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.

The main intention with this study was to explore how parents, employed in three Swedish small- and medium-sized companies, experienced their combination of work and parental leave. The investigation was carried out by a questionnaire, and the 21 participants estimated the attitude from and the treatment by mainly the management and the colleagues. The answers were analyzed both from a perspective of gender and in the aspect of high- and low utilizers of parental leave. The results showed that although both men and women generally estimated the attitude from the management and the colleagues towards parental leave to be positive, the parental leave was divided traditionally and unequally between the parents..

The legal right to take time off from work to care for one`s children has been regulated in Swedish law since late 1930. This right was limited to mothers and was provided under restricted forms. There was a long qualification period and the length of parental leave was limited.Since then, the right to parental leave has been extended through several modifications of the law. The question of equality in both the labour market and the private sector has been one of the greatest forces behind these changes. By including men in the right to take parental leave, the work place has become more equal and it is now considered a natural part of the employee?s life to request time off to care for children.Labour Arbitration Court has shown through its case law that equality in the work place is of the utmost importance and has shown its support in this matter through its judgements.

Theories about exposure and risk-taking in an everyday environment show a connection between parental strategies, parent-child relationship and exposure on the Internet. In the present study, the Internet is presented as an everyday activity. Negative exposure is seen as an outcome of risk-taking. The purpose of the study was to examine in what way parental strategies together with the parent-child relationship were related to the teenagers? negative experiences on the Internet, which consisted of three categories: 1) Exposure to pornographic sites, 2) Exposure to upsetting and violent material, 3) Digital bullying.

The goal of this paper is to examine whether the introduction of a qualifying day in the use of sick insurance in the Swedish welfare system resulted in an increase in the use of parental benefits as substitute to avoid the qualifying day. We believe that this could be the case because of the higher gain from the welfare system. We use OLS to perform a linear regression from a data set from the data base LINDA during 1991-1996. The results in this paper are that there is a significant increase in the parental benefit after the reform although there is a negative trend for parental benefit during the examined period..

Theories about exposure and risk-taking in an everyday environment show a connection between parental strategies, parent-child relationship and exposure on the Internet. In the present study, the Internet is presented as an everyday activity. Negative exposure is seen as an outcome of risk-taking. The purpose of the study was to examine in what way parental strategies together with the parent-child relationship were related to the teenagers? negative experiences on the Internet, which consisted of three categories: 1) Exposure to pornographic sites, 2) Exposure to upsetting and violent material, 3) Digital bullying.

Rules on parental leave have over the years been the subject of several gender debates. The big question has particularly been whether a further individualization of the days should be established. Sweden is a relatively equal country but differences still exist between men and women in the labor market, such as differences in wages. A fact that is considered encouraging for this is the uneven distribution of parental leave between men and women. It has now been nearly 40 years since the introduction of the first parental insurance but we have still not achieved gender equality in working life which was the main purpose.The main purpose of this essay is to study the motives for the proposal of individualized parental leave, and in addition examine how this change of rules could impact on gender equality in the work place.

One purpose of our study was to investigate if equality in work time and parental leave in a relationship affect the time that parents spend with their children. Our first hypothesis was that increased equality in work time and parental leave leads to a reduction of the parents? total time with their children, ie the children spend more hours in pre-school and begin pre-school earlier. In order to test our hypothesis, we investigated the relationship between the woman?s and the man?s work time and parental leave and the time that the children spend in pre-school as well as at what age they began pre-school by using two surveys.Our study showed a significant coherence between both working women?s work time and the children?s time in pre-school as well as women?s parental leave and the children?s age at start in pre-school.

Background: Good health at community and individual levels are key policy priorities. These priorities can be shown through supporting parents about various different healthy lifestyle choices. In order to know where interventions are needed, it is of interest to study how parents generally feel and how they perceive their parenting.Aim: To study how parents rate their own health and parenting skills, and examine whether there is any correlation between perceived general health and perceived parental competence.  Further, this study will show whether there is a correlation between rate of perceived general health and rate of perceived parental competence when it comes to gender.Method: 64 questionnaires were collected at strategic open kindergartens in the municipality of Uppsala. The questionnaires were distributed to the parents present and who chose to participate in this study.Main result: The result of this study shows that parents have a high rate of general health.

AbstractBackground The importance of establishing well-functioning parent-teacher relationships are clear objectives in the Swedish National Curriculum for Preschools, (Lpfö 98, Lpo 94 & Lgr 11 chapter 1-2). Parental involvement in preschool activities is seen as important for several reasons. Facilitating healthy child development, learning and socialisation are some of these reasons. During the past twenty years Sweden has become a multicultural society. Today, people from more than 170 countries live in Sweden, and about 18% of the population are first or second generation immigrants.

The purpose of this study has been to investigate how psychosocial support for families where a parent suffers from a life threatening illness can be constructed. The intent was also to explore how the child's perspective is protected and what barriers and opportunities there are for family oriented support. The study has a qualitative approach and includes interviews with four social workers. The interviews were analyzed with a systems theory and attachment theory. The conclusions are that the whole family suffers psychological and social pressures when a parent is sick.

The main purpose of this essay is to study the Swedish labor law concerning employees who are, aspire to be, or are expected to become parents, both men and women. Thereby accomplishing a gender perspective on the issue at hand. The study also take in to account the laws issued by the European Union, and their impact on the Swedish law system, so as to gain an international perspective. The laws regarding parental leave, both Swedish and European, involve protection for workers from being treated in a less favorable way than someone in a comparable situation, as employers are forbidden to disfavor any employee or job-seeker in basically all situations in the work place or in a recruiting context, if the disfavor is in any way related to the parental leave. The only situation where an employer is allowed to disfavor an employee regarding his or her parental leave, is if the disfavoring is a necessary consequent of the employee?s absence.

To be able to adopt, the future adoptive parents must participate in parental education and have a home investigation done. The home investigation is extensive and great demands are made on the parents. The purpose with this study was to get an insight and understanding in the parents? thoughts and feelings about the demands and expectations that are made on them during an international adoption. To answer this, we used these questions: Which demands and expectations are made on the future adoptive parents by the home investigator and the parental educator? How do the future adoptive parents experience the demands and expectations that are made on them before an adoption? Does the apprehension about the demands and expectations differ between the future adoptive parents and the home investigator contrary the parental educator? We used a qualitative method, interviewing four couples of parents, one home investigator and one parental educator.

This Bachelor Thesis is entitled ?Swedish parental leave and gender equality. Effects on women?s conditions on the labour market?. Through our empirical results in conjunction with economical and sociological theories, this Bachelor Thesis attempts to answer the questions: 1) Why are the claims for Swedish parental leave unevenly distributed between men and women? 2) Does the uneven distribution result in discrimination of women on the labour market? 3) How do different designs of parental leave scheme influence women?s conditions on the labour market and which possibilities are there to change these conditions through changes in the design? We make use of case studies from Denmark, Iceland and Great Britain, which work as basis for policy implications for the Swedish parental leave scheme.

The purpose with this essay was to analyse the view of parental leave in the public and private labour market. How does the economical compensation affect the parent's use of parental leave, with focus on the fathers "earmarked" months? Were there any differences in private companies and public organisations? We chose to look at past research and theories about father/men's usage of "60 day parental leave" from a point of gender and equality perspective. In regard to our questions we preformed qualitative, semi structural interviews. We picked people at random to interview at both private companies and public organisations that had or had not extra economical compensations except what the social insurance office paid during parental leave.