Browse

This book documents the early lives of almost 19,000 children born in the UK at the start of the 21st century, and their families. It is the first time that analysis of data from the hugely important Millennium Cohort Study, a longitudinal study following the progress of children and their families, has been drawn together in a single volume. The unrivalled data is examined here to address important policy and scientific issues. The book is also the first in a series of publications that will report on the children's lives at different stages of their development. The fascinating range of findings presented here is strengthened by comparison with data on earlier generations. This has enabled the book to assess the impact of a wide range of policies on the life courses of a new generation, including policies on child health, parenting, childcare and social exclusion. This book is the product of an exciting collaboration from experts across a wide range of health and social science fields. The result is a unique and authoritative analysis of family life and early childhood in the UK that cuts across old disciplinary boundaries.

This book documents the first five years of life of the children of the influential Millennium Cohort Study, which is tracking almost 19,000 babies born in 2000 and 2001 in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. This book is the second in a series of books that report on the findings from the data and follows on from Children of the 21st century: From birth to nine months (The Policy Press, 2005). It takes an extended look at the children's lives and development as they grow and begin formal education, and the implications for family policy, and service planning in health and social services. The chapters in this book are written by experts across a wide range of social science and health fields and form a unique look at the early lives of children that cuts across disciplinary boundaries.

Even after twenty years of children's rights and new thinking about childhood, children are still frequently seen as apolitical. All over the world there has been a growing emphasis on ‘participation’, but much of this is adult-led, and spaces for children's individual and collective autonomy are limited. This book questions many of the conventional ways in which children are perceived. It focuses on the politics of children's communication in two senses: children as political actors, and the micropolitics of children's interaction with each other and with adults. It looks at how children and young people communicate and engage, how they organise themselves and their lives, and how they deal with conflict in their relationships and the world around them. These are children at the margins, in various ways, but they are not victims; they are finding ways to take charge of their own lives. The book is also about adults and how they can interact with children and young people in ways that are sensitive to children's feelings, empowering and supportive of their attempts to be autonomous.

This book asks how far and in what way social inclusion policies are meeting the needs and rights of children and young people. Leading scholars write from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines including social policy, education, geography and sociology. The book critically examines the concepts of participation and social inclusion and their links with children and childhoods and considers the geography of social inclusion and exclusion. It explores young people's own conceptualisations of social inclusion and exclusion; and examines how these concepts have been expressed in policy at various levels. The book concludes with an agenda for progressing participation and social inclusion, both for and with children and young people.

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 book 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.

Grandparenting in the 21^st century is at the heart of profound family and societal changes. It is of increasing social and economic significance yet many dimensions of grandparenting are still poorly understood. Contemporary Grandparenting is the first book to take a sociological approach to grandparenting across diverse country contexts and combines new theorising with up-to-date empirical findings to document the changing nature of grandparenting across global contexts. In this highly original book, leading contributors analyse how grandparenting differs according to the nature of the welfare state and the cultural context, how family breakdown influences grandparenting, and explore men's changing roles as grandfathers. Grandparents today face conflicting norms and expectations about their roles, but act with agency to forge new identities within the context of societal and cultural constraints. Contemporary Grandparenting illuminates key issues relevant to students and researchers from sociology and social policy, including in the fields of family, childhood, ageing and gender studies.

This book is born of a contradiction: on the one hand, there has been a genuine advance in the awareness of violence against women and children and actions to oppose it. On the other, the violence persists and so does the counter-attack against those who seek to expose it. The book describes the links between discrimination, violence against women, and violence against children, and uncovers the strategies and tactics used for concealing it. The author's analysis, corroborated by a theoretical framework as well as international research data, reveals the interconnectedness of what might appear to be separate events or measures. The book also demonstrates how the same tactics and strategies are at work in various different countries.

Child poverty is currently regarded by many as the ‘number one’ issue in Britain. Yet it has not always been so high on the policy agenda. What were attitudes to poor children 200 years ago? How did child poverty emerge as both a quantifiable and urgent issue? And how did policy makers respond? These are the questions that this book tackles. The book presents a broad but sophisticated overview of 200 years of investigation into and responses to the plight of poor children. It identifies key moments and figures of the period, and includes chapters on children and work, education, and child poverty research to provide the essential context for the story of the ‘discovery’ of child poverty. Clearly and accessibly written, this book provides a concise but richly detailed account of the subject. It will appeal to policy makers, practitioners, researchers, and all those with an interest in child poverty wishing to understand the antecedents of current research and policy.

This book explores the issue of healthcare professionals' attitudes towards women who are victims of domestic violence. There is a growing interest by healthcare professionals and researchers in the role of healthcare professionals in relation to domestic violence. The book looks at the health experiences of women who are victims of domestic violence and the responses to such injuries by healthcare professionals. The author presents the results of an in-depth qualitative study, conducted within Britain, examining domestic violence and health. Women who are treated medically without any acknowledgement of the social, personal, and psychological aspects of their condition, are likely to re-present with domestic-violence-related injuries. The book includes chapters that look at why women access health services, an examination of the physical and non-physical effects of domestic violence, the range of treatment options currently favoured by healthcare professionals and the response of patients to them, differentiations in practice between different health professionals, and the impact of domestic violence as a social issue on trends in medical training. These issues are considered in light of debates about medicalisation, the function of the sick role, and both biomedical/wound-led, and holistic/person-led approaches to health provision. Key findings are highlighted, and the author provides recommendations for good practice.

Providing early education and care (ECEC) which is both equitable and high quality is a challenge all governments are confronting. This comparative volume seeks both to broaden and to deepen our understanding of policies in operation in different countries. It asks how successfully policies in eight different countries ensure that all children, including those from disadvantaged backgrounds, can access high quality ECEC. The countries included are Australia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, the UK and the US. Each chapter is written by academic experts from the country in question, and contains empirical evidence on access to services by children from different backgrounds, alongside careful analysis and discussion of how services are organised, including the operation of funding and regulation mechanisms. A concluding chapter pulls together potential policy lessons from across the eight countries, highlighting common policy challenges, and, where possible, identifying policies that have proved effective in particular countries. The book recognises the very different cultural and institutional inheritance which has shaped services in each country, and the idea is not one of “fast policy transfer” but rather one of “contextualised policy learning” (Mahon, 2007), in which attention is given to how policies work on the ground and to the contexts in which they are embedded.

Acknowledging the increasing diversity and complexity of families, this 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.

This book addresses the complexity of family change. It draws on evidence from two linked studies, one carried out in the 1960s and the other in the early years of the 21st century, to analyse the specific ways in which family lives have changed and how they have been affected by the major structural and cultural changes of the second half of the 20th century. The book shows that, while there has undeniably been change, there is a surprising degree of continuity in family practices. It casts doubt on claims that families have been subject to a process of dramatic change and provides an alternative account which is based on careful analysis of empirical data. The book presents a unique opportunity to chart the nature of social change in a particular locality over the last 50 years; includes discussions of social and cultural variations in family life, focusing on younger as well as older generations; explores not only what happens within family-households but also what happens within networks of kin across different households and shows the way changing patterns of employment affect kinship networks and how geographical mobility co-exists with the maintenance of strong kinship ties.

Across Europe and beyond, changing family living arrangements have stimulated popular and academic debate about the impact of socio-demographic trends on family well-being and the challenges they present for governments. This book explores the complex relationship between family change and public policy responses in EU member states and candidate countries. After comparing the major socio-economic changes of the late twentieth century in Europe and their impact on family and working life, it analyses both the reactions of policy makers and users as they respond to change, and the perceptions families have of public policy and its relative importance in their lives.

This book 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.

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.

Fatherhood is in transition and being challenged by often contradictory forces: societal mandates to be both an active father and provider, prevailing gender cultures, and the institutional arrangements in which fathers work and live. This book explores these dynamics in the context of cross-national policies and daily child care practices of fathers. It presents the current state of knowledge on father involvement with young children in six countries with unique policies related to parenting in general and support for fathers in particular: Finland, Germany, Italy, Slovenia, the UK, and the USA. These countries have different welfare state regimes, gender regimes, cultures of care and work-family reconciliation policies. This book examines these nations’ fatherhood rights and obligations, fathering practices, and father well-being. Specifically, current research is presented about the nature and extent of fathers’ activities with their young children (birth to entry into elementary school) in the context of demanding workplaces, degree of support via available family policies, and a culture demanding more father involvement. The chapters reflect the extent to which policy and practice are congruent with ideals of the active father who is both provider and nurturer of children in the unique cultural context of a country. The book concludes with a cross-national comparison, a conceptual model of fatherhood regimes, promising fatherhood initiatives, and recommendations for researchers and policy–makers.

The five Nordic countries - Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden -are well known for their extensive welfare system and gender equality which provides both parents with opportunities to earn and care for their children. In this topical book, expert scholars from the Nordic countries, as well as the UK and the US, demonstrate how modern fatherhood is supported in the Nordic setting through family and social policies, and how these contribute to shaping and influencing the images, roles and practices of fathers in a diversity of family settings and variations of fatherhoods. This comprehensive volume will have wide international appeal for those who look to Nordic countries and their success in creating gender-equal societies.

This book offers 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, the book explores 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.

This book is the first in-depth exploration of grandparents' relationships with adult children and grandchildren in divorced families. It asks what part grandparents might play in public policy and whether measures should be taken to support their grandparenting role. Do they have a special place in family life that ought to be recognised in law? This ground-breaking book is intended for a wide readership. Grandparents and parents in divorced families will identify with many of the thoughts, feelings, and experiences reflected here. Academics in social science and law departments will encounter new thinking about the nature of the grandchild-grandparent relationship. Policy makers will find out more about recent policy initiatives and their strengths and limitations.

This book is a sequel to Contemporary grandparenting, published in 2012 (Arber and Timonen, 2012). Both macro and micro level issues are covered, with a particular focus on gender, welfare states, economic development, and grandparental agency; this ensures that the book covers many topic areas of greatest relevance and interest. It emphasises that grandparenting takes many diverse forms and cannot be reduced to a small number of ‘types’. Grandparenting has evolved considerably, and continues to evolve, as a result of both socio-demographic and economic influences, and grandparents’ own agency. The book contains analyses of topics that have so far received relatively little attention, such as transnational grandparenting and gender differences in grandparenting practices. It is the only collection that brings together theory-driven research on grandparenting from a wide variety of cultural and welfare state contexts - including chapters on Europe, North America, Africa, Asia and Australia - drawing broad lines of debate as well as outlining country-level analyses. The book therefore combines up-to-date empirical findings with new theorising that will be relevant to academics, researchers, students, and experts working in the realms of family and old-age policy and practice.