PARENT BIOGRAPHERS. FAMILY SCRIPTURES AND BIRTH DIARIES

Abstract

This paper examines the parental writings about birth and infancy. Biographic fragments or texts, with or without photographies, can fit into the sections of a baby record book. They can also be archived in babies’ diaries or on the Internet, in the family’s blog. Several qualitative researches (FRANCIS, 2006, 2007, 2010) cross various types of data: the structure and the organization of babies’ books, texts written by parents and semi-directives interviews with parents and children. The purpose was to approach the family practices. The results show that the parental writings depict representations of family, childhood and mothers’ and fathers’ roles. At the border of the “self-writings” and “writings for others” (SIMONET-TENANT, 2004; LEJEUNE & BOGAERT, 2006) babies’ books and blogs can be defined as memory objects. They give opportunity of linguistic activities to fix the family history and the family memory. The study of the family practices in blogs and babies’ books underlines the figures of the parent biographer (FRANCIS, 2006) and places also the bibliographic activity of the parent in its socializing scale.

Key words: primary childhood, childhood representation, childhood socialization, family scriptures.

See also the translation of this article for the Portuguese language in the
same issue.