Socialstyrelsens konstruktion av familj – En kritisk diskursanalys av Socialstyrelsens handbok kring adoption.

The importance of family is widespread, both in society in general and within social work specifically. This essay focuses on the construction of family in the guidelines concerning adoption that the Board of health and welfare issue. The aim of this study is to identify and uncover dominant discourses concerning family in the guidelines. To do this we have used a form of Critical Discourse Analysis, influenced by Norman Faircloughs three-dimensional analytical model. Our major findings were, among others, that different kinds of family practices are excluded from the idea of what a family is. This process of exclusion is done through two different sets of discourses; discourses of sameness and discourses of difference. Discourses of sameness is concerned with including the adoptive family in the norm of the “ideal” family, but without really changing the idea of what a family can be. This leaves the traditional idea of family to remain unchallenged in the guidelines. Discourses of differences is concerned with the construction of the adoptive family as different than the idea of the “ideal” family. The consequences of this is that the construction of the “good” family excludes family practises that defy the traditional “ideal” family