Abstract

Drawing from a corpus of naturalistic videotaped data documenting everyday activities of 32 middle-class dual-earner families in Los Angeles, California, this article explores children's bedtime routines as an interactional matrix for carrying out culturally salient relational work, illustrating how family members co-participate in a ‘discourse of anticipation’ that prepares for—yet simultaneously forestalls—the moment of bedtime separation. Integrating research from psycho-cultural studies, language socialization, and conversation analysis, the article builds upon prior work on everyday routines as rich vehicles for cultural learning, discerning and tracing how parents and children co-constitute bedtime activities as collaboratively negotiated closing routines that foster autonomous self-initiative in tandem with a growing capacity for relational communion with others.