Parent education surfaced as a political question in Sweden in the 1960s and support for parents has since remained on the political agenda. Despite different views on the ideal relationship between the welfare state, the family and children, support for parents has been advocated by parties from all over the political spectrum. By tracing the political debate, this article addresses the question of how the notion of support for parents was adapted to different political ideas, ideologies and ways of defining the relationship between state, family and children from the 1960s until the 2000s in Sweden. We analyse the arguments that different political parties offered and the varying meanings attributed to terms like ‘parent education’ (föräldrautbildning) and ‘parenting support’ (föräldrastöd) during three different phases in the transformation of the Swedish welfare state: the final period of its expansion in the 1960s and 1970s; the economic crisis and retrenchments of welfare services in the 1990s; and the era of individual responsibility in the 2000s. Support for parents has been actualised as a solution to different social and political problems and the notions of parent education and parenting support have proven the capacity to accommodate different political ideas, ideologies and visions.

Barn, barndom och samhälle. Svensk utbildningshistoria handlar om skolor och alla de personer som funnits i dem: elever, studenter och lärare i första hand, men även andra, som skolpolitiker och debattörer. Boken handlar också om samhällsförändringen i stort från det sena 1500-talet fram till i dag. Skolans historia har formats av många parallella förändringsprocesser: klassamhällets och demokratins utveckling, förändrade föreställningar om samhällets behov av kvalifikationer och krav på medborgarna, nya vetenskapliga rön om barn och uppväxtförhållanden samt läraryrkets förändring. Därmed är detta också en bok om barn och barndomens historia, om synen på barns kulturella och sociala plats samt om föreställningar om normalitet och avvikelse.

Skolans och utbildningsväsendets historia handlar dessutom om hur en obligatorisk skola ska se ut för att den ska passa alla barn men samtidigt skapa förutsättningar att ta till vara på varje barns unika möjligheter. Varför är utbildning i skolor både en plikt och en möjlighet? Hur påverkar och påverkas skolan av välfärdssystemets utveckling? Det är den historien den här boken beskriver.

"The Swedish toy industry has long produced vast quantities of colorful, quality wooden items that reflect Scandinavian design and craft traditions. This superbly illustrated book, including specially commissioned photography, looks at over 200 years of Swedish toys, from historic dollhouses to the latest designs for children. Featuring rattles, full-size rocking horses, dollhouses, and building blocks to skis, sleds, and tabletop games with intricate moving parts, Swedish Wooden Toys also addresses images of Swedish childhood, the role of the beloved red Dala horse in the creation of national identity, the vibrant tradition of educational toys, and the challenges of maintaining craft manufacturing in an era of global mass-production. " 

   The well-being of children represents a challenge not yet fully confronted and The Handbook of Child Well-being supplies its readers with a thorough overview of the complexities and implications regarding the scientific and practical pursuit of children's well-being. The handbook addresses the concept of well-being through an in-depth analysis of the perspectives and vocabularies of various disciplines such as, philosophy, theology, psychology and sociology. It covers important issues in child well-being and the problems of the general politics of well-being as well as the implementation of interventional programs and measures. In addition the handbook deals with the methods of measuring well-being for a scientifically grounded understanding and also for policy-making. The interdisciplinary set up of the handbook makes it a unique work that offers readers from a vast scope of child-related disciplines and professions a profound overview of the complexities and implications of the scientific and practical pursuit of childrens well-being

In this article, changing treatment ideologies and policies in child psychiatric outpatient services in Sweden from 1945 to 1985 are examined. The aim is to discuss the role played by psychoanalytic and psychodynamic thinking in this process of change. When mental health services for children were introduced in the mid-1940s, psychoanalytic thinking was intertwined with the social democratic vision of the Swedish welfare state in which children symbolized the future. In practice, however, treatment ideology was initially less influenced by psychoanalytic thinking. From the early 1960s, child psychiatric services expanded and the number of units increased. By then, the political vision had disappeared, but a treatment ideology began to evolve based on psychodynamic theories, which became dominant in the 1970s.

I denna rapport sammanfattas arbetet som bedrivits av forskarna vid tema Barn, Linköpings universitet, inom ramen för projektet Samverkande föräldrastöd: nätverk för forskning och utveckling. Projektet har pågått under 2010 och 2011, och är ett samarbete mellan Linköpings kommun, omgivande kommuner i Östergötland, landstinget i Östergötland, idéburna organisationer, Centrum för kommunstrategiska studier, och Linköpings universitet. Projektet är finansierat av Folkhälsoinstitutet, och ingår i en större satsning initierad av Socialdepartementet, som tilldelat medel till kommuner och lärosäten för att utveckla metoder för förebyggande arbete kring föräldrastöd och barns psykiska hälsa.

I slutet av 2008 publicerades den statliga utredningen om föräldrastöd, Föräldrastöd – en vinst för alla: Nationell strategi för samhällets stöd och hjälp till föräldrar i deras föräldraskap (SOU 2008:131), där kommuner, landsting och ideella organisationer uppmuntras utveckla och samordna föräldrastöd i olika former. Den nationella strategin betonar generella insatser, det vill säga insatser som är riktade till alla föräldrar med barn mellan 0-18 år. Generella insatser syftar huvudsakligen till att förebygga viss problematik (prevention) och främja hälsa (promotion). Föräldrastöd definieras som ”ett brett utbud av insatser som föräldrar erbjuds ta del av och som syftar till att främja barns hälsa och psykosociala utveckling” (SOU 2008:131, s. 45). Sommaren 2009 utlyste Folkhälsoinstitutet medel som kommuner i samverkan med ett lärosäte kunde söka för att utveckla det generella förebyggande föräldrastödet. I Linköpings kommun gav ansvariga politiker tjänstemän i uppdrag att söka samarbetspartners vid universitetet och sammanställa en ansökan. Tema Barn, Institutionen för Tema, Linköpings universitet, kontaktades och en gemensam ansökan för projektmedel skrevs fram, efter en inventering av föräldrastödjande insatser i länets kommuner och utvecklingsbehov. I slutet av 2009 beviljade FHI medel till projektet ’Samverkande föräldrastöd – nätverk för forskning och utveckling’, med Linköpings kommun och tema Barn som huvudsökande.

In the Western world, the modern view of childhood as a space protected from broader adult society first became a dominant social vision during the nineteenth century. Many of the West's sharpest portrayals of children in literature and the arts emerged at that time in both Europe and the United States and continue to organize our perceptions and sensibilities to this day. But that childhood is now being recreated.  Many social and political developments since the end of the World War II have fundamentally altered the lives children lead and are now beginning to transform conceptions of childhood. Reinventing Childhood After World War II brings together seven prominent historians of modern childhood to identify precisely what has changed in children's lives and why. Topics range from youth culture to children's rights; from changing definitions of age to nontraditional families; from parenting styles to how American experiences compare with those of the rest of the Western world.Taken together, the essays argue that children's experiences have changed in such dramatic and important ways since 1945 that parents, other adults, and girls and boys themselves have had to reinvent almost every aspect of childhood.  Reinventing Childhood After World War II presents a striking interpretation of the nature and status of childhood that will be essential to students and scholars of childhood, as well as policy makers, educators, parents, and all those concerned with the lives of children in the world today.

The life course of women and men in most soc1et1es simply does not allow for childbirth and rearing during the entire period women are able to reproduce. Choices ha ve always been made not to ha ve children. Child bearing and the choices it involves have also been a source of social, cultural, and political conflict as the historiography of women, family, and fertility makes very clear. Yet it is also evident that revealing a society's attitudes towards infanticide and abortion, the subjects dealt with here, exposes the parameters of what is sanctioned or accepted as ways to limit reproduction in any particular society at any particular moment in time. Determining these restrictions has been central to policies on the regulation of populations practiced by the church, the state, government agencies, and civil society organizations such as medical societies and philanthropic organizations. Boundaries were also set by the norms developed in families and kinship networks. The negotiations related to these !imitations reflect not only the position of women and concepts of family, but they are also integrated into the understanding of children and childhood during different periods of time.

Critical issues such as these have been addressed through legal changes, the development and use of church registers, the establishment of midwives, the refinement of statistical surveys, the spread of education, and the conscious development of family and population policy. In a wider context, the understanding of populationchange and analyses of sexual behavior also had a bearing on and interacted with the techniques and technology of governance as early as the introduction of Chnstianity, during the debates on the high rates of infanticide of the seventeenth century, during the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century discussions about the predicament of unwed mothers, and in the discussions on the rise of the welfare system <luring the early to mid-twentieth century. The alternatives that emerged over the course of the centuries - criminalization, moral sanctions, more lenient legislation, the use of welfare schemes, and information campaigns - all had relevance, but the development of new surveillance techniques and knowledge systems also formed and transformed the understandings of the identity of the fetus and the newly born. The conflicts during the introduction of the Christian church form the backdrop for this article, begmnmg with the early modern era. It continues through the pivotal legislative action of the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, and then discusses the political and sc1enufic premises on which the Swedish welfare system was created in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.