Browsing by Author "Iivanainen, Josefiina"

Objectives. The aim of this thesis was to analyze how everyday life is structured in student families. The second purpose was to gather information about how daily routines affect the families’ mastering of everyday life. It has been proven in many previous studies that regularity and routines support families’ day-to-day lives. Also, combining family life with studies has been shown to create many challenges. With proper knowledge and a healthy respect towards routines, some obstacles of everyday life could be prevented from occurring beforehand. Methods. This thesis was qualitative and the data was collected by interviewing mothers (n=5), who were chosen by using purposive sampling. In each of the families, at least one of the parents was studying full-time and at least one child was in a day care center. The interviews were conducted as theme interviews and the data was analyzed by using qualitative content analysis. Results and conclusions. The families organized their everyday lives by coordinating studying, work and family life. The analysis revealed several different factors which support or hinder the mastery of everyday life. Day-to-day life was mainly cyclic and weekdays consisted of six different temporal phases. On weekends, the routines and schedules were more flexible. Establishments like kindergarten and school had both positive and negative effects. The flexibility of student life eased everyday life but at the same time the incessant need to study constrained it. Kindergarten regularized life but it also brought time pressure in the mornings. The management of schedules turned out to be a notable challenge for the families, which they attempted solve by equally dividing chores, scheduling studies and regularity. According to the results, routines had positive impacts on the mastering of everyday life. They relieved the families of certain actions and decreased the feeling of rush. They also created feelings of security and predictability from the children’s point of view. Scheduling routines had a great impact on intimate relationships, spare time, study time, sleep and emotions as well as on the flow of day-to-day functions. Routines were also associated with parenting goals, such as supporting the child to become more independent and responsible. If necessary, the most important routines could be adjusted accordingly but usually the aim was to stick by some common rules. Nevertheless, better routines were consciously created and molded simultaneously as the children grew up. As for the negative effects, fully scheduled weeks can be exhausting and have an overpowering effect on the family’s comings and goings.