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Chapter 5 73 we would add, many educational researchers and philosophers as well), tend to endorse the strategies of concerted cultivation. 31 It remains a question whether it is legitimate for professionals to do so or whether this perhaps reveals a social class related bias. Lareau stresses that it would, in any case, be a mistake to ‘accept, carte blanche, the views of officials in dominant institutions’. 32 That said, she also observes that children raised within concerted cultivation tend to have particular advantages; the traits fostered in their upbringing are generally of much value in their future work environment, because they are much valued by this environment. In general, to have a certain parenting ‘strategy’ is (among other things) to believe that doing particular things (e.g. organise piano lessons for their child, setting boundaries) will contribute to their child’s flourishing life. This need not be an explicit or deliberate pursuit. Parents might simply be busy caring for their children’s daily needs, and as such have their flourishing ‘at heart’, without ever doing anything deliberately to contribute to their children’s chances of living a flourishing life. Thus, aiming for flourishing minimally requires that parents have their children’s flourishing ‘at heart’, 33 meaning that parents act with good intentions without reflecting upon those, as opposed to acting upon deliberate/conscious reasoning. The most deliberate form of aiming is where parents make explicit that they do certain things because that will contribute to their child’s chances of a flourishing life. Lareau observed that across the social classes most parents were not explicit about their parenting strategy, nor about the aim(s) of their strategy; they rather seemed to take for granted that what they did was what they, as parents, should do. 34 Both strategies described by Lareau can be practiced more and less deliberately, but they differ in what they require in ‘active involvement’ of the parents. 35 Parents who adhere to the strategy of natural growth might be very explicit in their conviction that this is the best way to raise flourishing children, but that does not lead to the kind of pro-active structuring of the child’s activities which is typical for the strategy of concerted cultivation. It is in such a case rather a deliberate choice against such active involvement. Emily Kingsley, on the other hand, actively aimed for the improvement of her son’s cognitive abilities; she put in a lot of effort and demanded a lot of herself as a parent in aiming to contribute to a better life (from her perspective) for her son. Also, the examples of hyperparenting, which can be typified as both very active and very deliberate striving for the flourishing of one’s children, are therefore to be seen as extreme forms of the strategy of concerted cultivation. 31 Lareau 2011. 32 Ibid., p. 13. 33 See White 2011, p. 3. 34 Lareau 2011, p. 65. 35 Ibid.