Children's rights and gender equality in Swedish parenting support: policy and practice

Summary, in English

The aim of this article is to explore how ‘children's rights’ and ‘gender equality’ are articulated in parenting support policies in Sweden, and how these policies are enacted in practice with respect to the two perspectives mentioned. The analysis builds on key policy documents and interviews with civil servants working on parenting support on local, regional and national levels. The results show that despite national ambitions to enhance and achieve gender equality among parents, gender equality are downplayed in local settings. Important reasons are to be found in a lack of concrete strategies and instructions how to work with gender equality perspectives in cooperation with children's rights perspectives, but also the different interpretations of gender equality and ‘good parenting’ made by the civil servants.

• Author: Lisa Eklund; Åsa Lundqvist
• Department/s: Sociology; Department of Sociology
• Publishing year: 2021
• Language: English
• Pages: 32-47
• Publication/Series: Journal of Family Studies
• Volume: 27
• Issue: 1
• Links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13229400.2018.1484379
• Document type: Journal article
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Topic: Sociology; Gender Studies
• Keywords: Parenting support; children’s rights; gender equality; gender equal parenting; dual earner, dual carer family model; Sweden
• Status: Published
• Project: The Politics of Parenting Support: Development, Forms and Agents; Family, Migration and Welfare
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 1322-9400