Osedliga verser och smutsiga barn
Barnavårdens praktik och begreppsanvändning under 1929-1937
Historical child-careChildren?s care protocol1920s1930sDeviationHistorisk barnavårdBarnavårdsprotokoll1920-tal1930-talAvvikelse
Social work is a profession where documentation about people?s behavior and life circumstances is common. In the beginning of the essay we ask ourselves, if these descriptions about people can be problematic? To explore this, we studied social documentation, from the past. We used a historical source because history can help usunderstand the social work that is being conducted today. The aim of our study was to findout how early welfare work defined and described deviant behavior in child care issues, and how the child care agency handled these issues. Out method was a document analysis off the children?s care protocols in Kalmar, from 1929 to 1937. We present our results along with two illustrative case descriptions. Our theoretical approaches are Howard S Becker and Erwing Goffman´s theories of deviation. Their conclusion is that deviation is created by society, not by individuals or their actions. Since cases of children?s neglect and cases with deviant children were common and well documented we focused our empirical presentation on what was included in these terms. Children?s neglect cases focused on parent?s inability to provide the child with proper food, clothes, housing and similar factors. We also found that they made a distinction between mothers and fathers responsibility in these cases. Regarding the deviant children they also made a distinction between the sexes, identifying different behaviors deviant for girls andboys. Though some factors, such as being a illegitimate child and being unreliable is a definition used on both sexes. Since, according to our theories, deviation is created by our society our conclusion is that both children?s neglect and problem children can be seen as a result of societies expectations, and we present examples of how that can be understood in our analyze. In our final discussion we discuss how the definition of deviant behavior is relevant today. We discuss our findings in relation to BBIC, a Swedish child protection investigation guide. Our conclusion is that we still create deviations through documentation.