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Chapter 5 72 To which end the parents ‘develop’ their children is not specified in Lareau’s study. Neither does Emily Kingsley clarify what she means by ‘it’ when telling other parents that nobody should tell them ‘it’ is impossible. It seems plausible that ‘it’ refers to an implicit conception of aiming for flourishing which is embedded in this particular cultural repertoire of child-rearing: ‘in order to equip my children to be able to live a flourishing life, ‘I’ (as a parent) ought to engage in a process of concerted cultivation’. Lareau observed that working-class parents and poor parents have a different cultural repertoire, which she calls accomplishment of natural growth . 25 Good parenting here consists of caring for children and allowing them to grow. ‘For working-class and poor families, sustaining children’s natural growth is viewed as an accomplishment’. 26 In other words, ‘in order to equip my children to be able to live a flourishing live, ‘I’ (as a parent) ought to sustain their natural growth’. 27 The middle- and upper-class strategy of concerted cultivation seems reflected in how Dutch psychologist Jan Derksen describes current (Dutch) children growing up as the achterbankgeneratie [backseat generation], which refers to a generation of children who can be characterised as sitting in the backseat of the family car, driven around by their parents to and from their extra-curricular activities. 28 An extreme or excessive form of the strategy of concerted cultivation can be seen in what Frank Furedi calls ‘paranoid parenting’ , 29 and what in popular literature is called (as a caricature) ‘helicopter-parenting’ or ‘snow-plough-parenting’, in which parents function as a helicopter to monitor the development of their children, or as a snow-plough to take every obstacle out of the way so that their children will succeed in life. 30 These examples of ‘parenting strategies’ illustrate that there are different ways in which parents (can) aim for the flourishing life of their children. Even though these are a few examples out of many strategies across the world, we choose to elaborate on these because we recognise this dichotomy from our own lived worlds of parenting and educational research. Moreover, we agree with Lareau that professionals, such as educators, child care workers, social service agencies (and, 25 Ibid., p. 31. 26 Ibid., p. 5. 27 To be clear, these are clusters of behavior that Lareau (2011) observed that varied according to the social class of the family. As observed clusters of behavior, none of them is argued by Lareau to be intrinsically better than the other. Rather, Lareau endorses the view that both of them have certain advantages and disadvantages. Notably, children raised within concerted cultivation seemed to develop a sense of entitlement (i.e. expecting others to suit their preferences, acting as if having the right to certain things), but also seemed stressed more often, and were granted little autonomy. Children raised within ‘natural growth’ were usually less stressed, and granted more autonomy (and free time), but were not or less equipped to handle other adults, institutions, etc. They generally did not develop this sense of entitlement. 28 Derksen 2009. 29 Furedi 2002. 30 See https://www.todaysparent.com/blogs/snowplow-parenting-the-latest-controversial-technique/ which describes snow-plough-parenting as the successor of ‘tiger moms’ and ‘helicopter parents’.