ECEC institution's pedagogical approach.
As in most countries, ECEC institutions in Denmark are ultimately tasked with preparing children for school; in Denmark, however, this is not so much a matter of cultivating children's academic skills as their social skills. While this may be the case in terms of ideology, in practice, academic skills are expected, promoted, and supported even if they are not emphasised in the discourse. Parents are expected to embrace this broader concept of school readiness. Towards the end of the child's time in ECEC, parents and pedagogues assess together how ready the child is and what each party can do to address any shortfalls. To this end, pedagogues are positioned as the experts, advising parents as to what they need to work on at home. Parents willingly accept such advice and train situations at home that they think might support their child's participation in the social life of the ECEC institution, and later, the school, practising well-balanced behaviour. The ‘obedience’ of parents seems to be linked to a widespread desire to avoid certain risks, both in terms of children's ability to cope with the tougher environment at school and in order to avoid reinforcing problem behaviour. The concerns at the core of this risk awareness are embedded in diagnostic forms – so parental ‘obedience’ is strongly motivated, reinforcing refamilisation tendencies. Strong ideals of consensus and equal status in parent-pedagogue partnerships conceal a fundamental asymmetry between the parties. According to our study's findings, in a Danish context, what Lareau (Reference Lareau2003) refers to as concerted cultivation must be seen as embedded in a power relation. ECEC staff thus influence parenting practices, to a far greater extent than parents influence practice within ECEC, as pedagogical expertise is afforded institutional and cultural privilege of interpretation.
Nevertheless, we found that parents do not view pedagogues as distant, judgemental, know-it-all experts. The pedagogues in our study have a thorough knowledge of the children in their care, take great interest in their family lives and are seen by parents as people they can turn to for support, both in everyday situations and at times of crisis. Parents do not feel left alone with the task of childrearing, as some scholars have suggested (e.g. Lee et al., Reference Lee, Bristow, Faricloth and Macvarish2014). On the contrary, they seek out the expertise of pedagogues and, not least, they see and appreciate this expertise as operationalised and aimed at their child's specific history and problems. Such expertise can meet a longing of security and offer greater peace of mind in the complex and uncertain practice of parenting; thus, addressing a vague and broad sense of possibilistic risk. This vague risk awareness is shaped and given meaning by neuropsychiatric logics leaving space for diagnostic categories rooted in behavioural dichotomies.
Considering the active role of ECEC institutions in guiding parents, it seems that the Danish welfare state has not retreated, and that childrearing in Denmark has not become solely the task of the individual child's parents. However, the question is whether the shared task of raising the next generation also implies shared responsibility. It is perhaps more accurate to say that governmental and institutional logics have also infiltrated the private realm of the home, with parents expected to act as a kind of lay-pedagogue. By positioning parents, on the one hand, as key collaborative partners and, on the other hand, as targets of pedagogical intervention, a relationship between ECEC institution and the home is established where, in principle, there are no borders (cf. Dannesboe, Reference Dannesboe, Sparrman, Westering, Lind and Dannesboe2016). Paradoxically, the process of refamilisation occurs simultaneously with the process of defamilisation (Ellingsæter and Leira, Reference Ellingsæter and Leira2006). Our study suggests that while the increased institutionalisation of early childhood might be expected to reduce parental determinism and the degree to which parents are held responsible for their child's future, this has not been the case in Denmark. Instead, parents are now also held responsible for ensuring that the institutions attended by their offspring have the opportunity to perform the task they have been given. Parents are considered the most important adults in their children's lives. As such, their parenting capabilities need to be improved by pedagogues, thereby minimising risks and ensuring that parents, pedagogues, and children all play their part in realising young children's potential.
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by CeDif, the Danish Center for Research in Early Childhood Education and Care.
