Berghahn Books - Appreciating Parents & Their Commitment to Children

The Global Day of Parents is observed on the 1st of June every year. The Day was proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in 2012 and honours parents throughout the world. The Global Day provides an opportunity to appreciate all parents in all parts of the world for their selfless commitment to children and their lifelong sacrifice towards nurturing this relationship.

In honour of this event, we would like to invite you to explore the following titles which examine global parenthood from a variety of disciplines and perspectives.

Pregnancy in Practice
Expectation and Experience in the Contemporary US
Sallie Han

“The author takes an insightful look at an understudied phenomenon: that of ordinary pregnancy. She rightly notes that much scholarship has documented birth and the medicalization of pregnancy. Not enough attention has been paid to the mundane aspects of pregnancy. While an analysis of the quotidian might seem boring, it is when scholars problematize the everyday (the things we take for granted) that new insights are revealed.” · Miranda Waggoner, Princeton University

Nighttime Breastfeeding
An American Cultural Dilemma
Cecília Tomori

“I have nothing but praise for this book and its worth. It is written in a flawless and effortless manner. I loved the tone and how it packs in so much factorial information without the reader knowing it, but at the same time explores in-depth intimate life decisions and care giving practices that we have never seen so closely and so vividly presented.” · James J. McKenna, University of Notre Dame

Militant Lactivism?
Attachment Parenting and Intensive Motherhood in the UK and France
Charlotte Faircloth

“This is an attentive ethnography of women in London and Paris who are members of the international breastfeeding support organisation La Leche League (LLL)… The book is written in a clear and engaging way and can be recommended to students and scholars interested in kinship and family studies, as well as for those looking for a good anthropological study on contemporary motherhood.” · Social Anthropology/Anthropologie sociale

Globalized Fatherhood
Edited by Marcia C. Inhorn, Wendy Chavkin & José-Alberto Navarro

“A strikingly rich analysis of how fatherhood is culturally constructed and enacted across the world. It not only tells us about the intimate sphere of men’s lives as fathers and how they interact with their children, partners, hoped for and lost children, but also how studying fatherhood offers a fascinating window on broader social change across different societies.” · Maria Lohan, Queen’s University Belfas

Substitute Parents
Biological and Social Perspectives on Alloparenting in Human Societies
Edited by Gillian Bentley and Ruth Mace

“[This book] brings together high-quality papers from many different fields: endocrinology, evolutionary biology, demography, economics, psychology, sociology, anthropology… It can be seen as a practical tool for researchers in the field, and it provides a large amount of data across a wide range of populations and helps to find a common ground between theories emerging from different fields. It is the kind of book that will never end up in the last dusty row of your shelves because you will continually refer to it, picking up here and there empirical and theoretical data for the next decades.” · BioOne. Research Evolved

Children, Families, and States
Time Policies of Childcare, Preschool, and Primary Education in Europe
Edited by Karen Hagemann, Konrad H. Jarausch and Cristina Allemann-Ghionda

“This is a very strong collection of essays by some of the top scholars in the field of European social policy, including both historians and social scientists. The individual chapters are richly detailed, well written, and informative, documenting a wide range of thinking and practices about children, families, and states over more than two centuries.” · Sonya Michel, University of Maryland