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Sociology of Children and Families

Series Editors: Esther Dermott and Debbie Watson, University of Bristol, UK

The Sociology of Children and Families international monograph series brings together the latest international research on children, childhood and families and pushes forward theory in Sociology of childhood and family life. Books in the series cover major global issues affecting children and families.

The series appeals to an international and interdisciplinary audience of academics, researchers and students across sociology, social policy, childhood and youth studies, social work, politics, social and cultural geography, children’s geographies and anthropology.

The series is international scope and welcomes submissions from books that are comparative, international or which engage with inter and cross-national literature and debates.

Download the proposal guidelines.

Call for proposals

Proposals are invited for books that include one or a range of the following:

  • Theorising family in the 21st Century
  • Theorising contemporary parenthood
  • Parenting, motherhood and fatherhood
  • Theorising childhood
  • Family and childhoods in a global context
  • Family form (e.g. same sex parenting, step parenting, lone parent, extended families, and blended families)
  • Children’s everyday lives
  • Marriage and partnership (and divorce)
  • Transnational families and cross-cultural relationships
  • Friendship
  • Demographic change
  • Researching families
  • Researching childhoods
  • Family policy and politics
  • Families and fertility (e.g. reproductive technologies)
  • Health and wellbeing
  • Families, children and education
  • Growing up/growing older in a digital age

Contact regarding proposals
If you would like to submit a proposal, or to discuss ideas, then please contact the series editors: Esther Dermott: esther.dermott@bristol.ac.uk; Debbie Watson: Debbie.watson@bristol.ac.uk. You can also download our book proposal guidelines here. (Word)

International Editorial Advisory Board
Harry Brighouse, University of Wisconsin-Madison, US
Sara Eldén, University of Lund, Sweden
Mary Jane Kehily, The Open University, UK
Zsuzsa Millei, University of Tampere, Finland
Tina Miller, Oxford Brookes University, UK
Meredith Nash, University of Tasmania, Australia
Emiko Ochiai, Kyoto University, Japan
Gillian Ranson, University of Calgary, Canada
Anna Sparrman, Linköping University, Sweden
Ulrike Zartler, University of Vienna, Austria

Showing 1-12 of 14 items.

Belonging and Belongings

Children’s Sense of Home in Shared Custody Arrangements

Bristol Uni Press

Qualitative Fieldwork with Children

Context and Participation in Child Well-Being Research across Nations

Drawing on the multinational qualitative study ‘Children’s Understandings of Well-being’ (CUWB), this book offers practical insights into conducting fieldwork across diverse contexts. Featuring experts from 13 countries, the book provides valuable perspectives for researchers across a wide range of academic settings.

Bristol Uni Press

Turning Global Rights into Local Realities

Realizing Children’s Rights in Ghana’s Pluralistic Society

Focusing on Ghana, this book explores the intersection of dominant children's rights principles with lived realities. Challenging one-dimensional portrayals, it advocates for more holistic approaches to the study of children’s lives and children’s rights realization in Southern contexts.

Bristol Uni Press

Understanding Muslim Family Life

Changing Relationships, Personal Life and Inequality

This book offers an innovative perspective on Muslim family life in British society. It explores key issues including diverse forms of family, gender, generation, race, ethnicity and class, informing solutions for inequalities. It demonstrates how a better understanding of Muslim family life can inform policies to address inequalities.

Bristol Uni Press

Thinking Through Family

Narratives of Care Experienced Lives

Drawing from longitudinal research, this book shows how the perspectives of people who have been in care can help us redefine the concept of family. Through a narrative analysis of the complexity of family lives, the author challenges the idea that some families are ‘ordinary’, while others are troubled, problematic and ‘other’.

Bristol Uni Press

Critical Perspectives on Research with Children

Reflexivity, Methodology, and Researcher Identity

This book shows how reflexive debate enhances childhood research. Expert contributors explore researchers’ identities, roles, boundaries and ethical governance, and use empirical international examples from a range of child-related issues to challenge conventions and raise standards.

Bristol Uni Press

Race, Class, Parenting and Children’s Leisure

Children’s Leisurescapes and Parenting Cultures in Middle-class British Indian Families

School-age children’s everyday lives are changing as they are immersed in digital leisure and organised activities. However, our current understandings of these transitions are race-blind. Presenting the first study of middle-class British Indian families, this book reveals the salience of race and class in shaping parenting cultures and children.

Bristol Uni Press

Childcare Provision in Neoliberal Times

The Marketization of Care

Opening the ‘black box’ of childcare markets to closer scrutiny, this book brings to light the complex political, social and economic dynamics behind childcare provisioning.

Bristol Uni Press

Black Mothers and Attachment Parenting

A Black Feminist Analysis of Intensive Mothering in Britain and Canada

This outstanding work examines black mothers’ engagements with attachment parenting and shows how it both undermines and reflects neoliberalism. Unique in its intersectional analysis, it fills a gap in the literature, drawing on black feminist theorizing to examine intensive mothering practices and policies.

Bristol Uni Press

Sharing Care

Equal and Primary Carer Fathers and Early Years Parenting

This timely study explores the experiences of fathers who take on equal or primary care responsibilities for young children.

Offering academic insight and practical recommendations, this will be key reading for researchers, policymakers, practitioners and students interested in contemporary families.

Bristol Uni Press

A Child’s Day

A Comprehensive Analysis of Change in Children’s Time Use in the UK

This rigorous review of four decades of data provides the clearest insights yet into the way children use their time. With analysis of changes in the time spent on family, education, culture and technology, as well as children’s own views on their habits, it presents a fascinating perspective on behaviour, wellbeing, social change and more.

Bristol Uni Press

Designing Parental Leave Policy

The Norway Model and the Changing Face of Fatherhood

This compelling book examines parental leave policies in Nordic countries, looking at how these laws encourage men towards life courses with greater care responsibilities. It considers the impact that these policies have had on gender equality and how they have led to a re-gendering of men by promoting ‘caring masculinities’.

Bristol Uni Press