1. |
- Alsarve, Jenny, 1980-
(författare)
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Parental leave and then what? A study of new parents’ negotiations about work, care and parental leave
- 2021
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Ingår i: Families, Relationships and Societies. - : Policy Press. - 2046-7435 .- 2046-7443. ; 10:1, s. 83-98
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Drawing on qualitative interviews with Swedish mothers and fathers, this article aims to study the negotiations between parents before and after the birth of their first child. When expecting a child, parents need for instance to decide how to divide their parental leave. After the child is born they have to negotiate about the division of care tasks, paid work and housework. The aim of this article is to analyse how these negotiations take place, and how the initial negotiations are followed up later, when the couple become parents. The overall research question is as follows: how are the negotiations about the division of care and work embedded in other social relationships, and in workplace and financial conditions? Swedish parents are particularly interesting to study because gender equality has been a political goal for a long time in Sweden. Nonetheless, earlier studies of Swedish parents have shown that the division of work and care becomes more ‘traditional’ as couples become parents, and Swedish women still take more parental leave than men (Boye and Evertsson, 2014; Duvander and Wiklund, 2019). The results show that the couples were engaged in constant explicit or implicit negotiations about the daily care. The results furthermore indicate that factors like working conditions influenced the decision-making processes, as did relationships with, for instance, the child’s grandmothers.
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2. |
- Alsarve, Jenny, 1980-
(författare)
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Working it out : strategies to reconcile work and family among Swedish lone mothers
- 2017
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Ingår i: Families, Relationships and Societies. - : Policy Press. - 2046-7435 .- 2046-7443. ; 6:3, s. 325-340
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Drawing on 39 interviews with Swedish lone mothers, this article aims to explore the central coping strategies used by the mothers in reconciling work and family. The article also studies how working conditions and access to economic and social capital influence the coping strategies used. The findings indicate a variety of coping strategies. These were clearly influenced by position in the labour market and access to social and economic capital. While for instance working-class mothers tried to changed jobs to cope with temporary employments, middle-class mothers used flexitime to cope with work–family conflict. Access to social capital was crucial for all mothers.
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3. |
- Andreasson, Jesper, 1977-, et al.
(författare)
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Family practices, deportability and administrative violence : an ethnographic study on asylum seekers' family life in the Swedish migration context
- 2022
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Ingår i: Families, Relationships and Societies. - : Policy Press. - 2046-7435 .- 2046-7443. ; 11:2, s. 157-174
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Utilising data gathered through ethnographic fieldwork this article investigates (a) how asylum seekers portray family life in relation to their decision to flee their country of origin, and (b) how asylum seekers’ ways of doing family life intersect with the Swedish migration context. Analytically, the article leans on sociologically informed theories of family practices and a conceptual discussion on deportability. The results show how family life among the participants is reconstituted both in terms of geographical closeness and distance, and in terms of ideas about a previous family life in the country of origin and hopes for a possible future in Sweden. The insecurity and the strains placed on people and their family bonds by current migration policies, and the risk of deportation, are interpreted as a specific form of administrative violence that cuts into family practices, serving to maintain physical and emotional distance between family members and break down social bonds.
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4. |
- Andreasson, Jesper, 1977-, et al.
(författare)
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Perceptions of gender equality and engaged fatherhood among young fathers: parenthood and the welfare state in Sweden and the UK
- 2023
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Ingår i: Families, Relationships and Societies. - : Policy Press. - 2046-7435 .- 2046-7443. ; 12:3, s. 323-340
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article presents analyses from an international empirical study of young fatherhood in Sweden and the UK to interrogate how welfare contexts and family policies shape young fathers’ views of parenthood. Our analyses demonstrate that despite differences in constructions of young fatherhood, whereby young parenthood is problematised in UK family policy, more so than in Sweden, young fathers in both countries express an encouraging commitment to contemporary cultural imperatives for engaged fatherhood. However, differences in welfare and parental leave systems have a clear influence on the extent to which the young men in the respective countries fulfil their parental commitments and act as local agents of change in the wider social project of gender equality. We argue that while policy processes and discourses in support of young parenthood and gender equality are currently treated as disparate concerns, their articulations with one another may instead be seen as complementary and symbiotic.
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5. |
- Anttila, Sonja, et al.
(författare)
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Resourceful family economy during LGBTQ family-forming processes
- 2023
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Ingår i: Families, Relationships and Societies. - 2046-7435 .- 2046-7443.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study explores how LGBTQ parents in Finland account for the role of financial resources in their family-forming process before the child is born or otherwise joins the family. Semi-structured, thematic, face-to-face interviews (n=18) were conducted, audio-recorded, transcribed and analysed with reflexive thematic analysis. The study expands our understanding of financial resources in the family-forming processes of prospective LGBTQ parents and identifies the diversity of the meanings of financial resources experienced by the informants. It can be stated that the role of financial resources appears not only as a concrete need for money to have children but also as a resource that influences decision making and legal aspects during LGBTQ family-forming processes. However, it is not enough to look only at resources; it is equally important to consider the capabilities of individuals. The reconfigurations of family relations were connected to financial decisions and the importance of society’s support in terms of financial resources was essential.
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6. |
- Björk, Sofia, 1979
(författare)
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Emotions and empathic imagination: Parents relating to norms of work, parenthood and gender equality
- 2018
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Ingår i: Families, Relationships and Societies. - 2046-7435 .- 2046-7443. ; 7:2, s. 171-186
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article examines how Swedish parents relate emotionally to norms regarding parenthood, work and gender equality. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with seven mothers and six fathers, and using perspectives from the sociology of emotions, the article shows how norms influence parents’ lives through the feelings they evoke and prescribe, and how these emotions are managed. The parents’ responses reveal how they managed emotions via ‘empathic imagination’ of their children’s feelings in relation to gendered norms of parenthood and ideals of a ‘good childhood’. The ideals of gender equality in relation to work–life balance were found to include gendered emotion regimes, enabling fathers to feel pleasure and comfort as the emotion rules converged with those of involved parenthood, while mothers faced conflicting emotion regimes. Some parents were able to negotiate norms through their emotion work, making certain transgressions of norms unproblematic or sometimes even a source of pride.
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7. |
- Bruno de Sousa, Andréa, 1967-, et al.
(författare)
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Readiness parenting: practices of care by parents of children with chronic kidney disease in Portugal
- 2023
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Ingår i: Families, Relationships and Societies. - : Policy Press. - 2046-7435 .- 2046-7443. ; 12:4, s. 485-501
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Parents of a child with chronic kidney disease (CKD) must safely perform advanced care and treatment while at the same time allowing the child some freedom and maintaining everyday parenting and family tasks. Drawing on interviews with primary caregivers of children with CKD in Portugal, we examine the context of raising a child with CKD and how the parents practise their parenthood. The study takes inspiration from parenting studies and child studies and explores how good parenthood is constructed. Based on thematic analysis, three core themes emerged: protecting the child, involving the child in their treatment, and transferring responsibility. The transformation of life-limiting circumstances into a life that worked well for both parents and their child represents what we call ‘readiness parenting’. Assessing risks, supporting the child’s autonomy, and relating to social norms required constant vigilance and readjustments as well as negotiations about parental responsibility.
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8. |
- Evertsson, Lars, 1964-, et al.
(författare)
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On the other side of couplehood : single women in Sweden exploring life without a partner
- 2013
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Ingår i: Families, Relationships and Societies. - : Policy Press. - 2046-7435 .- 2046-7443. ; 2:1, s. 61-78
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article describes Swedish women’s experiences of life as single. Data showed that singlehood was not actively chosen but rather a situation that participants ended up in due to separation from a partner. However, once single, participants chose to remain single. The lack of gender equality in traditional cohabiting couplehood made participants wary about entering a new cohabiting couple relationship. Living apart together (LAT) relationships were identified as a possible way to combine gender-equal intimacy with personal freedom and independence. Data suggested that the increased number of single women may not necessarily point to an increased desirability of singleness per se, nor to a rejection of coupled intimacy. Singlehood was rather a rejection of the limitations associated with cohabiting couplehood. The article highlights the importance of the Swedish welfare state for making it possible for women toremain single, even those with dependent children.
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9. |
- Grunow, Daniela, et al.
(författare)
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Relationality and linked lives during transitions to parenthood in Europe : an analysis of institutionally framed work-care divisions
- 2021
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Ingår i: Families, Relationships and Societies. - 2046-7435 .- 2046-7443. ; 10:1, s. 99-118
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article ties together key findings from a 12-year cross-national qualitative collaboration that involved researchers from nine European countries. Our comparative analysis draws on longitudinal heterosexual couple data, in which both partners were interviewed first, during pregnancy, and second, between six months and two-and-a-half years after childbirth. We tackle the relational ties that shape family practices from a lifecourse perspective, emphasising the interdependent construction of motherhood and fatherhood identities, couples' institutional embeddedness and linked lives. Analysing the data by combining the relationality and lifecourse perspectives brings forth how women and men enact agency in a constrained environment while making consequential decisions about their own, their partners' and children's futures. Whereas the gender culture provides parents with arguments and discourses to motivate their work-care plans, the policy context limits how new parents interact as they seek to escape or cope with institutionally prescribed gender divisions of work and care.
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10. |
- Grönlund, Anne, 1962-, et al.
(författare)
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Great expectations. Dual-earner policies and the management of work–family conflict : the examples of Sweden and Slovenia
- 2014
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Ingår i: Families, Relationships and Societies. - Bristol : Policy Press. - 2046-7435 .- 2046-7443. ; 3:1, s. 51-65
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article explores mechanisms linking family policy to work–family conflict, work demands and gender. The conflict construct has dominated survey-based work–family research; however, both the individual actor and the societal context have been conspicuously absent. In qualitative interviews, including established instruments of work–family conflict, we studied how perceptions of work–family conflict were linked to strategies and use of policy entitlements among working parents in Sweden and Slovenia, two countries with policies promoting the dual-earner family. Our findings imply that such policies contribute to 'have-it-all' aspirations, but collide with practical realities, including norms related to work, parenthood and gender. In Sweden, policy tools and work demands appeared more decisive, especially for women's conflict, whereas in Slovenia, informal care by extended family was important. Based on the analysis, we propose a typology of strategies and perceived conflict that can help develop research on work–family conflict, especially from a comparative perspective.
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