Classed approaches to musical parenting in Norwegian schools of music and arts: findings from interviews with parents of music students

Abstract

This article explores musical parenting in Norwegian schools of music and arts. These schools aim to provide extra-curricular activities in music and other art forms to all children and adolescents regardless of their social and economic background, but the schools reveal traits of social and cultural exclusion, serving mainly the children of the middle classes. Taking this into account, we set out to understand the parents’ role in relation to music participation and explored different classed approaches to musical parenting in these schools, borrowing Lareau’s (Citation2011) notion of concerted cultivation and based on a Bourdieusian-inspired framework. Drawing on 14 qualitative interviews among parents of music students in schools of music and arts, we found that they invested time, energy, and money in their child(ren)’s musical activities in the schools, and as such, we also found traces of concerted cultivation, and some classed connections to different approaches to musical parenting.