child’s negotiation of this extimacy marks other relational encounters. As explained earlier, my own recent foray into autotheory was prompted by a similar acknowledgement of the ‘toxic maternal’, which led me to question my own career choices in light of my impossible maternal separation. Madeleine Grumet’s work, it may be argued, uncovered the centrality of the complex mother–daughter relationship in the professional lives of teaching women, thereby prefiguring the anchoring role of the maternal in autotheoretical texts written by women who use the genre to explore
Women and families within the criminal justice system (CJS) are increasingly the focus of research and this book considers the timely issues of intersectionality, violence and gender. With insights from frontline practice and from the lived experiences of women, the collection examines prison experiences in a post-COVID-19 world, domestic violence and the successes and failures of family support.
A companion to the first edited collection, Critical Reflections on Women, Family, Crime and Justice, the book sheds new light on the challenges and experiences of women and families who encounter the CJS.
Accessible to both academics and practitioners and with real-world policy recommendations, this collection demonstrates how positive change can be achieved.
In recent years, new areas of biology, especially epigenetics and neuroscience, have enthralled the public imagination. They have been used as powerful arguments for developing social policy in a particular direction, from early intervention in the lives of disadvantaged children to seeking ‘biomarkers’ as identifiers of criminality.
This timely book, written by leading commentators, critically examines the capabilities and limitations of these biotechnologies, exploring their implications for policy and practice.
The book will enable social scientists, policy makers, practitioners and interested general readers to understand how the new biologies of epigenetics and neuroscience have increasingly influenced the fields of family policy, mental health, child development and criminal justice.
The book will facilitate much needed debate about what makes a good society and how best to build one. It also draws attention to the ways that the uncertainties of the original science are lost in their translation into the everyday world of practice and policy.
This book offers an analysis and summary of the uses, abuses and limitations of attachment theory in contemporary child welfare practice.
Analysing the primary science and drawing on the authors’ original empirical work, the book shows how attachment theory can distort and influence decision-making. It argues that the dominant view of attachment theory may promote a problematic diagnostic mindset, whilst undervaluing the enduring relationships between children and adults.
The book concludes that attachment theory can still play an important role in child welfare practice, but the balance of the research agenda needs a radical shift towards a sophisticated understanding of the realities of human experience to inform ethical practice.
A vital interrogation of the internationally accepted policy and practice consensus that intervention to shape parenting in the early years is the way to prevent disadvantage. Given the divisive assumptions and essentialist ideas behind early years intervention, in whose interests does it really serve?
This book critically assesses assertions that the ‘wrong type of parenting’ has biological and cultural effects, stunting babies’ brain development and leading to a life of poverty and under-achievement. It shows how early intervention policies underpinned by interpretations of brain science perpetuate gendered, classed and raced inequalities. The exploration of future directions will be welcomed by those looking for a positive, collectivist vision of the future that addresses the real underlying issues in the creation of disadvantage.
Shortlisted for the BSA Philip Abrams Memorial Prize 2019.
What’s it really like to be a mother with a career working flexibly?
Drawing on over 100 hours of interview data, this book is the first to go inside women’s work and family lives in a year of working flexibly.
The private labours of going part-time, job sharing, and home working are brought to life with vivid personal stories.
Taking a sociological and feminist perspective, it explores contemporary motherhood, work-life balance, emotional work in families, couples and housework, maternity transitions, interactions with employers, work design and workplace cultures, and employment policies.
It concludes that there is an opportunity to make employment and family life work better together and offers unique insights from women’s lived experiences on how to do it.
This bestselling textbook provides social science students with an accessible introduction to neuroscience and the implications for our understandings of child development, considering the links between brain development and social and cultural issues.
Now covering the 0-18+ age range, the new edition critically analyses the relationship between children and young people’s thoughts, behaviours and feelings and the ways in which their developing brains are structured. It includes a new section on emotional development in adolescence, considering the impact of drugs and alcohol on the brain and the role of brain changes in driving risky behaviours.
Assuming no prior knowledge of the subject, the text connects the latest scientific knowledge to the practice of understanding and working with children. Incorporating the latest research and debate throughout, the book offers students and practitioners working with children:
-
case studies showing how brain science is changing practice;
-
a companion website including self-test questions;
-
end-of-chapter summaries, further reading and questions to test knowledge;
-
a glossary of neuroscientific terms.
This book provides an applied, interdisciplinary approach to an understanding of the key social determinants of health, essential at a time of increasing inequalities and reductions in existing NHS services and local authority budgets.
A person’s health and wellbeing is influenced by a spectrum of socioeconomic, cultural, living and working conditions, social and community networks and lifestyle choices. Based on the ‘rainbow model’ of the social determinants of health, chapters from experts in a wide range of disciplines examine the key factors which can lead to poor quality of life, homelessness and reduced mortality.
Featuring practitioner, academic and commentator experiences, and clear case studies, this book will enable researchers, front-line workers, managers, service commissioners and politicians to identify and employ the most appropriate health, social and economic interventions to support those at the edge of the community, and the promotion of their inclusion in society.
the maternal separation condition’ (Dawson et al, 1994: 772). More ‘positive’ emotion it would seem. In truth, there is a vast gallimauphry of neuroscience research, but little settled knowledge. Evidence for policy making does not simply repose in journals ‘ready to be harvested’ (Greenhalgh and Russell, 2006: 36). Rather, it is ‘rhetorically constructed on the social stage so as to achieve particular ends’ (Greenhalgh and Russell, 2006: 37). This seems an apt enough description of Allen’s modus operandi. Although ‘journal science’ is invoked, he seems not
nonhandled rats 90 minutes after the test, compared to the handled rats, for whom the levels had returned to baseline after 60 minutes. The study concludes: ‘our findings suggest that the mechanism by which the early environment influences the stress response involves the regulation of GR concentrations in the hippocampus’ (Meaney et al, 1985: 734). Crucially, the paper does not explain why human handling and maternal separation during suckling is apparently so beneficial in developing a greater level of resistance to stress. We might plausibly expect such
