Thinking Through Family
Narratives of Care Experienced Lives
By Janet Boddy With Fidelma Hanrahan and Bella Wheeler
ISBN
978-1529214727Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University PressISBN
978-1529214710Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University PressISBN
978-1529214734Imprint
Bristol University PressISBN
978-1529214734Imprint
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
