“Love is (not) for their age”: Sentimental education styles and socially differentiated relationships to love among children
Despite the predominance of love in people’s everyday lives, whether in cultural productions or in ordinary discussions, little is known about the actual way in which love comes to individuals from their earliest childhood. Nothing is said on the question of the genesis of romantic feelings, leaving almost the entire research field to the care of other scientific disciplines that tend to naturalize it. Based on a yearlong field survey, this article attempts to depict the styles of sentimental education of families, and more precisely their content, their administration and how they vary according to the cultural and economic resources of the parents. We highlight the existence of several forms or types of sentimental education that lie on a continuum between two ideal-typical poles: the first is characterized by a culture of feelings, an early interest and investment of mothers and fathers in children’s sentimental life; while the second is more based on “laisser-faire”. Parents think that love is something natural, a (adult and female) feeling that is not learned, but experienced: it will come one day, during adolescence and the development of hormones. These different styles of sentimental education are not randomly distributed within families. They are socially located and depend mainly on the legitimate definition of love in a given social context, and the gender norms on which it is based.