Doing Good Parenthood Through Online Parental Involvement in Danish Schools

Abstract

In Denmark, involvement in children’s schooling has become an integrated part of contemporary parenthood, during the last 30–40 years. For parents, this involves keeping up to date with daily classroom activities through the schools’ Internet-based communication system, known as ‘Parent Intranet’. This chapter investigates how two schools involve parents through Parent Intranet, examining how parents experience and deal with its online, omnipresent demands and expectations concerning involvement. Based on observations of the communication from the schools to the parents and semi-structured interviews with the parents, a Bourdieusian analysis of the parental perspective is carried out. The analysis focuses on the terms and conditions under which the two schools involved the parents. The study shows how the schools’ digital efforts to involve parents implicitly required parents to continually be at the school’s disposal, willing and able to closely follow and assist with their children’s schooling. This chapter discusses how this results in the school acting as a gatekeeper for doing good parenthood.