This article discusses the position of working parents in labour legislation and the protection that labour law offers to the employee in his or her capacity as parent. The article argues that the rules in labour law concerning employees’ parenthood, despite the fairly strongly formulated protection of their rights, in practice have a relatively weak normative position in working life and in labour law. The weakness of the rules on parenthood can be explained as a result of a normative conflict, or incoherence, affecting the judicial sphere, which means that deviating norms and values encroach on the rules about parenthood and weaken their position. The central aim of the article is to elucidate and analyse some aspects of this normative conflict.