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Chapter 4 53 to parents and, importantly, it denotes something like the development of the child, in a sense that goes beyond the narrow notion of teaching’. 13 Any relationship between an adult and a child can have a pedagogical dimension, which refers to the dimension of child-rearing within this relationship (thus although it is typical for the parent-child relationship, it is not confined to it). In other words, we speak of a pedagogical relationship when the adult has the role of the ‘child raiser’ (parent/teacher/otherwise) and the child the role of she-who-is-being-raised. It is informed by pedagogical concepts. This is a normative matter. Spiecker cites Herman Nohl in describing the pedagogical relationship as ‘the loving relationship of a mature person with a “developing” person, entered into for the sake of the child so that he can discover his own life and form’. 14 We think that the combination of this pedagogical understanding of the parent-child relationship with the particular intimacy of the parent-child relationship, which is always embedded in a cultural repertoire of what child-rearing is and should be, offers a good starting point for a philosophical understanding of the (uniqueness of the) parent-child relationship. 4.3 P ARENTHOOD AND THE NECESSITY OF DAS W AGNIS Many philosophers of education have discussed the use of the word ‘risk’ in an educational context. 15 A common sense description of the word risk is ‘an unwanted event which may or may not occur’. 16 This meaning of risk is implied in statements such as ‘[t]here is always the risk of an accident when driving in traffic’. 17 When people take a risk, they are uncertain about which possibility out of a multiplicity of possibilities will be realised. They are not sure that the ‘unwanted event’ will (not) occur: they are not in control. Uncertainty is a necessary characteristic of risk- taking. In child-rearing, there is always the possibility that child-rearing fails in some way. In other words, child-rearing is uncertain because parents run the risk that their child-rearing fails to succeed. The German philosopher and teacher Bollnow argues that such a ‘leap of faith’ is a type of existential risk taking that inevitably belongs to the nature of Erziehung . Erziehung is usually translated as education, but in his work Bollnow refers to the pedagogical dimension which, as discussed, is 13 Ramaekers and Suissa 2012, p. xiv. 14 Spiecker 1984, p. 203. 15 E.g. Pearson 1997; Blake, Smeyers, Smith and Standish 2000; Biesta 2013; Ramaekers 2005; Smith 2005, 2006; Smeyers 2005, 2010; Papastephanou 2006. 16 Möller 2012, p. 58. 17 Idem.