Policy Press

Thinking Through Family

Narratives of Care Experienced Lives

By Janet Boddy With Fidelma Hanrahan and Bella Wheeler

Published

Mar 1, 2025

Page count

196 pages

Browse the series

Sociology of Children and Families

ISBN

978-1529214727

Dimensions

234 x 156 mm

Imprint

Bristol University Press

Published

Sep 29, 2023

Page count

196 pages

Browse the series

Sociology of Children and Families

ISBN

978-1529214710

Dimensions

234 x 156 mm

Imprint

Bristol University Press

Published

Sep 29, 2023

Page count

196 pages

Browse the series

Sociology of Children and Families

ISBN

978-1529214734

Imprint

Bristol University Press

Published

Sep 29, 2023

Page count

196 pages

Browse the series

Sociology of Children and Families

ISBN

978-1529214734

Imprint

Bristol University Press
Thinking Through Family

Understanding what ‘family’ means – and how best to support families – depends on challenging politicized assumptions that frame ‘ordinary’ families in comparison to an imagined problematic ‘other’.

Learning from the perspectives of people who were in care in childhood, this innovative book helps redefine the concept of family. Linking two longitudinal studies involving young adults in England, it reveals important new insights into the diverse and dynamic complexity of family lives, identities and practices in time – through childhood and beyond.

Paving the way for future policy and practice, this book makes an important contribution to the theorization of family in the 21st century.

"Thinking Through Family throws a telling light on the taken-for-grantedness of family, and makes its ordinariness and extra-ordinariness visible for all lives through the voices of care experienced people. Janet Boddy writes with a care and commitment for the participants whose lives inform the book’s analyses and arguments." Rosalind Edwards, University of Southampton

Janet Boddy is Professor of Child, Youth and Family Studies at the University of Sussex and Adjunct Professor in the Childhood, Family and Welfare Division of NOVA at Oslo Metropolitan University.

Fidelma Hanrahan is Senior Research Officer at Research in Practice.

Bella Wheeler is Researcher in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford.

1, Why Think Through ‘Family’?

2. Learning From Care Experienced Perspectives

3. Doing Family: The Significance of the ‘Ordinary'

4. Re/Configuring Boundaries: Who Counts as ‘Family’?

5. ‘How Can we Not Talk About Family When Family’s All That We’ve Got?’: Care and Connectedness

6. Understandings and Experiences of Parenthood

7. Thinking Through Family: Implications for Theory and Practice