ABSTRACT

When addressed from the third-person perspective of professional and academic expertise, parents in high-conflict divorce are often described in polarized and individualized ways. This is at odds with the complex picture arising from studies exploring parents’ own experience of high-conflict divorce. Inspired by the research strategy of institutional ethnography, this article explores how the work of parents in enduring post-divorce conflicts relates to particular socially organized ways of doing parenthood. It draws on interviews with 20 Norwegian mothers and fathers experiencing a high-conflict divorce situation. The analysis connects parents’ experiences to dominant discourses about symmetrically shared parenting and the importance of parental devotion vis-a-vis their children. Through authoritative documents like laws, policies, and professional guidelines, these discourses are materially present in parents’ everyday lives, contributing to the coordination of experience. The findings show how parents’ struggles to care for their children in accordance with norms for good parenting can sometimes work to keep conflicts alive. It is suggested that organizing policy and professional responses around objectified understandings of post-divorce conflict as instances of parental neglect risks distancing policy and helping initiatives from the experiences of those parents they are meant to address.

摘要

当从专业和学术专长的第三人称视角处理时，经常以两极分化和个性化的方式描述高冲突离婚的父母。这与探索父母自己的高冲突离婚经历的研究所产生的复杂情况不一致。受制度民族志研究策略的启发，本文探讨了父母在忍受离婚后冲突中的工作如何与特定的社会组织的父母身份方式相关联。它借鉴了对 20 位经历高冲突离婚情况的挪威母亲和父亲的采访。该分析将父母的经历与关于对称分享养育和父母对孩子的奉献的重要性的主流话语联系起来。通过法律、政策等权威文件，和专业指南，这些话语实质上存在于父母的日常生活中，有助于经验的协调。调查结果表明，父母努力按照良好教养规范照顾孩子有时会导致冲突继续存在。建议围绕对离婚后冲突的客观理解组织政策和专业回应，作为父母忽视的例子，可能会疏远政策，并从他们打算解决的那些父母的经历中帮助倡议。