Great Expectations: Parenting, Optimism and the Child

If we consider the place of optimism in the raising of children, we quickly see that it has two distinct, though not unrelated, dimensions: optimism towards the child and optimism within the child. These dimensions can be thought of as exogenous (coming from without) and endogenous (growing within). In the case of the former, agencies external to the child, of which parents are the most obvious example, can often be observed to hold positive expectations about many aspects of a child’s future. Typically, these will be in the areas of general development, education, employment, values, sociability and so on. Such expectations can be explicitly articulated, they can be concealed, or they can remain unconscious and unadmitted; and, of course, they reflect wider societal influences, such as nationality, class, economic status, political ideology and religion. All of these factors come to bear on what I call ‘the parenting complex’, that network of influences with which parenthood is necessarily embroiled. I discuss this further below. The optimistic expectations that this complex produces are, needless to say, as diverse as the values they reflect; and they frequently come into conflict with one another. Children are, after all, one of the key battlegrounds of the future; they are, as the cultural critic, Neil Postman, puts it, ‘the living messages we send to a time we will not see’.1