Over the past decade there has been considerable debate in the media concerning the necessity of educating parents in how to be better parents, and strengthening their parental role. This question has also been debated at a national level, resulting in the state commissioning a number of official investigations into the problems that parental education could resolve. A growing body of scientific studies have shown that parental-educational programmes play a strong role in preventing behavioural problems amongst children and teenagers. Many Councils in Sweden already offer these parental courses to their citizens, but discussions are ongoing as to whether these courses should be obligatory for all parents before or near to the moment that they begin to have children. This conclusion has been supported by the official investigations commissioned to look into this issue. In light of the state is approaching a proposal for mandatory training for people to get to be parents, the aim of this essay was to investigate how parents see their role as parents in in comparison with the role they are trained for, the working role. It also investigates the views parents have as to the government’s intention to educate them in parenthood. Working from a phenomenological perspective, and a hermeneutic understanding of the issues involved, six qualitative interviews were conducted with parents of pre-school children. The results show that parents view their parental role as a responsibility on several different levels. This role is variously described as one of leadership, fostering and as a non-egotistical, loving relationship. Every role is defined by individual circumstances and is forged at the moment when the parent and child first encounter each other. The role of professional day-to-day work is also described as being a matter of responsibility, mainly from a perspective of duty. It is, as well, characterised by the level of education of the parent. Parents with a university education tend to describe the role as purely egotistical. Parents are positive about parental education on a voluntary basis and are broadly positive about government looking into ways to strengthen parenting skills in first-time parents. But the idea of educating ALL parents is seen as unnecessary and impossible to achieve.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-55067 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Blom, Katarina |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Pedagogiska institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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