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Finnish parents' views on responsibility in the home–school relations were explored. Responsibility was here understood as responsibility over education and upbringing. The data consist of semi‐structured interviews with 24 mothers and four fathers. In the home–school discourses, parents and teachers were often referred to as partners, and active parental involvement in school life was seen as a key to children's success. However, in some discourses teachers and parents were seen as polar opposites, e.g. teachers as experts — parents as laymen. Few references were made to children's responsibility.

Parental responsibility is considered to be one of the key concepts in parenting. This article examines the views of two Finnish groups interviewed—five mothers and three fathers—regarding the beginning and end of parental responsibility. The mothers came to a more or less shared conclusion that parental responsibility begins before the child is horn. The fathers held varying views, from 'before the child's birth' to concluding that parental responsibility begins later for men than for women. Both mothers and fathers described the end as the transformation of responsibility into worrying as the children grow up. The mothers said that responsibility ends when a child has a family of her or his own, while fathers maintained that the parents are in some way responsible throughout their lives.

This paper examines the dynamics of agency and power as revealed in young girls' fictional narratives about child–parent conflicts that are caused by incompatibility between the goals of children and parents in everyday family life. The data were collected from 26 girls aged 4 to 6 using the Story Magician's Play Time method. Narrative analysis yielded five types: mediation and compromise stories, surrender stories, persistence stories, solidarity stories, and standoff stories. In the girls' stories, agency and power were multifaceted and variable phenomena that were negotiated in a relational context in which the gender of the child and parent characters played an important role. Power relations tended to be narrated as more hierarchical and immutable in child–father conflicts, and more often as negotiated in child–mother conflicts. However, when narrated as deploying unyielding and tactical actions, the child characters were only able to exert power over the parent in girl–mother conflicts. Thus, some stories conveyed a clear, hierarchical generational order while others demonstrated children's agentic power to reshape adult dominance in child–adult conflicts in diverse ways. The practical implications of the findings are also discussed.

AbstractThis paper examines children's opportunities to participate in everyday child–parent conflicts as revealed in young boys' fictional narratives. The data were collected from 19 boys aged 3–6 years using the Story Magician's Play Time method. Narrative analysis yielded four story types: ignored participation stories, parent‐directed participation stories, child‐directed participation stories and dialogical participation stories. The study illustrates that when considering children's participation in child–parent conflicts, differences between children in their opportunities to participate in resolving conflicts should be taken into account. The boys' stories draw attention to the importance of children's right to a voice and influence in child–parent conflicts.

In the reorganisation of the family that inevitably follows childbirth, parents need to develop strategies for co-parental cooperation. Drawing on the theoretical framework of family systems theory and co-parenting, this study explores how Finnish heterosexual first-time parental couples construct co-parental cooperation at four to six months postpartum. Qualitative survey and diary data were analysed using thematic analysis and typification. Seven areas that couples saw as promoting or hindering co-parental cooperation, and three different co-parenting family types (alternating parents, equal sharers and stressed searchers) were identified. Many couples experienced working together in an equal, supportive and mutually satisfying way. Parents' daily communication and experiences of mutual support were perceived as necessary for well-functioning co-parental cooperation. However, couples' daily lives were complicated by various challenges (for example, fathers' overtime work and imbalance in parenting roles). Parents' egalitarian aspirations should be considered in political decision making, the work culture and the services offered to families.

The study focuses on dilemmas in storied experiences of everyday after‐school care arrangements among Swedish and Finnish mothers. Finland and Sweden, which share a history of strong labour market attachment among women, arrange institutional after‐school care in similar ways. The data consist of interviews with three Swedish and six Finnish mothers. A positioning analysis of four stories shows how decisions related to children's after‐school hours were allocated among different actors. Two reoccurring dilemmas, Competent‐dependent child stories and Unburdened‐deficient mother stories, emerged from the data analysis as related to prevailing moral discourses on childhood and motherhood.

Tutkimuksen tavoitteena oli tarkastella työntekijöiden kuvauksia ja havaintoja siitä, miten ohjatussa äiti–lapsi-vertaisryhmässä tuetaan vanhemmuutta ja selviytymiskykyisyyttä. Tutkimuksen viitekehyksenä sovellettiin resilienssitutkimuksen ja Seligmanin (2011) PERMA-hyvinvointiteorian käsitteitä. Tutkimuksen kontekstina oli matalan kynnyksen perhekeskustoiminta ja kohteena äiti–lapsi-vertaisryhmä. Lähestymistapana sovellettiin tapaustutkimusta, ja menetelminä olivat työntekijöiden (N=2) parihaastattelut tutkimusjakson alussa ja lopussa sekä puolistrukturoidut päiväkirjat, joihin työntekijät kirjasivat huomioitaan omista toimintatavoistaan ja vuorovaikutustilanteista äitien ja lasten ryhmätapaamisista kolmelta ajanjaksolta. Aineisto analysoitiin temaattisen sisällönanalyysin avulla. Tutkimuksen tuloksena tunnistettiin neljä selviytymiskykyä ja vanhemmuutta vahvistavaa työntekijän toimintatapaa: yhteisen tekemisen järjestäminen ja toiminnan sanoittaminen, kannustaminen ja vahvuuksien tunnistaminen, myönteisen ilmapiirin luominen sekä lähellä oleminen. Sosiaalipedagoginen työote ilmeni vertaisryhmän työntekijöillä toimivan vuorovaikutuksen rakentamisena, yhteisöllisyyden vahvistamisena ja yhteisön kasvatuksellisten mahdollisuuksien etsimisenä. Tutkimus antaa uutta tietoa työkäytänteistä, joilla voidaan vahvistaa vanhempien selviytymiskykyisyyttä perhekeskuksen matalan kynnyksen kohtaamispaikoissa.

Although primarily a practical matter in a family, coparenting is strongly modified by the existing culture and surrounding society. The development of coparenting, especially in its early stages is highly affected by existing gender ideologies, work cultures and family policies. Despite the widely agreed importance of socio-cultural embeddedness of coparenting, less is known about the interplay between coparenting systems and wider social and policy contexts. This study analyzed how existing work and family policies and underlying sets of values and beliefs frame the meaning, form, and construction of coparenting during early parenthood. To better understand how the sociocultural context frames the construction of coparenting, a critical interpretive synthesis (CIS) method was applied for searching, sampling, analyzing, and synthesizing the coparenting literature. The interpretative review process included the following phases: a broadly defined search strategy, applying systematic inclusion and exclusion criteria, and conducting a descriptive mapping and an in-depth process analysis and synthesis of all the selected articles ( N = 24). The review yielded three frameworks, in which new parents construct their coparenting in diverse socio-cultural contexts: gender equality, family solidarity, and social support. The studies falling into these frameworks see the effects of the form of the coparenting relationship (parents only/parents plus) and the role of institutional support (high/low) and cultural and religious beliefs (high/low) on coparenting differently. The literature synthesis indicated that coparenting is a dynamic system in which parents and other parental figures adopt culturally appropriate practices and roles when taking care of children. These findings, which broaden the dominant western-centered perspective on coparenting, can be used in the development of family policies, services, and coparenting programs for today's diverse, global multicultural families.