Power Struggles: The Paradoxes of Emotion and Control among Child‐Centered Mothers in the Privileged United States

• DOI: 10.1111/etho.12003
• Publication Date: 2013-02-01T21:01:27Z
• Authors: Diane M. Hoffman
• Keywords: Mainstream; Trope (literature)

Abstract In the discourse on contemporary parenting in United States, parent–child “power struggle” is often spoken of as a common event everyday lives parents and children. On basis ethnographic interviews with economically privileged white mothers preschool elementary‐age children, I analyze power struggle cultural trope. Despite refusal to be considered “mainstream” outright denigration what they parenting, mothers’ reveals understandings about its relationship self that reflect broader themes emotional control, choice, rationality, individualism are fact characteristic views child development. Further, although explicitly valued connectedness freedom expression their actual strategies advocated for dealing emotions during centered control constraint expression. The article explores this theme light tensions surrounding parental identities communities States [parenting, emotion, self, power, development]