In a revealing Beyond Gender discussion with Nancy McDermott, author of The Problem with Parenting, a striking observation is made about the transformation in how we understand and practise parenthood. No longer is “parent” primarily a role—anchored in identity, responsibility, and social function. Instead, we speak increasingly of “parenting,” a term that shifts attention away from being to doing. This linguistic transition—from noun to verb—signals a much deeper cultural shift: one that Carl Jung might argue reflects the erosion of archetypal grounding in favour of procedural optimisation.
Jung maintained that archetypes are foundational forms embedded within the collective unconscious—timeless patterns that shape our experience, give structure to identity, and make meaning possible across generations. When we occupy a social role like that of mother or father, we do more than perform a function; we participate in a living archetype. These archetypes are not invented, but inherited. They carry the weight of tradition, ritual, and symbolic continuity.
But what happens when roles are displaced by processes? When, instead of being a parent, we are encouraged to engage in parenting—often measured by how well we follow expert advice, mitigate risk, manage emotion, and optimise outcomes—we lose connection with the archetypal dimension of the role. Parenting becomes a skillset, a series of choices, an endlessly recalibrated set of practices. In this context, the deep, grounding archetype is pushed aside in favour of the procedural self. Where once the parent was understood as a guardian, nurturer, and transmitter of culture, today’s parent is a project manager, risk assessor, and emotional regulator.
This reorientation is not just semantic. It represents a profound shift in how society constructs identity and authority. The archetypal parent—anchored in myth, religion, story, and collective experience—afforded both stability and reverence. The procedural parent, by contrast, is under constant scrutiny, judged by outcomes, and prone to self-doubt. McDermott describes the pressure modern parents face to optimise every moment of childhood, to protect children from all forms of distress, and to perform their parenting according to ever-shifting norms and guidelines. This is not growth through participation in the timeless; it is anxious calibration in the moment.
In Jungian terms, this shift represents a kind of archetypal starvation. Without the container of role, the psyche is left unmoored. When cultural structures no longer provide clear patterns of identity—when the archetype is forgotten—we are left navigating uncertainty with little more than procedural advice and therapeutic reassurance. The deeper symbolic nourishment that archetypes provide—rooted in sacrifice, transformation, responsibility, and integration—is no longer available.
This is not simply a matter of nostalgia. The displacement of role by process reflects a wider cultural phenomenon in which the authority of all inherited structures—family, community, religion, even citizenship—is eroded by a culture of managerialism. In this world, virtue is measured by efficiency, adaptability, and output. But what is lost is the symbolic orientation that once allowed individuals to find a stable footing in society. As everything becomes subject to change, improvement, and redefinition, the ability to trust in a stable self—anchored in collective meaning—is diminished.
Jung warned that when archetypes are repressed or ignored, they do not disappear; they become pathological. In the absence of culturally integrated roles, individuals are left vulnerable to confusion, over-identification, and psychic fragmentation. In the case of parenting, this may manifest as parental burnout, emotional enmeshment with children, or a sense of chronic inadequacy. We are asked to perform a task without being given a map. Or worse, with too many competing maps, none of which carry symbolic weight.
Recovering the language of role—of mother, father, elder, guide—is not about returning to rigid or oppressive structures. It is about restoring symbolic depth to our social identities. It is about re-establishing a balance between the individual and the collective, the personal and the transpersonal. To parent well, we do not need more checklists. We need cultural stories that remind us who we are, and who we are called to be.
Until we revalue the archetypal dimensions of social roles, we risk dissolving the very structures that hold meaning together. And in doing so, we leave not just parents—but entire generations—adrift in a world that no longer knows how to ground the self in something greater than itself.
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