"Parents are parents. That's it." But "it's not like you can replace a mother with a father". : A critical discourse analysis on the parentage discourse of social workers.

The purpose of this study was to examine social workers arguments behind the investigationfor children custody, resident and social intercourse due to possible parentage discourses.Results from earlier research has shown that societal discourses makes a difference betweenmothers and fathers due to traditional stereotypes something that contrasts with the officialSwedish family politics. Socialconstructionism and critical discourse analysis creates thetheoretical approach for this study which was aimed to illustrate how social workersreproduce and maintain societal discoureses about parents, fathers and mothers. The analyzewas based on four semi-structured interwieves, using vinjettes to enable detailedargumentation about parentage according to gender. To identify possible discoursesFaircloughs (1992) critical discours analysis about three dimensions of discours was appliedto the material. The analyze resulted to four discourses about parentage, motherhood,fatherhood and governing discourses. These discourses showed how social workers tend toget affected by organizational discourses about parents being gendernatural, but also bysocietal discourses about mothers being a childs primary caregiver and fathers being a childssecondary caregiver. The results indicate that social workers contribute to theese discoursesbeing maintained