Heteronormativiteten och den ensamma tvåsamheten- en undersökning av en familjerättslig handbok

Social workers meet individuals who structure their family in varied ways; these public servants have the possibility to initially accept and normalize new family forms. Their work is an arena where political power is exercised and it is therefore important that resources that are at hand enable them to meet non-normative families in an including and understanding way. This study investigates how a handbook from 2012 produced by Socialstyrelsen regarding custody, living-arrangements and right to access constructs the idea of the family. Queertheory and the ideological and juridical regulations of the family are used in creating a flow scheme where the normative family is identified. This flow scheme is through conceptual and content analysis applied to distinguish the handbooks construction of the family and used to examine if this construction resembles the normative family. In the flow scheme criteria’s such as heterosexuality, a sexual twoness, and parents who are legal guardians of their children are identified to be part of the normative family. In the handbook most of these criteria’s are likewise found, a reality that points to an exclusion of certain parents and that possibly indicates a structural problem in this field of the public sector