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Through adoption, the state actively contributes to creating families. It therefore also assumes the role of guarantor of the child's best interests in the adoption process, which entails assessing the suitability of presumptive adoptive parents. In the present paper, we use the concluding sections of assessment reports on applicants for intercountry adoption in Sweden to answer the following question: what must be said about an individual or a couple in order for her/them to be seen as a suitable adoptive parent? We thus assume that report conclusions serve to display parent suitability to their audiences. The assessment aligns with Swedish national adoption guidelines, and the study shows how the assessment handbook comes to serve as a catalogue of arguments that not only define good parenthood but also outline a way of life that is suitable for parenthood. The analysis illustrates how valid arguments for granting consent to adopt refer to three layers of suitability. They include not only the applicants' insights into and knowledge about adoption in particular and children in general but also their conventional and orderly life, i.e. a life free from distractions that could hinder a wholehearted focus on children and family life.

The consequences of looking visibly 'non-white' are a recurrent theme in the accounts of many trans national adoptees in Sweden, who frequently find their Swedishness challenged in everyday life. The guidance and education material published by the Swedish Intercountry Adoption Authority (MIA) suggests a strategy of dealing with this by developing pride in the adoptees' non-Swedish origin. The implicit message is that the Swedishness they are excluded from is not worth aspiring to and having additional national origins is more desirable. While this might seem to be a plausible strategy, it raises various problems. For example, despite official discourse on the value of multiculturalism, non-Swedishness in Sweden continues to have predominantly negative connotations. Further, it is a strategy that requires certain cultural and language competencies that are difficult to acquire. Judith Lind analyses the accounts of 22 young adult transnational adoptees in nine focus group discussions in relation to the recommendations made by the MIA. In so doing, she contextualises the Swedish recommendations by considering the background in which they were produced.

Parent education surfaced as a political question in Sweden in the 1960s and support for parents has since remained on the political agenda. Despite different views on the ideal relationship between the welfare state, the family and children, support for parents has been advocated by parties from all over the political spectrum. By tracing the political debate, this article addresses the question of how the notion of support for parents was adapted to different political ideas, ideologies and ways of defining the relationship between state, family and children from the 1960s until the 2000s in Sweden. We analyse the arguments that different political parties offered and the varying meanings attributed to terms like 'parent education' (föräldrautbildning) and 'parenting support' (föräldrastöd) during three different phases in the transformation of the Swedish welfare state: the final period of its expansion in the 1960s and 1970s; the economic crisis and retrenchments of welfare services in the 1990s; and the era of individual responsibility in the 2000s. Support for parents has been actualised as a solution to different social and political problems and the notions of parent education and parenting support have proven the capacity to accommodate different political ideas, ideologies and visions.