Browsing by Subject "own time"

Objectives. The aim of this qualitative research was to examine the meaningfulness of own time for single parents and the meaning it carries in their everyday life. The target was also to gather experience based knowledge about the life of single parents. Previous research on the single parents' life is not abundant and often time the perspective has been simply coping with the challenges of lone parenthood. Based on previous research a single parents' life is often barely survival from one day to the other. In this research the target was to expand the point of view beyond mere survival, bringing light to new aspects of living as a single parent. Methods. The material of the research consisted of thematic interviews. The interviews involved 10 single parents. The sources were all women, although gender was not a relevant criteria when selecting interviewees. The transcribed material of the thematic interviews was analysed applying qualitative theory directive content analysis. The unique characteristic of experience based knowledge presented itself strongly. Results and conclusions. The own time of single parents seemed to be after the children's bedtime or during the free weekends (without kids). During their own time the parents relaxed in their way of preference. Own time was considered important with respect to overall wellbeing. The material indicated that even though single parent's own time was held important and they most often wanted to have more of it, there was little effort made towards getting more own time.