Sweden is often rightly seen as progressive. It leads the world on shared habitation – a term that describes when children with separated parents share an everyday life with both of them – with 35-40%, or about 200,000 Swedish children having that experience. Another piece of good news for Sweden is that the trend for couples to separate has stopped growing, even if for now that is only amongst those with higher education. This is good because research of children´s health and well-being shows that
children´s fundamental need is to have love and acceptance from both parents (or whoever fulfills this function during the child´s upbringing, Khaleque & Rohner, 2014), and that children are better off when their parents stay together (Fransson, Bergström & Hjern, CHESS-report 2015).
Gøsta Esping-Andersen, a Danish researcher also uses these findings a decisive argument (Esping-Andersen, 2016) for an equal sharing of responsibility for both the children and the household. To achieve this,
Sweden – as well as other
Scandinavian countries –
has invested into
building up public
childcare and
into offering women full-time work.
However, unfortunately Sweden’s reputation for social reforms does not mean that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) is respected where it concerns one’s right to family life. This has been the finding of my work as an investigative psychologist and as a researcher of alleged child abuse and of complex custody cases for the past 25 years.
Think of the child – or any of us – as a tree.
Roots and wings shall be given to the child by its parents.
wisdom of unknown origin
Most parents love their child and want to give their child roots and wings. Such unconditional love is a child´s fundamental need; a need that is above food, water, or shelter.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 16, states:
“The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State."
summer 2017 PSG 27