Den goda föräldern: En netnografisk dokumentstudie på ett internetforum för föräldrar

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this study is to investigate how pictures of good parenting is challenged, consolidated and renegotiated on a Swedish online-community for parents. This online-community includes a forum feature consisting of several categories, whereas data for this study were collected from the category “childrearing”. With a qualitative approach, a netnographic document study was used to obtain empirical data for this study. Data was collected from 64 threads written during a period of one year, in which the respondents were anonymous. Using intensive parenting and the concept of identity-work, expert knowledge and parental determinism as theoretical framework, this study describes the characteristics of the good parent. The most common characteristics of the good parent, as it is constructed by the material, is commitment, anxiety and knowledge acquisition. Furthermore, commitment is closely related to the concept of identity-work as well as to the ideals of intensive parenting, whereas anxiety and knowledge acquisition relates to parental determinism, respectively expert knowledge. Using knowledge from both experts and other parents, the parents in this study discusses and positions their own parenting style in terms of what constitutes good parenting.