Print Price: $38.50

Format:
Paperback
208 pp.
6.125" x 9.25"

ISBN-13:
9780190873639

Publication date:
November 2019

Imprint: OUP US

Parenting Musically

Lisa Huisman Koops

Parents use music in family life to accomplish practical tasks, make relational connections, and guide their children's musical development. Parenting Musically portrays the musicking of eight diverse Cleveland-area families in home, school, and community settings. Themes from interviews focused on the families' hopes and dreams for their children musically, as well as the families' perceptions of media messages regarding parents and music, serve to deepen the documentation of how families use and perceive music in their daily lives. Family musical interactions are analyzed using the concepts of musical parenting (actions to support a child's musical development) and parenting musically (using music to accomplish extra-musical parenting goals), arguing the importance of recognizing and valuing both modes. An additional construct, practical/relational musicking, adds to the detailed analysis of family musical engagement.

Practical musicking refers to musicking for a practical purpose, such as learning a scale or passing the time in a car; relational musicking is musicking that deepens relationships with self, siblings, parents, or community members, such as a grandmother singing to her grandchildren via Facetime as a way to feel connected. Families who embraced both practical and relational musicking expressed satisfaction in long-term musical involvement. Weaving together themes of conscious and intuitive parenting, the rewards and struggles of musical practice, and the role of mutuality in community musicking, the discussion draws on research in music education, psychology, family studies, and sociology. This book serves to highlight the multi-faceted nature of families' engagement in music; the author urges music education practitioners and administrators to consider this diversity when approaching curricular decisions. Written in a style accessible to laypersons, this book will interest a wide range of music educators as well as families, community members, and scholars and practitioners in family studies, psychology, and sociology.

Readership : The intended audience is scholars, researchers, teachers of early childhood and middle childhood music, and professors of early childhood and general music methods: individuals with an interest in children's musical development and how to better understand and influence the impact of families in this development.

Reviews

• "As we read through the poignant narratives presented in this book, we laugh, cry, feel for and empathize with the families, as if we were right there with them. By co-interpreting these lived experiences, we are invited to rethink our roles as musical parents, music teachers, and music researchers."
  
  --Beatriz Ilari, University of Southern California
  
  
• "This book takes readers to children's musical beginnings, and to the seeding of their musical identities. It is well-conceived, compelling, and consciously attentive to the realities of music's presence in children's lives at home and in the family. Lisa Koops brings experience and ethnographic styling into focus, and offers new insights on the meaningful roles that parents play in nurturing their children's musical development. A resonant study of human musicality in the everyday lives of families, this work is essential reading for parents, teachers, and care-givers who claim to support their children's expressive social-emotional growth."
  
  --Patricia Sheehan Campbell, University of Washington