Play, Study, Success.Everyday Life of Middle Class Children in Sofia
Play, Study, Success. Everyday Life of Middle Class Children in Sofia

Summary/Abstract: In this paper I look at changing notions of childhood and parallel developments in parenting practices in urban settings in post-socialist Bulgaria. Focusing on how play, after class activities, and house duties are organized and managed by parents in central Sofia, I show that a growing number of the well-off population in Bulgaria places children at the centre of family organization and investment, and constitutes parents as active, engaged managers of their children’s experiences. Informed by Western liberal visions of early child development, and values like achievement, competition and success in the context of vast social restructuring, middle class parents construct pre-teenage childhood as a time for hard work, intensive learning, and a preparation stage to success in a neoliberal social order. Unlike previous child rearing models which relied heavily on the extended family and the services provided by the state, current parenting practices involve capsulation of child care within the nuclear family, intensity of parental involvement and rupture with values, roles and relations previously essential for child raising. Changes in childhood notions and transformations in parenting practices can be seen as responses to social restructuring in post-socialist Bulgaria that also show the insecurities of the middle class in their own identification.

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