This chapter and the next explore the modes of relating within respondents’ families. The role and place of children is the lens through which relationships are examined in this chapter. We will investigate the extent to which children are the source of their parents’ most meaningful relationships. The chapter then moves on to hear parents’ accounts of their child-rearing practices. The interest is not in parenting as a mediating factor on outcomes for children, but rather in the parenting-related perceptions and practices of people as they play out in everyday life. It should be noted that there is insufficient information to compare female and male parenting practices and that the generic ‘parent’ is usually a mother. Given that all the respondents are parents and that the interviews were with them rather than their children, the chapter mainly explores parenting practices from the viewpoint of the parents. However, some evidence from parents does give a sense of the lives of their children and the kinds of relationships that children have with parents. This is explored in the chapter's last section.

The significance of children

Respondents’ children dominated the interviews, despite there being few specific questions about them. One could even say that for about a fifth of respondents it was as if the purpose of the interview was to discuss their children's lives and their own feelings about their children. People's accounts conveyed a very strong sense of the centrality of children in their lives and, as evidenced already, indicated the existence of a hierarchy along generational lines, whereby children and their needs were prioritised. The significance of children was so profound that it was impossible to pin a single meaning or interpretation to it. There was, however, a number of striking aspects to how people described and discussed their children: one was their children as a source of pride, a second was the extent to which children conferred meaning on their lives, a third was about prioritising children for the purpose of sharing family resources.

By far the most frequent mention of children was as a source of pride. There was even an existentialist side to this: “I just look at them and go, ‘Goodness, that's what I have created’ – it makes you proud looking at them, you’re sitting looking at them at night,” says Heather, (young mother of two with another baby expected).