Placing children in foster care is today considered the best alternative for children unable to stay in their biological environment. A nuclear family consisting of a father, a mother and a child is the most common family structure within foster care today. The purpose of this thesis is to gain insight on the family norms that control the foster care system. It's a qualitative study based on interviews with six professional social workers within the field of foster care. This method gave us empirical material, that was later analyzed from two main theories and one theoretical concept. Queer- and attachment theory has been our main analyzing tools. The theory of queer emphasizes on questioning the normative perceptions of our society that excludes ‘non- normative’ ways of living. The attachment theory is a psychological perspective that investigates a child's ability to develop different attachment patterns to its care takers and how this effects the child's further development. The perspective of postcolonial theory has only taken up a small part of this thesis and focuses on an uneven power relation, where the western world is considering itself being the most eminent and thereby excludes others. This thesis will show that there are strong norms in our society regarding the concept of a family and that these norms shape foster care today. The narrow concept of a family contributes to an exclusion of families not shaped as the traditional ‘nuclear family’ and excludes alternative types of placement for children.
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