Understanding Parenting as Situated in the Larger Sociocultural Context in Clinical Social Work May-Britt Solem Published online: 8 September 2012 Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012 Abstract As a corrective to an unbalanced focus on children’s problem and diagnoses, this study addresses the importance of recognizing the place of parenting within the context of clinical social work. Sixteen parents of children with or without behavioural problems were selected according to parents’ appraisal of the child-rearing situation, children’s problems and ages, parents’ marital status. The main finding was the seriousness of the situation for parents who have other problems in addition to a child’s behavioural problems. Knowledge of variations in family structures and normal family processes are important to prevent clinical cases from always being seen as deviant. Keywords Critical realism Á Normal family processes Á Parenting stress Á Risk factors Á Salutogenic approach Introduction This article explores and analyses parenting as situated and challenge an unbalanced focus on problem behaviour and diagnosis in child and family practice. The empirical basis is a mixed method research study from Norway, 1 which included 192 parents of boys aged 6–12 years (64 boys defined with behaviour problems and 128 other boys whose parents formed the comparison group). This study, which aimed to examine parental coping practices and predictors to parental stress, indicated that there were no differences between the groups with regard to parents’ coping strategies. The present article was inspired by these unexpected results, and M.-B. Solem (&) Faculty of Social Sciences, Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, Post Box 4, St. Olavs plass, 0130 Oslo, Norway e-mail: may-britt.solem@hioa.no 1 The results published in Infant and Child Development: DOI:10.1002/icd.681. 123 Child Adolesc Soc Work J (2013) 30:61–78 DOI 10.1007/s10560-012-0278-9