Coping Mechanisms

Abstract

Conflict and misunderstanding were continuous possibilities in the negotiation of parental behaviour. Schutz indicated that this was a feature of any process of constructing reality. Speaking of the ‘recipe knowledge’ which provides the meanings at hand in everyday life he said:

It embraces the most heterogeneous kinds of knowledge in a very incoherent and confused state. Clear and distinct experiences are intermingled with vague conjectures; suppositions and prejudices cross well-proven evidence; motives, means and ends, as well as causes and effects, are strung together without clear understanding of their real connections.¹

In this chapter I shall consider how, at the level of everyday behaviour, respondents developed ‘coping mechanisms’ to deal with contradictions, dilemmas and problematical elements involved in their mutual development of parental behaviour.