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.

The aim of this study is to create an increased understanding of shared leadership and how it takes shape in the relationship between first-line managers in human service organizations. Shared leadership is seen as a complement to the traditional one-man leadership and briefly means that two managers share the role that usually is held by a single leader. The study has a qualitative approach based on semi-structured interviews with managers in human service organizations. The interviews mention the mangers thoughts and experiences about shared leadership and gain approval in the hermeneutic science field. The study is analyzed based on symbolic interactionism where perspectives from the theoreticians Mead and Goffman are used.

Syfte: Att undersöka pappors tankar och erfarenheter kring föräldrautbildning och föräldraledighet under barnets första levnadsår. Metod: Explorativ kvalitativ intervjustudie. Ett målinriktat bekvämlighetsurval gjordes och semistrukturerade intervjuer genomfördes med nio män som blivit pappor under de senaste två åren. Data analyserades med kvalitativ innehållsanalys. Resultat: Föräldrautbildningen bör inriktas mer på det gemensamma föräldraskapet än på graviditet och förlossning.

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.

Background: The health of children and youth has decreased the last two decades. The Swedish government has decided to back a national plan for parenting support. The municipality of Tjörn is a part of national parental support project to identify the need and to improve the parental support in the municipality. Purpose: The purpose with this study was to identify experience and need of parental support among fathers with more than one child on Tjörn. Method: Five individual qualitative interviews were conducted with the fathers.

Leadership is essential for every company. Its strength or weakness of direction, clarity, and evaluation affects success or failure of its organization. With the complex structure of the big and global companies today leadership is more challenging. The traditional view of leadership, with the single individual possessing all the competences and skills, is therefore being challenged by an alternative way of leadership, a shared leadership. Existing research on the subject is still scarce, which makes further studies in this field important.

The aim of this study was to investigate leadership in public health care. The methods used were shadowing and semi-structured interviews. The shadowing involved observing the shared leadership of two head nurses in an administrative management position of a ward in their daily work during two weeks. The observation was supplemented by ten semi-structured interviews. A thematic analysis of the data was carried out and the result indicated that shared leadership is a form of leadership well suited for an organisation as big and complex as the clinic where the study took place.

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.

Parenting and parental leave in a career context is a highly topical subject in which discussions about gender equality and corporate discrimination against parents occur daily. Media has recently raised the theory of parenting and parental leave as having positive impacts on personal development, such as creativity enhancement, which may promote the individual's work performance. Despite the subject's significant value for society and organizations, no scientific research is to be found. This paper examines how an individual's creativity at work is affected when becoming a parent and if parental leave has any contributory effect. Furthermore, the paper identifies and scrutinizes four creativity theories that may help explain these changes in creativity.

Mothers and fathers in Sweden receive an earnings-related benefit of 80 percent of their income when they take parental leave. There exists a ceiling in the allowance though, meaning that some people with high earnings don?t receive fully 80 percent of their ordinary salary. The length of the parental leave varies between women and men and also among men and women. Various reasons are used to explain this; one of them is economical.

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 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.

The aim of this study is to create an increased understanding of shared leadership and how it takes shape in the relationship between first-line managers in human service organizations. Shared leadership is seen as a complement to the traditional one-man leadership and briefly means that two managers share the role that usually is held by a single leader. The study has a qualitative approach based on semi-structured interviews with managers in human service organizations. The interviews mention the mangers thoughts and experiences about shared leadership and gain approval in the hermeneutic science field. The study is analyzed based on symbolic interactionism where perspectives from the theoreticians Mead and Goffman are used.