ABSTRACT
A major tenet of this book is that parent and child relations are assembled differently in different places and at different times. Historical perspectives are useful for understanding current constructions and dominant discourses of parent and child relations, all of which are inventions of thought (Hultqvist & Dahlberg, 2001). I draw on several historical perspectives to investigate dominant discourses of parent and child conflict, and these too are inventions of thought. To show how parent and child conflict has been conceptualized in developmental psychology for the past century, I analyze the major theoretical perspectives that have been used to explain and “treat” it. I show how each has constructed children, parents, and parent and child conflict, and offer explanations of how these came to be what is considered normal and what ought to be considered normal. Although the ideas discussed in this chapter were all “new” at some time and had their origins in the philosophy and psychology of their respective time periods, these same ideas also need to be located in the social, political, cultural, and economic circumstances of their time. Similarly, those theories used here to analyze the ways parent and child conflict has been conceptualized in child development are also products of historical, social, political, cultural, and economic times and circumstances.
