Family life and parenting are an area where contemporary people’s moral identities are evaluated. One of the arenas where present-day parents face the task of finding the right way to act is balancing work and responsibility over (child) care in the family. In Western philosophy ‘care’ is understood to be gendered and difference is made between different types of caring: natural caring and ethical caring (see e.g. Gilligan 1982; Noddings1984, 1998). Nevertheless, there are fathers “speaking in the language of care’, in the same way as is expected of mothers (Doucet 2006). This study is based on the idea that today there are parents who make decisions concerning childcare irrespective of gender. The aim of this study is to investigate if the gendered philosophical conceptualisations of care can be found in parents’ everyday thinking. It is taken that the point of reconciliation of work and family is crucial and brings to surface parents’ ethical ideals of care. Therefore, the meanings parents give to work will also be explored. It is thought that culture, including family ties and socially negotiated norms plays a role here. Parents’ ethical ideals concerning care are part of parental ethnotheory, parental cultural belief system (See e.g. Harkness and Super 1996).

The data of the study consist of thematic interviews of parents. The data is analysed by first coding the data into categories pertaining to parental care and the meanings of work, then searching for reappearing themes and finally looking for connections between the themes (see e.g. Kvale 1996; Punch 2005 ) and further to establishing ‘care profiles’ and ‘meanings of work’ profiles for the interviewed.

The scientific contribution of this study is focused on the development of new ways of conceptualizing ethics of care. New knowledge of the significance or non-significance of gender in ethical thinking will be gained. The description of different ethical understandings of care and meanings of work will help parents and child care professionals, like teachers, in their every day activites. Teachers are also men and women thus the findings will provide some understanding of the care work of teachers.