Relationality and linked lives during transitions to parenthood in Europe: an analysis of institutionally framed work-care divisions

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.

Integration and volunteering: the case of first-generation immigrants to Canada

This study investigates the association between the integration of first-generation immigrants and their volunteering. Using data from a Canadian national survey, we examine three dimensions of immigrant integration: professional, psychosocial and political. General volunteering is not significantly related to integration; however, there exists a relationship between the different dimensions of integration and where immigrants choose to volunteer. Thus, the relationship between the type and degree of immigrant integration and volunteering is nuanced; it matters where volunteering occurs.

Parents displaying family consumption in Ireland

This article considers qualitative data collected from 78 parents in an Irish study on the commercialisation and sexualisation of children. It makes a distinctive contribution in showing that the framework of family display (Finch, 2007) can be productively applied to the entire field of family consumption. It shows that consumption narratives can be viewed as a tool that is used to display family – in other words, showing how family is done – to internal family members and to outsiders. While family display has been more often applied empirically with non-conventional families, its relevance for all families is reasserted by our data. Our application of the family display framework shows that middle-class parenting ideals are stretched and can become unstuck when displayed by middle-class parents, the constituency most associated with their production and propagation.

Paid parental leave and fathers’ involvement: capturing fathers’ gender beliefs and fathering perceptions

This study examines how multidimensional gender and fathering beliefs of fathers may explain their relative involvement in childcare after considering paid leave uptake. We draw on cross-sectional survey data from one German state, which allow us to distinguish three belief dimensions: (1) gender traditionalism and essentialism, (2) fathering attitudes, and (3) fathering self-concepts and self-efficacy. By means of multiple linear regression models we investigate how the different dimensions of gender and fatherhood beliefs relate to fathers’ relative involvement in basic and indirect childcare tasks. Our results show that gender (essentialist) ideologies and fatherhood attitudes were strongly associated with fathers’ relative involvement in both childcare domains. The higher fathers perceived self-efficacy in fathering, the more involved they were in basic but not indirect care. All belief dimensions mediated the positive association of fathers’ uptake of paid leave with their involvement in basic childcare.

Longing for interdependence, aspiring to independence: a qualitative study on parenting in Germany

This article presents interpretative analysis of 25 qualitative interviews with parents of preschool children in Germany, which focused on starting daycare and centred on topics of closeness and distance in the parent–child relationships. The article draws on sociological studies on intensive parenting, and cultural psychological theories of parenting. The analysis reveals that parents discuss starting daycare within the cultural framework of intensive parenting: they stress the benefits for their child’s social and cognitive development. As cultural psychological theories suggest, parents in Germany emphasise autonomy and independence, while also arguing that young children need interdependence. In addition, parents articulate a longing for interdependence themselves: they yearn for closeness with their children, but are also aware that their children are on a path towards autonomy. The article theoretically elaborates on these ambivalences and suggests that adding the dimension of parents’ longing enriches both the concept of intensive parenting and cultural psychological accounts.

Being a good digital parent: representations of parents, youth and the parent–youth relationship in expert advice

Social concern about online behaviour and safety of children and youth has increased dramatically in the last decade and has resulted in an abundance of parenting advice on ways to manage and protect children online. The cultural context in which this is happening is one characterised by intensive parenting norms, heightened risk awareness, and growing concerns about the effects of ‘over-parenting’, especially in the teenage years. Using contemporary advice to parents on managing adolescents’ digital experiences, this study investigates the ways that parenting, youth and the youth–parent relationship are depicted. Parental roles, in this material, are portrayed as instrumental and pedagogical while youth are assumed to lack agency and judgement. Intensive parenting expectations are extended as parents face advice to be both highly vigilant agents of surveillance and trusted confidantes of their children, with an overall goal of shaping children’s subjectivity in ways that allow them to become self-governing.

Creating online participatory research spaces: insights from creative, digitally mediated research with children during the COVID-19 pandemic

Our article draws on research undertaken with children during the 2020–21 COVID-19 pandemic in order to consider the potential of digitally mediated participatory research for child-centred research practice. Our specific focus is on how children’s inclusion can be centred in the absence of opportunities to meet in person. We reflect on how we sought to support children’s engagement through offline and online creative activities and explore how these digitally mediated spaces can facilitate children’s inclusion, creative engagement and dialogue. We offer examples from our arts-based, digitally mediated research to consider how researchers might work remotely, yet inclusively, in contexts where children have been marginalised and their voices silenced. Our research suggests that scaffolding creative activities through bespoke digital animation and asynchronous chat can facilitate children to participate in ways of their choosing. However, to address equity of inclusion researchers must attend to the contingencies of children’s digital, material and social exclusion.

Romance, companionship and masculinities in establishing relationships by Mexican Mormon men

The contradictory pressures that Mormon belief and practice create for men’s gender identity and sexuality give reason to reconsider the concept of ‘hegemonic masculinity’. Starting from Connell’s conceptualisation, this article analyses narratives by 25 Mexican Mormon men of establishing ‘romantic’ relationships. Participants were recruited through three different Mormon organisations in Mexico City. I explore emotional/affective notions constitutive of masculinity at play in their narratives and how they influenced the experiences and trajectories of their romantic relationships. I argue that relationships framed by hegemonic Mormon masculinity incorporate ‘traditional’ elements associated with long-lasting Judaeo-Christian normativity, such as (self-) control over physical attraction and marriage as the only context for it, simultaneously emphasising modern/post-modern forms of masculinity through ideas of love, companionship and emotional connection. The incorporation of these affective notions in the analysis can expand the concept of ‘hegemonic masculinity’, illuminating ways in which men adopt, negotiate or contest hegemonic patterns of masculinity.