Policy Press

Family Troubles?

Exploring Changes and Challenges in the Family Lives of Children and Young People

Edited by Jane Ribbens McCarthy, Carol-Ann Hooper and Val Gillies

Published

Oct 15, 2014

Page count

320 pages

ISBN

978-1447304449

Dimensions

240 x 172 mm

Imprint

Policy Press

Published

Apr 4, 2013

Page count

320 pages

ISBN

978-1447304432

Dimensions

240 x 172 mm

Imprint

Policy Press

Published

Oct 15, 2014

Page count

320 pages

ISBN

978-1447320456

Dimensions

Imprint

Policy Press

Published

Oct 15, 2014

Page count

320 pages

ISBN

978-1447320463

Dimensions

Imprint

Policy Press
Family Troubles?

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.

Dr Jane Ribbens McCarthy is Reader in Family Studies, in the Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance (CCIG) at the Open University. Her research interests and publications focus on families and relationships, particularly children and young people’s family lives, including their experiences of bereavement and loss.

Dr Carol-Ann Hooper is Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of York. She has worked in the overlapping fields of child protection and family support, gender and crime, and violence against women, for over 20 years.

Val Gillies is Research Professor in Social and Policy Studies at the Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Research, London South Bank University. Her research interests focus on family, parenting, social class, and marginalised children and young people, and she has published extensively in journals on these topics.

Preface

Troubling normalities and normal family troubles: diversities, experiences and tensions ~ Jane Ribbens McCarthy, Carol-Ann Hooper and Val Gillies

Part 1: Approaching Family Troubles? Contexts and Methodologies

Cultural context, families and troubles ~ Jill Korbin

Representing family troubles through the 20th century ~ Janet Fink

The role of science in understanding family troubles ~ Michael Rutter

Family troubles, methods trouble: qualitative research and the methodological divide ~ Ara Francis

Part 2: Whose Trouble? Contested Definitions and Practices

Disabled parents and normative family life: the obscuring of lived experiences of parents and children within policy and research accounts ~ Harriet Clarke and Lindsay O’Dell

Normal problems or problem children? Parents and the micro-politics of deviance and disability ~ Ara Francis

Troubled talk and talk about troubles: moral cultures of infant feeding in professional, policy and parenting discourses ~ Helen Lomax

Children’s non-conforming behaviour: personal trouble or public issue? ~ Geraldine Brady

Revealing the lived reality of kinship care through children and young people’s narratives: “It’s not all nice, it’s not all easy-going, it’s a difficult journey to go on” ~ Karin Cooper

Part 3: The Normal, the Troubling and the Harmful?

Troubling loss? Children’s experiences of major disruptions in family life ~ Lynn Jamieson and Gill Highet

The permeating presence of past domestic and familial violence: “So like I’d never let anyone hit me but I’ve hit them, and I shouldn’t have done” ~ Dawn Mannay

Thinking about sociological work on personal and family life in the light of research on young people’s experience of parental substance misuse ~ Sarah Wilson

The trouble with siblings: some psychosocial thoughts about sisters, aggression and femininity ~ Helen Lucey

Children and family transitions: contact and togetherness ~ Hayley Davies

Part 4: Troubles and transitions across space and culture

‘Troubling’ or ‘ordinary’? Children’s views on migration and intergenerational ethnic identities ~ Umut Erel

Colombian families dealing with parents’ international migration ~ Maria Claudia Duque-Páramo

Families left behind: unaccompanied young people seeking asylum in the UK ~ Elaine Chase and June Statham

Young people’s caring relations and transitions within families affected by HIV ~ Ruth Evans

Estimating the prevalence of forced marriage in England ~ Peter Keogh, Anne Kazimirski, Susan Purdon and Ruth Maisey

Part 5: Working with Families

European perspectives on parenting and family support ~ Janet Boddy

What supports resilient coping among family members? A systemic practitioner’s perspective ~ Arlene Vetere

Troubled and troublesome teens: mothers’ and professionals’ understandings of parenting teenagers and teenage troubles ~ Harriet Churchill and Karen Clarke

Contested family practices and moral reasoning: updating concepts for working with family-related social problems ~ Hannele Forsberg

Working with fathers: risk or resource? ~ Brid Featherstone

What is at stake in family troubles? Existential issues and value frameworks ~ Jane Ribbens McCarthy