Measurements of parenthood: children’s ‘settling in’ practices in nurseries

Based on the perspectives of parents and pedagogues, this paper explores in what ways pedagogues evaluate parents as a naturalized part of the pedagogical practice in nursery. When a child is enrolled in nursery, the parents naturally seek to orient themselves within this institutional setting in order to make the ‘settling in’ process as smooth as possible. The pedagogues are in charge of the setting; on the one hand, their task is to involve parents and their particular perspectives; on the other hand, to educate them about the routines of everyday life in the nursery, to which they must adapt. The preliminary findings from participatory methods show, that the pedagogues’ assessments of children’s ‘settling in’ process also turns into measurements of “good enough” parenting. When the ‘settling in’ of the child transcends what is perceived by the pedagogues to be the “standard process”, their assessments come to include a range of abstract concerns regarding parenthood and parents’ attachments to their child and subjectivity of everyday life seems to disappear. The theoretical framework based on critical psychology (Osterkamp & Schraube, 2013; Dreier, 2008) provides basic assumptions about how subjects mutually interact with the world in which they participate. Working with the concept conduct of everyday life (e.g. Holzkamp 2013) the analysis throws light on how the process of understanding the child’s need from different perspectives is a continuous and challenging matter.