Parenting as Utopian Labour
Parenting as Utopian Labour?
Sarah Hitchen, Lancaster University ABSTRACT ONLY – FOR THE FULL PAPER PLEASE CONTACT BY EMAIL
In this paper I discuss parenting as labour in order to take into consideration the relations between work and play, work and self-development and the potential differences between work in and outside of the home. In order to explore the possibilities of parenting as Utopian labour I focus upon two questions; first of all does parenting counts as work? Secondly if it does, whether this work may or may not be thought of as particularly utopian work? There are two problems we need to overcome in order to consider parenting as labouring.
The most immediate of these being that whilst few would claim that parenting is not hard, there seems to be some reservation about thinking of it in terms of labour. The second of these problems is that, whilst the family has been subject of some philosophical speculation this tradition has rarely focused upon the nature and individual tasks of parenting as such, but has instead focused upon the relation between family and state, taken the family as the model of political power, or focused upon the family as breeding ground for future citizens or future man. This means in order to do any serious work here we have to spend some considerable time thinking about how to define ‘parenting’ as well as ‘labour’. I use Locke’s work in the Two Treatises as a way in to answering the first of these questions before turning to Wittgenstein’s insistence upon the importance of family resemblances as a way in to answering the first of these problems and overcoming the limitations of the second.
In order to address the question of parenting as utopian labour we need of course to think about what we are willing to include under the utopian umbrella. This seems particularly troublesome in this case as some attempts to mitigate the burdens of parenthood are common features of both Utopian and Dystopian landscapes. This should perhaps be no surprise when we remember that Utopias are written with specific purposes and from differing perspectives. Even those written within a shared tradition can offer us vastly differing solutions to the same problem drawn from the imagination of a particular author. What we may have to gain here then is noticing that, though the solutions differ, the basic problem to be solved is thought to be the same.
There is another reason why we find such differing responses to parenting and the family in the various works we encounter in Utopian traditions. At the heart of Utopian writing lies a constant tension between the fulfilled life for the individual and the good of or for the community. This is a tension which finds its echo in discussions of the family and of individual family members within the public and private spheres. Looking to this literature can therefore provide us with much grist for the mill of our thinking about the nature of