In accordance with the ethical principles of the Finnish Advisory Board on Research Integrity, we are committed to conducting our research responsibly, while following good scientific practice and seeing through the realisation of the three-step guidelines for ensuring the preservation of respondent confidentiality, outlined by the Board. The said principles of good scientific practice are as follows: (1) respecting the autonomy of the research participants; (2) avoiding causing harm to any participants involved; and (3) ensuring the protection of both the participants’ privacy and the data.
(National Advisory Board on Research Ethics, 2009.)
We trust in the fact that our two colleagues from the Aleksanteri Institute, Meri Kulmala and Zhanna Chernova, who have been in charge of collecting the interview data, have also adhered to the aforementioned guidelines amid their work. Participation in this study and the interviews has been completely voluntary, and the respondents’ have had the right to refuse to answer and terminate their interview at any given time. The interviews have been carried out anonymously without gathering an exhausting amount of personally identifiable information, although some of the respondents have chosen to share personal details in their answers. These data will not, however, be shared to the reader in order to prevent any potential identification of individual responses. In fact, during the transcription stage, any remaining traces of personal identifiers were obliterated so that none of the research participants could be identified on the basis of individual utterances. However, as Pirkko-Liisa Rauhala and Elina Virokannas (2011) perceptively point out, an ethical review of any research process requires much more scrutiny than simply ticking boxes on a list of basic rules of good scientific practice.
When assessing the informational value of one’s research, one must factor in that, particularly in disciplines such as the social sciences, where the topics of study are often highly sensitive and intimate, the research subjects may easily be endangered. The reported findings, albeit truthful, may have a stigmatising, even damaging, effect on some of the participants. Additionally, it is not uncommon that research into social or psychological vices may legitimise ‘hopelessness’ by highlighting the difficulty of comprehensively addressing such ample social problems and the scarcity of professional resources to carry out their resolution. For that reason, ethically sound research ought to
strive towards being beneficial and, above all, constructive. Therefore, personal interest alone, however important a prerequisite it might be for the quality of one’s work, does not suffice, but we must always consider the ethical implications of our work. It is thus imperative that our inquiry can be justified by something other than mere interest, to wit, the actual usefulness of it. (Rauhala & Virokannas 2011, 236–238, 246.)
Regarding our own study, a research project that engages a large international team of researchers, transcending state and cultural borders, always presents an array of practical and ethical challenges. For researchers operating in an international context, it is particularly important to acknowledge the fact that the ethical norms of one scientific community might to coincide with the research ethics of another academic tradition.
Hence, it is the researchers themselves, to borrow fro Jäppinen’s (2010, 140–141) reflections on her own field research in the Udmurt Republic in Russia, who must exercise ethical vigilance in their work. Issues that may rise during the research permit application process can vary significantly between countries. In Russia, for instance, the procedural mechanisms to protect institutional documents seem far more rigorous than those established to preserve the privacy and confidentiality of individual respondents. Another point of concern might be that, given the scope and international nature of the research project, the study results may remain somewhat difficult to reach for the myriad stakeholders, whereby it is our responsibility as researchers to report back to both our partners and the study participants. In this connection, we are happy to confirm that, amidst this particular research project, significant attention has been paid to generating real-time information and regularly reporting back with the findings in multiple languages, including the research participants’ native of Russian.
The most important thing to note here is that we are researchers, not a tribunal. It is not our place to judge or excuse, but to analyse and interpret. Whilst remaining alert in our political analysis, this study makes no attempt at criticising – nor appraising for that matter – certain family forms or systems at the expense of others or at passing value judgements on individuals’ decisions regarding their family life. Instead, the objective is to shed light on an emerging topic which, despite of its societal weight, remains an insufficiently researched niche in both academic and public discussions. Assuming the the role of a conscientious researcher entails vigilance and sensitivity towards one’s research subjects and sources, but, by the same token, it necessitates a certain
informational, if we may, responsibility over the topic itself. In other words, our professional duty enabled by our scientific authority is not merely to produce ethically sound research, but also inform the public. We show respect to our research subjects both by handling information reliably and without manipulation and by sharing that information to a wider audience.
The thing to remember is that, not only are we interpreting sources, but we are also producing knowledge ourselves – knowledge that will remain, whereupon we exercise a significant power over the very topic itself. Therefore, we should not neglect the fine art of self-reflection as we construct our interpretations. Whilst allegedly possessing rather extensive prior knowledge of Russia as a country, a political entity and a society, we should nonetheless avoid making untimely assumptions about its local realities. If prejudice is the companion of ignorance, then it is perhaps speculation that too often accompanies familiarity. True, we cannot erase pre-existing experiences or understandings of Russia from our memory, but what we can do is prevent ourselves from anticipating certain conclusions merely because we think we know something about Russia and instead allow ourselves to be surprised by our data. In plain English, we owe it to our research participants to embark on our analysis without unnecessary prejudice.
Amid all of this, we still think that the voice of the child should not be forgotten.
Now, we understand that our primary data and secondary literature mainly reflect adults’
– policy-makers, parents, experts and scholars alike – images of children. Yet, we try to appreciate the role and agency of the child and seek to listen to the children’s voices whenever possible, even though we realise that this voice might manifest itself only somewhere in-between the lines or as second-hand knowledge. Including children into a study is always an academic and ethical challenge for any researcher. However, it is an advisable, necessary even, attempt when the topic of study is family policy, family life and child welfare. On that account, despite maintaining that our primary focus is on foster parenting, we should remember that there really is no parent without a child.
6 MICRO: PERCEPTIONS OF PARENTHOOD IN RUSSIAN CHILDREN’S VILLAGES
This chapter presents the results of our primary data analysis. Our inquiry has produced seven thematic categories which we will now introduce to the reader, conceptualising the findings more broadly in relation to our research question as well as secondary literature. Although distinct from each other in our categorisations, these themes do not exist in a vacuum, nor do they operate separately but in tandem, whereupon we may see considerable overlap and correspondence between them. Yet, due to the binding mechanisms of our chosen method of analysis, the data have been processed, coded and arranged under an established category system that suggests seven major perceptions of parenting arising from the interviews with foster parents and child welfare professionals in Russian Children’s Villages. The themes are as follows:
(1) parentings as a profession; (2) parenting as a duty; (3) parentings as child saving;
(4) parenting as a natural state; (5) parenting as a personal project; (6) parenting as a collective effort; (7) and parenting as reforming.
While our focus remains firmly on Russia, it is perhaps worth reminding the reader that parenthood is inherently a global phenomenon, whereupon the challenges and facilities of parenting rarely apply to one country or locality only, but transcend state and cultural borders. Of course, national context may prompt cross-national differences and translate into certain domestic peculiarities, however, there remains significant universal points of contact free of national confines, by which we can relate themes of parenting across different country contexts.