Lecture room: Oddi – 206. Click for a map.
Working institution
Multietnos Institut, Stockholm
Abstract
This survey/work concentrates on the fact that situations for families has changed very quickly in society and that children´s living conditions has changed radically. The most important change is that the nuclear family is no longer composed of father-mother-children with relatives. Nowadays the nuclear family can have two mother´s or two fathers or/and mothers, fathers and children from previous marriages or single mothers/fathers with children. This survey is about single mothers with children with problems.
All data comes from a survey on a psychotherapy treatment of families of single mothers with children. The goal of the study was to evaluate and explain the results to us therapists after our therapeutic interventions. It became clear to us, that we need to learn more about this area after realizing that we got very good results and very bad results with the same kind of interventions – same strategies and same procedures. 102 families were studied in this survey. All of these families received therapeutic intervention or help from a (family) therapist after children had motivated this help in one way or another. All this families of single mothers wanted help, or had gotten the advice to seek help or were forced to seek help for their children.
The method used was Grounded theory and the material used was our work notes and the families own descriptions. The material was treated according to the working method of Grounded theory and categories were allowed to emerge from the data through – ideas, concepts, elements, and codes. The data was also enriched and limited with information from professionals in contact with the families.
The results showed that it is possible to classify the families in different categories that are useful for predicting how to intervene with each child. These categories help us also to have a better understanding of what every child is experiencing and what kind of interventions is needed. These categories also presents the most common problem for these children and the most common strategies to solve and overcome this problems. And at last, his categories helps us in how to treat mothers and children.