Temporal Imaginaries in Accounts of Parenting Practices: Negotiations of Time, Advice, and Expertise

Abstract

In recent decades, scientific knowledge, especially about the brain, has been leveraged within policies and programmes aimed at parents of infants and young children. However, the ways in which parents engage with (neuro)science, and how they value recommendations based on this vis-à-vis other forms of expertise, is not often examined. Drawing on 22 interviews, we present an analysis of how parents and care-givers in Scotland negotiated (neuroscientific) ideas about parenting that they encountered through one of two voluntary parenting programmes alongside broader advice they received (e.g., through books, friends, families). We examine how parents’ negotiations were related to particular configurations of the past and the future, and analyse how these temporal imaginaries help to justify accounts of parenting practices. Scientific knowledge encountered through parenting programmes was appreciated by many, but enjoinders based upon it were not wholeheartedly adopted. Importantly, constructions of possible futures (and pasts) contoured our participants’ engagements with advice and expertise. Consequently, we demonstrate that temporal imaginaries can play an important role in how parents’ reflexively develop and situate their own epistemologies of parenting.