Precarious Care Labor: Contradictory Work Regulations and Practices for Au Pairs in Sweden

This paper focuses on the rules and regulations relating to au pair work in Sweden, and how these rules correlate with au pairing practices. The precarious position of au pairs has been highlighted before, but in addition, au pairs coming to Sweden also find themselves in an unclear work situation due to contradictory rules and regulations. While au pairs from outside the EU must apply for a work permit that defines their work as cultural exchange, this regulation does not apply to EU au pairs. As a consequence, we currently see the emergence of an almost completely unregulated— and growing—market for au pairing in Sweden. Drawing on a qualitative study of the private child care market in Sweden, this paper analyzes rules and regulations for au pairing, as well as how au pair working conditions are understood, negotiated, and realized by employing parents, and au pairs themselves. This is analyzed in relation to theoretical elaborations of paid and unpaid work, as well as discussions of care as a practice where ‘work’ and ‘emotion’ is inherently intertwined

Bortom kärnfamiljen? Omsorgsgörande från barns perspektiv

Research on children and care often take its point of departure in assumptions about the nuclear family as the hub of care.  In contrast, this study, by taking its point of departure in the actual practices and relations of care that children experience and engage in – accessed through children’s own narratives of everyday care – suggests new ways of understanding children and care. There is an ‘ordinary complexity of care’ it is argued, apparent in the presence of ‘others’ than parents – e.g., grandparents, siblings, friends, neighbours – doing care in children’s lives. The study also shows how the doing of care still is a gendered activity that seems to extend to female carers outside the nuclear family. Also, children’s own doing of care emerges, a doing that poses critical questions regarding children as ‘competent actors’

Konsten att lyckas som par : Populärterapeutiska berättelser, individualisering och kön

In this thesis, the expanding discourse of popular therapeutic culture on and for heterosexual couples is analysed. Three case studies have been carried out; self-help books for couples, TV programs with relationship-focus, and web discussion boards connected to the TV programs. The analysis is made in relation to sociological theories of individualization, therapeutic culture, feminist studies of couples and inequality, as well as inquiries of the private/public dichotomy. The thesis argues for a need to critically engage with the effects of individualization on couple relationships and gender. A responsible autonomous couple is constructed in popular therapeutic narratives. This couple is simultaneously autonomous and responsible for doing “couple work”, but also dependent on the experts’ definition of ideals of “the good couple” as well as on guidelines for ways to get there. As a result, the popular therapeutic narrative (contrary to the argument of theories of late modernity) ends up reproducing meaning-constitutive scripts for the heterosexual couple. In addition, the assumption of the responsible autonomous couple enables a reproduction of gendered stereotypes as well as gender inequality in the couple. Swedish popular therapy talks about the couple in gender-neutral terms, but e.g., the generalized “tools” offered to the participating women and men in the TV programs ends up reproducing traditional gender roles: men “take action”, “set limits”, and make decisions, and women “connect with their feelings”, “mirror” their men, and refrain from “controlling”. Furthermore, inequalities related to social structures and cultural norms of gender, such as unequal distribution of housework, cannot be framed as a “couple problem” in the discourse, but is understood in terms of “differences” related to “personality”. Popular therapeutic narratives are, however, challenged by the (mainly women) writers on the web discussion board. Most importantly, gender-neutral characterization of heterosexual couple relationships is questioned in the sharing of individual experiences. Thus, the thesis argues that popular therapy on the couple holds an – indirect – potential challenge of, not just the private/public dichotomy, but also the dichotomy of the personal/political

"You child is just wonderful!”

This article discuss the consequences of the ambiguous view of children in the ethical guidelines – the ambitions to “give voice” while also “protect” – with a point of departure taken in the Swedish context, and in an actual research process of a project on children and care. It shows how the regulation of informed consent through the parent compromises the ideals of child-centred research; firstly, by limiting the child’s possibility to opt in to research; secondly, by affecting the relationship between researcher, child and parent in the research encounter; and thirdly, by jeopardizing the child’s right to confidentiality. The author argues that we should view not only the child’s but also the adult’s consent as a “continuous negotiation” and discusses strategies for strengthening the child’s right to opt in and participate in research on equal terms

Negotiating Closed Doors and Constraining Deadlines: The Potential of Visual Ethnography to Effectually Explore Private and Public Spaces of Motherhood and Parenting

Pregnancy and motherhood are increasingly subjected to surveillance, by medical professionals, the media and the general public; and discourses of ideal parenting are propagated alongside an admonishment of the perceived ‘failing’ maternal subject. However, despite this scrutiny, the mundane activities of parenting are often impervious to ethnographic forms of inquiry. Challenges for ethnographic researchers include the restrictions of becoming immersed in the private space of the home where parenting occurs, and an institutional structure that discourages exploratory and long-term fieldwork. This paper draws on four studies, involving 34 participants, which explored their journeys into the space of parenthood and their everyday experiences. The studies all employed forms of visual ethnography including artefacts, photo-elicitation, timelines, collage and sandboxing. The paper argues that visual methodologies can enable access to unseen aspects of parenting, and engender forms of temporal extension, which can help researchers to disrupt the restrictions of tightly time bounded projects

An ordinary complexity of care : Moving beyond 'The Family' in research with children

For some time, studies of care in personal relationships have managed to move beyond a taken-for-granted focus on the nuclear family. In addition, studies of children and care have shown children's active engagement in doing care. In the project presented here, these two insights have been combined by allowing children to tell about and reflect upon their everyday life and caring situation, without preconceived assumptions of in what relationships and under what circumstances care is 'done'. The results reveal that there are significant practices and relations of care around children outside the nuclear family. I argue that an 'ordinary complexity of care' exists in children's lives, and these caring practices and relationships need to be taken into account in studies and conceptualizations of children and care. To capture this, the researcher must conduct careful methodological and conceptual work to allow the research participants to include 'others' in their telling of their everyday life

The Threat or Promise of Popular Therapy? A Feminist Reading of Narratives of 'the Good Couple'

Popular therapeutic culture—such as self-help books, TV programmes, and Internet resources—is growing rapidly and posing important questions for feminist research and politics. On the one hand, it can be seen as a challenge to the public sphere in terms of what can be shown and said and by whom, with the emancipatory potential of giving political credentials to the personal. On the other, it can be seen as exploiting, and thereby reproducing, stereotypes and inequalities, such as those related to gender. In this article, the discussion is advanced by the use of Swedish popular therapy for couples as a point of departure. It is argued that a cultural narrative of the “good couple” is constructed in self-help books and TV programmes on relationship issues, a narrative that seems to keep the unequal nature of this heterosexual institution from being challenged. However, in the individual narratives of consumers of this culture, apparent on web discussion boards, the cultural narrative of the “good couple” is being challenged, not least with reference to gender and gender inequality