Swedish parents today raise their children in a welfare state, where childcare is both accessible and affordable, and often within dual-income households. At the same time, they have witnessed a challenged welfare state affected by cutbacks, privatizations, and the demands of an increasingly flexible working life. Previous research has shown that Swedish grandparents are more involved in their adult children’s family lives today, and that grandparental involvement is often understood as crucial for parents’ everyday lives and their children’s upbringing. Given this background, this article aims to analyse intergenerational care and relationships, with a specific focus on negotiations and responsibilities between adult children and their parents. It is based on a qualitative study on intergenerational care in Sweden involving grandparents, adult children and grandchildren (63 interviewees), and focuses specifically on the narratives of adult children, examining how they navigate their role as the link between grandparents and children. It explores the paradox between “having it all” and “needing more”, highlighting the increasing dependence on the grandparent generation in everyday life, as well as changing ideals around both parenting and grandparenting. This, we argue, contributes to and also partly challenges the contemporary parenting ideology of “intensive parenting” in the Nordic context.

While the role of grandparents has increasingly been explored, the position of being a grandchild is under-researched. Recognising the active role of children in intergenerational care relationships, we analyse narratives of being a grandchild in Sweden in the 1940s–1950s, the 1970s–1980s, and today. Interviews with 63 participants of both genders show how conditions for care-doings change in response to welfare state developments and in relation to new ideals of childhood. Intensified engagements by grandparents in the life of grandchildren are identified, but also continuity in the significance of close and reciprocal relationships between grandchildren and grandparents.

Grandparents' involvement in their adult children's families has increased in recent decades, especially in relation to care arrangements around grandchildren. This 'new army of proxy parents' calls for the need to critically analyse grandparental care. Drawing on a study on intergenerational care in Sweden, involving grandparents, adult children and grandchildren (63 interviewees including 28 grandparents), we suggest the concept of intensive grandparenting as an analytical lens for understanding contemporary grandparental involvement in care for grandchildren. Intensive grandparenting is done in a complex and ambivalent relation to parenting, making grandparents 'proxy parents' that help realise intensive parenting ideals, while also realising 'good grandparenting' ideals through adding a 'golden touch' to grandparent-grandchild relations. This growing involvement of grandparents, while highly appreciated, risks reproducing gendered and classed inequalities within and between families.

This chapter examines migration and families through the lens of privatised childcare. Domestic and care work have become migrant niches, mediated by national scale policies and cultures. We use the framework of 'regimes' of care, migration, welfare and work to contrast the cases of the UK and Sweden. We show that in the UK deregulated au pairing has grown within regimes that bolster long hours of paid work for parents and cultural preferences for 'mother-like' care. In Sweden the neoliberalisation of welfare regimes has brought a rhetoric of 'freedom of choice' together with the long-standing goal of gender equality. One outcome has been a tax policy that has underpinned growth in nanny and au pair employment. In both countries the employment of domestic workers and au pairs has supported existing gender inequalities, stratifying them by class and nationality rather than challenging assumptions about women's place in the home.

AbstractPolitical initiatives such as tax deductions for domestic services including nannies have, together with a growing au pair market, paved the way for new possibilities of organizing child care and parenting in Sweden. This affects everyday ‘local care loops’ for the upper-middle-class families purchasing the services, as the logistics of solving the work-family dilemma change with the possibility of hiring cheap female—and often migrant—care workers (Näre & Isaksen 2019). In this chapter, we analyse how this affects the doing of family in ‘nanny families’. Taking our point of departure in a qualitative study with nannies and au pairs (n = 26), parents (n = 29), and children receiving care (n = 19) (Eldén and Anving 2019), we show how everyday care is experienced and understood from the perspective of different actors involved in the practice, with a special focus on ideas of ‘quality time’. We argue that the new possibilities of organizing care and time in families reproduce inequalities: the new local care loops enable the possibility for some—well-off—parents to realize ideals of ‘good and stress-free parenting’, with quality time with their children, while at the same time not giving up on the idea of gender equality.

Objective: This paper analyses intergenerational relationships in Sweden during the corona pandemic, with a special focus on practices of care. The research question is: How is care between generations – between grandparents, adult children and grandchildren – done during pandemic conditions? Background: In Sweden, where an extensive welfare state provides affordable child- and eldercare, the corona strategy of generational separation has still affected family practices of care between generations. In this article we analyse narratives of intergenerational care, taking our point of departure in theories of personal life (Smart 2007), relationality (Mason 2004), and care as sentient activity (Mason 1996). Method: The paper draws on a qualitative interview study with grandparents (n=30), adult children (n=12) and grandchildren (n=12), with data collection taking place shortly before and during the coronavirus pandemic. Results: The study detects the reciprocal and complex ways in which care between generations takes place. When people relate their experiences, strategies for new ways of doing care are at the centre, involving creative ways of negotiating distance and risk, all marked by both worry and relief. Conclusion: The pandemic condition becomes a "filter" affecting and leading to a reformulation of practices of care, from taken-for-granted co-presence narratives, into narratives of relational participation resulting in an overall heightened awareness of the importance and difficulties of intergenerational care practices. The study concludes that a strong welfare state does not translate into complete autonomy or independence; rather, people continue to live "linked lives".

Sverige är ett få länder i världen som reglerar forskningsetik i lag. Men vad händer när en enhetlig lagstiftning inte har hänsyn till olika forskningsdiscipliners särart, och forskningsetiken formaliseras i ämnesövergripande förordningar? Den formella process som etikprövning av forskning har utvecklats till kan innebära en utmaning för möjligheten att bedriva sociologisk forskning, både vad gäller anpassning till en byråkratisk diskurs och i kontakten med respondenter. Det här samtalet baseras på ett seminariesamtal som organiserades av sociologiämnet på Södertörns högskola den 17 november 2021, där Jonas Edlund, professor i sociologi vid Umeå universitet, Sara Eldén docent och lektor i sociologi vid Lunds universitet och David Wästerfors, professor i sociologi vid Lunds universitet deltog. En av tidskriftens redaktörer, Lena Sohl, var moderator.

The corona pandemic has put intergenerational relationships in focus in ways previously never experiences. In many national contexts, lockdowns and restrictions have caused forced generational separation in families. In Sweden, the official government standpoint of generational separation – all citizens over 70 were to avoid contact with others, and especially to stay away from interactions with grandchildren – has severely affected practices of care and emotional support between generations. This has brought attention to the persistent significance of care between generations in Sweden, contrasting sociological theories depicting the country as the ’most individualized’ society in the world where the expansive welfare state is seen to have led to ‘defamiliarisation’ and weakening intergenerational ties (Bauman 2003; Berggren Tragardh 2006). Previous research, including our on-going study Intergenerational care in Sweden (SRC Elden 2018-01053), show that involvement by grandparents in everyday care of adult children’s families has increased in recent decades, as has engagement of adult children in everyday care of grandparents. During corona, these engagements are challenged, and the consequences thereof are multifaceted (Kivi et al 2020; Iversen et al 2020). This paper analyses the effects of the corona situation on intergenerational care relations, focusing how care is done, understood and negotiated (Morgan, 2011; Mason, 1996) between elderly parents and their adult children and grandchildren. Of special interest is the effects of forced separation on relationships regarding practical care arrangements, emotional support and commitments. Our point of departure is a study where data (biographical interviews, diary interviews, lifelines, drawing exercises with grandchildren) from grandparents, adult children and grandchildren has been gathered. So far, 45 individuals have been interviewed, several in repeated encounters, before and during the pandemic. (Less)

Senaste numret av Sociologisk Forskning är här, och med detta nummer säger vi från Lundaredaktionen tack för oss! Det har varit spännande år, framför allt för att det har gett oss en fin inblick i och insikt om hur mycket bra sociologisk forskning det görs runt om i landet. Det har också stärkt oss i övertygelsen om Sociologisk Forsknings viktiga plats i svensk sociologi. Det behövs ett forum som detta – i dag kanske mer än någonsin – där sociologi om och av forskare verksamma i Sverige kan presenteras, delas och debatteras. I detta vårt sista nummer presenterar vi tre originalartiklar som alla presenterar och diskuterar empirisk ny forskning om aktuella ämnen. Numret innehåller också fyra recensioner av nyutkomna verk.