Betydelsen av föräldrarnas kön i vårdnadstvister : En kvalitativ innehållsanalys av domstolsbeslut

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this study was to examine how the Swedish court reason, argues and legitmizes mothers and fathers to get sole custody. In Sweden, mothers got sole custody twice as many times as fathers. Results from earlier reasearch has indicated that there are several general differences regarding the requiment of a parent wich depends on the parents gender. A gender perspective has been used for this study to analyze and understand the courts final jugements of the cases. The study has a gender perspective based on the theorist Yvonne Hirdman. The analysis was based on 16 documents of cases from the Swedish court called Tingsrätten (crown court) and Hovrätten (court of appeal). Eight of them concerning mothers who got sole costody and eight when fathers got the full custody of the child. The result of this study shows that the court used different arguments for mothers and fathers. Mothers were often expected to be with their children. Only when mothers failed at parental ability, the court could start legitimize fathers to get sole custody. In almost every case, the court legitimized mothers and fathers to sole custody by desribe the parents as each others opposites.