As the everyday family lives of children and young people come to be increasingly defined as matters of public policy and concern, it is important to raise the question of how we can understand the contested terrain between “normal” family troubles and troubled and troubling families. In this important, timely and thought-provoking publication, a wide range of contributors explore how “troubles” feature in “normal” families, and how the “normal” features in “troubled” families. Drawing on research on a wide range of substantive topics - including infant care, sibling conflict, divorce, disability, illness, migration and asylum-seeking, substance misuse, violence, kinship care, and forced marriage - the contributors aim to promote dialogue between researchers addressing mainstream family change and diversity in everyday lives, and those specialising in specific problems which prompt professional interventions. In tackling these contentious and difficult issues across a variety of topics, the book addresses a wide audience, including policy makers, service users and practitioners, as well as family studies scholars more generally who are interested in issues of family change.
Families play a key role in the transmission of unfair and unearned advantage and disadvantage. The nature and position of the family a child is born into makes a substantial difference to their life chances. ( Calder, 2018 : 424) Introduction This chapter takes a critically informed look at the role of families, and children’s position within families, in understanding child poverty and disadvantage. The chapter begins by demonstrating that family life under conditions of disadvantage tends to be pathologised and denigrated: parents who are ‘poor’ are
In this ethnographic study Maria Adams turns a geographical and feminist lens on prisoners’ families.
She captures the testimonies of families as they navigate the sociological and social challenges of the imprisonment of loved ones, exploring key concepts including inequality, penal power and vulnerability. She also measures the impacts on many aspects of families’ emotions, relationships and identities, and considers the sources of support and resilience they draw on.
With original research and fresh insights, the book deepens our understanding of carceral geography and how families experience spaces, both inside prison and beyond the bars.
Are Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) connecting families? And what does this mean in terms of family routines, relationships, norms, work, intimacy and privacy?
This edited collection takes a life course and generational perspective covering theory, including posthumanism and strong structuration theory, and methodology, including digital and cross-disciplinary methods. It presents a series of case studies on topics such as intergenerational connections, work-life balance, transnational families, digital storytelling and mobile parenting.
It will give students, researchers and practitioners a variety of tools to make sense of how ICTs are used, appropriated and domesticated in family life. These tools allow for an informed and critical understanding of ICTs and family dynamics.
Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence
Paying privately for childcare is a growing phenomenon worldwide, a trend mirrored in Sweden despite the prevalence there of publicly funded daycare. This book combines theories of family practices, care and childhood studies with the personal perspectives of nannies, au pairs, parents and children to provide new understandings of what constitutes care in nanny families.
The authors investigate the ways in which all the participants experience the caring situation, and expose the possibilities and problems of nanny and au pair care. Their study illuminates the ways in which paid domestic care workers 'do' family and care; in doing so, it contributes to wider political and scientific discussions of inequalities at the global and local level, reproduced in and between families, in the context of rapidly changing welfare states.
Family life in areas of concentrated poverty and social problems is undermined by surrounding conditions. This timely book, by acclaimed author Anne Power and her team, is based on a unique longitudinal study of over 200 families interviewed annually over the last decade. It examines the initiatives introduced to help such families and the impacts on them, their future prospects and the implications for policy. Accessibly written and with clear data presentation, the book will have wide appeal to people who work with, live in and care about families, children and low-income areas.
257 PART FIVE wORKIng wITh FAMILIES Introduction to Part Five Carol-Ann Hooper Families come into contact with state agencies in a range of contexts – from before their children’s birth and throughout their childhoods – and the impacts of public policy and family members’ interactions with professionals on their troubles have been evident in many chapters. This part brings into focus: the ways families are worked with in different national contexts (see the chapter by Boddy); the potential and limitations of some key current policy developments in
Acknowledging the increasing diversity and complexity of families, this innovative book proposes a new conceptual framework for understanding families and other relationships that both challenges and attempts to reconcile traditional and contemporary approaches.
Using the notion of ‘boundaries’, the book shifts thinking from ‘families as entities’ to ‘families as relationship processes’. Emphasising the processes that underlie boundary construction and reconstruction suggests that the key to understanding family life is the process of relationship formation. The ideas of entity, boundary, margins and hybridity provide a framework for understanding the diverse, and often contradictory, ways in which families contribute to society.
Families in society makes a significant contribution to the academic literature on families and is essential reading for social science students, social researchers, policy makers and practitioners interested in families and relationships.
Drawing on original research from the Women, Family, Crime and Justice research network, this edited collection sheds new light on the challenges and experiences of women and families who encounter the criminal justice system in the UK.
Each contribution demonstrates how these groups are often ignored, oppressed and repeatedly victimised. The book addresses crucial issues including short-term imprisonment, trauma-specific interventions, schools supporting children affected by parental imprisonment and visibility and voice in research.
Bringing together contemporary knowledge from both research and practice, this ambitious volume offers valuable insights and practical recommendations for positive action and change.
Family policy paradoxes examines the political regulation of the family in Sweden between 1930 and today. It draws attention to the political attempts to create a ‘modern family’ and the aspiration to regulate the family and establish gender equality, thereby shedding light on ongoing policy processes within Europe and how these can be understood in the light of a particular political experience.
The book is valuable for researchers, lecturers, undergraduate and graduate students who study gender, gender equality and welfare state development in gender studies, sociology, social and public policy, social work, politics and social/contemporary history
