| Summary: | The purpose of this study is to examine what professional social workers within the field of children and families experience the concept “good enough parent”, and how they make assessments on parental ability based on this. The term good enough is often used among social workers within the field of child protection as a form of scale in the assessment of the parental ability. The term functions as a reference to the fact that a parent does not have to achieve perfection in his or hers parenting, but being good enough is just enough to take care of a child in a favourable way. The professional social worker then must determine if the parent manage to live up to the measurement of good enough or not. The empirical material of this study is based on six qualitative, semi-structured interviews with professional social workers. Through our collected empirical material, it appears that a good enough parent should have the ability to mentalize and to enable the child to develop a secure attachment. Other than that, good enough parenting skills cannot be described based on a completed template or a checklist that the parent must fulfill in order to be considered good enough, but the meaning of a good enough parent must rather be set in relation to what the specific child needs, and how the parent is able to meet these needs. It is thus the child's need that places the bar for good enough.
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