Parental restrictions on young minority Norwegians: Prevalence and patterns in and out of school

Abstract

Nordic studies have shown that minority parents more often than majority parents are restrictive with regard to young girls' participation in gender-mixed activities and relationships. Such restrictions challenge norms for child-rearing in the Nordic welfare state: gender equality and increasing self-determination with age. Parental restrictions may also involve protection, and the boundary between legitimate protection and illegitimate control may not always be clear-cut. In this article we explore the prevalence of parental restrictions and variation with regard to minority status, gender and age based on data from the Young in Oslo 2018 survey. We also analyse factors that contribute to explain restrictions statistically. In line with previous Nordic studies, we find that girls with backgrounds from countries in Asia and Africa experience more restrictions compared with other young people. The analyses also show that parents' country of origin, religious affiliation, degree of religiosity, as well as perceptions of neighbourhood risk contribute to explaining restrictions outside of school. Only affiliation with Islam and degree of religiosity contribute to explaining restrictions on participation in school activities. A contribution of this study is to show that while the level of restrictions decreases with age for young people in general, this is not the case for minority girls. Implications of the findings are discussed.