EIGHT Dealing with money in low- to moderate-income couples: insights from individual interviews Sirin Sung and Fran Bennett Introduction Research on the material aspects of family life is not easy because so much economic behaviour takes place (literally) behind closed doors. (Burgoyne et al, 2006, p 619) As Cantillon et al (2004) argue, what happens within households is often neglected. The family is a key site of distribution – of money, time and labour (see, for example, Lister, 2005), as well as other resources – but is often a ‘black box’, which is
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.
Every household has to perform housework, and researchers know a lot about what predicts who does which chores, drawing frequently from theoretical explanations that highlight the importance of power dynamics.
This book moves beyond the existing scholarship by using quantitative, nationally representative survey data to theorize about how power dynamics as reflected in housework performance help us understand broader family variations. The authors investigate how knowing who cleans the house explains how households of differing forms, demographics and compositions operate, both cross-sectionally and over the life course of the household.
There is increasing government recognition of the importance of early family experiences on individuals in the long term and of how inter-parental conflict influences children’s development. Recognition of the role of such factors early in life is key to helping both policy makers and practitioners promote positive outcomes for children. This accessible book reviews recent research showing how children who experience high levels of inter-parental conflict are at serious risk not only in terms of their own wellbeing, but also in relation to the perpetuation of these behaviours later in life.
It examines the differences between ‘destructive’ and ‘constructive’ conflict and how they affect children, explores why some children are more adversely affected than others, and features the latest evidence on how conflict affects child physiology. Of particular note is the book’s focus on the growing evidence-based literature on conflict interventions within the last decade. A primer for practitioners working with families, policy makers, students and academics, it will show how to improve the tomorrows for children who experience challenging family experiences today.
Cohabiting couples and those entering religious-only marriages all too often end up with inadequate legal protection when the relationship ends. Yet, despite this shared experience, the linkages and overlaps between these two groups have largely been ignored in the legal literature.
Based on wide-ranging empirical studies, this timely book brings together scholars working in both areas to explore the complexities of the law, the different ways in which individuals experience and navigate the existing legal framework and the potential solutions for reform.
Illuminating pressing implications for social policy, this is an invaluable resource for policy makers, practitioners, researchers and students of family law.
This is the first book to address the issue of ageing after a long life with disability. It breaks new ground through its particular life course perspective, examining what it means to age with a physical or mental disability and what the implications are of ‘becoming old’ for people who have had extensive disabilities for many years. These people may have had to leave the labour market early, and the book looks at available care resources, both formal and informal. Ageing with disability challenges set ideas about successful ageing, as well as some of those about disabilities. The life course approach that is used unfolds important insights about the impact of multiple disabilities over time and on the phases of life. The book highlights the meaning of care in unexplored contexts, such as where ageing parents are caregivers or regarding mutual care in disabled couples. These are areas of knowledge which have, to date, been totally neglected.
‘The family’ is a subject of enormous academic, political and popular interest. It is a central feature of most people’s lives, the framework within which other relationships, activities and events take place. This unique study provides important new insights into the dynamics of Britain’s social and economic life - in family structures and relationships; in employment and household incomes; in housing, health and political affiliations.
Most previous research has been limited to measuring an individual or family’s position only at the time of the interview. This book presents a clearer picture by following the important events in people’s lives, such as starting work, getting married, or falling into poverty. It reviews existing findings and presents new analyses of data from the British Household Panel Survey. The same 10,000 adults (in 5,000 households) have been interviewed every year between 1991 and 1997.
Seven years in the lives of British families is a collaboration between members of the University of Essex’s Institute for Social and Economic Research. Each of the authors is an expert in the field, but the work has been presented in an easy-to-read style to make these important research findings widely accessible. The book will be read by policy makers and all with an interest in the dynamics of modern society, as well as by academic sociologists, economists and demographers.
As new forms of family and ‘non-traditional’ families grow in number, there is a need to understand these ‘new’ arrangements and models of parenthood.
This ground-breaking book discusses, using a comparative and a sociological perspective, examples of the relationship between changing gender identities and processes of family formation in the Western experience. It aims to show that, in the 21st century, it is possible to form a family without sex, without children, without a shared home, without a partner, without a working husband, without a heterosexual orientation or without a biological’ sexual body.
‘Diversity in family life’ will help readers discover and understand the characteristics, advantages and drawbacks of these new models of parenthood, and their political implications in terms of social movements, characteristics and demands.
Drawing from an activist research project spanning Loja, Santo Domingo, New York, New Jersey, and Barcelona, this book offers a feminist intersectional analysis of the impact of migration on health and well-being.
It assesses how social inequalities and migration and health policies, in Ecuador and destination countries, shape the experiences of migrants. The author also explores how individual and collective action challenges health, geopolitical, gender, sexual, ethnoracial, and economic disparities, and empowers communities.
This is a thorough analysis of interpersonal, institutional, and structural mechanisms of marginalization and resistance. It will inform policy and research for better responses to migration’s negative effects on health, and progress towards greater equality and social justice.
In this exciting book, leading fatherhood scholars from Europe and Scandinavia offer unique insights into how to research fathers and fatherhood in contemporary society.
Outlining research methods in detail, including examples of large scale studies, online research, surveys and visual and aural methods, they explore how each approach worked in practice, what the benefits and pitfalls were, and what the wider and future application of the chosen research methods might be.
Covering a wide range of subjects from non-resident fathers to father engagement in child protection, this major contribution to the field also critiques and addresses the notion that fathers, especially young fathers, can be ‘hard to reach’. Essential reading for both students and policy makers in a fast-growing area of interest.
