1 Introduction

Coparenting refers to the relationship between parents and other adults, who share responsibility for the care and upbringing of a common child. Coparenting is thus a triadic family sub-system distinct from the dyadic parent–child and couple relationship sub-systems. Coparenting consists of several interconnected components: division of labor, childrearing agreement, parents' mutual support versus undermining, and joint family management (Feinberg 2003). Hock and Mooradian (2013) have refined coparenting into the following components: parental harmony, boundary preservation, parental connection, and reciprocal caregiving. A well-functioning coparenting relationship is positively linked to parental adjustment and child outcomes (Kotila and Schoppe-Sullivan 2015) and protects parents from parenting-related stress (Durtschi et al. 2017). Preventive services offer a natural and familiar space for getting support for co-parenting. Such services can, for example, intervene in a situation where the father shows emotional withdrawal from his infant, as this has been shown to predict the toddler's later adaptive emotional regulation (Gallegos et al. 2017). New parents view coparenting dimensions as an opportunity for growth and learning (Ranta et al. 2022), which implies a need for getting support in the preventive space of services.

Researchers (e.g., Durtschi et al. 2017; Feinberg 2003; Kuersten-Hogan 2017; McHale et al. 2004) see coparenting as a highly important form of family relationships, yet also as something that does not automatically work well among new parents, as indicated, for example, by parental conflicts, undermining behavior, and a lack of involvement (Darwiche et al. 2022; Favez et al. 2023; Ranta, Böök, et al. 2024). Therefore, coparenting is considered a relevant target for parental education and prevention (Feinberg 2003). Supportive coparenting is not only beneficial for the baby but also for the parenthood and wellbeing of individual parents (Durtschi et al. 2017). Coparenting research has expanded its focus beyond divorced parents to include nondivorced parents and parents in diverse family forms and phases.

The way parents share parenting responsibilities is strongly bound to the wider context in terms of family policies, services, and cultural values (Grunow and Evertsson 2019, 2021; Kekkonen, Böök, et al. 2023). While in many Western nations, especially in the Nordic countries, coparenting is valued from a gender equality perspective, coparenting is a source of family solidarity and social support in familistic and collectivist cultures, where relatives are often included (Kekkonen, Böök, et al. 2023; Rönkä et al. 2026). Correspondingly, preventive early support is shaped by the existing family policy, socio-cultural context, and needs of the families concerned. Preventive perspective refers to those practices and interventions which support positive, cooperative coparenting relationships before problems in families have developed into disruptive behavioral patterns. Prevention aims at improved parental adjustment, couple relationship quality, father involvement, and child development (Feinberg and Sakuma 2011). Researchers on early coparenting (Lindroos et al. 2025; Ranta, Paloniemi, et al. 2024) call for preventive work that promotes parental collaboration already before the baby is born and during the early years of childhood. In recent years, an increasing number of family intervention programs are focusing on coparenting alongside parenthood (Eira Nunes et al. 2021). However, early support for coparenting in preventive services has remained unstudied.

In Nordic countries, such as Finland, early support for coparenting is integrated in family centers, which reach virtually all parents. Finnish family center refers to the entity of integrated services that aim to support and promote health and well-being of children, parents, and families. Family centers provide universal but also needs-based, tailored support to individual children and their families. Services like maternal and child health care clinics, family social services, and family counseling services—but also preventive child welfare services and open meeting places for families—are all part of the family center. Consequently, integrated health and social services located in family centers provide comprehensive preventive support in the perinatal and early years of childhood, as opposed to fragmented, specialized service systems in many other countries (Rautaparta-Pennanen et al. 2025; Serapioni 2023).

In this study, we focused on the clinical practices of professionals working in preventive and early support child and family services combined into family centers. We were interested in what kind of discourses professionals used to support parents to cooperate as co-parents in the early phase of parenthood. More specifically, we were interested in professionals' ways of talking to parents to promote coparenting, and how this professional talk varied in a variety of family and service contexts as well as what possible effects the variation in speech patterns will have on the parents' possibilities to receive appropriate help as co-parents.

1.1 Practices to Support Coparenting

Coparenting support has been included in interventions for various target groups, such as expectant parents (Feinberg and Sakuma 2011), multigenerational family systems (Gleeson et al. 2011), fragile families (Carlson and Högnäs 2011), young parents (Eira Nunes et al. 2021; Florsheim and Burrow-Sánchez 2023) or post-divorced families (Pruett and Donsky 2011). Also, universal interventions, like the Family Foundation (FF) and Building Strong Families (BSF; Feinberg and Sakuma 2011), in addition to more focused ones, such as Lausanne Trialogue Play (LTP) and Coparenting and Family Rating System (CFRS) (McHale and Jenkins 2023), are available. Supporting and assessing coparenting is a task of service clinicians, but it requires agreement on what is meant by coparenting, which assessment tools are to be used, which elements are essential in the assessment, and who the target groups are (McHale 2011).

In clinical practice the target for interventions has traditionally been one caregiver or child–parent dyad (McHale and Negrini 2018). However, if no focus is paid to parental collaboration the consequences for the child may be unpredictable and even contradictory, thereby leading to less successful intervention outcomes. McHale, Tissot, et al. (2023) note that in mainstream infant mental health practice coparenting assessment has not yet focused on, and there is a lack of expertise in how to communicate with the parents about the importance of coparenting for healthy child development. McHale, Tissot, et al. (2023) claim that the adoption of a systemic, triangular family approach, which includes both/all adults and a child itself requires that four functions must be considered in services: engagement, teamwork, presence/absence of conflict and child focus. In engagement the fundamental task is to establish whether all family members are engaged and if not, in what way they are not. In the situation of disengagement, withdrawal, or exclusion, a starting point is to ask each person individually—while not prioritizing mothers—whether they have the opportunity for equal interest, engagement, and access in coparenting. Assessment of teamwork focuses on cooperation (or lack thereof) between the coparenting adults, but not so much on symmetry or balance but rather on how adults regard each other and endorse the other(s) as (a) fully participative and needed member(s) of the team. Assessing presence/absence of conflict refers to the identification of diverse forms of disrespect between co-parents: competition, verbal sparring, interruptions and disparaging comments about the absent coparent in the presence of the child. Finally, child focus emphasizes whether coparents are showing adequate attunement to the child and his/her needs. Child focus means that adults are able to recognize and affirm the child's contributions, emotions, and interaction and adults are capable of seeing the child accurately as well as agreeing on what the child needs, working accordingly in alliance to meet those needs (McHale, Tissot, et al. 2023).

In Nordic countries, such as Finland, support for coparenting is integrated in universal service provision combined into family centers, where professionals discuss, for example, parents' mutual trust, division of responsibilities, shared concepts of upbringing, and equal participation in childcare. Although the concept of coparenting is not used in clinical practice, professionals do recognize central elements of parental cooperation (Kekkonen, Malinen, et al. 2023). A more active approach to supporting coparenting among all parents is, however, lacking in Finnish family services. Also, conceptual awareness is needed to make it clear for parents when the issues under discussion are related to mutual coparenting, distinct from parent–child or romantic couple relationships. A broader knowledge and awareness about the multidimensional model of coparenting would lead to a more active approach in supporting parental cooperation among all families using services.

1.2 From Dyadic to Triadic Approach

A coparenting approach focusing on triadic relationships in which father and mother as well as the child are included is an essential practice in services. Focus on dyadic relationships refers to supporting parenthood or child–parent relationships, which often equals, in practice, working with mothers. McHale and Negrini (2018) state that it is unlikely that stronger inclusion of fathers in clinical work, which is frequently called for, will take place without understanding the importance of triadic coparenting relationships. According to McHale and Negrini (2018), working solely with the father or mother is insufficient: rather, a triangular coparenting approach is needed. For this purpose, the questioning of existing practices must take place throughout services. It is essential that in preventive interventions and support programs professionals can foster healthier coparenting dynamics, improve parental well-being, and promote the positive development of coparenting (Lu et al. 2024). Equally important is to promote positive coparenting arrangements in the family, including parent–grandparent relationships (Xu et al. 2024) as well as to focus on couple's coparenting cohesion and alliance alongside marital satisfaction and parenting skills (Morrill et al. 2010). This illustrates the paradigmatic shift in favor of coparenting promotion whereby all parents are messaged consistently, repeatedly, and clearly regarding the importance of involving fathers.

Vital for the early development of coparenting is how professionals encounter a father/non-birthing parent. Involving the other parent in coparenting is most effective early in the transition to parenthood. Evans et al. (2023) from the UK showed in the systematic review that the role of midwives was central, particularly in relation to LBGTQ+ families. The non-birthing parent could exert a positive impact on women's experiences in labour when s/he was trusted and encouraged as a co-parent by midwives. The Family Initiative's International Neonatal Fathers Working Group propose that in neonatal care attention is given to the father-baby bond, the differences between mother and father and to strengthening of coparenting relationship (Fisher et al. 2018). A study by Russell and colleagues (Russell 2019) showed how the way nurses responded to both parents in post-divorce families with a child having diabetes depended on the nurses' training implying that more training on coparenting is needed. In Sweden fathers and/or non-birthing parents are invited to attend individually or with their partner routine postnatal visits by a child health nurse, which was shown to be positively associated with improved coparenting among fathers participating in regular child health visits (Wells et al. 2023).

The exclusion of fathers in service practices may relate to professionals' ideas about child's best interest, professionals' beliefs about ideal parenting or presuppositions concerning shared parenthood. Autonen-Vaaraniemi (2022) studied Finnish professionals' attitudes toward post-divorce fatherhood. Professionals emphasized the importance of treating parents equally regardless of their gender. What, however, outweighed gender equality between parents for these professionals, was the child's best interest, which was seen to be most effectively secured by the continued parenting of two cooperative parents supporting each other. Only minor consideration was given by professionals to the possibility that this kind of coparenting doesn't work well, in, e.g., situations of parental alienation. Mental health and social services for families can likewise uphold culture and clinical practices that exclude fathers (Lim et al. 2023). Based on their interactional data of video-recorded encounters in child health clinics in Finland, Tiitinen and Ruusuvuori (2015) state that nurses (as well as parents) make gendered presuppositions when discussing issues related to shared parenting. This is illustrated in, for example, interactions in which mothers´ parenting responsibilities are treated as taken for granted and fathers´ roles as not self-evident. There are also deviations from the presuppositions of gendered parenthood in, e.g., cases where nurses pose questions that invoke presuppositions of shared rather than gendered parenthood. Tiitinen and Ruusuvuori (2015) argue that encounters in child health clinics serve as an arena not only for reproducing gendered ideas of parenting but also for treating gendered presuppositions as problematic and negotiating them as well as discussing potentially conflicting ideals of parenthood. Similarly, according to Australians Lim et al. (2023), infant mental health assessment and treatment paradigms often privilege the importance of infant-mother relationships. They recommend practitioners work with the whole family system, which more fully reflects the interpersonal environment that shapes the infant's early experience. They recognize several conversation-stopping objections to involving fathers in infant mental health work ranging from concerns about dangerousness to concerns about creating additional work. Lim et al. (2023) encourage infant mental health teams and clinicians to be reflective in their thinking and conversations about service culture and how it includes/excludes fathers and other adult caregivers through, for example, intake processes, prevailing therapeutic interventions or ways of talking about fathers.

1.3 Current Study

Despite a relatively wide range of research on coparenting support, there is a gap in the literature on how professionals in preventive and early support services can purposefully support all families in their aim to cooperate as co-parents. This leads us to put forward the ensuing research question: How can professionals support coparenting in preventive and early support child and family services?

The context of the research is a Finnish family center, which is an integrated, multidisciplinary service hub or network (Serapioni 2023). It includes preventive and early support services, like maternity and child health care clinics, social services for families, family work, family counseling, as well as open, low-threshold meeting places for families. Professionals conduct health checks for children, provide support, guidance, and counseling for parenting, and foster healthy parent–child relationships. Services, based on a one-stop service principle, are provided for all families, including divorced and disputed parents.

The study was part of the research project Learning to coparent: A longitudinal, cross-national study on construction of coparenting in transition to parenthood (CopaGloba) focusing on the development of coparenting throughout the transition to parenthood and on the drivers and barriers in the family, community, and larger society as well as culture enhancing/impairing coparenting.

2 Method

In this study, we assume that the construction of coparenting takes place through discourses, in which language itself functions as a tool for social practice and a way of doing things (Wood and Kroger 2000, 4). By adopting a discursive approach, we see coparenting not merely as a practical matter of family life (Ranta, Paloniemi, et al. 2024), but rather as a matter of talk and discursive meaning-making, in which people's utterances are seen as actions with specific functions (Wood and Kroger 2000). We are interested in what kind of discourses professionals construct to promote and support parents to cooperate as co-parents. The study adopts a social constructionist epistemological stance. The opinions of the interviewed professionals as well as our interpretations of them reflect the multiple constructed realities emanating from our social interactions and cultural contexts (Berger and Luckmann 1991; Gergen 2014).

All authors have long experience of co-parenting, parenting, and family services and qualitative research. The first author has wide knowledge about family center services and the second author has excellence about international parenting support and family service systems, while the other authors have conducted research on co-parenting among new parents, divorced, and foster families. The last author has extensive cross-cultural research experience concerning coparenting during the transition to parenthood.

2.1 Recruitment of Participants

The data was collected from professionals working at the family centers located in four municipalities¹ participating in the Learning to coparent: A longitudinal, cross-national study on construction of coparenting in transition to parenthood (CopaGloba). The first author contacted selected centers, in which a local contact person informed professionals about the aim, length and content of the interview and consent. Participants (n = 21) worked in maternity and child health care, family work, family counseling, family social work, child welfare, family law services and early childhood education services. Their occupational titles were those of public health nurse, family worker, social worker, therapist, child welfare officer and early childhood educator. Two participants were male. The mean age was 47 years, ranging from 33 to 62 years, and occupational experience varied from three to 40 years.

2.2 Data Collection

Five focus group interviews were held during November–December 2020, and they were conducted via Microsoft Teams video calls, as Covid19 pandemic restricted in-person contacts by this time. The Teams video call format offered a neutral, shared social space for free discussion, but hindered researchers in terms of having direct eye contact with participants or the opportunity to observe non-verbal interaction between interviewees. Group size varied from three to seven persons, which enabled each participant to be able to share his/her experiences, knowledge, and thoughts about coparenting as a smaller group size is ideal to give all participants enough time to tell their stories (Tausch and Menold 2016). Nevertheless, data collected online in Covid years may be less rich compared to in-person focus interviews, as participants are more likely to hold back spontaneous comments and initiatives. Each interview was conducted by two researchers, audio-taped and transcribed verbatim as well as pseudonymized into a text totaling 139 pages (Times New Roman 12, line spacing 1.5). The average length of the interviews was 28 pages, with a minimum of 25 and a maximum of 31 pages. The research project was approved by The Human Sciences Ethics Committee of the University of Jyväskylä.

2.3 Data

The interview frame consisted of five topics: (1) Professionals' conceptions and thoughts about coparenting, (2) How professionals talk about coparenting in services, (3) Supporting parents/families in their coparenting, (4) Coparenting in diverse families and (5) Effects of the Covid19-pandemic on families and parenting. In this study, we utilized primarily data related to themes two and three, but the entire data was searched to ensure inclusion of all coparenting support conversations. Topic 2 included, for example, questions such as: In what services and in what ways are coparenting themes currently included? What is the role of your own organization in supporting coparenting? In what services should the themes of coparenting be more visible? Topic 3 covers questions such as: Which matters need to be discussed with families/parents in relation to coparenting? What are the situations where it would be good to provide support to the family for coparenting? What kind of practices do you use to support coparenting? The context of focus group talk is itself context-shaped and context-renewing (Heritage and Atkinson 1984; Wood and Kroger 2000).

2.4 Analysis

The specific ways professionals talk, use language and discuss with parents play a central role at the service appointments. By ‘discourse’ we refer to established language use based on a particular tradition applied in interaction and discussion in a certain environment, community or professional field. The established method of using language in social and health care services is a general professional discourse distinct in this field (see Alasuutari 2010; Alasuutari and Markström 2011). In this study, we focused on professional discursive practices and their variation around coparenting support. We looked for the variation of discursive practices by identifying positions of professionals, which indicate specific ways of constructing relationships between the speaker and hearer (Wood and Kroger 2000).

Thus, we looked for those features in the data, which represent the various ways of constructing professional support for coparenting through discussion. There were differences in how professionals talked about the discursive object, such as support for coparenting, implying that the object can be constructed in diverse ways. Positions of professionals were constructed “in the network of available meanings, which professionals can take up or place others within” (Willing 2024, 160). Furthermore, professionals used “discursive strategies in order to manage a stake in social interaction” (Willing 2024, 147), for example, strategies concerning how they see parents, their mutual relationship and support requirements. Furthermore, agencies of parents, constructed by professionals, had twofold characteristics, namely “what is done by a person and what is done to a person” (Wood and Kroger 2000, 101), the former labeling an agent and the latter a patient. Moreover, agencies were formed in the action orientation, concretized in the verbs used by professionals in coparenting support talk. We explored various discursive meanings of coparenting constructed by professionals from the data, instead of approaching it as “talk-in-interaction” such as in conversation analysis (CA) in institutional settings (Wood and Kroger 2000, 21, as cited in Schegloff 1989).

2.4.1 Phases of the Analysis

To improve the reliability of the results, we used researcher triangulation (Ravitch and Carl 2019) as two researchers conducted the analysis in phases, and findings were discussed several times by the entire research team to arrive at a common interpretation. In an inductive, data-based manner (Ravitch and Carl 2019) the first author separated individually all those excerpts which related to coparenting promotion and established 71 data-based codes from the data. Codes, like supporting both parents, father is invited, child's needs or disagreements about child's up-bringing illustrate this phase. Next the codes were grouped into subthemes (such as fathers, parenting, both parents) by the first and third author, making visible that professionals' talk illustrated how professionals themselves understood and interpreted the issues brought into discussion. To analyze this ‘action being done in talk’, special attention was paid both to content and discursive resources and practices utilized by professionals (Potter and Wetherell 1995; Wood and Kroger 2000). Next, construction of supportive professional relationships with parents was identified through variation of subject positions of professionals. In the final phase, the agency of parents was identified either as an active agent or a more passive patient. Next, we explore in more detail the positions of professionals and agencies of parents.

2.4.2 Positions of Professionals

We searched for what kind of discursive positions professionals adopted while they talked about parents in need of support for coparenting. By positioning, we refer to a variety of discursive choices, which represent professionals' various ways to construct interaction and communication encounters with parents. According to Wood and Kroger (2000), “positioning refers to the constitution of speakers and hearers in particular ways through discursive practices, which are at the same time resources through which speakers can negotiate new positions” (100). We identified three different professional subject positions in relation to parents by paying attention to specific verbs professionals used in their accounts about encounters with parents. One category was formed around verbs related to active professional communication: asking, listening, inviting, discussing, tailoring, filtering expertise, persuading. The second positioning was based on verbs connected with intervening: guiding, counseling, giving advice, acting as a role model, convincing, correcting, improving. The third positioning constructed professionals as those who were supervising child's rights, caring for child's needs, defining parents' rights, and setting responsibilities or boundaries on parents.

2.4.3 Agencies of Parents

We also explored what kind of agencies professionals constructed regarding fathers, mothers, parents, and children to express the need for support and promotion. We looked for those speech actions which express and indicate those whom professionals were concerned about in terms of coparenting. We noticed that professionals could construct a parent as the one who needs involvement, help, encouragement, and advice in his/her coparenting or as the one who acts equally responsible, competent, or involved in coparenting. This follows the agent-patient distinction presented by Wood and Kroger (2000). We identified excerpts in which both parents or the father alone was seen as a parent who would benefit from the professional's ability to tailor his/her way of talking about pregnancy, caring for the baby, or (co)parenting. In alternative construction fathers and parents were seen as equal and competent coparenting agents. By utilizing these analytical tools, we proceeded to the analysis.

3 Results

By combining professional positions of communicator, intervener and supervisor and the agent-patient dichotomy of parents' agency we formed three distinctive discourses of coparenting support: a discourse of coparenting involvement, a discourse of coparenting capacities and a discourse around coparenting reconciliation (Table 1). Next, we explore each type of discourse in detail.

3.1 Discourse of Coparenting Involvement

The discourse of coparenting involvement describes how professionals actively engage with parents—especially fathers—by inviting, encouraging, and tailoring communication. Professionals act as experts aiming to familiarize parents with parenting roles and coparenting tasks. Fathers are often portrayed as absent or passive, requiring special attention and activation to recognize their role as co-parents. This discourse emerges when fathers begin to navigate both their new parenting role and their position as clients in child and family services. Professionals frequently perceive fathers as withdrawn or inactive in various settings and position themselves as facilitators who welcome and include fathers, especially during pregnancy, viewing them as key partners alongside mothers.

Well, maybe we actively invite a father to the maternity health clinic (MHC) every time, so that he can experience that he is welcomed to participate and he is not only a listener, but also his thoughts are asked for, and also his coping is considered, so these are the things which can be developed in MHC, but it is understandable that fathers are working and you visit MHC during the office hours, so it is not always possible to attend every time. (Katja)

In the involvement discourse, a couple is not interpreted as an unseparated unit but considered to consist of two individual persons, usually identified as a mother and a father, in some cases also as same-sex parents. Professionals want to communicate personally with both. Professionals do not assume that individual parents can represent or replace the other, but by making use of the expert knowledge that coparenting is by nature a relationship between two adults having a (baby) child together, they encounter both. This applies also to same sex parents. “If I think of same sex parents, they seem to have the same problems as other families, so the sex of the parents does not matter, as we discuss the same issues.” (Asta). Despite speaking about parents in plural, professionals name fathers as those who seldom visit child health clinics, and accordingly their participation is expected and they are welcomed in services.

Well, I myself, I do emphasize in my own work, already from the pregnancy, that I want to meet both parents, regardless whose or what issues we are talking about, so the issues always affect both, if both pare…, or in this case, if the father is present and willing [to participate]. (Jutta)

By engaging fathers in equal measures to mothers, professionals aim to strengthen and activate fathers' agency as a co-parent. By stressing that both parents can attend services equally, professionals make individual space for the father to act as a full co-parent—also as a father of the baby. However, equal attendance of the father seems to come into juxtaposition with professionals' expertise with regard to breastfeeding guidance. The stammering of the professional in the next excerpt may indicate that the public health nurse found herself somewhat out of her depth in her new position as the breastfeeding guide to a non-breastfeeding parent. The worker doubts if the father really knows how breastfeeding works for the mother but does not bring up in discussion the importance of a non-breastfeeding parent's role as a supporter of the mother. Thus, tension seems to rise already during the breastfeeding period between the mother-centered breastfeeding standard clinical practice and parents' choice to share their visits to the child health clinic.

It is a bit difficult to think if there is any difference, of course, there are some practical issues in the breastfeeding (stammering), well, you can discuss with a father too, and the father is… can… (stammering)… can have an idea, of how it works, and, and but I do think that there is not any big difference between a father and a mother. (Katja)

The discourse of equal coparenting involvement is constructed in situations where professionals tailor their communication, particularly in relation to fathers. Tailored talk is needed when professionals recognize that fathers seem to have difficulties understanding expert jargon used in the service occasions. A tailoring position is also adopted in situations, where all participants (mother and professionals) except the father are females. Tailored wording indicates that the father is seen to have difficulties following standard clinical practice and discussion. Professionals argue that tailored talk prevents fathers from feeling incompetent or unskilled. Tailored talk takes place when professionals filter their expertise by using simpler language or more straightforward expressions. As Kaarina, a public health nurse puts it:

With a father you need to have a slightly different touch, as I have long experience from human relation work in how to approach [fathers] what is important and meaningful to them—so you present your message so that the other [the father] really understands it and he doesn't need to say, ‘sorry, I don't know what you are talking about’.

Tailoring of the communication can also mean adoption of the position of chairperson, who decides the appointment time schedule or parents' turn to speak (while settling disagreements). Furthermore, professionals can challenge the established practice of primarily contacting the mother in child's matters and choose to call the father first instead. By contacting each parent individually, the professional interprets both parents having an equal right for participation and access to the expertise and knowledge of coparenting available at services. By creating safe spaces for parents to participate child and family services professionals prepare the path for both parents to get involved in coparenting.

3.2 Discourse of Capacity Building of Coparenting

Another way professionals support coparenting is by helping parents understand its meaning and challenges. In the discourse of capacity building of coparenting, professionals act as interveners bycounseling and guiding parents to share their thoughts and expectations. Parents are seen as motivated and capable, but fathers are often viewed as having misconceptions about their tasks as coparents. Professionals view fathers as needing to strengthen relationships with their child and partner. Professionals encourage both parents to express their emotions, recognize each other's strengths, and discuss parenting goals. Parents are seen as competent to talk about cooperation, the sharing of household duties, interaction, and the sharing of time. Parents are portrayed as experts in their own family life, while professionals serve as guides pointing out possible paths for families.

What the baby needs in each stage of development and how a good discussion and interaction between parents is possible and everyone has an equal amount of time, but time is divided a bit differently. You cannot know [how] before you have become a parent. Usually, it is important to talk and ask and there is no wrong way to ask, but your own experience is important, which I encourage parents to bring up so that you can discuss it with someone, either with some expert or with the spouse first and foremost. (Jutta)

The professional position of a counselor is adopted when there is some concern about the family. Fathers are often identified as the ones, who are confused or at loss in their parental role and coparenting tasks. Professionals therefore enter a conversation particularly with the father, to change his misconceptions and assumptions about (co)parenting relationships. The father may have misconceptions about how spouses' romantic relationship ends by a baby's birth or the baby dislikes being in the father's lap, or that there is no need to re-share household tasks/duties. Fathers may also assume that they have no role to play in alleviating the mother's exhaustion after childbirth. This is especially the case because home aid is often directed solely to a mother. In the discourse of capacity building, fathers are seen as marginal to the coparenting system, and by adopting the counseling position, professionals aim to help the father to build functioning relationships in the family. Discourse of capacity building also includes interpretations about father-baby relationship. The father is seen as the one who has difficulties establishing a close relationship with his baby. Fathers are described as approaching the baby more like a project, which requires measurement, follow-up and the reporting of developmental results. Professionals try to encourage fathers to enjoy the baby. By enjoyment professionals refer to ‘listening to the baby’ or ‘reading to the baby’ or ‘being with the baby’. Thus, in a way the fathers' detailed noting can be interpreted as the fathers' attempt to stand very close to their babies, by very carefully noting baby's sleeping-eating and movement rhythm. Instead of reinforcing the fathers' attempts to monitor the infant, professionals simulate close bonding with the baby. In this way, fathers are recognized as important carers of the infant. During home visits, the family worker suggests father/infant interaction:

Well, I have always talked about presence with dads, unfortunately it is a topic, that is often discussed, and when you ‘re talking about a very small child, and a father says: I cannot be with the baby, what can I do [with the baby]’, and I say: ‘go and sit on the floor, the baby crawls over to you and you look at it, but don't keep glancing on your mobile phone’—heh, this is how I talk about being present in the babies life to the fathers. (Heikki)

Baby-related capacity talk also refers to situations in which the father tries, wants, or simply must care for the baby by himself. Fathers can be single fathers or, for some other reasons, singly responsible for the baby. Fathers are not seen as helpless but in need for very concrete counseling and advice in their effort to meet the needs of infant. A female professional recalls how she does not need to pay particular attention to the mother's capacity to care for her baby, which may indicate that the caring skills are presumed to associate naturally with women. After all, the father is also seen as capable of taking care of the baby, when the professional takes the position of a guide and an adviser. Fathers' guidance can relate to the caring of the infant: for example, diaper changing, feeding, bathing or changing of the baby's clothes.

3.3 Discourse around Coparenting Reconciliation

The discourse around coparenting reconciliation focuses on conflicted divorces involving disputes over coparenting, fears of exclusion, and concerns for the child's well-being. The discourse includes reconciling the coparenting relationship, care arrangements, and supervised visitations. Professionals act as neutral experts, listening to both parents without taking sides, aiming to restore a well-functioning coparenting system. Their impartiality centers on protecting the child's rights and maintaining relationships with both parents. Parents are viewed as equally entitled to see their child and equally responsible for ensuring smooth daily care.

I think that these matters were strongly present in the appointments, and in most cases, discussion was created around how you could get the parenting to work smoothly after the divorce, and just how to manage to achieve equal parenting because both parents need to have similar rights to be with children. (Emilia)

Coparenting in the context of a conflicted divorce is socially constructed by asking, listening, and guiding parents openly and without judgment or preconceptions. The professional positions her−/himself as an understanding and permissive independent observer, facilitating dialogue between parents who are in mutual conflict. The threshold for participation in the family mediation process is made as low as possible for both parents, and professionals deploy a position to safeguard any eventual gatekeeping of the child. Parents are not allowed to deny the other's right to meet a child and spend time together with the child. While adopting reconciliation positions, professionals consult both parents, but in some cases, fathers are seen to be in need of a special attention and limit-setting. Father-related reconciliation takes place when professionals listen to fathers in the case of a hard-fought divorce or make the father's agency visible in the child's life. Professionals help to secure the father's opportunity to spend time together, to have (e.g., a holiday or trip with the child without the other parent's [mother's] presence or control). The mediating work aims to strengthen father's role in the child's life after divorce.

Another approach to reconciliation is the construction of a coparenting relationship characterized by shared caring and upbringing of the child. In the context of a very harsh divorce professionals facilitate a dialogue between the parents, who tend not to agree on anything as they live in ‘their own realities’. Both parents' equal rights are given emphasis, as well as the child's right to be heard. In the positions of promoter and supervisor professionals go through simple and concrete everyday issues of the coparenting relationship: how parents communicate, interact, and encounter each other to agree on child's issues. Reconciliation is about searching for agreement on the arrangement of caring, living, and meeting the child. Parents are encouraged to cooperate to enable the child's relation to both parents, to agree about the daily care of the child, for example, meals preparation and shopping, as well as other coparenting tasks and responsibilities. In relation to a few immigrant families, professionals position themselves as the ones, who put limits and restrictions on fathers. Some fathers are described as having limitless power to decide how the care of the child should be arranged. In these cases, professionals take a decisive position and make it clear to the father what the child's rights are. However, professionals stress that a particularly respectful attitude is needed when setting limits in families with multicultural backgrounds. Cultural differences concerning the caring and upbringing of the child may apply.

When the relationship between divorced/separated parents has become conflicted, a professional takes the position of the supervisor by law. Supervised visitations can be arranged by the child welfare services. Professionals are obliged to arrange supervised visitations in accordance with the decision of the local court. Professionals cannot alone or by their own decision initiate the supervised visitation process, nor can they force parents to agree to this arrangement. However, both parents are seen to benefit from supervised visitations in the case that they feel concerned, helpless, or unskillful about the child's needs. The professional secures smooth interaction between the child and the parent.

And of course, if there are these divorced parents, who cannot even meet each other here, it can be the case, that the other parent brings the child earlier to the meeting and so it works [….] but then some day it gets to the point, that there comes a day, when they [the parents] are able to meet each other and those meetings with the child are arranged by the parents themselves, together, so these kind of thoughts are what I came to consider. (Teija)

In the discourse of supervised meetings, professionals position themselves as supporters and modelers for the parent. Professionals can act as a model and show how parents should interact with a child, or they can mediate between the parents if the parents are unable to communicate with each other. The professional's role is to secure the child's right to have a secure relationship with both parents. Nevertheless, parents are seen to be able to develop and mature in their parenthood and coparenting. Now and then, professionals witness moments of joy and success when, at the beginning of a highly disputed coparenting, adults start to cooperate and take care of the child's visits by themselves.

There are some occasional moments of joy and success, when there are parents, who have brought the child [to the supervised visitation] at different times, because they can't meet each other, and then comes a day when they can see each other again and we move from supervised meetings to the supervised exchanges of the child and [….] then after a while they start to take care of the child's visitations by themselves, so this is how [coparenting] issues look like in my work. (Teija)

4 Discussion

Family support encompasses policies, services, and practices aimed at strengthening family roles, relationships, and overall welfare through diverse forms of assistance (Churchill et al. 2024; Devaney et al. 2022). The integration of evidence-based practices—such as research-informed coparenting—requires organizations to enhance the voices of families, which is essential for ensuring quality, accountability, and transparency in public services (Acquah and Thévenon 2020; Jiménez et al. 2024).

There is growing evidence about the benefits of involving both or all parents in parenting (Evans et al. 2023; Pruett and Donsky 2011). However, gendered practices in family services often focus on mothers, potentially excluding other parents (Lim et al. 2023; Tiitinen and Ruusuvuori 2015). To address this, service-specific improvements have been proposed (Lim et al. 2023; Wells et al. 2023), and a review of therapeutic coparenting practices in infant-family mental health has been conducted (McHale, Tissot, et al. 2023).

Developing initiatives that reflect families' actual needs is a key in fostering an evidence-based service culture (Mullins et al. 2012). This process demands collaborative reflection with frontline practitioners to uncover cultural and organizational barriers to parental support. Promoting innovative models, such as coparenting in multiprofessional family centers, calls for active dialogue with practitioners and local stakeholders across sectors and disciplines (Jiménez et al. 2024).

However, a comprehensive overview of practices around coparenting support in primary services for children and families is lacking.

This study fills in this gap and highlights the potential of primary services to offer coparenting support by identifying three main professional discourses. The discourse of coparenting involvement refers to the communicative position of professionals as they actively invite, encourage, engage, and discuss with parents, focusing especially on fathers to familiarize them with coparenting as a joint action to raise a child. The discourse of capacity building of coparenting focuses on the idea, content, concerns, and possible tensions of the coparenting relationship. Professionals intervene by counseling and guiding parents, especially fathers, to share their thoughts, experiences, and expectations of coparenting. In the discourse around coparenting reconciliation, professionals take a position as impartial and neutral experts while communicating and meeting with parents to promote primarily agreement on the child and the child's rights. The context of the discourse is often family mediation when the coparenting system is malfunctioning, mostly after a conflicted divorce. These three professional discourses contribute to the new understanding of ways of supporting coparenting in primary and early support health and social services, including maternity and child health clinics, family work, home visits, child welfare, and family counseling. Supporting and assessing coparenting is a task that practitioners do, but it requires agreement on what is meant by coparenting, which assessment tools are to be used, which elements are essential in the assessment, and who the target groups are (McHale 2011).

In the discourse of coparenting involvement, both parents' right to participate in the joint caring of the child is on focus. The discourse is in line with the assessment task of engaging both/all parents into the coparenting system, suggested by McHale, Tissot, et al. (2023). However, engagement of both parents can be challenging for professionals, like in neonatal services, where breastfeeding and parenting guidance has traditionally been seen as solely a matter for mothers (Abbas-Dick et al. 2015; Kim et al. 2018; Maycock et al. 2013). Our study shows how professionals discuss, tailor, and filter their expert knowledge, particularly in relation to fathers, to engage them, as they often remain in the background. According to McHale, Tissot, et al. (2023) one or more family members appear to be withdrawn or excluded in triangular interactions with the child. Wells et al. (2023) argue that fathers benefit from receiving support from midwives at prenatal and postnatal servicesIn social work the involvement of fathers is messaged consistently, repeatedly, and firmly to both parents (McHale and Negrini 2018). Despite speaking for fathers' participation in our study, the notion of father friendlier service was not discussed by professionals. However, service structures and practices also need to be addressed to father friendlier efforts to engage all parents individually (Fisher et al. 2018) and in a manner independent of the sex of the parent (Evans et al. 2023). Nevertheless, the involvement discourse in this study does not actually assess who else, besides the father, is involved in coparenting as McHale (2011) suggests.

In the discourse of capacity building, parents are guided and counseled to understand the idea, content, and concerns of the coparenting relationships and to find agreements for possible tensions. Couples are mostly seen as capable of discussing and agreeing on mutual cooperation, sharing of time, domestic work, and shared responsibility for childcare. Assessing coparenting teamwork is crucial, as teamwork is essential for each family and cooperation (or lack thereof) between the adults is important to understand (Favez et al. 2023; McHale, Tissot, et al. 2023).

The discourse of coparenting capacity building covers reflection and reasoning as tools to encourage spouses to share mutual experiences, thoughts, and emotions as a team. Although both parents are considered as the experts, conversations with fathers construct them as helpless or confused in their new role as a (co)parent. McHale, Burton, et al. (2023) state that focusing on teamwork is not so much about assessing symmetry but rather how each co-parent sees and endorses the other(s) as a fully participative and needed team member. In our study, the discourse of capacity building covers supportive talk concerning the sharing of coparenting responsibilities in the context of family life. However, mutual appreciation and endorsement between co-parents were not systematically present in the discourse. Focusing on the coparenting alliance, rather than on fathering or mothering, is crucial in supportive coparenting teamwork as the parental stress of both partners is significantly associated with relationship quality (Darwiche et al. 2022; Favez et al. 2023; McHale, Tissot, et al. 2023; McHale and Jenkins 2023). In the discourse of coparenting capacity building in this study, the expertise of (co)parenthood is still linked to mothers, while fathers are seen to require special support in their emerging father-baby relationship. One professional challenge in the promotion of coparenting is related to fathers, who too quickly move from joy and pride raised by new fatherhood to stress, withdrawal, and resistance at the fore of female dominated family and therapy services, fearing for “not only being heard to but losing their autonomy and voice” (McHale and Jenkins 2023, 505). To engage fathers, men's self-definition comprising of separateness, autonomy, independence, and individuality needs to be better understood among female professionals (McHale and Jenkins 2023).

In this study, professionals acted as mediators in the discourse around coparenting reconciliation, which is constructed around the actual conflict of distressed, divorced/separated co-parents. Professionals position themselves as impartial and neutral experts while supporting parents in building a coparenting relationship. The reconciliation discourse coincides with the third assessment task suggested by McHale, Tissot, et al. (2023); namely the need to observe the presence/absence of conflict between coparenting adults as well as identify diverse forms of disrespect. Greater mindfulness enables parents to better distinguish and limit or eliminate such behavior (McHale, Burton, et al. 2023). In our study, the reconciliation discourse is contextualized predominantly in the preventive child welfare services, and the neutrality of the professionals is emphasized. Professional talk is focused on mediating and promoting mutual agreement. Preventive services have been recognized to help parents agree on post-divorce collaboration (Heller 2013), and problem-solving techniques have been developed to help post-divorced parents agree (Sommers-Flanagan and Barr 2005) on child caring. However, the risk of the failure of mediation grows if parents are highly conflicted, have mental health problems, are struggling with the separation, have unrealistic expectations concerning co-parenting, or if conflict is prolonged (Morris and Halford 2014; Stokkebekk et al. 2021). The priority in the coparenting reconciliation discourse is how professionals secure a child's well-being and safety. In our study, coparenting reconciliation discourse was used to help divorced parents establish a safe and caring relationship with the child, and to enhance the non-resident parent's possibility to spend time with the child. The child's right perspective is predominant, but also the father's right to equal participation and responsibility for child maintenance.

Child focus is also the fourth pillar in the coparenting assessment by McHale, Tissot, et al. (2023) and highly underscored by Feinberg and Sakuma (2011). According to these researchers, the essence of growth-promoting coparenting is not just whether the adults themselves agree and get along with one another, but whether they are showing adequate attunement to the child and his/her needs. While reconciling co-parents, attention needs to be given to coparenting teamwork, which works effectively when high-conflict post-divorce parents articulate common goals for their shared child (McHale and Jenkins 2023). By affirming the child's contributions, emotions, and interactions, adults can see the child accurately and agree on his/her needs and accordingly work in alliance to meet them (McHale, Burton, et al. 2023). In our study, children's rights were strongly present in the reconciliation discourse. Professionals took positions like supervisors, guardians, and observers of the child if there was any suspicion of neglect or maltreatment. In addition, professionals acted as interpreters of the child's point of view, alike to claims by McHale et al. (2012) and McHale and Negrini (2018), to the effect that coparenting alliance needs to be seen from the child's eyes in the case of divorced families or longstanding absence of the other co-parent.

To sum up, identified discourses show how professionals can apply for various positions in their aim to assess and promote coparenting in the family system. It is noteworthy that all discourses emphasize the father's role. The agency of the child becomes visible first in the context of conflicted divorce. Embedding a child's perspective in all coparenting discourses enables professionals to work out a truly triangular coparenting family system from the prebirth of a child right through to adolescence.

4.1 Limitations of the Study

In evaluating the research findings, it is essential to consider the nature of the data and discourse analysis as an approach. It is not possible to definitively conclude based on the three discourses presented how professionals provide support for coparenting in their work. As Hjelm (2021) argues, even hegemonic discourse is unable to elucidate the practical consequences of actions due to the finite nature of discourse. It is thus impossible to say conclusively why someone did what they did by looking only at the discourse. Instead, based on the latter, we can gain an understanding of the lines of action—in this research, the lines of action by family professionals on supporting coparenting in the Finnish service context. Their behavior is both enabled and constrained by the social and cultural framework in which they are embedded (Hjelm 2021). The three discourses with gender specific encounters also reflect gendered presuppositions and other cultural practices in healthcare paradigms, which tend to change slowly (Lim et al. 2023; Tiitinen and Ruusuvuori 2015).

It should also be kept in mind that the findings are drawn from the qualitative study conducted with a relatively small number of research participants, as is typical for a discourse analysis study using interviews as research data. This means that the study is highly contextual, and caution may need to be exercised when generalizing the study findings to other contexts. It is also possible that the professionals chosen for the study by contact persons were somehow selected, for example, with respect to their interest or motivation. It is notable that there is a limitation in data in terms of diverse families. Although focus group questions were not limited to topics of coparenting support solely among Finnish, heterosexual two parents' families, professionals' talk mostly dealt with these families. Therefore, discourses may not be transferable to support more diverse families, including multicultural and LGTBQ+ families. Furthermore, discourses are embedded in the wider socio-cultural contexts, values, and norms, including gender equality, provision of welfare state services, and child's rights regulation (Grunow and Evertsson 2021; Kekkonen, Böök, et al. 2023; Rönkä et al. 2026). This study was conducted in Finland, a country where aspiration for gender equality and father involvement in parenting is practically the norm. In future studies, focus group interviews of professionals should be replicated in other socio-cultural contexts.

4.2 Implications for Practice

Based on our findings we make the following five recommendations for practice. First, promotion of coparenting by applying professional discourses of involvement, capacity building, and reconciliation can also take place in routine clinical practices, not only as part of interventions. This is of special importance during the transition to parenthood when coparenting is under construction. We argue for a more applicable, discursive approach for the promotion of coparenting in universal and early support child and family services. Second, it is crucial to involve fathers and other relevant co-parent figures in supporting coparenting. This, in turn, implies changes in services in favor of more equal attendance. This implies the involvement of fathers in services by using father-targeted practices and by improving the staff's knowledge about a father-friendly clinical environment. Both parents need to be messaged consistently and firmly about the involvement of fathers. Third, to involve the whole parental team, it is important to ask each person individually—not prioritizing mothers—whether s/he has the opportunity for equal interest, engagement, and access to coparenting (McHale, Tissot, et al. 2023). Also, co-parents from extended, multigenerational families (Gleeson et al. 2011) and LBGTQ+ families (Evans et al. 2023) should be considered in the coparenting team. Fourth, the discourse of capacity building refers to a professional way to approach parents who have issues with coparenting. By actively bringing up discussion regarding coparenting issues, professionals can assess and promote a coparenting relationship. By combining the knowledge of coparenting dimensions with a discursive approach, professionals can provide support for families whenever they visit child and family services. Fifth, as divorces affect an increasing number of families, the need for targeted support for coparenting is increasing. Similarly, parents who act competitively, use harmful communication, or make negative remarks about the other parent can benefit from targeted support provided in the multiprofessional family center.