Criar, resistir y acompañar: El eco de las manos que cuidan

Abstract

This research analyzed the conceptions of parenting held by five child protection professionals, in dialogue with the author's personal and professional experience. The study aimed to understand how these individuals think about, inhabit, and convey meanings around parenting, while acknowledging the imprints of their own trajectories and the structural tensions that shape their practice. A qualitative methodology with an autoethnographic approach was used. In-depth interviews were conducted with five participants—four women and one man—selected for their work with families involved in child protection processes. The interviews were complemented by field journals and a reflective systematization rooted in the author's lived experience. The analysis was inductive and categorical, based on thematic matrices and open coding. The findings were organized into five categories: caregiving as personal experience; parenting as a social and cultural fabric; the inner tensions of those who provide care; the forms of child-rearing observed in communities; and the possibilities of building loving and restorative practices, both for children and for those who raise them. The study reveals that ideas about caregiving are shaped by affective histories, structural contexts, and collective imaginaries, and that the act of caring emerges as an ethical and political practice.