The Impossible Expectations of Parents in Digital Childhoods

Parenting today is a high-stakes balancing act. On the one hand, parents are positioned as frontline defenders in preventing (cyber)bullying, expected to monitor, educate, and protect their children across both offline and online worlds. On the other hand, they’re the first to be blamed – explicitly or implicitly – and their parenting styles and skills questioned whenever their child experiences or is involved in (cyber)bullying behaviour. But what if this focus on parenting skills and parental engagement obscures the wider social structures that shape – and often constrain – parenthood? And what conversations might be missing when we overlook the responsibilities of other stakeholders such as governments and tech companies?

Much research into (cyber)bullying continues to link children’s involvement – either as targets or perpetrators – to parenting styles and parental traits. While these are important concerns, this framing can also reinforce a deterministic and individualistic understanding of (cyber)bullying. And it sidelines the broader social, institutional, and policy contexts in which parenting takes place. The question is not just how parents raise their children and how this might shape their social lives, but how discourses of ‘good’ parenting and institutional authority shape which parents are valued, heard, and which are dismissed. And how discourses of ‘good’ parenting might increasingly pressure parents to hold sole responsibility for their children’s happiness and success.

Parenting has undeniably become more intensive, emotionally demanding, and time-consuming in recent decades. In Ireland, the rise of ‘concerted cultivation’ reflects a broader global trend: parenting as a high-stakes project aimed at cultivating specific skills and dispositions deemed valuable by schools and future employers. But this emergent norm on intensive parenting doesn’t emerge in a vacuum – it is reinforced by political and economic systems that overvalue competition, self-reliance, and individual achievement. Left unchallenged, these values not only fuel growing inequalities but also contribute to rising levels of parental exhaustion and stress.

These expectations of ‘good’ parenting extend across class lines, even though not all families have the same social, cultural or economic resources to meet them.

Family-School Tensions and Unequal Parenting Narratives

When it comes to addressing and preventing (cyber)bullying behaviour, parents often have to communicate with their children’s schools. Yet, family-school relationships are complex, and influenced by wider social-political dynamics. Nina Hein’s qualitative research in Danish schools offers a rare insight into parents’ experiences navigating school responses to bullying. Many parents struggle to reconcile their child’s distress with educators’ often bureaucratic or inadequate reactions. While Hein reveals how schools often place the burden of responsibility on parents for their child’s suffering, she also traces how policy reforms in Denmark created a climate of mutual surveillance between families and schools, further straining their relationships and levels of trust.  At the same time, dominant narratives frame certain parenting styles – typically white, middle-class, intensive, concerted – as ideal. Working-class, racial and ethnic minority parents, by contrast, are frequently depicted as aggressive, disengaged, or lacking.

The digital age exacerbates these pressures. Parents are now expected to safeguard their children from online harms – such as cyberbullying, disinformation, and harassment – while also promoting digital literacy, autonomy, and healthy online habits. Yet, surveillance technologies (such as parental control apps) and expert advice often contradict one another, leaving parents overwhelmed and unsure. Being “always on” may be deemed like ‘good’ parenting, but it’s also a recipe for burnout. Notably, studies suggest that burnout among parents is especially pronounced in Western societies, where ideals of individual responsibility and personal achievement dominate.

Rethinking Support for Parents in Digital Childhoods

If we are to prevent and tackle (cyber)bullying, we need to move beyond individual blame and recognise that parenting does not happen in a vacuum. In the absence of meaningful social policies that address the multiple challenges families face – alongside equitable digital infrastructures – responses to (cyber)bullying will continue to rely on overburdened families and under-resourced schools. Parenting expectations will likely intensify and remain shaped by surveillance, anxiety and institutional mistrust, rather than one grounded in collective care, solidarity, and support.

Isabel Machado Da Silva & Audrey Bryan

 

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If you are a parent who has a child currently enrolled in a primary or secondary school in the Republic of Ireland, and would be willing to share your experiences navigating parenthood and family-school relationships, please do not hesitate to reach out: isabel.machadodasilva@dcu.ie.

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