Community parenting and the informal safeguarding of children at neighbourhood level

This article explores the notion of ‘community parenting’ in one neighbourhood in South Wales. Community parenting is defined here as parenting that is carried out collectively or between families within a community. Placed within a context of continuing political and practitioner interest in how to understand and enhance parenting in marginalised communities in the United Kingdom, the article reinforces the notion that parenting is carried out within a local social, material and cultural context and is not solely reliant on individual skills. Data are presented from a qualitative research project to explore how social and material aspects such as physical environment, socioeconomic status and kinship networks, plus localised social norms around parenting, impact on the care for, and regulation of, children within the neighbourhood. The article suggests a ‘community parenting paradox’, whereby the visible nature of community practices leads to a relative invisibility of the more positive aspects of ‘community parenting’.