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In this article the focus is on young parents' engagement process in relation to participation in parenting support groups carried out at child welfare centers. This qualitative study focuses not only on young parents' reasons for participating or not participating in parenting support groups during different phases in their engagement process, but also on examining the circumstances that may contribute to such changes. The results show that these reasons can be divided into four categories: the staff, other participants, the social network, and practical circumstances. It also appears that these reasons change between different phases of their engagement process. Primarily three different circumstances contributed to variation in parents' reasons: difficulty in predicting the value of participation, increased closeness in relationships with staff and other parents, and the specific life phase in which young parents find themselves. The results have important implications for policy makers and practitioners in their work in formulating and updating parenting support; they also indicate what may be important to focus on in the recruitment of young parents, and also what may be crucial in regard to them completing their engagement in parent support groups.

In this paper, we explore meanings of adulthood and youthfulness in relation to notions of life course, good motherhood, and girlhood among young mothers in Sweden. Our analysis was informed by a discursive psychological approach and was based on interview conversations with 17 mothers who were 13–25 years old at the birth of their first child. In our analysis, we identified two repertoires – the ‘social age’ repertoire and the ‘chronological age’ repertoire. The interviewees invoked the two repertoires to position themselves and others as either responsible adult mothers or as responsible youthful mothers. Meanings of adulthood are central within the idea of motherhood, and by deviating from their expected life course young mothers are often understood as non-adults who are incapable of fulfilling the developmental task of motherhood. Our work suggests that the maternal identity work of young mothers takes place within discourses of both adulthood and youthfulness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the western understanding of a nuclear family and the idea of good motherhood, the need for grandparental support is commonly viewed as an expression of deficient motherhood. Young mothers are often seen as incapable of maternal practices and as being in need of support from their extended family. An alternative view is that too much support might result in the grandmothers taking on the role of mother. This paper explores research around the ambivalent meanings of grandparental support in young Swedish mothers’ narratives. In this research, we identified three repertoires: inhibiting, being-there-no-matter-what and responsibility. Mothers who were following their expected life course achieved a subject position as a “real mother” within a functioning nuclear family. Mothers deviating from their expected life course achieved a subject position as either a “mother in becoming” with a functional and supportive extended family or as a “real mother” with a dysfunctional and non-supportive extended family. In the case of young mothers who are seen as insufficient, motherhood might become negotiable and fluid between the biological mother and the young mother’s own mother. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, many countries spend a great deal of money and effort on programs for expert-guided parenting support to be carried out in face-to-face groups. One goal of such support is to target, help, and educate “risky” groups of parents, such as young parents. It is striking, however, that young parents have a conspicuously low degree of participation in this type of parenting support. Drawing on the assumption that many young parents go online to seek, give, and receive peer parenting support, this paper presents a case study of activities within three Facebook groups. Using a combination of social network analysis, online ethnography, and interviews, we analyze how social network relationships and discussions differ depending on whether the analyzed Facebook group in question is administrated by professionals or peers, what the role of professional experts is, and how young parents might use social media to take control of their own support needs. Our results indicate that some of the affordances provided by Facebook might contribute to a challenging of the roles of “skilled” professionals versus “risky” young parents. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]