Who Cares About Parents?

Temporary Alliances, Exclusionary Practices, and the Strategic Possibilities of Parenting Groups

Kim Price-Glynn

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9781978824874, 9781978824881
• eBook ISBN: 9781978824911
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Marriage & Family Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Who cares for parental caregivers? The short answer is, parenting groups do. Who Cares for Parents examines how parenting groups collectively build and contribute significant resources to form a broader care infrastructure for adult family caregivers with children. This book looks at the content of care parenting groups provide for parents, through comparative research including mothers, fathers, and nonbinary parents. Cases include some of the most recognizable parenting groups in the United States, some with vast networks of parent members numbering in the thousands or even millions, like the Parent Teacher Association, La Leche League, and MOMS Club International. The book also examines newer and, perhaps, less well known groups like the City Dads Group, the Upper East Side (UES) Mommas, as well as smaller sets of local dads' groups and a babysitting co-op.

Can parents in the contemporary United States secure some of the necessary resources to provide care, not only for their children but also for themselves, through parenting groups? The evidence from this research suggests they can. Parenting groups have a long history of organizing membership, meetings, education, material resources, and advocacy to provide for parents' needs. Parenting groups' ideologies and practices often seek broad goals, and sometimes include far reaching advocacy, innovative solutions, and possibilities for what Price-Glynn calls strategic parenting and social change. Alongside their successes, however, parenting groups also face challenges of producing narrow and temporary alliances, exclusion, and exacerbating inequalities. Despite their many challenges, Price-Glynn remains hopeful about the possibilities for non-familial and collective care infrastructure like that performed by parent groups.
 

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Parenting Group Beginnings: History and Overview
• 2. Belonging and Exclusion: Parenting Groups’ Objectives
• 3. Educating Parents: Care and Ideology
• 4. From Fundraising to Respite Care: Broad Resource Goals and Narrow Allocation
• 5. Parenting Groups as Agents and Opponents of Social Change
• Conclusion: Building Strategic Parenting Groups
• Appendix A: Research Methods
• Appendix B: Parenting Group Interview Guide
• Appendix C: Parenting Group Demographic Survey
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• References
• Index
• About the Author