»Your Baby needs you, your love, your closeness and your tenderness!« (Normative) constructions of parenthood and parents’ tasks in settings of natality

Abstract

Children and adults are intrinsically tied to each other due to children’s need of assistance and care. This relational order is deemed as natural order between children and parents. The associated tasks are interpreted as natural elements of parenthood. The relativeness of the idea of »growing up well« and of attributed responsibilities for the needs and tasks associated with it are often disregarded in their historical and cultural dimensions. The concept of parenthood is a social construction as well. Based on ethnographic observations in settings of natality, this article tries to demonstrate that the relation between parenthood and childhood is even antenataly constructed. Taking the described scenario into account the article asks, from a praxeological point of view, how certain concepts of childhood demand special mother-, father- and parenthood practices from parents to be. At the same time the paper focuses on appearing gender differences.