It saved their lives: exploring feminist parenting practices

Abstract

This study explores the practices of feminist parenting and looks at practices that feminist parents use to raise children outside of patriarchal parenting designs that enable and perpetuate sexism, gender and sexual binaries, ageism, heterosexism, and performance of societal norms. My research is being guided by two related questions. (1) What are the current practices that feminist parents are utilizing to raise critically engaged, socially conscious children? (2) Why they choose to be or why they feel it is important to be a feminist parent? I am imploring a qualitative design, specifically guided by feminist narrative research to engage in face to face interviews with self-identified, feminist parents to capture both questions. The benefits of this research are to build the literature around feminist parenting, and continue the important conversation of raising critically conscious children. This project explores the actual practices of how parents are engaging in feminist parenting in successful ways. The hopeful outcomes for this study is to add to the research surrounding feminist parenting and to illuminate the strengths of parenting in a feminist informed way.