Collection: Families, Relationships and Societies Editors’ Choice

 

Enjoy free access to our journal Editors’ top articles from recent issues. Access these articles for free until 30 April 2025. 

The three articles below analyse relationships, identities and ethics adopting rich sociological and analytical lens to consider gender, class and intersectional identities, practices and contexts. These place a spotlight on male sibling relationships, fatherhood and father-inclusive practice.  

Editors' Choice Collection Families, Relationships and Societies

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Research on social mobility continues to foreground the role of familial relationships. Studies of students who are first-in-family to attend university have often highlighted the intensity of familial obligations. Drawing on longitudinal research with upwardly mobile young men from working-class (and working-poor) backgrounds, this article presents three case studies focused on their relationship with their brothers who were on different, less upwardly mobile pathways. We understand gender to be discursively constructed and relationally negotiated through various interactions and the roles individuals come to embody. Research into caring masculinities foregrounds the various ways men are no longer disconnected from traditional feminine practices, particularly those concentrated on caring for others. We draw on the words of three upwardly working-class young men regarding how they perceived their relationship with their younger brothers, focusing specifically on the subjectivities they present as protector, supporter and familial caregiver.

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This article draws on ethnographic research to explore how an ethic of care is incorporated into fathers’ everyday family lives. Drawing on feminist conceptualisations of the ‘components of care’, this research investigates how fathers recognise and interpret care needs, as well as observing how such needs are practically attended to. Central to this article is an exploration of the extent to which men’s integration of care ethics can be seen to consolidate ideals of hegemonic masculinity or whether newly emerging forms of caring masculinities are challenging traditional gendered inequalities in care work. Analysis of fathers’ recognition of care needs and what they care ‘about’ implies a masculinised coding, in which traditional masculine values are recast to align with an ethic of care. It is argued that such framings stand to reaffirm hegemonic processes, with caring forms of masculinity representing a new hegemon. However, observations of fathers’ embodied caregiving arguably demonstrate how caring ‘for’ children can challenge traditional ideals of care labour, with men’s bodies recast within an ethic of care. Ultimately, this article contributes nuanced understandings of how men interpret and practise components of care, offering distinctions in the gendered trajectories of caring ‘for’ and caring ‘about’.

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Interdisciplinary social sciences literature on the value and significance of engaged fatherhood and father-inclusive approaches to practice for enhanced family outcomes have begun to reach a consensus. Yet there has been less attention to how research knowledge about fatherhood, including that which is co-produced with and for fathers, can be more effectively translated and embedded in practice and policy contexts. This article elaborates on a cumulative, empirically driven process that has established new relational ecologies between young fathers, multi-agency professionals and researchers. It illustrates how these ecologies, supported by longitudinal and co-creative research combined, are driving societal transformations through knowledge exchange and the instigation of new father-inclusive practice interventions that address the marginalisation of young fathers. The methodologies, including the co-creation of the Young Dads Collective and its impacts on young fathers and multi-agency professionals, are evaluated, confirming them as powerful and productive mechanisms for embedding father-inclusive practices within existing support and policy systems.

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