Hi, You're listening to The Sociology Show, a podcast about absolutely anything to
do with the wonderful world of sociology. Whether you're a teacher, a lecturer,
a student, or just taking a passing interest. This podcast will look
at a range of issues from social casts, ethnicity, gender, sexuality,
religion, crime, education, and anything else that sociology has to offer.
My name is Matthew Wilkin. In each episode, I will speak to someone
working in the field of sociology and let them explain all about their own interests,
their research, and their experiences. So put your ear phones in,
turn the volume up, and let's be sociology gigs together. Eh. Hello,
and welcome to the Sociology Show podcast. My guest for this episode is
Professor Frank Farreddi. Professor Frank Freddie talked to me about his book Paranoid Parenting,
which is really really useful for families and households if you're studying that either
GCSC or A level. And he also talked about his more recent book How
Fear Works, which is really useful for a whole range of different topics,
from crime to globalization and all in between. So, without further ado,
let's go over to the interview with Professor Frank Freddie. Thank you very much
for coming on the show. Would you like to start by telling us a
little bit about who you are and what you do? Please? Well.
My name is Frank Freddie. I'm a sociologist and an author, and I
spent a long period of my life researching and dealing with sociological issues. I
got entered by accident. It wasn't something I intended to do, because initially
I did my PhD in African studies in the nineteen seventies. But then I
became increasingly interested in issues to do with our own society rather than something that
existed far away, and in particular, I became interested in the question of
fear and risk and was really excited to have the opportunity to explore the way
that fear impacted in our lives and the way that a lot of our everyday
concerns were being increasingly framed through an inflated sense of fear and anxiety. So
that's really how I kind of began to do my more serious sociological work,
and I published a book called Culture of Fear in nineteen ninety seven, which
then provided the starting point for a lot of my other work, a lot
of other research in the subsequent twenty years. Thank you. I'm one of
those areas of fear which we're going to talk about today is the issue of
parenthood and childhood. And you wrote a book, was it two thousand and
two, Paranoid Parentings around that period? Yeah, around then two thousand and
one, I think, but I'm not hundred percent show. Yeah, yeah,
and a full title paranoid parenting while ignoring the experts maybe best for your
child? And so would you like to give us a little bit of an
introduction into what your motivation was for the book and also what your sort of
main findings are. Well, what happened was that I became a further leading
life and I noticed that the way that children were regarded, babies were regarded,
was very different than I had anticipated. And in particular, I noticed
that there was a kind of a climate of fear in the bringing up of
kids, and virtually every child would experience went with a health warning. And
that was something that really concerned me because it also meant that parents became a
considerable extent disoriented by the fact that they had to continually look after and watched
their children twenty four hours a day, and therefore I felt that in particular,
children's capacity to have an independent life without adulthood adults supervising them was being
on demand. So my commitment to the freedom of children to basically have the
space to grow up without being micromanaged was something that motivated me to write the
book, and in the course of doing that, I think I found out
to my surprise that parenting, which or child rearing, which historically has been
seen as an accomplishment of a relationship, something that you do as a relationship
as your child, was increasingly being redefined as a skill. So you have
this term which never existed in the past, called parenting skill. And not
only was the redefined as a skill, but parents were told that they were
amateurs who lacked these skills, and therefore they had to find experts who apparently
had the sophisticated understanding how to bring up a kid. And this, I
think kind of created a dependency or a tempt to create a dependency of parents
and experts, which further on the mind the confidence of parents, And I
felt that what I called parent or parenting was really the product of these kinds
of virus societal pressures where the problems facing children were being continually inflated, and
because they were being continually inflated, parents were in a sense put on the
defensive. But then in addition to that, parents capacity to bring kids up
was being continually questioned. And do you think that sort of over cautiousness over
protectiveness. Is there a moment in time where you think it really sort of
there was a tipping point where that really became apparent. I think it very
much kicked in in the late seventies, and there's a lot of evidence that
shows that the amount of time that children spend on their own outdoors begins to
diminish. The amount of time that moms and dad spends with their kids increases
from the late seventies onwards. And I think it's interesting that as you kind
of look at the world in the subsequent fifty years, it gets worse and
worse all the time, so that every generation of parents is probably less confident
than the one that preceded, and every generation of parents feels constrained to spend
more time with their kids than the ones before. So you have a situation
to just agree. An example that in the nineteen seventies, a mother who
wasn't working in the nineteen seventies spent less time with their kids, you know,
sort of than than what would happen kind of subsequently, and what happened
what's happening increasingly is that there's less and less ability on the part of children
to explore the outdoors and have that kind of freedoms, and kids therefore becoming
increasingly focused and chained digitally, chained to their digital bedrooms. I mean it
sort of guy's hand in hand with the argument. A lot of people would
say that protectiveness is evidence of a more child centered, more caring society.
Wait, does that sort of argument fitting with you, because that would suggest
it's actually gone the other way. Yeah. I think there's a there's a
fundamental flaw in the argument that we become more more child centered and more sensitive
because it's not children who are demanding to be continually supervised by the apparentson like
a massive movement on the part of young kids to say, we don't want
to explore the outdoors, we don't want to be on our own. It's
the adult world that has decided that it doesn't trust children to make their way
and develop independently, and it's the adult world that decides that the world is
so dangerous and so threatening that kids need to be insulated from being exposed to
everyday life. And although this is often called child centered, I think it's
very much adult centered. Is a result of adult obsessions which are being recycled
through children. It must be really difficult, frank to piece together the disconnect
between the threat that the media is telling us is out there for children in
a whole manner of ways, from pedophilia to online of use, pulling,
whatever it is, and the reality is the reality of threat actually much smaller
than the media would have us believe. I think it is. But we
have to remember that if we're told that something is dangerous and threatening, then
we will perceive it as dangerous and threatening, and therefore our capacity to manage
uncertain to manage risks diminishes. And one of the things that I have found
was that if and in sort of the media, it's the entire parenting industry,
it's very much the kind of cultural institutions that we inhabited. If they
continually tell the world that, for example, putting pressure on children in schools,
having exams in schools makes them ill, and they're going to be traumatized,
and they're going to become unable to cope with life as a result of
that, which is a relatively new development because there's been exams around for a
very, very long time, for centuries. Then what will happen is that
people will internalize, children will internalize the idea that exams are really scary,
that exams are going to make you ill. I remember talking to my wife,
who's roughly my age to be younger, and she tells me that when
she did her ECSC exams back in the days, she was hardly even aware
of the fact that these exams were consequential. She was hardly aware of the
fact that this was a make or break moment in her life. She certainly
didn't have anything more than the normal anxieties that you have when you're at an
exam. Used to call that having butterflies in your stomach, and certainly nobody
was traumatized by it. Whereas today, if you've been told that this is
going to have a big psychological impact on your life, this is very potentially
quite threatening that after a while that narrative will be something that you live by.
You internalize and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. I think one of
the things you mentioned in the book actually is that putting pressure on children is
asking children to behave like adults, and vice versa. You've got the infantilization
of adults. But what did you mean by that? Just for our listener,
so could you just explain what you mean by those ideas? Well,
There's two ideas that I've been developing and it's still in the process of developing,
which is, on the one hand, the adultification of children and the
infantilization of adults. These two things go hand in hand, and I think
that one of the things that has occurred is that on the one hand,
we treat children as like precious little babies that cannot come on a sort of
coup on their own, and we treat them childishly rather than the way that
children ought to be treated, So we don't really trust them to do the
kind of things that were expected as normal throughout the centuries. But at the
same time as we're doing that, we often sexualize them. We we kind
of treat them as like little adults in the way that they're kind of expected
to, you know, the way that for example, told about psychological issues
and therefore they become adult to fight. I remember my own son, by
the time he was nine or ten, he had a very sophisticated psychological vocabulary
that he picked up from school. You know. He would say, oh,
man, I'm really stressed out, you know, I'm I'm depressed,
you know, and he sounded like a little fraud because that's what you learn
in school. And he kind of a kind of absorbed all these hitherto adult
problems. And at the same time, a lot of the adults, you
know, because they've you know, sort of a variety of reasons, because
they've become so confused about how to draw the line between themselves and their children,
because they're so immerged in their everyday life, begin to act like children.
And you have this this kind of weird situation where mothers go shopping with
their daughters and it's their daughter stoves and what to wear rather than the other
way around. And that kind of, you know, sort of shifting generational
relationship is quite fascinating from a sociological point of view. The Sociology Show podcast
relies on the kind contributions of sponsorship and donations. If you enjoy the show.
Then you can help with the hosting costs by donating as little as five
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will be sent to Sociology Show pen as a small thank you for your continued
support of the show. Just thinking as well to two decades on from when
the book was first published, where do you think we are at the moment?
Frank? Do you think the situations have got worse that they've been improvements?
How do you see it? I think the situation has become far worse,
and it's it's really accelerated, especially in the last decade, and in
particularly it's excellent accelerated in relation to the way in which children and their personality
has been redefined as one which is inherently powerless and vulnerable. And we don't
see, completely deny in practice their capacity for resilience, and therefore we do
not believe that children are likely to cope with the kind of normal pressures of
everyday life, the existential difficulties that all of us have when we grow up.
We see our hurdles are almost impossible for children to overcome, certainly overcome
on their own. And in that sense, what we've done by this kind
of parenting regime is we've created a sense of permanent identity crisis where a lot
of young kids are struggling to know who they are, what they're about.
You know, usually, historically, by the time you're eighteen or nineteen,
even have resolved your identity crisis and got a sense of what you're all about.
Whereas today, when you're eighteen or nineteen, you're still are in many
cases dealing with issues that historically are pre adolescent issues. As I'm just thinking
about that, I was always looking looking back over the book, I wondered
how important cases such as the Madling mccan disappearance or the Manchester bombings. Do
you think those of had even more impact on the other protectiveness of parents and
sort of a cautiousness about what our children are doing to some extent, Yes,
I mean, you know, the media does play a role, and
you know there are all these symbols of dangers. You know that one one
can look back over the twenty years and there are several cases that highlights the
precarious state of childhood but I think that I think that there is much greater
problems than that. I think those amplify rather than are responsible for creating the
cultural conditions for these kinds of attitudes. And I think what I see as
being a far bigger problem is the loss of confidence in adults who the depletion
of what it means to be an adult, the moral content of being grown
up of maturity has been underman to the extent that a lot of mothers and
fathers lack the confidence to be able to do the job and know the tremendous
pressure, and that further on the mind that and they're being continually told that,
you know, parenting is the most difficult job you will ever face.
That's what they always say, that parenting is the is the most the greatest
sort of challenge that you will encounter. Whereas for thousands of years, you
know, parenting or child rearing was the norm. You didn't need to have
a PhD. In psychology to be a good mother or father. In fact,
you didn't have to go to school at all to be a caring mother
and a good father. These things were abilities that evolved with maturity, whereas
today they are in a sense called into question, and their importance as a
result of that diminishes their importance, their sense of you organically becoming a moment
of dad, especially when the experts quite often contradicted each other. Right,
there's a sort of a mind field of information coming towards parents where they're probably
feeling a little bit lost themselves as to what is the correct thing to do
in any given situation. You're right, I mean, that's so confusing because
you know, one day you're told that carrying parents sleep with their babies.
Next day you're told that if you sleep with your baby that can create cod
debt and it's very dangerous. So you're getting your conflicting advice on everything from
the food you to a variety of what other experiences all the time, and
just linking that idea up with your more recent book, How Fear Works.
One of the key aspects of that book is that we are experiencing fear differently
today than we used to. So do you mind just explain what you mean
by that. Well, I think that the problem is not fearing, because
fearing is a is a natural, normal state, and sometimes fearing is a
good thing because there are some genuine threats out there. I think that the
problem that we're faced with is when our understanding of uncertainty it becomes one that
almost paralyzes us. I mean, historically, uncertainty can be seen as an
opportunity, something you kind of look forward to. You don't know what the
outcome will be, but you you think this is an exciting quest and exciting
adventure. And there are moments in human history where the sieity is really,
you know, sort of reveled in that and thrive. They're flourished on that.
And there are times like today when uncertainty is seen not as an opportunity
but as a problem because we don't think we can manage it, and we
become so wary of uncertainty that we end up inflating problems and turning them into
threads, but not just turning them into threats, but increasingly into existential threads.
So a lot of issues become redefines the problems of existence, and under
those circumstances, the way we fear and the meaning of fear is one that
is much more corrosive. It's less helpful than it would be under kind of
circumstances. And the book what I try to do is to try to look
at the way the way that fear works and tries to explain some of the
cultural drivers and that makes us in a sense so fearful and allowing in the
capacity to manage the uncertain dimensions of our daily lives. And what would you
say are the current main fears that are driving let's even take it to British
society, what are the underlying sort of risk factors people live in fear of.
Well, the interesting thing is is that we talk far more about fear
than we really fear because we're encouraged to do that. So I'm involved in
a project at the moment where we're looking at what people fear in different parts
of Europe. And the interest thing thing is is that when you look at
all the services that are being carter carried out, what people fear are not
the headline fears that are from the media. It's not like global terrorism or
global warming, or it's not like you know, sort of pedophilia or you
know sort of or or crime. What people fear at the end of the
day is what they've always feared in modern times, particularly from the twentieth century
onward, which is their economic security, which is their old ege pension,
which is the question, you know, is my child going to have a
job when when they kind of grow up, So what their fear is actually
quite constant, And that's that's the good news the end of the day,
that's that's that's what occurs. But the problem is is that at the same
time, and as as as we kind of have these kinds of fears,
we become and inserted into culture that continually tells us to be anxious, to
continually incites us to be fearful, continually tells us that at the end of
the day, will we are far less able to deal with many of these
problems, many of these threats, and that they've basically presented to us,
then we imagine and that's really what I think is particularly damaging. And then
that creates sometimes the kind of hysterical or or or reactions that are not warranted
by the kind of threats that we kind of confront And if I could make
this perhaps the last question, just despite that hystoria, our kind of current
capacity to think about talk about mental health mental well being is is probably big
than it's ever been. So is that not working? Then if they if
the risk and theorem worry is higher than it's everything. I'm just working how
that balances itself out. Well. I think there is a very interesting question,
because the way that it works, I think is that, you know,
we're often told that we don't talk about mental health enough, and we
need to talk about mental health, But it seems to me that all that
we ever do at the moment is constantly talk about mental health. If you
listen to the media or newspapers, and we've basically medicalized everyday alivee to the
point at which that virtually every problem that you will have comes with a psychological
diagnosis. You know, you can be shy, but you know, I
have sociophobia. If you're a little bit active, you know, sort of
in the way that I was when I was a child, then you have
attention deficit syndrome of some sort. So there's a variety of different syndromes that
attach themselves to just about anything. And I think that what that does is
it actually makes us even more disoriented than we already were. And I actually
think that the promotion of mental health as a principal problem our times creates its
own demand for mental health intervention. And the more you have counseling facilities available.
The more you tell people to come in and tell us about your problems,
the more mental health issues are highlighted, the more it actually becomes a
public health problem. And that's the perverse effect that mental health intervention and the
industrialization of mental health is actually turned into into a public health problem for which
we are responsible. It wasn't the fact that somehow people became sort of less
able to deal with with their mental well being then before. It's a cultural
accomplishment which incites us, which reminds us continually that our mental state is in
need or repair. It's created the fear in itself through the promotion. Yeah,
thank you very much, Thank you very much. Just finally, if
people want to find out more about your work, read some of your books,
how can they go about that? Please? But there's a number of
ways that I've got a website Frank Furedi dot com. But probably the most
interesting thing that people might find is that I got what's called a sub stack,
it's called the Roots and Wings, where I write cliessays on different issues
or sociological significance and which they might want to check out. And of course,
if you look at Amazon. My books are there as well, so
right, and they can follow you on Twitter as well. Absolutely, you
can follow you on Twitter and you can criticize me. I react to my
my posts. Thank you so much for your time. I really really appreciate
it pleasure. Thanks very much for having me here. Thank you. The
Sociology Show podcast relies on the kind contribution of sponsorship and donations. If you
enjoy the show, then you can help with the hosting costs by donating as
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dot com and search for the Sociology Show. If you can donate, then
you will be sent to Sociology showpen as a small thank you for your continued
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