Ways of Supporting Coparenting in Child and Family Services: Discourses of Involvement, Capacity Building and Reconciliation

In the research of parenting and family relations, there has been a visible shift from focusing on dyadic family relations-like parent-child-to triadic ones, such as coparenting. Likewise, in the family support research, knowledge about supporting coparenting of all parents has been called for. In this study, we were interested in what kind of discourses professionals construct to support parents to coparent, especially in the early phases of parenthood. The context of the study was preventive multiprofessional Finnish family centers. The data was collected in five focus group interviews from professionals (n = 21) working in health, social, child welfare and early childhood education and care services. Interviews were audio-taped, transcribed verbatim and pseudonymized. By identifying professional positions and two-fold agencies of parents, we could find three distinctive professional ways of supporting coparenting: discourse of coparenting involvement, discourse of coparenting capacity building, and discourse around coparenting reconciliation. In each discourse, the professionals used varying discursive strategies to assess and promote coparenting in the family system. Agency of father was emphasized in all discourses, but rights of the child were discussed mainly around reconciliation of coparenting. Results are discussed in the light of existing research on coparenting support. In practical implications for child and family services, we suggest that issues of coparenting are brought up to discussion actively by professionals, who can accordingly provide both universal and targeted support for families. The study is part of the research project Learning to coparent: A longitudinal, cross-national study on construction of coparenting in transition to parenthood (CopaGloba).