Är mamma eller pappa bäst? : En kvantitativ undersökning om hur könstillhörighet påverkar socialsekreterares bedömningar av föräldraförmåga.

Sammanfattning: The purpose of the work is to investigate whether investigations and assessments regarding children within the social services are affected by the parent's and/or social worker's gender affiliation. The work has been carried out quantitatively through web surveys which were answered on the basis of a case description. The respondents were child administrators from the social services in six Swedish municipalities. A total of 71 respondents answered the survey, 35 of the respondents answered the questionnaire based on a case description of a single mother with a child and the remaining 36 respondents took part of the same case description but with a single father instead. The empiricism has been analyzed in the analysis program IBS SPSS Statistics, version 24. A significant difference is shown in the result that the female social workers are more likely than male social workers to initiate an investigation. Furthermore, the social worker holds the parenting skills of the mother in low regard by comparison with the father's parenting skills. Thus, more social workers initiate investigations/inquiries related to the mother. The previous research also shows that both the client's and the social secretary's gender are influencing factors in social service assessments. This is in line with the results of this study. The fact that assessments are influenced by both the client's and the social secretary's gender affiliation indicates that there are more factors that influence the assessment than the child's best, which according to the portal section of the Social Services Act (2001: 453) should always be taken into consideration in assessments regarding children.