New experiences in the exercise of parentality: the report of adolescent daughters in joint custody living

Abstract

This study seeks to problematize, from the point of view of teenagedaughters, how their parents share the parental attributions in the shared guardexperience. This article aims to understand the relationships of teenage daughters inshared custody with their parents. In order to do this, we used authors that approach themes involving family, custody of children and the exercise of parenting, fromdifferent perspectives such as psychological, legal and social, since these differentknowledge centers are related to the theme of the study, which is of aninterdisciplinary nature. It consists on a qualitative research, which used themultiple case study method. Participants consisted in three families, with teenagedaughters in joint custody, whose parents were clients in the Núcleo de AssistênciaJudiciária (Legal Assistance Center). For data collection it was used a documentanalysis of clients’ reports in the mentioned institution, the fulfilment of a form withboth parents and adolescents and a semi-directive interview conducted with theteenage girls. Data analysis was done using the cross-case technique. Results basedon the narratives of the adolescents indicate that the mothers are still considered theprimary responsible person by their daughters, however, the fathers, in spite ofpresenting roles usually more driven to family support, kept present in the care oftheir daughters, enabling the action of parenting. The final considerations highlightthe understanding that parenting can be understood as an unique experience in eachof these family contexts, which are characterized by the joint custody, withoutevidences of pattern or model for such experience.

Keywords: Parenting; Adolescents; Joint custody.