Who Embraces Intensive Parenting? Migrant Background and Parenting Attitudes in Sweden

Sweden has been shown to have a high prevalence of intensive parenting attitudes, including a potentially unique configuration of selective intensive parenting attitudes. Assessing whether migrants in Sweden from different parts of the world share these attitudes gives us a possibility to see whether people from certain origins are more prone to embrace or reject this parenting culture development, as well as whether there is convergence in attitudes between individuals with a Swedish background and second-generation individuals. Investigating latent classes of intensive parenting attitudes using the Swedish Generations and Gender Survey (2021), we found no evidence of a wealthy-poor country divide in adherence to intensive parenting attitudes. The pattern of moderate or selective intensive parenting attitudes, coupled with few who reject or have strong intensive parenting attitudes, was shared by migrants only from other Nordic countries. Migrants from the Middle East and North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa had the strongest attitudes and rejection remained rare for all groups. Second-generation individuals had nearly identical parenting attitudes to those with a Swedish background. Although non-Nordic migrants were more likely than those with a Swedish background to focus on educational achievement in parenting, their intensive parenting attitudes encompassed more than this dimension. Our results point to two likely forces: non-Nordic migrants may be selectively more prone to attitudes that prioritize children’s development, and structural inequalities in Sweden may influence the scope and strength of their intensive parenting attitudes.