Are all parents equally welcome in preschool? : A study of how same-sex parent couples experienced their child's start at the preschool

The purpose of this study is to see a display on how family, gender and sexuality are produced in four same-sex parents’ stories about their children’s pre-school start. The question formulations that have been used were aimed to find out what expectations and concerns parents may have on the pre-school organization, if the parents have any saying regarding the organization, if the pre-school have worked with equality and how they have been treated as a family. The method used is a qualitative study based on interviews. Four lesbian women have been interviewed on their experiences of their children’s pre-school start and after finishing the interviews the content has been analyzed from different viewpoints found in the material. To back this study up theories as heteronormativity and stereotyping in general have been used. Heteronormativity is based on beliefs related to gender and sexuality. Even stereotyping is related to gender and sexuality but explains more an act performed, while heteronormativity is something prevailing. The conclusions reached in this study are that pre-schools are strongly characterized by heteronormativity, there are small ambitions of change of the organisation at the pre-school and the small changes that happen are moving forward slowly. The knowledge of rainbow families is low and the pre-school does not consider these questions before children from rainbow families start at their school. The change should occur before children from rainbow families start at the pre-school since children from other types of families need to meet this kind of questions in the organization. As long as the pre-school does not work with normative questions, children at pre-school will grow into heteronormative notions of family, gender and sexuality. As the pre-school work today, the children from rainbow families will keep on being invisible in the pre-school organization