Are Intensive Parenting Attitudes Internationally Generalizable? The Case of Sweden

Abstract

Attitudes promoting “intensive parenting” are prevalent in many countries and are associated with mothering and class privilege. Are intensive parenting attitudes widespread and similarly classed in Sweden, which has historically shifted burdens off parents and reduced inequalities? Using the 2021 Generations and Gender Survey, descriptive and latent class analyses identified predominant patterns of intensive parenting attitudes and sociodemographic predictors among Swedes. Moderate population-level agreement with measures of intensive parenting attitudes obscured subgroup variability in intensive parenting profiles and a reversed relationship with class. About half of respondents, disproportionately younger, foreign-born, and female, belonged to concordant latent classes that strongly or moderately subscribed to intensive parenting attitudes. Another third belonged to a discordant class dominated by older, Swedish-born, class-advantaged respondents espousing certain aspects of intensive parenting attitudes in a distinct pattern not yet identified elsewhere. This dissonance in predominant parenting attitudes among Swedes may have interesting implications for norms and policies.

Keywords

intensive parenting intensive mothering parenthood Sweden latent class analysis

Intensive parenting attitudes and behaviors have become prevalent in many wealthy countries. Characterized as “child-centered, expert-guided, emotionally absorbing, labor intensive, and financially expensive” (Hays, 1996, p. 8), intensive parenting is intended to ensure children’s future socioeconomic success in contexts characterized by uncertainty and inequalities. The related middle-class parenting style of “concerted cultivation” (Lareau, 2011) involves extensive verbal interaction and provision of enrichment opportunities, in which children learn interactional styles that mesh well with educational institutions (Calarco, 2018)—yet intensive parenting ideology can be associated with differing parenting styles that all involve heavy investments of various resources. Both qualitative and quantitative research on intensive parenting have their origins in the United States (Hays, 1996; Liss et al., 2013), but scholarship has demonstrated the presence of intensive parenting attitudes in other wealthy countries (e.g., Gauthier et al., 2021; Klimor Maman et al., 2023). Both countries’ policies and their normative contexts are crucial for shaping people’s attitudes and behaviors around parenting (Neyer & Andersson, 2008).

Sweden is a particularly interesting country in which to study intensive parenting attitudes, but they have not previously been measured there. Sweden is a global outlier both in terms of policies that support childrearing, gender-egalitarian norms, and economic equality and in terms of high public trust in institutions. These factors may reduce the attractiveness of intensive parenting attitudes, which place responsibility on individual parents—particularly mothers—and stress future insecurities for children. Thus, according to theoretical arguments about intensive parenting, Sweden is arguably a Western context in which intensive parenting attitudes may not be present. At the same time, Sweden is experiencing a shrinking social safety net and rising inequalities (OECD, 2015), and it is tightly interconnected with global media and information. These are reasons why intensive parenting may have spread even to Sweden.

In this study, we investigated the potential spread of intensive parenting attitudes to Sweden. We developed two contrasting, novel hypotheses grounded in extant literature that have implications for the international parenting literature beyond the Swedish context: the “international development hypothesis,” which expected intensive parenting to have become widespread in wealthy countries including Sweden, and the “Swedish resistance hypothesis,” which expected intensive parenting not to have gained an extensive foothold there. We moved beyond population-level averages to consider profiles of intensive parenting attitudes within individuals and across domains, a methodological strategy that has only occasionally been used when studying this topic. We asked what the predominant profiles of intensive parenting attitudes and their prevalence and sociodemographic composition were in a nationally representative sample of Swedish adults. Like many other studies, our study’s goal was not to adjudicate whether intensive parenting is harmful or beneficial for parents or children, but rather to characterize its prevalence, the predominant configurations of intensive parenting attitudes in the population, and their associations with different sociodemographic characteristics. Our results reveal a complex landscape in which a distinct, discordant profile including some intensive parenting attitudes but not others among older, privileged groups appears to be bumping up against more comprehensive intensive parenting attitudes among younger, female, and foreign-born Swedes. Social class is not operating in the expected way: class disadvantage, not advantage, predicts strong intensive parenting attitudes.

Background

Intensive Parenting

Intensive parenting is considered the dominant parenting paradigm in the contemporary United States (Damaske, 2013). Research has also documented its prevalence in other wealthy countries (Gauthier et al., 2021; Loyal et al., 2017). Rooted in neoliberal trends stressing personal responsibility (LeBesco, 2011), intensive parenting attitudes expect parents—particularly class-privileged mothers—to expend abundant resources in terms of time, money, and emotional investment. Foundational scholarship by both Sharon Hays (1996) and Annette Lareau (2011) has spurred related bodies of research that together inform the intensive parenting perspective. Fostering socioeconomic achievement to ensure children’s success in a future perceived to be uncertain and unequal has been considered the predominant focus. But as class-privileged notions of ideal parenting have become more holistic, emphasizing health, emotional security, and resilience, pressures have increased on parents to retain a focus on academic achievement while expanding their efforts to encompass these additional dimensions (Göransson, 2023; Mollborn et al., 2021).

Evidence from time use data suggests that intensive parenting practices are becoming more widespread. Across a variety of wealthy countries, mothers and fathers are spending more time caring for children than in past decades (Dotti Sani & Treas, 2016). US data show that parents have simultaneously increased their spending on childrearing (Kornrich & Furstenberg, 2013). Unsurprisingly, class-based achievement gaps have concomitantly widened (Reardon, 2018). More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic intensified pressures on parents in many contexts but also transformed family and work life, with likely implications for intensive parenting in the future (Cummins & Brannon, 2022; Montazer et al., 2022).

Evidence on the effects of intensive parenting is sparser but suggests that it is often not positive. Rizzo and colleagues (2013) found that mothers’ beliefs that parenthood is challenging predicted their higher depression and stress. Swedish mothers and fathers who shoulder the double burden of earning as much or more than their partner and taking as much parental leave or more are more likely to take sick leave (Lidwall & Voss, 2020). And although intensive parenting is expected to benefit children’s development, findings from Schiffrin and colleagues (2015) do not support this notion: As anticipated, adherence to the challenging and stimulation dimensions of intensive parenting predicted children’s enrollment in structured activities through the causal pathway of increased “anticipatory problem solving” in parenting. But these enrichment activities had few developmental effects for children.

Gender and socioeconomic status have long been considered especially important for understanding intensive parenting—indeed, Hays’s (1996) original formulation was “intensive mothering.” Evidence supports the idea that intensive parenting can be extended to fathers but that its pressures are particularly salient for women. On one hand, mothers and fathers are evaluated similarly positively when engaging in intensive parenting behaviors (Ishizuka, 2019). On the other hand, although many men are highly involved in daily parenting, they are still relatively shielded from intensive parenting pressures compared to women (Shirani et al., 2012). Shirani and colleagues have argued that to more fully incorporate the lived experiences of fathers, intensive parenting should be expanded to include pressures to provide financial resources for children.

Intensive parenting was originally formulated among White, middle-class mothers, although Hays (1996) expected support across social classes. Both class of origin and class of destination matter for parenting (Streib, 2013). Some early research found that parenting styles such as “concerted cultivation” differed markedly by social class (Lareau, 2011). But more recent studies have identified class-based similarities in attitudinal adherence to intensive parenting. Elliott and colleagues (2015) found in ethnographic research that low-income Black mothers subscribed to intensive parenting attitudes. Compounding intensive parenting pressures, poor mothers, especially women of color, must also spend considerable time, energy, and resources on “inventive mothering” to meet children’s basic needs and safety, work often rendered invisible (Randles, 2021). In a nationally representative survey experiment, Ishizuka (2019) found that concerted cultivation parenting behaviors were evaluated positively and similarly by respondents from different social classes and by women and men. Behavioral enactment of intensive parenting increases with socioeconomic status, presumably because of disparities in access to the substantial resources that are necessary (Bennett et al., 2012).

Intensive parenting has its origins in qualitative scholarship, fostering a long research tradition (e.g., Collins, 2019; Damaske, 2013; Elliott et al., 2015; Göransson, 2023; Klimor Maman et al., 2023). In the last decade or so, quantitative measurement of intensive parenting has also blossomed. Rooted in Hays’s (1996) work, the Intensive Parenting Attitudes Questionnaire (IPAQ) was developed with multiple measures within five domains: parenting as challenging, child-centeredness, stimulation, fulfillment, and gender essentialism (Liss et al., 2013; Mackintosh et al., 2014). The IPAQ was initially tested and validated with a convenience sample of predominantly white mothers, demonstrating validity and reliability. Because there appear to be differences in how it works for other groups by gender and race/ethnicity, more studies with diverse and representative samples are needed (Long et al., 2021).

The original US focus of intensive parenting research has expanded to incorporate other contexts, such as the United Kingdom, Estonia, and Slovakia (Gauthier et al., 2021), France (Loyal et al., 2017), Israel (Klimor Maman et al., 2023), and Singapore (Göransson, 2023). This expansion is important because both national policies and cultural norms can be expected to shape attitudes toward parenting (Neyer & Andersson, 2008). In related research, Collins (2019) compared middle-class working mothers in qualitative interviews in Germany, Italy, Sweden, and the United States, finding that both policies and norms were important for understanding the pressures and social reactions mothers experienced. Gauthier and colleagues (2021) compared three countries using quantitative measures of intensive parenting, finding a mixture of differences and similarities in average intensive parenting attitudes across national contexts. Differences were especially pronounced when examining specific domains of intensive parenting, suggesting that attitudinal profiles within individuals are complex and warrant further attention.

Our study emphasizes the importance in quantitative research of investigating individuals’ profiles of intensive parenting attitudes holistically, rather than relying only on population averages. This approach mirrors that often taken by qualitative researchers seeking to understand intensive parenting attitudes and experiences from the lens of the whole individual. Two findings discussed above support this approach: first, the country-level differences that vary by specific intensive parenting domain (Gauthier et al., 2021) and second, the differing reliability of the IPAQ depending on gender and race/ethnicity (Long et al., 2021). Further, age, gender, parenthood status, and socioeconomic status all predict intensive parenting attitudes differently across different domains (Gauthier et al., 2021). Factors such as gender and employment also intersect: Stay-at-home versus working mothers subscribe more strongly to different domains of intensive parenting (Liss et al., 2013). Qualitative research bears out the notion that different profiles of intensive parenting can exist across individuals: Israeli middle-class parents tend to subscribe to one of two “folk models” of intensive parenting, one focused on child-centeredness and another on stimulation (Klimor Maman et al., 2023).

Extant quantitative studies have used such a person-centered approach—in contrast to a variable-centered one—to examine profiles of intensive parenting attitudes within individuals. In hierarchical cluster analyses of attitudes about intensive parenting and combining work and mothering, Loyal and colleagues (2017) identified some clusters of French individuals that were internally discordant; in other words, these respondents subscribed to some facets of intensive parenting but not others. They found that socioeconomic status and the youngest child’s age predicted cluster membership. The presence of internally discordant clusters speaks to the importance of going beyond population averages to identify profiles of intensive parenting attitudes within individuals. Lankes (2022) conducted a latent class analysis among US mothers, identifying predominant profiles combining intensive parenting attitudes (in the domains of parenting satisfaction, fatigue, and gender essentialism) and behaviors. All identified latent classes of individuals were internally discordant. Membership in these latent classes varied significantly by socioeconomic status, age, race/ethnicity, and partnership status. These studies support a person-centered approach allowing for internal discordance in attitudes and domains of intensive parenting.

The International Development Hypothesis

In this study, we focus on Sweden, arguing that it provides a fruitful case for investigating the composition, distribution, and sociodemographic correlates of individuals’ intensive parenting attitude profiles. Rooted in international scholarship on intensive parenting, we articulate the international development hypothesis, which regards Sweden as part of a global system in which hegemonic ideologies often develop across contexts facing similar structural pressures and diffuse within populations and across national borders despite the presence of local normative contexts and policies (Pampel, 2011; Pampel & Hunter, 2012). Trends toward perceived uncertainty and inequality, in Sweden as in many other wealthy contexts, may be fostering the development of intensive parenting attitudes. Exposure to international media may accelerate this process. Swedes are unusually well-connected to the Internet (Kemp, 2021) and devote large amounts of time to consuming social media and online content (Guttmann, 2022). Much of this content is international rather than Swedish-generated, especially in this context where nearly 90% of the population is fluent in English (European Commission, 2012). People tend to look online for information about parenting (Kubb & Foran, 2020), and much of the information Swedes encounter is in English and produced in other contexts. All of these processes may serve to diffuse intensive parenting attitudes, which researchers have documented is predominant in many wealthy countries, including in Europe.

See Figure 1 for an articulation and comparison of our hypotheses. If intensive parenting attitudes have developed in Sweden as in other wealthy contexts, the population should on average show strong adherence. In profiles of intensive parenting attitudes within individuals, there should be a high proportion of the population with concordantly strong or moderate adherence to different domains of intensive parenting. Adherence to intensive parenting should be higher among women and parents, both because they are disproportionately held to the societally dominant parenting norms and because they may be more likely to be exposed to international online content about parenting. The international development hypothesis expects stronger adherence among younger respondents, those in urban areas, and the foreign-born—especially those from wealthy countries—because they are all more likely to engage with international online content that promotes intensive parenting attitudes. The international development hypothesis expects higher adherence to dominant parenting attitudes (in this case, intensive parenting) among the socioeconomically privileged, who have more resources to enact the culturally preferred parenting ideal. Findings on the international diffusion of gender egalitarianism further support the notion that international development first occurs among higher-SES people (Pampel, 2011).

Figure 1.

Summary of predictions and findings according to hypothesis. Notes: IP=intensive parenting.

Parenting in Sweden

There are many ways in which Sweden is unusual that instead poise it to become an exception to international intensive parenting attitudes. The Swedish state has long provided extensive supports for childrearing, such as lengthy parental leaves with multiple months reserved for both parents, child subsidies, paid leave to care for a sick child, and high-quality low-cost child care (Ferrarini & Duvander, 2010; Viklund & Duvander, 2017). Governmental policies have also focused on encouraging all parents to work for pay and promoting gender equality (Eriksson, 2019; Evertsson & Duvander, 2011). These policy supports may be important for understanding intensive parenting attitudes in Sweden because, relative to other contexts that have been studied, parents are not being expected to provide as many resources themselves and the burden of parenting is not expected to fall heavily on mothers.

Beyond policy supports directly related to parenting, Sweden’s traditionally low levels of socioeconomic inequality could be salient for intensive parenting attitudes. Intensive parenting is theorized to be driven by concerns about an insecure future and the need for children’s socioeconomic achievement to smooth the way for their futures (Gauthier & de Jong, 2021; Milkie & Warner, 2014). For example, Villalobos (2014) found that women who perceived more insecurity in their lives more often had attitudes and behaviors that were concordant with intensive parenting. If social safety nets and a relative lack of inequality make that future less uncertain, parenting attitudes may be less intensive.

But the situation is changing in Sweden. Economic and health inequalities have increased (OECD, 2015), and the shrinking social safety net is bifurcated between those with permanent work contracts and others, as well as between native-born Swedes and others (Parrilla Stoorhöök & Wedtström Kjerfh, 2020; Statistics Sweden, 2023). These rising inequalities could be making intensive parenting more salient in Sweden overall. They could also make intensive parenting unequally attractive for different groups. For example, foreign-born people and those without permanent work contracts might be more compelled to focus on intensive parenting in an attempt to ensure their children’s future socioeconomic success. All of these structural dynamics make Sweden a very different policy case from many of the countries that have been studied quantitatively to date.

Alongside these structural factors that likely shape intensive parenting are cultural norms. Sweden is an outlier with regard to norms around gender and parenting. Among European countries, Sweden has a high level of consensus in its gender ideology, which—together with other Nordic countries—stands out as being predominantly and consistently egalitarian across a variety of dimensions (Begall et al., 2023). At the same time, though, few fathers choose to take an equal share of parental leave (Duvander & Johansson, 2012; Duvander & Viklund, 2020), and motherhood comes with a wage penalty (Bygren et al., 2021). As a consequence, nearly half of new parenting couples still have gender-traditional divisions of parental leave and income (Lidwall & Voss, 2020). This speaks to the importance of not only policies, but also normative factors, for understanding intensive parenting in Sweden. Indeed, qualitative research has found that work–family policies alleviate much but not all of the parenting guilt experienced by Swedish mothers (Collins, 2021).

In contrast to the case of the United States, where mothers must justify their decision to work (Lamar & Forbes, 2020), Swedish norms and policies keep women attached to the labor market during the childbearing and early childrearing years. Nevertheless, some interesting trends may tell us about the preferences of mothers when faced with the demands of parenting and a career. Although recent cohorts of fathers have increased their parental leave uptake, women do not seem to have decreased their parental leave use at the same time (Nylin et al., 2021). Seen from another angle, more gender-equal leave sharing results in children starting preschool later (Viklund & Duvander, 2017), and when families can afford it, women take more unpaid parental leave (Duvander & Viklund, 2014). These behaviors suggest that Swedish women’s time commitment to parenting is robust, even as gender equality in parenting has increased.

Finally, Swedes’ levels of both generalized social trust and trust in welfare state institutions are relatively high (Delhey & Newton, 2005; Edlund, 2006). Beyond having policies and institutions in place, trusting state policies and institutions such as schools to care for children, provide them with sufficient opportunities, and prevent extreme inequalities may mean that essential fodder for the growth of intensive parenting attitudes is absent in the Swedish context.

Swedish Resistance Hypothesis

In contrast to the international development hypothesis articulated above, this discussion motivates our development of the Swedish resistance hypothesis, which expects that population-level adherence to intensive parenting attitudes in Sweden will be low to moderate rather than high. Looking at profiles of intensive parenting attitudes within individuals, Swedes may resist intensive parenting attitudes across the board, or they may present internally discordant profiles adhering to some aspects of intensive parenting and not others. But the Swedish resistance hypothesis expects that most Swedes will not subscribe to all intensive parenting attitudes.

This hypothesis further expects stronger adherence to intensive parenting attitudes among certain sociodemographic groups. Because parents and particularly mothers are disproportionately scrutinized for their adherence to dominant parenting norms, the Swedish resistance hypothesis expects women and parents to subscribe more strongly to dominant (non-intensive parenting) Swedish parenting attitudes. There is no clear expectation of a relationship with age or residential location (urban versus rural). Swedish-born respondents are expected to have been more exposed to dominant (non-intensive parenting) Swedish parenting attitudes and be more trusting of Swedish institutions, so should have higher levels of non-intensive parenting than foreign-born respondents. And those with privileged socioeconomic status, who are most able to enact the dominant parenting attitudes and who have the most to gain from an attitude that facilitates combining work and parenting, are more likely to adhere to dominant (non-intensive parenting) Swedish parenting attitudes. Examining population averages as well as latent class analyses modeling the different predominant profiles of intensive parenting attitudes within the population, we assessed these competing hypotheses among Swedish adults.

Method

Data

This study used data from the second wave of the Swedish Generations and Gender Survey (SGGS), a repeated cross-sectional survey. Administered online with a postal option between March and August of 2021 to adults aged 18–59, the survey focused on fertility and partnership behaviors in Sweden and other European countries. The 2021 survey included a new module of questions assessing respondents’ intensive parenting attitudes, designed to facilitate comparisons with findings in other countries. The response rate was 27%, yielding a sample of 8082. The response rate was low across all assessed subsample characteristics and was lowest for the foreign born. Probability weights were designed to account for nonresponse. After excluding 2.2% of respondents who were missing data on any included variable, our analysis sample consisted of 7907 respondents. Because intensive parenting attitudes are present in the broader culture, we chose to analyze both parents and (current) nonparents, but we compared these groups as well as potential future parents in supplementary analyses described below. Although the survey was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, Sweden had relatively looser restrictions. A survey item asking about the pandemic’s effects on respondents’ well-being had a modal response of “stayed the same,” with somewhat fewer respondents reporting positive compared to negative changes.

Measures

Intensive Parenting Attitudes

The intensive parenting module was grounded in the Intensive Parenting Attitudes Questionnaire (IPAQ), a 25-item scale assessing intensive parenting attitudes in five domains. Note that the scale is gender-neutral and thus captures intensive parenting—rather than intensive mothering—attitudes, which is a departure from early literature but may be an advantage in the Swedish context. Developed and validated among US mothers and non-mothers, the IPAQ has demonstrated high validity and reliability (Liss et al., 2013). Further validation has been conducted in France, with some differences from the US findings (Loyal et al., 2017). The smaller battery of items included in the SGGS focused on the three IPAQ domains most likely to be intensifying in recent years (Gauthier et al., 2021): the challenges of parenting, child-centered parenting, and children’s need for stimulation. Respondents reported whether they strongly agreed, agreed, neither disagreed nor agreed, disagreed, or strongly disagreed with six statements; see the left side of Table 1 for item frequencies and standard deviations. The two items with the highest factor loadings for each dimension in previous validation (Liss et al., 2013) were selected. Stronger agreement with each statement represents stronger intensive parenting attitudes. Challenging: 1) “Childrearing is a really demanding job,” and “Parents never get a mental break from their children, even when they are physically apart.” Child-centeredness: “Children’s needs should come before their parents’,” and “Children should be the center of attention.” Stimulation: “Finding the best educational opportunities for children is important as early as preschool,” and “It is important for children to be involved in classes, lessons, and activities that engage and stimulate them.” Having just two items per dimension and being limited to just three dimensions of intensive parenting are limitations of the SGGS data. Different dimensions and items may also carry different meanings for different subpopulations (Gauthier et al., 2021). It is also important to consider possible reverse causality: UK findings suggest that women’s attitudes toward gender essentialism in parenting may influence their employment status, at least in countries where stay-at-home motherhood is common (Borrell-Porta et al., 2023).

Table 1.

Class-Conditional Response Probabilities From Latent Class Analysis of Intensive Parenting Attitudes.

Source: Swedish Gender and Generations Survey, 2021.

Notes: N = 7907. Analyses are weighted. All items range from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree. SD = standard deviation. IP = intensive parenting. Color coding: dark green = highest agreement with IP, light green = higher agreement than average, light orange = higher disagreement than average, dark orange = highest disagreement, dark gray = highest neutrality, light gray = higher neutrality than average.

Independent Variables

See Table 2 for descriptive information on all analysis variables. SGGS respondents self-reported gender as male or female and age in years.¹ Age was recoded into unweighted quartiles: ages 18–30, 31–41, 42–50, or 51–59. The lowest quartile of respondents was below, and the rest at or above, the 2021 median age at first birth of 31. Nativity distinguished between Sweden as the respondent’s country of birth versus anywhere else. Supplemental analyses found that 75% of respondents were born in Sweden, 1% in other Nordic countries, 5% in Western European or Anglo countries, and 6% each in Eastern Europe, Africa or the Middle East, and other or unknown. Respondents’ current municipality type was coded as a large metropolitan area, medium-sized metropolitan area, or small town/rural area.

Table 2.

Means for Independent Variables Across Intensive Parenting Latent Classes.

Source: Swedish Gender and Generations Survey, 2021.

Notes: N = 7907. Analyses are weighted. IP = intensive parenting. Color coding used if p < .05 compared to overall mean: dark green = highest level of independent variable, light green = higher than average, light orange = lower than average, dark orange = lowest level.

Social class was operationalized through one measure of class background and two of current socioeconomic status (SES). Parents’ educational attainment, drawn from Swedish registers, captured whether the respondent’s mother or father had received at least 2 years of postsecondary education. Because this information was missing systematically depending on respondent’s country of origin and parents’ dates of death, we included an indicator for missing information. Respondents’ educational attainment, also drawn from register data, was coded as at least 2 years of postsecondary education versus less. Respondents’ self-reported employment status was measured as: employed with a permanent contract, employed with a non-permanent contract, self-employed, unemployed, student or trainee, on parental or child care leave, or other.

The main measure of parenthood status used in the analyses was the age of the respondent’s youngest child. Response categories were: respondent has no children, or age 0–2, 3–5, 6–10, or 11 or older. Alternative measures used in some analyses included: (1) an indicator of ever having had children versus not, (2) parity (coded as ever having had 0, 1, 2, or 3 or more children), and (3) age at birth of first child (coded as no children or having had one’s first child under age 25, 25–29, 30–34, or 35 or older).

Auxiliary Variables

Several other variables were included in descriptive but not multivariate analyses because of a consistent lack of significance (for the first two variables below) or similarity to already included variables (for the last two). Family structure of origin measured whether the respondent lived with both parents until age 15. Current relationship status was coded as married, cohabiting, living apart together (i.e., partnered but not married or cohabiting), or unpartnered. Respondents’ personal income was captured from Swedish register data. Respondents’ 2019 personal gross income from job and/or business was coded as: no income, 1–149,999 SEK, 150,000–299,999 SEK, 300,000–449,999 SEK, or ≥450,000 SEK. A self-reported measure of financial hardship recorded responses to how they “make ends meet”: with great difficulty, with difficulty, with some difficulty, fairly easily, easily, or very easily.

Analyses

Preliminary descriptive analyses examined the intensive parenthood survey items at the population level, their reliability as a single scale, and a factor analysis identifying potential subscales. Latent class analysis (LCA) was then conducted to identify different predominant profiles of intensive parenting attitudes within individuals in the population. LCA takes a person-centered structural equation modeling approach, using a set of observed indicators to identify a categorical latent trait that it assumes accounts for associations between the observed variables (Collins & Lanza, 2013). We estimated LCA models using the dolca package in Stata (Lanza et al., 2015) and then estimated predictors of the latent classes through a two-step approach. In using fit statistics to choose the best-fitting number of latent classes, we examined multiple fit statistics with particular weight on the Bayesian information criterion (BIC) because it rewards parsimonious models.

Each case was assigned a probability of membership in each latent class, and we assigned the class with the highest probability of membership to each individual. Item response probabilities and population shares for each latent class were calculated. Bivariate analyses identified relationships between these intensive parenthood latent classes and independent variables. In multinomial logistic regressions, we predicted the probability of membership in each latent class on the basis of the full set of independent variables. All analyses included probability weights to make findings representative of Swedish adults aged 18–59.

Results

Intensive Parenting Measures

When examining the intensive parenting items, we concluded that (1) the three intensive parenting domains received moderate support from Swedish adults on average and (2) intensive parenting attitudes were discordant, with respondents endorsing some much more than others. This provides some support for the Swedish resistance hypothesis.²

With the exception of the activities measure that reached 42% strong agreement (a finding anticipated in the Swedish qualitative literature; see Sjödin & Roman, 2018), none of the intensive parenting items received strong agreement from more than a quarter of the sample, and many were substantially lower. On average, Swedish respondents expressed moderate levels of agreement with the challenging dimension of intensive parenthood (see Table 1, first column). More than 70% agreed or strongly agreed that “childrearing is a really demanding job,” but slightly fewer than half of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that “parents never get a mental break from their children, even when they are physically apart.” Levels of consensus about parenting being challenging, indicated by standard deviations, were fairly high. Further supporting this point, few respondents (6% and 12%, respectively) disagreed or strongly disagreed. Some what similar levels of agreement and consensus were found for the child-centeredness dimension of intensive parenting. For both items (children as the center of attention and their needs coming first), 58% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed, slightly more than one third were neutral, and 7% disagreed or strongly disagreed.

The stimulation dimension incited more polarization.³ The item on the importance of finding “the best educational opportunities … as early as preschool” generated higher disagreement and lower agreement. Roughly one third of the sample disagreed or strongly disagreed, a third was neutral, and another third agreed or strongly agreed. The standard deviation was correspondingly larger. In contrast, the item on the importance of “classes, lessons, and activities that engage and stimulate” children provoked the most positive and unified response of all intensive parenting items. 90% agreed or strongly agreed, with almost no disagreement and high consensus.

Latent Class Analyses

Others have found that population-level averages of intensive parenting measures obscure considerable variation across individuals in profiles of intensive parenting (Lankes, 2022; Loyal et al., 2017). A person can subscribe to some aspects of intensive parenting but not others, for example. A latent class analysis approach can identify the predominant profiles of intensive parenting attitudes among individual Swedes, regardless of whether they are consistent or inconsistent within or across dimensions.

We estimated solutions from two to eight latent classes, comparing their goodness of fit based on multiple fit statistics and examining the sizes of very small classes, which can cause statistical power issues. The five-class solution emerged as the best-fitting class that did not result in a very small latent class containing 3% or less of the sample.⁴ This solution contained four internally concordant (i.e., with similar responses across intensive parenting items) latent classes that we have dubbed “strong intensive parenting,” “moderate intensive parenting,” “reject intensive parenting,” and “neutral intensive parenting,” and one large internally discordant class called “challenging/activities.” Information on the attitudinal profiles (displayed in Table 1 and Figure 2) and sociodemographic composition of each latent class (Table 2) follows. Because the sample was split roughly in half between concordant latent classes that adhered strongly or moderately to intensive parenting attitudes and either discordant latent classes or those that did not support intensive parenting attitudes, these findings provide partial support for both the Swedish resistance and international development hypotheses. Interestingly, parents and nonparents were not different in their predominant intensive parenting attitudinal profiles. In supplemental analyses that split latent class analyses by parenthood status, although proportions in each class differed, similar types of latent classes emerged. Restricting the latent class analysis of nonparents to those under age 42 (who might have future children) did not result in substantively different findings compared to including all nonparents.

Figure 2.

Means for intensive parenting attitude items by latent class. Source: Swedish Gender and Generations Survey, 2021. Notes: N=7907. Analyses are weighted. All items range from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree; thus, the edges of the graph represent stronger intensive parenting attitudes. Clockwise from the top, items capture the challenging, child-centeredness, and stimulation dimensions of intensive parenting attitudes.

First, the strong intensive parenting (“strong IP”) class comprised 17% of the sample. This class was distinguished by comparatively high levels of strong agreement with all six items (see Figure 2). Strong agreement was twice as high or more than in any other latent class. For example, 59% of “strong IP” respondents strongly agreed that childrearing is a really demanding job, compared to 0–20% of respondents from other latent classes. Table 2 shows that the “strong IP” class was disproportionately composed of female, younger respondents lacking permanent employment. They more often had young children, struggled financially, and lived in large metropolitan areas. 38% of “strong IP” respondents were foreign born, compared to 23% of the overall sample.

Second, the moderate intensive parenting (“moderate IP”) class was tied for the largest in the sample, at 36%. For all items, this class was characterized by low levels of disagreement and the highest levels of agreement (but not strong agreement) of all classes; see Figure 2 and Table 1. Table 2 shows that besides being more likely to have had children, those in the “moderate IP” class rarely deviated much from the sample mean. They were sociodemographically distinct from the “strong IP” class.

Third, the reject intensive parenting (“reject IP”) class, comprising just 4% of the sample, had the relatively highest levels of disagreement and strong disagreement on all six measures (see Figure 1). The percentage of respondents in this class who disagreed or strongly disagreed with each item was substantially higher than the percentage who agreed or strongly agreed, excepting the activities measure. Table 2 reveals its distinct sociodemographic profile. 56% were men and most were older with older children and older ages at first birth. They disproportionately came from small towns or rural areas and were more likely than other groups to have non-permanent or self-employment. Like the “strong IP” class, the “reject IP” class had a high proportion of foreign-born respondents, at 37%.

Fourth, the neutral intensive parenting (“neutral IP”) class was again small at 7%. Most respondents answered “neither agree nor disagree” on each item (see Figure 2). This neutrality was the most strikingly consistent pattern among the latent classes in Table 1. It is difficult to draw conclusions from use of the neutral response option because it can either reflect substantive neutrality regarding the attitude being measured or it can represent a pattern of nonsubstantive “satisficing” by frequently choosing the middle response option regardless of the question (Truebner, 2021). Use of the neutral response option has been increasing over time and is often related to older age and lower education (Truebner, 2021). Table 2 shows that “neutral IP” respondents were more often male, older, Swedish-born, unpartnered, and either childless or had 3 or more children, had lower education and came from lower-SES backgrounds, and came from small towns or rural areas.

Fifth, a second large latent class emerged that discordantly subscribed to aspects of intensive parenting—representing the only discordant latent class. The challenging/activities class (36%) was overrepresented in its agreement (but not strong agreement) with three intensive parenting items: the challenging dimension and the stimulation measure about children’s involvement in lessons and activities (see Figure 2). In contrast, a majority of “challenging/activities” respondents took a neutral position on the two child-centeredness measures, and most did not agree with the educational opportunities measure. This resulted in a distinct profile of discordant adherence to intensive parenting attitudes, agreeing that parenting is challenging and children should have stimulating activities but not that children should be centered or that seeking educational opportunities early is important. Respondents in the “challenging/activities” latent class had greater socioeconomic privilege than any other classes, both in terms of socioeconomic background and current SES (educational attainment, permanent employment, personal income, and financial hardship; see Table 2). Members of the “challenging/activities” class were the most likely of any class to be Swedish born. They were disproportionately male, older, cohabiting or living apart together, and had older children. Given the expected association between intensive parenting and class privilege in the international literature, the association of class privilege with this discordant class in Sweden is particularly interesting.

Multivariate Analyses

Table 3 reports results from multinomial logit models that compared each latent class to the base outcome of the “strong intensive parenting” class, as well as to all other latent classes. Many of the results support the hypothesis of international development of intensive parenting attitudes among younger, foreign-born, urban mothers. Gender structured the probabilities of latent class membership as expected by this hypothesis. Female respondents were 32% less likely than men to belong to the “reject IP” class compared to “strong IP.”⁵ The equivalent likelihood was 24% for the “challenging/activities” class compared to “strong IP.” In other words, the two latent classes that concordantly supported all measured aspects of intensive parenting were predominantly populated by women.

Table 3.

Coefficients From Multinomial Logit Models Predicting Intensive Parenting Latent Classes (Base Outcome=Strong IP, 20%).

Variable	Moderate IP			Reject IP			Neutral IP			Challenging/activities
% of sample	36%			4%			7%			36%
Female	−0.12	^d	(0.08)	−0.38	*	(0.15)	−0.20		(0.13)	−0.28	**^a	(0.08)
Age (<30)
31–41	0.01	^bc	(0.13)	0.53	*^a	(0.26)	0.42	*^a	(0.20)	0.17		(0.13)
42–50	0.21	^bcd	(0.16)	1.12	**^ad	(0.30)	1.18	**^ad	(0.23)	0.53	**^abc	(0.15)
51–59	0.26	^bc	(0.17)	1.17	**^ad	(0.33)	1.11	**^ad	(0.24)	0.45	**^bc	(0.17)
Foreign born	−0.53	**^d	(0.17)	−0.24	^d	(0.31)	−0.75	*	(0.30)	−0.86	**^ab	(0.17)
Municipality type (small town/rural)
Midsized metro area	−0.11	^c	(0.11)	−0.41	*	(0.20)	−0.45	**^ad	(0.16)	−0.17	^c	(0.11)
Large metro area	−0.21	^c	(0.11)	−0.45	*	(0.20)	−0.59	**^ad	(0.16)	−0.18	^c	(0.11)
Age of youngest child (none)
0–2 years old	0.00	^bcd	(0.16)	−0.91	**^a	(0.32)	−1.37	**^ad	(0.27)	−0.70	**^ac	(0.16)
3–5 years old	0.15	^bcd	(0.17)	−0.46	^a	(0.33)	−0.77	**^a	(0.26)	−0.46	**^a	(0.17)
6–10 years old	0.27	^bcd	(0.16)	−0.36	^a	(0.28)	−0.69	**^ad	(0.23)	−0.07	^ac	(0.15)
>11 years old	0.22	^bc	(0.14)	−0.31	^a	(0.24)	−0.53	**^ad	(0.20)	0.03	^c	(0.14)
Parental education (<2 years postsecondary)
>2 years postsecondary	0.17	^bd	(0.09)	−0.16	^ad	(0.17)	0.12		(0.14)	0.31	**^ab	(0.09)
Parent education missing	−0.35		(0.20)	0.12		(0.34)	−0.22		(0.34)	−0.25		(0.20)
>2 years postsecondary	0.15	^d	(0.09)	0.17		(0.17)	−0.07	^d	(0.14)	0.31	**^ac	(0.09)
Employment status (permanent contract)
Non-permanent contract	−0.13		(0.15)	0.19		(0.28)	−0.22		(0.25)	−0.29		(0.16)
Self-employed	−0.19		(0.17)	0.06		(0.29)	0.03		(0.24)	−0.01		(0.17)
Unemployed	−0.07	^d	(0.18)	−0.31		(0.36)	−0.14		(0.28)	−0.51	**^a	(0.19)
Student/trainee	0.04	^c	(0.15)	0.08		(0.29)	−0.45	^a	(0.25)	−0.05		(0.15)
Parental/child care leave	−0.24		(0.25)	−0.24		(0.58)	−1.36		(0.78)	−0.26		(0.28)
Other employment status	−0.23		(0.20)	0.00		(0.36)	0.13	^d	(0.27)	−0.40	^c	(0.21)
Constant	0.92	**^bc	(0.15)	−1.31	**^acd	(0.29)	−0.38	^abd	(0.22)	1.02	**^bc	(0.15)

Source: Swedish Gender and Generations Survey, 2021.

Notes: N = 7907. Analyses are weighted. IP = intensive parenting. Standard errors and reference categories in parentheses. *p < .05, **p < .01.

^a p < .05 compared to “moderate IP.”

^b p < .05 compared to “reject IP.”

^c p < .05 compared to “neutral IP.”

^d p < .05 compared to “challenging/activities.”

Age also structured latent class membership as expected by the international development hypothesis. Compared to respondents aged 30 or younger, those in the two oldest categories (ages 42–59) were significantly more likely to belong in the “reject IP,” “neutral IP,” and “challenging/activities” classes relative to “strong IP.” For example, compared to the youngest respondents, older respondents were more than 200% more likely to belong to the “reject IP” class relative to “strong IP.” These findings support the notion of intensive parenting ideologies being more prevalent among younger people. Further, results for municipality type supported the international development hypothesis. Relative to “strong IP,” respondents from midsized and large metropolitan areas compared to small towns and rural areas were significantly less likely to belong to the “reject IP” and “neutral IP” classes. This means that membership in classes supporting intensive parenting ideologies was higher in urban areas.

Parenthood status was also associated with intensive parenting classes as expected in the international development hypothesis. Parents with young children, in particular, were significantly more likely than nonparents to belong to the “strong IP” class relative to “reject IP” (148% more likely), “neutral IP” (294% more likely), and “challenging/activities” (101% more likely). Parents with preschool-aged children were significantly less likely to belong to “neutral IP” or “challenging/activities” relative to “strong IP,” and those with older children were less likely to belong to “neutral IP.” In other words, parents in the most intensive stages of their parenting careers were more likely than others to subscribe to intensive parenting.⁶

Supplemental analyses (not shown) interacted gender with the dichotomous measure of parental status. Parental status operated similarly on latent class membership across genders. In other words, both women and parents were more likely to belong to classes with strong intensive parenting attitudes, but being a mother did not further strengthen those relationships. Taken together, some multivariate findings supported the international development hypothesis by showing that membership in latent classes concordantly adhering to intensive parenting attitudes was often more prevalent among women, younger people, those in urban areas, and parents of young children.

The multivariate findings with respect to socioeconomic status were unexpected within both the intensive parenting literature and the international development hypothesis, instead partially supporting the Swedish resistance hypothesis. Rather than the classes with stronger support for intensive parenting being more socioeconomically privileged, it was the “challenging/activities” class, with its lack of agreement with many aspects of intensive parenting, to which socioeconomically privileged respondents disproportionately belonged.⁷ Either having at least 2 years of postsecondary education of one’s own, or having a parent with postsecondary education, predicted a 36% higher likelihood of belonging to the “challenging/activities” class (relative to “strong IP”) compared to having less education. Compared to unemployment, permanent employment was also associated with a higher likelihood of belonging to the “challenging/activities” class relative to “strong IP.” Differences according to other socioeconomic measures were not statistically significant.

Finally, nativity findings supported both the Swedish resistance and international development hypotheses. Foreign-born respondents, compared to the Swedish-born, were significantly more likely to belong to the “strong IP” class relative to the “moderate IP,” “neutral IP,” and “challenging/activities” classes. Being Swedish-born predicted membership in the “challenging/activities” class and weaker intensive parenting attitudes. There was no significant difference by nativity when comparing “reject IP” to “strong IP,” but being Swedish-born was associated with belonging to the “challenging/activities” class compared to “reject IP.”

Discussion

Intensive parenting attitudes, which promote extensive devotion of resources such as time, money, and emotional labor when parenting, are present in many wealthy countries. Sweden, with its long history of state intervention to shift the burdens of parenting away from individuals and equalize women’s and men’s work–life balance, is an interesting potential exception. Given longstanding norms and policies around parenting and given trust in institutions, has intensive parenting penetrated into Swedish adults’ attitudes? Providing the first assessment of this question, we developed and articulated novel competing hypotheses that have implications for the parenting literature beyond the Swedish context. The international development hypothesis posits that class-privileged intensive parenting is developing in Sweden as in other contexts experiencing uncertainties, inequalities, and pressures to follow expert parenting guidance. The Swedish resistance hypothesis instead suggests an alternative view of parenting as less intensive, rooted in Swedish culture and supported by Swedish institutions and policies.

We analyzed nationally representative 2021 Swedish Generations and Gender Survey data that measured three domains of intensive parenting based on internationally validated scales. Analyses compensated for the relatively low response rate using probability weights, but future data with higher response rates would improve generalizability. We found moderate average agreement with intensive parenting and fairly high consensus for most items, but endorsement of intensive parenting was discordant, with some items much more highly endorsed than others. We also found that these averages concealed important individual-level variation. In latent class analyses identifying predominant profiles of intensive parenting attitudes within individuals, about half the sample belonged to classes that moderately or strongly supported intensive parenting across the board. Nativity distinguished these classes, with the foreign-born overrepresented in strong intensive parenting. Importantly, one third of the sample was in a latent class subscribing to the challenging domain of intensive parenting but not the child-centeredness domain and to the importance of lessons and activities but not early educational opportunities. 89% of participants belonged to latent classes that at least partially endorsed intensive parenting. Just 11% of respondents were in classes that rejected or were neutral toward intensive parenting attitudes.

Some findings supported the international development hypothesis that intensive parenting attitudes are developing in Sweden among younger people, women, the foreign-born, urban dwellers, and parents of young children. But surprisingly, given extant intensive parenting research, the (so far) uniquely Swedish “challenging/activities” profile was more prevalent among the socioeconomically privileged, the Swedish-born, men, and adults in their forties and fifties—in other words, subpopulations with disproportionate power and influence in Swedish society. Among them, the Swedish resistance hypothesis was supported. Partial rejection of intensive parenting attitudes among more elite groups is unexpected in the international literature, and future research should examine whether this is driven by aspects of the Nordic context or is more widespread across countries.

Our results provide suggestive evidence for a hybrid of the two hypotheses representing competing parenting ideologies in contemporary Sweden. In this hybrid model, intensive parenting attitudes appear to be developing among those less supported by and trusting of Swedish institutions and bumping up against alternative parenting attitudes held by culturally privileged, established groups that adhere to some aspects of intensive parenting but not others. Especially because these differing ideologies map onto salient social dividing lines such as Swedish- versus foreign-born and urban versus rural, possibilities exist for cultural tensions around parenting norms. Such cultural tensions should be explored in contexts beyond Sweden.

Our findings suggest another interesting potential tension. Intensive parenting was originally documented among racially and class-privileged mothers and acknowledged as a strategy for protecting and perpetuating those privileges in the next generation (Hays, 1996). Yet in Sweden, cultural elites disproportionately subscribed to discordant parenting attitudes, and intensive parenting was more prevalent among non-class elites. If these attitudes translate into behaviors, and if children benefit more from a more universally intensive parenting approach, then this could result in narrowing of class divides in the next generation.

Yet structural pressures in contemporary Sweden are moving in the direction of potentially greater inequalities in the future (Robling & Pareliussen, 2017). The educational system is becoming increasingly segregated by social class and ethnicity (Böhlmark et al., 2016; Dovemark et al., 2018), the welfare state is contracting (Statistics Sweden, 2023), and dualization of social benefits is rising, with one track for the permanently employed and another for the rest (McKay et al., 2012). In other words, the generous interventions of the Swedish state to shift the burden of parenting off individuals are now disproportionately accessible to socioeconomically privileged, Swedish-born, older populations. Indeed, it is these groups who subscribed less to centering children’s needs above all and actively seeking out educational opportunities starting early in life. Other groups, who have disproportionately less access to state benefits for parents, appear to be responding by subscribing more heavily to all measured aspects of intensive parenting. When state support withdraws, individuals must step in to fill the gap—and when this withdrawal process is unequal, there may be important implications for inequalities that have not yet been documented in other contexts. Further qualitative research fleshing out the everyday experience of intensive parenting and quantitative research following Swedish adults’ intensive parenting attitudes into the future can shed more light on how societal shifts in state support for parents may track with individuals’ commitments to investing massive resources in intensive parenting.

Implications of Swedes’ intensive parenting attitudes for policy can be better fleshed out with future research, but this initial evidence shows that most Swedes agree that parenting is difficult. These attitudes are the strongest among a group of respondents who are often parenting young children and have relatively fewer resources at their disposal. These findings suggest that the Swedish social safety net is viewed as not sufficiently supporting parents, especially those who have higher needs. Investments in the safety net for parents could decrease many people’s sense that parents are responsible for individually shouldering the burden of providing a good upbringing for their children. Because intensive mothering has been associated with compromised well-being (Gunderson & Barrett, 2017; Rizzo et al., 2013), such investments could have implications for population health.

The lower-resource “strong intensive parenting” group also differs from other latent classes in perceiving a need to pursue educational opportunities from early in the child’s life. Such needs are not perceived among the other latent classes. As both school privatization and school segregation on the basis of class and ethnicity increase in Sweden (Brandén & Bygren, 2018), this speaks to a need to bolster educational support for all groups. Structured activities and sports in Sweden have a long history of support in the civic sphere (Støckel et al., 2010), but they are typically not organized through schools and do not have funding through the education system. The widespread agreement about the importance of stimulating activities could indicate unmet need for more formal supports of this aspect of children’s development. Whether resource-based differences in intensive parenting attitudes persist or deepen in the future, as cohorts become more consistently socialized in the era of intensive parenting norms, may depend on how Sweden’s policies related to inequalities, education, and parenting develop. Cross-national research is, nevertheless, key for understanding how policies influence parenting attitudes.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was supported by FORTE: Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare grant 2022-00490.

ORCID iD

Stefanie Mollborn

Notes

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