Parental Work from a Sociological Perspective

Communication within the family is one of children’s main educational experiences. The way in which parents communicate both among themselves and with the children determines education and some of its specific characteristics that unfold as communication style and also education style. The development of children’s personalities due to parental influences is recognized and analysed in different theoretical researches and practical investigations. When talking about parental work, the focus is actually on their efforts with their own children. Looking at this in terms of practical duties (material occupation) and mental preoccupation (availability), the concept of parental work includes the definition of parent, father or mother, and its perpetuation – meaning its continuity in the child that is not exactly the same nor is it totally different. Also, the concept of “parental work” underlines decades of changes: it no longer is only about “doing” silently, but also about a work that can be quantified and that, in the meantime, has gone through a process of objectification and is now seen as work, as a job or a career – as a set of partly dissociated consequences of a naturalization between father and mother in an initial phase.