Introduction

Why do parent–child argumentative interactions matter? What is the reason for such an interest? This chapter provides the reasons that motivated the study of parent–child argumentation with the aim to understand the function of this type of interactions. Focusing on the activity of family mealtime, in the first part, the chapter draws attention to the distinctive features of parent–child conversations. A second section of the chapter is devoted to discussing whether and, eventually, when children have the competence to construct arguments and engage in argumentative discussions with the aim to convince their parents to change opinion. In the last part of the chapter, research questions and structure of the volume are presented.