“I feel like I’m failing and don’t remember anything”, gendered aspects of guilt, anxiety and shame in connection to parental school and leisure work: Samviskubit, kvíði og skömm mæðra og feðra í tengslum við skóla- og tómstundavinnu barna

• Main Author: Auðardóttir, Auður Magndís
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: Icelandic
• Published: Menntavísindasvið Háskóla Íslands 2023
• Subjects: samstarf heimila og skóla; áköf mæðrun; einstaklingsvæðing foreldrahlutverksins; tilfinningar; tómstundastarf; Iceland
• Online Access: https://ojs.hi.is/index.php/netla/article/view/3902

Parents are increasingly expected to cooperate with schools about their children’s education and be educators in the home. They are also expected to organise the children’s leisure time with sports or other extra-curricular activities. This is also the case here in Iceland but this trend and its ramifications for families has not been scrutinised. Rather, it has been taken as a self-evident truth that this development is positive for families. This study aims to understand in what way guilt, anxiety and shame manifest with mothers and fathers in connection to their work around the schooling or organised leisure activities of their children. This refers to anything parents do to support their children in these areas, such as providing homework assistance, driving to a music or sports practice, and attending events. Through exploring these feelings, I aim to shed light on the social context of families in Iceland and its gendered dimensions. The data was collected through an online qualitative questionnaire where parents of children aged 0–18 years old were asked to describe their feelings in connection to parenthood. In total, 374 mothers answered the list, along with 76 fathers. The respondents were overwhelmingly university-educated and wrote fluent Icelandic. I analysed the data using reflexive thematic analysis and constructed two themes. The first theme is “Am I doing this correctly?” Mothers’ responsibility for homework and organised leisure activities. This theme revolves around the feelings of anxiety and guilt that the mothers express in connection to the myriad of ways they are expected to support their children’s schooling and leisure activities. The fathers, on the other hand, did not express these feelings. As it so happens, throughout this study, I am comparing the agonising guilt, shame and anxiety of the mothers to the silence of the fathers. It is clear from the answers that the mothers shoulder the lion’s share of work in support of their children’s schooling and organised leisure activities. ...