A concern with parenting...must direct attention beyond behavior. This is because parenting is not simply a set of behaviors, but participation in an interpersonal, diffuse, affective relationship. Parenting is an eminently psychological role in a way that many other roles and activities are not.

The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender, Updated Edition (ed. Univ of California Press, 1999) - ISBN: 9780520924086