| Summary: | There is an ongoing discussion in Sweden about child perspective and child’s perspective. The municipalities’ family law units are required to include these perspectives in their investigations. But how do they affect the outcome of custody investigations? This essay addresses that issue. I have looked at how much say children have and how much they participate in their custody investigations. I have studied fourteen children, from seven custody investigations, what their views are and how children are presented in these investigations. I use a social constructionist theory according to which the way children are viewed is constructed through interactions between people. This essay uses the terms “showing” and “telling” to see how children get their say. In a showing text it is the child who tells the story. In a telling text it is the narrator who is telling us about the child. Nine of the children give a clear opinion of which parent they want to live with and how much they want to see the other parent. Eight of the investigations use a showing text to describe the children. These children’s opinions have a greater impact on the investigation than the ones described with a telling text.
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