New geographies of parenting, policy and place

At the centre of relationships between children and parents is something arguably uniquely personal, intimate and embodied. For example, Rose (2003), discussing mothers' practices around family photographs, comments that ‘it is part of a mother's relationship to her child to engage with that child's absolute corporeal uniqueness. It cannot be denied or avoided’ (16). Yet as the papers in this Special Issue attest, parent–child relationships and practices of ‘parenting’ are also clearly and unavoidably bound up with wider social, cultural, political and economic dynamics in diverse ways. This collection demonstrates a range of such dynamics, but is concerned in particular with how state policy, interventions and services frame and intersect with the everyday spaces and practices of being a parent. The research presented here, therefore, draws on a fairly small but well-established body of research on geographies of parenting (Dyck 1990; Holloway 1998; McDowell et al. 2005). Much of this work has been informed in particular by feminist insights into social reproduction and economies of care to show how geographies of parenting (or rather mothering in the main) are shaped by class and labour market position.