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Being a parent and being a child in Chile today: the relational construction of subject positions in a neoliberal context

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Abstract

In this article, we discuss the social demands on parents and children in a context of growing neoliberalisation and sociocultural change. Borrowing from the notion of intensive parenting, and extending it to children’s experience, we conceive of the parent–child link as a social relationship in which the participants relationally configure heterogeneous and dynamic subject positions. Based on the results of a discursive study conducted in Chile, we also describe some of the positions that parents and children adopt in the contemporary context. In this study, the almost claustrophobic and over-attentive tone through which parents and children describe their relationship is remarkable, as is the painful and emotionally taxing nature of the reciprocal care they have for one another, and the profoundly moral nature of the positions they adhere to.

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Notes

  1. The rate of female participation in the labour force in productive work in Chile was 47.4%, according to the Casen Survey 2015, remaining one of the lowest in Latin America.

  2. These figures will be updated based on the 2017 Census data.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the support provided by the Fondecyt project “The relationship between parents and children from the eyes of children and adults: a discursive study in Santiago de Chile” (1160650). This work was also financially supported by the Millennium Scientific Initiative of the Ministry of Economy, Development and Tourism of Chile, grant “Millennium Nucleus Center Authority and Power Asymmetries”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Santiago, Santiago, Chile

    Ana Vergara

  2. University of Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Mauricio Sepúlveda

  3. Alberto Hurtado University, Santiago, Chile

    Irene Salvo

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  1. Ana Vergara
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  2. Mauricio Sepúlveda
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  3. Irene Salvo
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Correspondence to Ana Vergara.

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Vergara, A., Sepúlveda, M. & Salvo, I. Being a parent and being a child in Chile today: the relational construction of subject positions in a neoliberal context. Subjectivity 12, 371–388 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41286-019-00084-7

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