Acting as a parent does not take place only in the families; on the contrary, families often work together with a various child care and family professionals. Contemporary parents deal for example with day care personnel, teachers and children’s health care personnel. In these interactions the responsibilities of child-rearing must be shared and negotiated in different pedagogical contexts (see e.g. Alasuutari 2003, Beck- Gernsheim 2002, Ribbens Mc Carthy, Edwards & Gillies 2003).

The presentation focuses on Finnish mothers’ and fathers’ views of parents’ and child care professionals’ responsibility. The findings are a part of a larger study that aims at deconstructing parental responsibility and investigating the meanings it has in different contexts. The interview data consists of 40 semistructured interviews of mothers and fathers. The methodological approach in this study is qualitative (see e.g. Daly 2007, Gilbert 2001, Patton 2002). Using inductive analysis re-appearing themes and topics have been searched.

In the interviews of this study mothers and fathers discussed among other things the relationships between parental responsibility and institutional responsibility of child care professionals, e. g. teachers and day care personnel. In this presentation I will focus both on the results of the analysis what is responsible parenting and what is the responsibility of school and teachers. In other words, I try to find out what kind of meanings parents attach to the responsibility of parents and teachers. What are the obligations for mothers, fathers, and teachers when they are expected to behave as responsible adults? Are there common features between these responsibilities? What kind of ‘moral tones’ can be heard in these interviews when the responsibility is described in various pedagogical contexts?