Till Örebro universitet

This article draws on 20 qualitative interviews with women between 60 and 78 years of age who migrated from Turkey to Sweden some 40 years ago. It focuses on how they understand, reproduce and challenge both pre- and post-migration gender norms. By analysing the narratives of the 20 women, we investigate how they negotiate work, care and housework with their partners over the course of their lives. Furthermore, we examine how the Turkish diaspora in Sweden influences the ways the interviewed women do and redo gender. The findings show that the interviewed women used implicit and explicit negotiations to change, reconstruct and renegotiate gender norms. Doing and redoing gender is a central aspect of these negotiations, since the interviewed women are ambivalent about gender norms. The conclusion is that the women had one foot in traditional gender norms by “knowing their places” but had adapted to more egalitarian norms over the years.

This article contributes expanded knowledge about parents' difficulties in reconciling work and family and their work-family strategies by studying how these difficulties and strategies change over time, e.g. from the early childhood years to the school-age/preteen years. Drawing on qualitative, longitudinal interviews with Swedish parents of school-age children who were interviewed when their first child was about 1.5 years of age, and then later when that child was 11 years of age, the article addresses the following research questions: What are the main difficulties in the parents' reconciliation of paid work and caring responsibilities, and how have these difficulties changed over time? What are the parents' most important work-family strategies for reconciling paid work and caring responsibilities and how have these strategies changed over time? The article draws on theories of work-family conflict, gender and time, and the results indicate change and continuity concerning the work-family difficulties and work-family strategies. Time famine appears to be a central difficulty that is consistent throughout the years. The findings also indicate gendered aspects of some of the strategies.

In this article we explore how parents (re)negotiate care and housework during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on qualitative interviews with Swedish parents of school-age children, the article contributes new knowledge about how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the everyday lives of families and their care and household practices. Previous research indicates that life changing events influence how couples divide and perhaps renegotiate the division of care and housework. Similarly, the pandemic and its accompanying restrictions and recommendations, such as working from home, might trigger the need to renegotiate care and housework. The results of the study suggest that while most of the interviewed parents have been affected in some way by the pandemic, especially with regard to a change of workplace and the restrictions on social interactions, only some argue that this has led them to explicit renegotiate and modify the division of housework and care.

Parents' social comparisons on social networking sites (SNS) is a research area of growing interest. In this study, we examined parents' positive and negative feelings when comparing with other parents and associations with self-reported distress (i.e., stress and depression) and self-efficacy. We used a sample of 422 Swedish parents of children below the age of five (M-age = 1.29 years). In a first step, we examined construct validity of two new measures on parents' positive and negative feelings when doing comparisons on SNS. In a second step, we examined associations with self-reported parenting. Results showed that parents reported more positive feelings than negative feelings in relation to other parents on SNS. Further, negative feelings when doing social comparisons were linked to more distress and lower level of self-efficacy, whereas positive feelings when doing social comparisons predicted higher level of self-efficacy, but not distress. These results suggest that negative feelings are related to lower actual levels of distress and self-efficacy, but positive feelings can have an instant positive effect on parents' perceived competence, but not on their well-being. Practitioners can encourage parents to reflect on who they compare with on SNS and why, as it might enable evaluations that could lead to self-improvement rather than weakening of oneself as a parent.

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.

Hur kan vi få till fler möten och mötesplatser för nya och etablerade svenskar? Det är en central fråga som det sociala projektet Familjekompis handlar om. I den här rapporten beskrivs och analyseras Familjekompisverksamhetunder dess första år. Rapporten inleds med en bakgrundsbeskrivning av projektet. Därefter ges en introducerande beskrivning av pilotprojektet som genomfördes under 2018 samt en kort diskussion om utvärderingens metod. I det efterföljande avsnittet presenteras en analys av de observationer och intervjuer som gjorts i syfte att utvärdera projektet. Avsnittet avslutas med att resultaten från en enkät presenteras. Avslutningsvis förs en sammanfattande diskussion utifrån analysen: vilka slutsatser kan vi dra utifrån studien? Vilka förbättringsområden finns, och vilka styrkor kan vi identifiera utifrån pilotprojektet?

Studies have demonstrated the importance of informal social relationships in lone mothers’ everyday lives, not least regarding their ability to reconcile paid work and care duties. This paper examines lone mothers’ relationships with their friends. Drawing on qualitative interviews with Swedish lone mothers, it aims to analyse how friendship relations are described by the lone mothers, to what extent they are characterized by different forms of reciprocity and if the mothers perceive their friends as being part of their families. Inspired by Alberoni’s thoughts on friendship, and Finch and Mason’s view of reciprocity, the analysis reveals a complex picture of friendship relations. It is argued that friends often play a significant role in the everyday lives of the lone mothers. Friends were seen as key elements in some mothers’ lives, and sometimes were defined as ‘family’, providing emotional as well as practical support; but they were almost entirely absent in the lives of others. The support from their friends was often surrounded by norms of reciprocity. The results indicate that although the help from friends sometimes was decisive and appreciated, the mothers found it difficult to ask friends for help.