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
159 NINE Family life As the previous chapter shows, exploring children’s everyday encounters with other people indicates that other factors existed behind the passing moments of the encounter. In some cases, children’s attitude towards other people was formed through the prism of expectations rather than through actual knowledge, while elsewhere a long-term history of contact and the sedimented nature of experiences with the other person shaped children’s practices in the encounter. Chapter Eight raised the question of other people’s significance in
_______ THREE ___ 37 Family diversification The ‘first demographic transition’, which lasted from the late 19th and throughout most of the 20th century in the western world, was characterised by low fertility, low mortality and greater life expectancy, resulting in low population growth and ageing. The ‘second demographic transition’, which began in the 1960s and was still continuing at the turn of the century, entailed a marked rise in divorce, unmarried cohabitation, births outside marriage and lone parenthood. This de
In the 2018 Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) China Shenzhen talkfest, the host asked everyone, “what is the best way to express ‘I love you’ in Chinese?” Then, she answered herself: “I think the Chinese version of ‘I love you’ is ‘my parents have approved us’”. The host’s speech in this PFLAG event demonstrates the strong wish for the coexistence of romantic love and parental harmony during the emergence of queer subjectivities. Indeed, parent–child relations have been the most important relationships in Confucian Chinese society and
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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.
15 TWO Families in later life introduction Understanding family practices in later life raises a number of difficulties for research and the development of social policy. Three main problems can be identified from a survey of the literature provided by historians, sociologists and those working in the field of social policy. First, generalisations are often made about ‘the family’ in previous centuries or in ‘modern times’. These often ignore substantial class, gender and ethnic differences – strikingly apparent in the 21st century but no less real at
This chapter lays the theoretical and conceptual foundations for the rest of the book. It provides an overview of major debates in family and relationship studies and explores their relevance for theorizing Muslim family life. It begins by summarizing traditional theories of family before moving on to consider theories of individualization and the accompanying decline of the family. It shows how these theories have simultaneously overlooked Muslim family life while contributing to problematizing accounts of it. Drawing on influential decolonizing arguments, the
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
This book offers an innovative perspective on Muslim family life in British society. Drawing on recent debates, the book considers how theories of family have overlooked Muslim families and offers a comprehensive framework to address this oversight.
Informed by decolonising approaches, the book sheds light on the impact of narrow and stigmatising perspectives that shape our understanding of Muslim families. The author pays close attention to the increasing diversity of family forms and to the role of gender and generation, whilst also considering race, ethnicity and class. In doing so, she demonstrates how a better understanding of Muslim family life can inform policies to address inequalities, and advocates for placing Muslim families at the heart of policy solutions.
1© The Policy Press, 2013 • ISSN 0305 5736 Key words: family • representation • information sharing • records Policy & Politics vol 41 no 1 • 1-19 (2013) • http://dx.doi.org/10.1332/030557312X645838 Representing the family: how does the state ‘think family’? James Cornford, Susan Baines and Rob Wilson Over the last decade the family and family-centred policies and practices have received increasing attention within the public service agenda, culminating in the emphatic instruction to ‘think family’ individually, collectively and institutionally. This has
