Underlying Deception in Parent-Child Relationships

Abstract

My research takes the relational role of lying as understood by sociologist Georg Simmel (1950) as the starting point for my qualitative study on lying in parent-child/child-parent relationships. Simmel (1950) argues that lies play a role in binding social relationships, and his work as well as the work of anthropologist Susan Blum (2007) are instrumental in my analysis of deception. My research analyzes lying within the dynamics of parent-child relationships in Canadian society. I explore how lying plays out in these relations and the effects that lying can have on the relationship as a whole. I discuss parent-child deception from three angles: ideology, practice, and justification. My aim is to address these three aspects of lying in relation to parent-child relationships and the contexts that this relationship provides. I conclude that through lying ideology, practice, and justification, lying plays a role in shaping the dynamic of the parent-child/child-parent relation.