Varannan-vecka-liv En studie om växelvis boende och barns familjeskapande

Abstract

Title: Every second week. A study on how co-parented children do family.

The aim of the study is to explore children’s day-to-day experiences of co-parenting. It focuses on how the children actively participate in the process of shaping family life and their own childhoods in the context of family change.

The study addresses the following questions: • What characterizes co-parented childhood? • What are the children’s day-to-day experiences of co-parenting? How are they doing family? • How do the children talk about their family and family life? The study is based on a qualitative method and consists of semi-structured interviews with eight co-parented children aged nine to thirteen. The starting point is the view of children as social actors and hence involved in interactions, negotiations and the construction of their social worlds. Thus the theoretical framework is based on the sociology of childhood, as well as the theoretical concepts of doing family, family practices and negotiation.

These children’s experiences take place in the context of late modern society where family life is being transformed by changes in family structures, due to for example high rates of divorce. After the parental separation the children have to find new ways of living, sharing their time between their two parents on a 50-50 basis. Co-parenting is one among several models of post-divorce family life, and is an arrangement increasing rapidly in Sweden. Since it is a rather new model, no templates exist of what it should be like. Accordingly, these children are engaged in shaping –and displaying- new ways of doing family and creating new kinds of family relationships.

The children conceptualize family in terms of relationships rather than blood ties or legal ties. Furthermore, in their view a family is based on practices and a common home (or in this case, one with each parent). According to these children, what is most important is the quality of the relationships. In line with this argument, what matters to them is being able to keep a close relationship with both their parents, which they stress is only possible as long as they share an everyday life.

Despite the fact that the children themselves construct families based on ties of love and affection, most of them with open boundaries, they still voice the concept of the nuclear family when it comes to spontaneous reactions or describing their possible future family. Thus there are large contrasts between the open family boundaries of their own families and the nuclear family norm, which after all is present in their narratives. This indicates a complex relationship between personal views and underlying norms.

One conclusion is that these children are pioneers as they are in the process of constructing new ways of doing family; co-parented family.