Within the last decades, who and what family is, along with the question what ‘tasks’ family (still) should perform, is steadily investigated (Edwards & Gillies, 2012). In general, we can make a distinction between two ‘types’ of descriptions. One school of thought uses, in a certain way, more top-down definitions or descriptions of family (e.g., in legal texts, policy documents), meaning that ‘family’ is explained through (focusing on) one or more underlying processes or (f)actors – such as residence, kinship, marriage – that are then considered to be prime constitutors of ‘family’. The other side of the debate calls attention to more bottom-up perspectives. While criticizing the idea of ‘family’ as a static entity (e.g., Bernardes, 1999), rather than trying to precisely define ‘family’, the scholars here want to understand how laypeople experience or ‘do’ ‘family’ (e.g. Morgan, 1996) or attach the meaning ‘family’ to personal relationships (e.g. Roseneil, 2006). In this perspective ‘family’ is, among other things, more a feeling (of connectedness) or some-thing people actively ‘do’ instead of some-thing they are or (simply) belong to.

We sympathize with the idea that ‘family’ is not solely based on, for instance, biological or juridical criteria, but is instead a specific ‘doing’. Nevertheless, we are not entirely convinced that ‘bottom-up’ descriptions grasp everything we need to (or can) know about ‘family’: both schools of thought still emphasize a certain kind of ‘person centeredness’, linking ‘family’ with (the effort undertaken by) people (to maintain a family). Put differently: it seems each description of ‘family’ upholds the belief that human beings are the most significant actors, i.e. are what that “make a difference” (Latour, 2007, p. 71). This ontological idea seems especially true in the current European discourse on upbringing, i.e. the ‘new’ parenting culture (Lee, Bristow, Faircloth, & Macvarish, 2014). In an important sense, we could say that nowadays upbringing – especially when it is conceptualized as ‘parenting’ - is understood as something that takes place within a one-to-one interaction scheme between parent and child; the ‘vigilant’ adult needs to be constantly alert for possible developmental opportunities and risks and the child is a vulnerable individual with particular developmental and other needs. The pedagogical challenge, so to speak, lies then in giving the ‘right’ support at the ‘right’ moment for this particular child to develop properly – a human endeavor, driven by the parent(s).

The dyadic construction of ‘parenting’ leads to a narrow theoretical perspective where other things (e.g., other family members, material stuff) are rarely considered as relevant. Upbringing, in the ‘parent-ing’ sense, begins and ends with parent and child as the only two actors in this ‘being together’. We do not challenge the idea of parents and children as important points of access into upbringing practice(s), but perhaps human beings are not the sole elements in upbringing. Whereas the current view on parenting undeniably puts subjects/parents in the forefront of upbringing, we understand upbringing as a practice where a multiplicity is at play, that is, we view upbringing as an assemblage or a rhizome (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). The rhizome is a protean analogy, both heterogeneous and multiplicitous. It describes the connections that occur between (what seems at first) disparate or similar elements (material objects, people, places, ideas); to describe a rhizome is to ‘map’ the (strange) chains of events that link elements together. By conceptualizing upbringing as a rhizome, we may have a tool that allows us to think beyond the dyadic relationship between parent and child. Hence, it may allow us to re-visit and rethink the pedagogical side of family apart from the developmental psychological argument.

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