This volume presents a fresh approach to the analysis of childrearing. By focusing on mothers' own understandings of their childrearing, the author reveals how differences in childrearing are rooted in fundamental ideas about the nature of social life and the place of the individual and the family within it.



Broad cultural concepts of family, individuality and the nature of childhood are discussed. The author analyzes the implications of mothers' ideas about these for key childrearing preoccupations of time, discipline and the independence of children. An important theme that emerges is the diversity behind the image of the 'ordinary family'. Drawing on empirical evidence of mothers' concerns and understandings of childrearing, the author illustrates how issues of power and the public/private divide are negotiated in the daily lives of mothers and their children.