Parenting Support and the Role of Society in Parental Self‐Understanding: Furedi's Paranoid Parenting Revisited

The publication of F rank F uredi's Paranoid Parenting in 2001 was trend‐setting in the sense that it addresses parents directly in a way that is intended to be both critical and supportive, by helping parents to look through a sociological lens at their alleged predicament. F uredi's hope is that this will lead to the restoration of parental self‐confidence, which he claims to be sorely lacking in contemporary (Western?) society. I argue that such a project would be more likely to succeed if one were to hold a less dim view of the way both parents and other individuals are connected with their own society. By introducing a cultural‐hermeneutical perspective on human agency, based on a specific reading of H eidegger and Taylor, I suggest a more constructive way to reconnect parents with the ongoing conversations in their communities and to conceptualise parenting support.