Since 2016, separated parents in Sweden are expected to pay child maintenance directly to each other unless special reasons, such as intimate partner violence (IPV), can be invoked. Problems with maintenance payments, which may involve expressions of financial abuse, have become a common topic in interactions between parents and the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (SSIA) that handles these cases.
This article examines 132 phone calls to the SSIA and the results show that payment problems are typically framed as relating to inability or negligence, and not as possible indications of abuse. This highlights the need for training and capacity building regarding IPV in the Swedish welfare state.
Background: Parents with intellectual disability are vulnerable to parenting stress and overwhelming life events. The Covid-19 pandemic constitutes a potentially overwhelming event, but there is little knowledge concerning the effects on parents’ caregiving. The present study aimed to fill this gap.
Method: Semi-structured interviews with ten Swedish parents with intellectual disability were analysed using thematic analysis.
Results: One broad caregiving-related theme: Increased caregiving demands and reduced resources for coping resulting in strained parent-child interactions and relationships. Four subthemes highlighted influential factors: Pandemic information; professional support; social relationships and informal support; and children’s school activities. Strained parent-child interactions were particularly common in the absence of adapted pandemic information, if professional and informal support were compromised, and if the parents had dealt with school-related changes.
Conclusions: Findings support contextual models of caregiving and a stress-resources perspective, and emphasize the importance of adapted information and support to parents with intellectual disability during crises.
This study examines recent changes in Swedish regulations for child maintenance in relation to post-separation families with experiences of either intimate partner violence (IPV) or conflict. The reform limited the possibility to rely on the state for maintenance in cases of cooperation difficulties. For IPV cases, the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (SSIA) can function as an intermediary between parents, but such exceptions are made upon assessment and require disclosure of IPV. This study investigates consequences of the maintenance reform and the ways in which it may re-actualize conflict and IPV between separated parents. Data consist of 649 recorded phone calls (~ 55 h) to the SSIA concerning maintenance. Disclosures of post-separation conflict or IPV were found in 132 of these calls; these calls were analyzed using thematic analysis. The maintenance reform’s requirement to reinstate contact with a former partner can re-actualize experiences of parental conflict as well as IPV by (a) re-surfacing physical or psychological abuse; (b) continued or accelerated cooperative difficulties; (c) renewed financial control; and (d) ‘paper abuse’ and new possibilities to display diligence or exert camouflaged control. This can take the form of explicit acts of abuse, anxiety or concern caused by the renewed contact, or being forced to deal with difficult memories. We argue that the Swedish maintenance reform ignores the reality of parental conflicts and IPV by re-actualizing such experiences in a range of ways.