After-school Hours and the Meanings of Home: Re-defining Finnish Childhood Space

Abstract

School children's use of their home during the after-school hours has become a controversial question in Finnish society. The article discusses cultural conceptions and uses of home as a specific space for children by comparing two different sets of empirical data: children's accounts of their after-school spaces and media debate on the same topic. Activated public concern in media accounts is analysed as a process of re-defining the properties of ‘proper places’ for children, whereas children's accounts are interpreted as expressions of local cultures. For the children, home is an ideal place for spending after-school time, while the public debate portrays the home as empty and children as lonely and unsafe. Definitions of home in after-school time are considered as part of a broader cultural process of re-defining contemporary Finnish childhood in which control turns out to be a crucial dimension of children's ‘proper places’.

Keywords:

• Home
• childhood
• after-school hours
• spatial discourses and experiences

Notes

1. The concept of the home as a private retreat first emerged in the lives of some European bourgeois families in the eighteenth century. The development of this concept was closely linked to the new ideals of domesticity and privacy associated with the characteristics of the modern child-centred family (Hareven, 1991, pp. 258–259).

2. Notions of Finland as a model country for public child care services are usually made with reference to the care of children below school age, as children have a statutory right to day care in few countries. In addition, almost all possible forms of child care—home care for children under three, care in day-care centres, family day care and private day care—are covered by public subsidies (see Anttonen, 2003, pp. 160–161).

3. In 1961, for example, over 50% of the mothers of children below 16 years of age were in gainful employment outside the home; the employment of Finnish women has also been characterised by full-time jobs (Takala, 2002, p. 12).

4. The Act on school children's morning and after-school care (L 1136–1138/2003) came into force 1 August 2004. In addition to morning and after-school care, a new addition concerns the possibilities of extending or reorganising the school day. The working parents of first- and second-graders are also entitled to work shorter days (The Act of changing the 4^th chapter of the Labour contract 870/2003).

5. The data have been gathered as part of Hannele Forsberg's research project ‘Anybody home? After-school activities, Configurations and (In)security of Small Schoolchildren’ funded by the Academy of Finland. The data were collected by the author in cooperation with Ouiti Kauko, Master Student of Sc.Sciences at the University of Tampere. All names and other identifying information have been changed in order to protect the participants' anonymity.

6. Helsingin Sanomat is actually the largest subscription based newspaper in the Nordic countries. The paper's weekday circulation totalled in 2005 430,785 copies, in a population of about five million people (Helsingin Sanomat).

7. The data have been collected by M.Soc.Sc Lotta Haikkola as part of Harriet Strandell's research project ‘Childhood, Space and Age Order of Society’, funded by the Academy of Finland.

8. At the earliest, the school day ends at noon, and at the latest, at 2 p.m.

9. In 1998 about 60% of mothers of first and second graders were gainfully employed (Kartovaara and Sauli, 2000, p. 121). Some mothers are also at home taking care of younger children. In Finland the maternity leave is about 1 year long. The Homecare allowance makes it possible for parents to stay home with their children until the child reaches the age of three.