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'.