Parents’ perspectives on the role of kin in child-rearing: a qualitative study on Greenland’s universal parenting programme MANU

ABSTRACTNurturing care and protection from parents and community in the early years of life are fundamental for a child’s development. The article aims to explore what relations parents see as meaningful in their child’s upbringing and how these are shaped, and how these perspectives are reflected i...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International Journal of Circumpolar Health
Main Authors: Christine Ingemann, Ingelise Olesen, Else Jensen, Tine Tjørnhøj-Thomsen, Christina Viskum Lytken Larsen, Siv Kvernmo
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Taylor & Francis Group 2023
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Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1080/22423982.2023.2225720
https://doaj.org/article/873c483d14b54a85827081fe139d3a7e
Description
Summary:ABSTRACTNurturing care and protection from parents and community in the early years of life are fundamental for a child’s development. The article aims to explore what relations parents see as meaningful in their child’s upbringing and how these are shaped, and how these perspectives are reflected in MANU. MANU is a universal parenting programme in Greenland. Ten of 40 interviews with parents were selected for the analysis of this article’s objective. Five grandparents were interviewed. Grandparents are the child’s closest extended family members and provide support to parents. Parents placed between one to 19 extended family members in their child’s network. Eating and being in nature together, along with familial and intergenerational connectedness, were deemed valuable and important aspects in child-rearing. Parents’ own experiences in childhood can influence and complicate how parents place their new family within the extended family. The MANU materials address aspects in the role of kin that parents and grandparents described in interviews. The format and delivery of MANU aims to be universal and mostly addresses Western epistemologies, but both Western and Inuit epistemologies coexists in Greenland. This article creates a window into the existing context parents navigate in. It is important that initiatives are built within this context to ensure they are relevant to families