This report is a Licentiate Thesis of Professional Licentiate Studies in Social Work with children and Young people at the Helsinki Univesity. The research was financed by Svenska Kulturfonden. The aim of this research is to increase the knowledge of Internet discussions as a method for supporting parents and to define it`s possibilities and risks. Parenthood has become more aware and reflective. A resource promoting approach sees parents as active and acting. Social support in virtual communities emphasizes the parents own resources in everyday life. Using Internet has increased the access of information and support which are dependent of time or place. Internet as context offers both possibilities and risks for the users. The empirical research questions are: - What and in which context are parents discussing in the Internet community? - How is the interaction showed when asking for, giving and receiving social support in the Internet community? A number of 1348 discussions, which started in three months in the year of 2006 in the Internet community mammapappa.com, are processed by qualitative content analysis and a quantitative approach. The participants of the community are virtual persons, which usually are active in starting discussions and taking part of them. The topics of the discussions are focused on children, parents and family or on community promoting activities. Social support is presented from the view of a selection of discussions which includes to ask for – to give and to receive support. Ethical dilemmas have an important role in the research process and a special consideration was the level of public status for the discussions. In this research all writings are classified as public data. A sensitive approach is being used in processing and presentation.
The results of the research show that parents ask for give and receive resource promoting social support as advice, information, confirming, emotional support and support for reflection in the Internet community. Support is usually provides immediate after someone is asking for it. Experience based social support is important and the interactive dimension of the discussions can be compared to IRL peer support. The conclusions of the research are that the virtual community is activating parents to discuss every day subjects concerning families with children. In social work it´s important to notice possibilities of virtual support methods and parents needs of peer support. Anonymity, time flexibility and experience based informal support should get a more visible role in developing support methods for families with children.