How Postindustrial Families Talk

Abstract

The nuclear family is both crucible and product of capitalism and modernity, carried forth and modified across generations through ordinary communicative and other social practices. Focusing on postindustrial middle-class families, this review analyzes key discursive practices that promote “the entrepreneurial child” who can display creative language and problem-solving skills requisite to enter the globalized knowledge class as adults. It also considers how the entrepreneurial thrust, including the democratization of the parent–child relationship and exercise of individual desire, complicates family cooperation. Family quality time, heightened child-centeredness, children's social involvement as parental endeavor, children's autonomy and freedom, and postindustrial intimacies organize how family members communicate from morning to night.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 88 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.