A Study On The Realization And Hidden Risks Of Fine Parenting In Middle-Class Families

In the context of changes in the social value and status of children,changes in parental responsibilities,increasing competition for education and changes in the structure of the nuclear family,along with the expansion of the content,refinement of the objectives and outward movement of the functions of family education,a trend towards refinement of upbringing has gradually emerged.The middle class,with its richer material base,is an effective representative of the refinement of family upbringing in China.In this study,23middle-class families in four counties of Chongqing,Mianyang and Weinan were selected as interviewees to examine the core objectives,basic contents and realisation methods of finetuned parenting in middle-class families,and to grasp the basis of the fine-tuned parenting model,so as to analyse the hidden risks that may be brought about by overly fine-tuned parenting.The study found that:Parents’ high expectations of their children’s education in terms of marks,ability and future,and their high involvement,participation and control in the three aspects of their children’s education,provide the basis for their children’s intellectual,technical,leisure and physical upbringing.The high level of parental commitment to their children’s development provides the material basis for fine parenting;the high level of involvement in their children’s lives,social life and schooling provides the time for fine parenting;and the high level of parental control over their children,such as monitoring,regulation and inspection,provides the institutional guarantee for fine parenting.Through high involvement,participation and control of children,parents achieve fine parenting,especially the three instruments of high control(and also parental discipline)-monitoring,regulation and inspection-which are related to the production and reproduction of the parenting order in the family educational space,ensuring the operation of the fine parenting model They also reinforce the power relations within the model.The study also focuses on the hidden risks of over-refined parenting.One is that it leads to growth anxiety in children.Parents exercise fine control over their children through fine-grained temporal and spatial discipline such as monitoring,regulating and checking,resulting in their children exhibiting temporal urgency and spatial narrowness,leading to academic and social growth anxiety.Secondly,parents’ educational anxiety increases.The contradiction between the means and the goal of fine parenting adds to the reproduction of parents’ educational anxiety.This contradiction is mainly reflected in the contradiction between the means of fine parenting and the difficulty of achieving the goal of parenting,the contradiction between the wrong means of fine parenting and the inconsistency of the goal of parenting,and the contradiction of mistaking the means of fine parenting for the goal.Thirdly,it gives rise to family conflicts.Fine parenting places new demands on parents’ parenting responsibilities,and parenting subjects are more likely to be confused by the division of family responsibilities and their own behavioural expectations,leading to family conflicts.The article concludes with a discussion of the appropriate scale of fine parenting.Children,like springs,have their own maximum ’degree’ of fineness of upbringing,and this degree is the space for children to adjust to the fineness of their upbringing.This degree of delicacy is related to the child’s own ability to accept,adjust and adapt,as well as the environment and age in which he or she grows up.Therefore,it is necessary for parents to keep an eye on their children’s physical and mental state and to establish a positive interaction with their children,as well as to establish a family education guidance service system in collaboration with the government,schools and the community from the perspective of relieving the social pressure of parenting.