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Diagnosis in paediatric genetics involves a combination of technologies able to display variation in DNA and clinical discussions with families that concentrate on retrieving family histories. This paper explores the significance of the family tales that genetics brings to the fore. Through discussion of an ESRC-funded ethnographic study of families referred to a paediatric genetic service, the paper explores how genetics and family history intersect in 'relations of exchange' ( Latimer, 2013). It draws from sociological work on family that emphasizes the importance of narrative to the formation and maintenance of family ties and the importance of broader social contexts to the kinds of stories that can be told and recognized by others. The paper emphasizes the significance of claims to respectability and value to the narratives people provide of family ties; particularly in contexts where such ties, in the past or the present, are thought of as 'troubling'. Making reference to research by Skeggs and Loveday (2012), it is argued that an important narrative that is drawn upon, in order to claim respectability, is that of being a good parent who protects their children from socially 'risky relations' so that a positive future as a 'subject of value' may be possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on a fundamental problem with individualisation theories - the assumption that contemporary personal lives are radically new and different from those in the past. This is a particularly important issue for individualisation theories because they essentially depend on the idea of epochal, even revolutionary, historical change. Empirically, I examine the experience of personal life in Britain in the late 1940s and early 1950s (where a number of excellent sources exist) and compare it with today. Looking first at the personal life of gay and lesbian people, and of heterosexual spouses, I find substantial, but not unambiguous, 'improvement'- in terms of equality, openness and diversity - over the period. But this improvement does not necessarily mean transformation in how people think about their personal lives and how they ought to conduct them. The paper goes on, therefore, to examine 'tradition' and 'individualisation' through the lens of ideas around extra-marital sex and divorce. Rather than some duality between 'traditional' and 'individualising' people in the two periods, I find that how people thought, and the range of their thoughts, about how to conduct personal life seem similar in 1949/50 to the present day - given the debates and issues of the time. In both periods the married, older and more religious were the more 'traditional', and the young and the more professional were more 'progressive'. But the bulk of both samples were 'pragmatists', holding practical views of what was reasonably proper and possible in adapting to, and improvising around, their circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to make a contribution to debates on ‘class analysis’, as well as exploring the role of the family in class reproduction. A broad distinction is drawn between primarily ‘economic’ and primarily ‘culturalist’ accounts of class reproduction. It is argued that despite their differences, these accounts also share many similarities. In particular, both approaches identify the role of the family as central to the reproduction of class. However, economic and cultural accounts cannot be integrated into a single ‘theory’, one reason being that the mechanisms whereby economic and cultural capital are transmitted are different. Nevertheless, economic and cultural approaches may be (and should be) used in combination with each other in order to develop a full account of the reproduction of class inequalities. In developing these arguments, a critique is offered of current theories of ‘individualisation’ in relation to class and the family. The argument is illustrated by two ‘worked examples’; teenage motherhood, and the patterning of mothers’ employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks beyond an individualised type of parental involvement and discusses the role of the extended family in relation to school. We draw on the different social capital theories to explain its implications and also to discuss its efficacy. Our focus is on the Bangladeshi community and the Pakistani community in two towns in the North East of England. British South Asian parents are variously accused of having too high educational expectations of their children or not being interested at all and that Pakistani and Bangladeshi parents in particular have no or limited relationships with their children's schools. In this paper we demonstrate that parental involvement in these two communities resides not simply in the hands of the parents but within the wider family. We challenge the deficit model of British South Asian families as indifferent to the education of their children and we identify the potential resource of the extended family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emphasis in class research remains on the structural aspects of class, class processes are neglected. This paper focuses upon some relational and normative aspects of class through an examination of social divisions produced and constructed within middle class families’ choices of childcare. Working with data from two contrasting settings in London (Battersea and Stoke Newington) three issues are addressed in the paper; the extent to which childcare arrangements both substantively and structurally position children differently within long term educational careers; the ways in which the use of choice in a market system of child care and education, works to produce patterns of social closure that quietly discriminate via the collectivist criterion of class and racial membership; and the ways in which child care choices also point-up and perpetuate subtle distinctions and tensions of values and lifestyle within the middle class, between class factions. Concepts drawn from the work of Bourdieu are deployed throughout. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper seeks to develop the discussion of informal care in the community stimulated by feminist analyses in social policy of what has been called 'the moral politics of caring'. In particular the paper inquires into the relationship between family structures and the 'political styles' through which families bargain about caring issues. A selection of studies dealing with family structure anal decision-making are discussed. The paper closes by making some observations about the potential development of family therapy strategies, particularly by social workers trying to ensure the co-operation and involvement of family members, friends and neighbours in caring responsibilities within the new community care framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the patterns of income allocation in cross-class families; that is, in families in which the wife is employed in higher level white-collar or professional employment, and the husband in manual work. Following the work of Jan Pahl (1982 and 1983) families are categorised according to their system of money management. The majority of families here employ either a 'one purse' system based upon joint family funds, or an independent system based upon separate bank accounts. In addition, couples who use an 'allowance' system, a shared system, or a variant of the independent system with only one-earner are discussed. Whenever possible, qualitative reports from the families interviewed are drawn upon.
The paper reveals ways in which gender-specific behaviour may be observed through the study of families' allocative systems. In particular, the wives' propensity to assume responsibility for food shopping, regardless of the couples' sources of income or allocative pattern chosen, is demonstrated. In addition, however, the source of income - specifically cash payments to the husbands - is seen to have an independent effect upon the couples' perceptions of money within the family. The paper concludes with speculation as to why the majority of these affluent families employ a system of joint family funds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides the first report of an intensive empirical study of social relations of unemployment on a Glasgow housing estate. Its sample is divided into two equal, age-based categories corresponding to families where the male 'head of household' is over 25 and has a previous record of regular work, and those under 25 where such experience is absent. The paper identifies and examines a domestic and work-linked cycle which has been disrupted by unemployment. On this basis we then consider the differential adaptation to unemployment of the two groups; differences in their gender relations and differences in the forms and degrees of their reliance on kin and other support. We finally and tentatively propose some connections between unemployment and domestic conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In modern pluralist societies, notably Great Britain and the United States, there has been a growth of full-time expert agencies officially empowered to implement legitimation in particular institutions or sectors of society. Thus control of the family is variously the responsibility of genetic, marriage and child guidance counsellors as well as "generic" social workers, doctors, teachers and so on. In this paper, authors attempt to show how several official agents doctors, social workers, voluntary associations for the disabled and also family and friends may act to redefine the situation of parents with disabled children so that they may continue to appear as "good" parents acting in accordance with the prescriptions of the official morality of child-rearing or making appropriate use of its rhetoric. Medical science was presented as based on a "disease model," the distinctive nature of its explanations deriving from their being conceptualized in terms of the structure and functioning of the body. Secondly, parents' ideology, though expressed in common-sense terms, was shown as grounded also in various scientific legitimations.

In debates on social change and personal life, modernity has generally been conceptualized in opposition to tradition, though some have pointed to the persistence of traditional values and practices within modern family relations. In this paper we seek to extend these debates beyond their largely Eurocentric context. Drawing on a comparative qualitative study of women and social change in Britain and Hong Kong, we argue for an understanding of the traditional and the modern that takes account of the ways in which tradition is reshaped in the context of modernity. The accounts of young adult women and their mothers in Hong Kong and Britain reveal varied interpretations of family obligations and practices in relation to normative ideals of family life in each context. We consider how configurations of family life deemed 'modern' are inflected by the differing traditions and histories of Hong Kong and British society and argue that these differences are not only cultural, but also attributable to the material conditions under which family relationships are forged and negotiated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on two qualitative studies which looked at diet, weight and health from a social class perspective, we use Bourdieu's theory of habitus to help explain the different food and eating practices undertaken by families with young teenagers. Whilst the families displayed considerable reflexivity when making decisions about what to eat on a daily basis, the analysis highlighted that everyday behaviours are still bounded by distinctions of taste, according to social position. The paper includes an examination of the relationships between different forms of capital and whether form or functionality is prioritised within families. We show the importance of temporal frameworks when interpreting classed food and eating practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the relationship between the state and the individual in relation to an aspect of mundane family life – the feeding of babies and young children. The nutritional status of children has long been a matter of national concern and infant feeding is an aspect of family life that has been subjected to substantial state intervention. It exemplifies the imposition upon women the ‘biologico-moral responsibility’ for the welfare of children ( ). The state's attempts to influence mothers’ feeding practices operate largely through education and persuasion. Through an elaborate state-sponsored apparatus, a strongly medicalised expert discourse is disseminated to mothers. This discourse warns mothers of the risks of certain feeding practices and the benefits of others. It constrains mothers through a series of ‘quiet coercions’ ( ) which seek to render them self-regulating subjects. Using data from a longitudinal interview study, this paper explores how mothers who are made responsible in these medical discourses around child nutrition, engage with, resist and refuse expert advice. It examines, in particular, the rhetorical strategies which mothers use to defend themselves against the charges of maternal irresponsibility that arise when their practices do not conform to expert medical recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how money and domestic tasks are allocated in families where one spouse works full-time in the home, in comparison with families where both parents have outside employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals primarily with Australian aboriginal society and culture, and compares these with the society and culture of white Australia in the special realm of the family. It assumes that white Australia is a complex but fundamentally coherent whole, and that aboriginal Australia can also be viewed as a coherent whole, irrespective of regional variations, for comparative purposes. The major distinction between the aboriginal family and the white family is a significant difference in the relationship between social structure and culture in the context of family. The only differentiations in modes of livelihood in an aboriginal tribe were the obvious ones based on age and sex. The familial cultures of aboriginal Australia exhibited a remarkable uniformity, even from tribe to tribe, compared with the diversity of familial cultures in white Australia, but the reverse is true of family structure. Earlier works on the aborigines had over-stressed "group marriage" to such an extent that the presence of some monogamists in the tribe was ignored. A typical aboriginal family consists of a man aged 50 years old or above, two wives, and children. Each family, whether polygynous or monogamous, constituted a separate camping unit with its own shelter and fire.

The article focuses on family life in London, England suburb. The material presented in this paper was collected in the course of a study of an urban general practice made by the Social Medicine Research Unit of the Medical Research Council during 1950-52. It relates to the way of life, and the family and social relationships, of a group of families within that practice, and it is the kind of material that often lies unused in research flies. It also provided a basis for assessing the characteristics of the group; characteristics which cannot be left out of account if any attempt is to be made to understand the factors which influence the behavior of patients in health and illness. The young wife of a man who had recently set up in business on his own volunteered the information that she and her husband could talk about everything and anything together, she thought that modern girls were not afraid of their husbands, as the older generation hat been, and so they could be companions for each other and do things together.

The inheritance practices of the ultra-wealthy play a key role in reproducing socio-economic inequalities across generations. Given this role, we need a better understanding of the individuals and families who own, accumulate and pass on substantial amounts of wealth. This article asks two questions: first, how do parents with profound ownership or control over capital reconcile cultivating dynastic wealth with beliefs in meritocratic achievement? And, second, how do wealth managers justify their commercial value to first generation wealthy clients? The answer to both of these questions involves what I call a pedagogy of inherited wealth. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with first-generation ultra-wealthy parents and their wealth managers, it documents how wealthy parents and wealth managers construct risky futures around inheritance, and their strategies to manage those risks through the control of access to the family's wealth. In doing so, it explores how they produce two roles, termed here the 'good inheritor' and the 'good client'. Through examining various strategies to manage family wealth and inheritance, the article reveals the legitimating and enabling pedagogy surrounding this process and the paradox at the heart of this pedagogy – which promotes both the value of work among the next generation of inheritors and the preservation of dynastic wealth that will preclude their dependence on income-generating work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, there has been a resurgence of sociological work exploring the importance and meaning of kinship. Much of this work has criticized the 'individualization' thesis according to which changes in family structures over time have been interpreted as reflecting a fundamental decline in family values. Highlighting continuities as well as change in family life, this work has also suggested ways to move beyond the individualization debate and to develop alternative frameworks for the study of contemporary families and personal life, notably through the analysis of related practices. For various reasons, this recent work has focused primarily on the experience and practices of adults in 'ordinary' rather than more difficult family circumstances. This article aims to complement this work by focusing on the difficult family experiences of young people affected by parental substance use. It is argued that it is important not to lose sight of such experiences in order that sociological thinking reflect the diversity of family practices and the resources available to support them, including at younger ages. In addition, the importance of developing concepts or a language facilitating the exploration and communication of the emotional and symbolic significance of these practices is emphasized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the theoretical approach to the concept of lone motherhood is adopted from ‘new’ family sociology where families are understood to be dynamic processes constituted by webs of relationships. I analyse life stories written by lone mothers in order to examine the meanings that they give to their lone motherhood in relation to their larger family context. This approach reveals that, along with the concept ‘family’, the category ‘lone motherhood’ can be questioned. The life stories show that as with all families, the representations of ‘the lone mother family’ vary. Lone motherhood emerges less as a distinct family form and more as an experience coloured by the lone mother's position in a web of family relationships, as well as her place in her broader personal, social and historical context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent increase in transnational migration among women has lead to a reappraisal of theoretical explanations of migratory movement ( ; ; ). This paper reviews a number of theoretical explanations of transnational migration and then applies these theories to a qualitative study of women who migrated from Ireland to Britain in the 1930s. I explore the women's reasons for leaving Ireland and their experiences as young economic migrants in Britain in the inter-war years. Women have made up the majority of Irish migrants to Britain for much of the twentieth century yet the dominant stereotype of the Irish migrant has been the Mick or Paddy image ( ). Through an analysis of these twelve women's narratives of migration, I explore themes such as household strategies and familial networks. I am interested in the interwoven explanations of migration as both a form of escape ( ) and a rational family strategy and, hence, the ways in which women's decision to migrate can be seen as a combination of both active agency and family obligation. Drawing on the work of ) as well as ) and , ), I will analyse the ways in which family connections may transcend migration and engage with the concept of ‘transnational family’ ( ). In so doing, I raise questions about the complex nature of migration and the extent to which it could be described in terms of empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights significant moments, strategies, and themes in British nonheterosexual Muslims’ management of familial and kin relations. Significant socio-cultural and religious factors constitute the framework within which they negotiate such relations. These factors are: the strict religious censure of non-heterosexuality (specifically homosexuality) based on various Islamic written sources, the pervasive cultural censure of homosexuality as a ‘western disease’, the expectation of marriage as a cultural and religious obligation, the respect for parents, and the maintenance of family honour ( izzat) particularly in the close-knit kinship network. These factors, which significantly inform the participants’ responses and experiences, also reflect the social position of this religious and ethnic minority in British society. Specifically, the participants highlighted the complexity of secrecy, silence and discretion in balancing individualism (ie expression of sexuality) and socio- religious obligations. In general, the data demonstrate the intricate inter-relatedness of structure and agency, and the cultural embeddedness of the production and management of identity and social relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social capital has become a key concept in Government policy-making and academic circles. Particular forms of social capital theorising have become dominant and influential, invoking certain conceptions of the nature of family life. Inherently, ideas about ‘the family’ not only draw on gender divisions in fundamental ways, but also on particular forms of intergenerational relationships and power relations. This paper explores the place, and understandings, of family in social capital theorising from a feminist perspective, including the way that debates in the social capital field interlock with those in the family field. These encompass: posing both ‘the family’ and social capital as fundamental and strong bases for social cohesion, but also as easily eroded and in need of protection and encouragement; the relationship between ‘the private’ and ‘the social’; notions of bonding and bridging, and horizontal and vertical, forms of social capital as these relate to ideas about contemporary diversity in family forms and the nature of intimate relationships; and analytic approaches to understanding both the natures of social capital and family life in terms of an economic or moral rationality. It argues for greater reflexivity in the use of social capital as a concept, revealing rather than replicating troubling presences and absences around gender and generation as fundamental axes of family life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years there has been a proliferation of writing on the meaning of home within the disciplines of sociology, anthropology, psychology, human geography, history, architecture and philosophy. Although many researchers now understand home as a multidimensional concept and acknowledge the presence of and need for multidisciplinary research in the field, there has been little sustained reflection and critique of the multidisciplinary field of home research and the diverse, even contradictory meanings of this term. This paper brings together and examines the dominant and recurring ideas about home represented in the relevant theoretical and empirical literature. It raises the question whether or not home is (a) place(s), (a) space(s), feeling(s), practices, and/or an active state of state of being in the world? Home is variously described in the literature as conflated with or related to house, family, haven, self, gender, and journeying. Many authors also consider notions of being-at-home, creating or making home and the ideal home. In an effort to facilitate interdisciplinary conversations about the meaning and experience of home each of these themes are briefly considered in this critical literature review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the family relationships of mothers and children living at a women's refuge because of intimate partner violence. Theoretically, the article contributes to the sociological literature analysing family relationships in terms of 'doing' and 'displaying' rather than 'being' a family. Empirically, it is based on ethnographic fieldwork and semi-structured interviews with children living at a refuge in Denmark. The article shows that family display at the refuge is conducted by both mothers and children and sometimes in conflicting ways, not least when it comes to the question of how to define the position of the father (who has committed the violence) in the family's future life. This highlights how display – as an evaluative practice – can be done in different ways in order to protect or reject family relationships, both internally and when addressing external audiences. Furthermore, the article analyses family relationships in a semi-public setting (the refuge) where powerful audiences are active interpreters of the family display enacted, and participants in decisions concerning the families' futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a paper that examines the debate about the class rationality of the working class demand for a family wage. The article informs that the demand has assumed an important place in many accounts of the consolidation of the gendered division of labor and the domestic subordination of women within industrial-capitalist societies. It argues that this issue cannot be resolved without considering the feasibility of alternative strategies. The evaluation of alternatives requires detailed historical contextualization. It describes that existing accounts are criticized for their unrealistic treatment of these alternatives and the constraints upon them and particularly for their neglect of the influence of the policies of employers and the state upon working-class strategies. It supports this argument by discussing the economic and political context of the family wage demand in Great Britain up to the First World War. It concludes that the strategy was more rational than many suggested by other writers.

Recent debates about flows of help within the family have indicated considerable diversity according to the type of help (money, services), and ages and gender of those involved, and have shown that values are only a partial guide to the scale of such flows. This paper focuses on a particular occasion for help, young people's housing, and a particular region, South-East England, where one would expect family financial help to be high given the capacity to help of older generations (due to higher average incomes and wealth) and the affordability problems faced by young people. It is shown that contrary to hypothesis only 12% of a sample of young people had received financial help for housing purposes since they had left home, less than found in previous studies with different samples. The amounts involved were less than young people believed their parents could afford. The role of inheritance was also found to be minor. The results from the different studies are explained as due to changes in the housing market, changing values regarding financial help and differences among the samples. Intensive re-interviews with three households from very different back- grounds are used to show the different ways in which family help operates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When children move into a new foster care family, they and the foster carers are initially strangers to one another. Without knowing one another's history, experiences and practices, foster carers and children are expected to get settled quite quickly in the intimate setting that makes up family life. In these early days of a new placement, bodily intimacy is brought to the forefront; how the foster carers manage bodily care and go about touch without any 'embodied knowledge' of the child. This study draws on in-depth interviews with eight foster care couples and explores how foster carers construct practices around bodily care and touch in new foster care relationships. Findings of the study showed that in some cases (babies) the foster carers felt it was 'natural' and relatively straightforward to care for the child in an intimate and bodily sense. However, most often the foster carers experienced that either they or the children had felt discomfort, often lead by a lack of embodied knowledge and around reading and understanding one another's bodily signals. The study emphasizes how children's prior trajectories around negative, positive or absent touch are imperative for the dynamics of bodily care practices in new foster care relationships. Children may express their embodied experiences very differently, and foster carers, also having embodied biographies, can enact bodily practices in a more or less negotiable manner, adjusted to the child. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years there has been increased interest in couples Living Apart Together (LAT) within the sociology of the family in Europe. One of the main questions concerns understanding their evolution over time. Given the lack of longitudinal data, the present study focuses as a proxy to study the perception LATs hold of their future and the influencing factors. Based on data from the Generations and Gender Survey (GGS), a sample of 5253 people in LAT relationships was taken from seven European countries. The results show that the future intentions of these couples are conditioned by the understanding of the family in different European countries, the age of its members and, above all, the social pressure exerted by family and friends to live together and/or marry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically explores sociological arguments for greater biosocial synthesis, centring contemporary developments in public policy to demonstrate how such a reframing of humanity tends to reinforce existing political orders and socially patterned normativities. The case for further amalgamation of the social and life sciences is examined to suggest that production of somatic markers of truth from relational encounters largely relies upon an anaemic and politically contained version of the social as acquired in early childhood. More specifically, the gendered, classed and culturally specific practice of parenting children has come to occupy a new significance in accounts of social brains and environmentally reactive genomes. This is highlighted through a discussion of 'early intervention' as a heavily biologized policy rationale framing opportunities for biosocial collaboration. It is argued that late capitalist objectives of personal investment and optimization are driving this assimilation of the social and life sciences, pursuing an agenda that traces and re-scores long-standing social divisions in the name of progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people's engagement in political discussions with parents and friends represents a significant component of the political socialization process and can be seen as an activity where they learn some very basic democratic skills. Based on data from qualitative interviews and a questionnaire survey, this article explores how young people experience political discussions in their everyday life. Our data indicate that young people who feel that their father, mother or friends, respectively, hold more distant political views are less likely to engage in political discussions with each of them. These findings support previous studies in political communication suggesting that people tend to avoid social situations where political disagreements are likely to appear. Furthermore, the results show that there are significant gender differences when analysing the role of the parents as political discussion partners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a small qualitative study of younger and older mothers, this article argues that the timing of motherhood is significant for the construction of classed maternal moralities. It is based on qualitative data generated during a year of fieldwork, with a group of mothers who had their first child when particularly younger or older than average. My discussion of mothers' accounts highlights the multitude of different 'right' times mothers evoked and their struggles to reconcile them. In particular I identify there were two normative and conflicting discourses about the 'right' time for motherhood the narrative of appropriately timed motherhood and the discourse of generational right time. This article highlights the classed dimensions of normative discourses about the timing of motherhood and draws attention to the lifecourse dis-synchronicities which these two groups of women faced around becoming a mother, especially the older group for whom this had important intergenerational consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the beginning of the 1960s, Colin Rosser and Chris Harris worked together on a community study in Swansea, south Wales, UK. It explored how families, in particular extended families, had been affected by social change since the early years of the 20th century. The re-study, which began in 2001, investigated the nature of social change and how it had affected extended families in the four decades since 1960. Research that is framed in terms of contemporary sociological theory asks different questions from those that were asked in the 1950s when structural functionalism was the dominant paradigm. The re-study, which replicated (as far as possible) the methodology of the original study, asked similar questions to those that had been asked in 1960. This meant that, inadvertently, it relied on a Durkheimian conception of society and social change. In this article I explore some of the methodological implications of asking the same research questions 40 years apart and reflect on how the two studies differ in the way they address issues of 'race'/ethnicity, gender and social class. I suggest that asking the same questions allows an appreciation of the continuities as well as changes in how family and community are experienced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the notion of 'family' to consider how it may be understood in people's everyday lives. Certain recurrent and powerful motifs are apparent, notably themes of togetherness and belonging, in the context of a unit that the person can be 'part of'. At the same time, there may be important variations in the meanings given to individuality and family, evoking differing understandings of the self and personhood. I consider these ideas further through globally relevant but variable cultural themes of autonomy and relationality, suggesting the term 'social person' as a heuristic device to distinguish the sense of 'close-knit selves' that may be involved in some understandings of personhood. I argue that this version of personhood may be powerfully expressed through 'family' meanings, with a significance which can be at least provisionally mapped along lines of inequality and disadvantage within and between societies around the world. These forms of connectedness may be hard to grasp through those theoretical and methodological frameworks which emphasize the (relational) individual. I argue that, in affluent English speaking societies,1 there may be little alternative to the language of 'family' for expressing such forms of relationality and connection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on interviews with 60 children and young people to explore how they construct narrative accounts of post-divorce family life. Rather than seeking to describe children's experiences as if their accounts are simple factual recollections, the focus of the article is on how young people position themselves in their narratives and the ways in which they construct their past experiences. It is argued that these narratives are multi-layered, often revealing ambivalence and contradictions. The conclusion turns to the question of whether these individual accounts can give rise to what might be referred to as an ethical disposition in which children's experiences can inform a broader social ethos on how to divorce ‘in the proper manner’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent attempts to announce the death of the family as a useful analytical category for sociologists are rebutted as being premature. The tendency to view household relations as family relations or, indeed, couple or gender relations as family relations seems to have arisen in the early 1970s. Earlier attempts to construct an empirically grounded analysis of family relationships have been curiously neglected. An account of one family on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent provides some illustrative ethnography on both the positive uses of family members - particularly siblings - and on the way the social boundaries of this family are constructed by its members. It is argued that the family is best understood as a system of relationships that change over time. There is a curious lack of systematic ethnography of contemporary family relationships so that what is taught to students as the sociology of the family may be widely at variance with their own personal experience. This may be partly a result of relying too much on random surveys of households at the expense of detailed explorations of existing patterns of social relationships and social meanings. Developing theoretical arguments on the basis of inadequate or inappropriate ethnography is evidently a dangerous and misleading exercise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on data gathered in settings where the family side of personal troubles is a regular concern, it is argued that the family enters into social relations as a collective representation. Adapting Durkheim's usage to everyday life, the family is analyzed as a 'public' project of those whose domestic affairs are challenged for consideration of family order. Three features of the family project are considered: (1) the awareness of the social form, (2) family conduct in the large, (3) family usage. As an object of experience, the family presents itself in a category separate and distinct from its members, while at the same time being a practical, discursive construct built out of, as well as reflecting concrete domestic affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a critical analysis of a qualitative research in the field ethnography: on the way of understanding the family lives and on the way sociologists use the term the family. Whilst sociologists accept that the so-called normal family is statistically insignificant, they object to the abandonment of the use of the term the family as an analytical category. They argue that we must avoid conflating households of different compositions with so-called family types. The way people use the term family is enormously complicated -- far more complicated than some sociologists believe. Firstly, there is the problem of primacy and immediacy. Secondly, there is the surprisingly protean nature of the concept which has been reconceptualised as ubiquity - that is, family terms are present in a host of different situations involving different meanings all at the same time. Thirdly, family terms are prototypical - that is, they carry political, ideological and moral power as patterns, models, standards or archetypes.

By developing the concept of Multidimensional Developmental Pathways, the potential social policy consequences of such theorising are explored. In moving towards conceptualising the actual needs of people and the unity of their lives we can consciously (rather than unconsciously) contribute proposals for rebuilding social policy. With a view to generating further interest in alternative theoretical approaches to the analysis of 'family life', three theorems are then proposed. These three theorems constitute the first step in founding the New 'Family Studies'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In examining 'family policy', previous work on 'family ideology' is developed to demonstrate that 'traditional family sociology' has been 'doing things with words'. In this area sociology, far from being innocuous, has had real impact upon society and may well have been oppressive and deeply reactionary.
Sociological interest in 'family life'[1] and 'family policy' seems to be a growth area in the UK.[2] Many, however, seem to regard 'family policy' debates as somehow neutral, even a technical issue (e.g., Family Impact Statements as discussed by Ory and Leik, 1983 or the Study Commission on the Family, 1983, 46--9). The central argument here is that 'family policy' debates, especially those in which sociology has taken part, are very much 'political', have substantive results and are in fact both dangerous and repressive.[3]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This analysis takes Elder's work on the life-course as a starting point. Two proposals are made: (1) That the sociological use of the concept of 'the family' should be restricted to indicate only the occurrence of everyday usage; (2) That the notion of the 'family life-course' be replaced by the notion of individual life-courses coinciding upon developmental pathways. In this way the idea of a central type of 'the family' is made redundant and we are required, instead, to discover when and why participants refer to a particular developmental pathway as being 'a family'. This approach not only facilitates the conceptualisation 'family diversity' but also compels researchers to engage the rich complexity of everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research note reports some findings of a small exploratory study of a sample of 18 women and 14 men living in the North-West in families in which the wife was the major (though not necessarily the only) breadwinner. Amongst the aspects explored in interviews were their domestic financial arrangements, which were found to be significantly different from those in studies where the husband was the main breadwinner. It was found that there was a tendency for the wives to cede some of their financial power to their husbands. At the same time they took on a sense of the burden of responsibility and worry associated with the breadwinning role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of 'family ideology' has been systematically ignored by a majority of 'family'[1] scholars whilst it has been taken for granted by a minority. The following study arises from the author's attempts to explore the issue of alternative theoretical approaches to the analysis of 'family life'.[2] Increasing numbers of contemporary researchers concur in recognising the diversity of 'family forms' and the inappropriateness of speaking of 'The Family'.[3] Despite these recognitions many researchers find themselves re-adopting the term 'The Family' in their discussions and especially in the titles of their work. For example, Segal clearly recognises that the 'traditional family model' no longer reflects the reality of our lives (1983, 11) and yet the title of her book is What is to be done about THE FAMILY? (emphasis added). One reason for the re-importation of the idea of 'The Family' may be found in the rather limited nature of previous conceptualisations of 'family ideology'. With the exception of Barrett (1980), recognitions of 'family ideology' tend to be conceptualised in terms of sets of partisan beliefs supporting a particular 'family form'. Thus the concept of 'The Family' is rarely regarded as being problematic in itself, rather attention is paid to the presumed virtues or deficiencies of the particular form of 'The Family' which is assumed to be prevalent. Notwithstanding the recognition of 'family diversity' or the inappropriateness of the term 'The Family', nearly all discussion becomes a straightforward attack upon, or defence of, 'The Family'.[4] Only very rarely does analysis avoid this trap and question whether 'The Family' really exists to be attacked or defended; thus Collier et al. have asked 'Is there a Family?' (1982) and the present author has asked 'Do we really know what "The Family" is?' (Bernardes, 1984a)... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there is an extensive and varied literature on the nature and consequences of unemployment very little has been written about the experiences of jobless women. This is unfortunate since there are good sociological reasons why the reactions to job loss among women may be different from those of men. Empirical data tend to support this expectation although more research is needed and called for. Sociological studies of unemployed women could contribute to the development of theories about wage-work, family life and domestic labour. Women's unemployment also has a broader significance in that it bears directly upon theories of social stratification and social order that are central to sociological study as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information about the lives of women home workers. It explains that homework, that is, waged work, carried out largely by women in their domestic premises is a meeting ground of separated fields of sociological theory and research. It further adds that it falls outside the sociology of work and industry and outside theories of development of capitalism as an economic and political system. It descries that homes were assumed as consumption units, devoid of economic activity, wives and children became dependent on the husband/father and above all women became mothers and housewives, never workers. It considers women as the central actors in the sphere of domestic labor, and argues that the material base of women's oppression is to be found in the labor contract, which is integral to the marriage contract. This constitutes a patriarchal mode of production involving relations of the exploitation of women by men.

The author of the article narrates how contradictory definitions both of legitimate womanhood and the conditions engendering it are dominant both in the penal discourses and in the extra-discursive practices of the women's prison in Scotland. The features of the disciplinary regime which are specific to women's imprisonment elevate, fracture and realign opposed ideological elements of the prisoners' subjective experience until they have been constructed as women both irrevocably within and irretrievably without adult female subjectivity. Women prisoners are contradictorily defined as being, both within and without family and sociability, both within and without femininity and, concomitantly with the two previous conditions, both within and without adulthood. Family-ness is one dominant conceptual axis along which women's imprisonment is conceived by the Scottish judicial and penal authorities. Femininity is another. Officers continually pointed out to me that few of the women had acquired the ordinary female accomplishments of baking and sewing, whilst the women complained that the prison authorities denied to them most of the sartorial and cosmetic props to femininity which they were accustomed to enjoying outside the prison.

The increase in shiftwork, particularly in non-continuous process industries, that has taken place since the second world war, has prompted sociologists to study its social effects.[3] However, the vast majority of these studies have assumed the shiftworker to be male and women to be affected by shifts only as wives of shiftworkers. The only exceptions to this are a study conducted by Hilda Brown, which includes a sample of women on double-day shifts, and a preliminary study of women and shiftwork undertaken by one of the authors.[4] One of the major findings of these studies, at least as far as male shiftworkers are concerned, has been that 'Most workers who choose jobs involving shifts do so mainly because of the higher earnings to be obtained from them. Shiftworkers generally tend to have more financial commitments than other workers, many of them are unskilled or semi-skilled workers with dependent families'.[5] The relevance of this to women shiftworkers will be explored in the course of the article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the health of children through an analysis of the 1971 General Household Survey in Great Britain. Emphasis is given to topics such as the consulting of a general practitioner for conditions such as bronchitis and upper respiratory infections, the association between age of sick children and degree of consultation, and home visits for working class families.

The article presents an insight to the sociological theory of occupational choice. It is now possible to locate occupational choice firmly in sociological theory, more specifically in that part of secondary socialization that deals with producer roles, though primary, tertiary and other types of secondary socialization may have latent relevance. Much anticipatory secondary socialization occurs in the family. Thus an important part of economic socialization at the peerwork stage is the move from viewing one's future occupation in a spirit of fantasy and idealism to taking a realistic view of one's potentialities. The field of anticipatory economic socialization is an important one in practice. The pathway of roles available to the child, and hence his choice of occupation, is narrowed by the experiences that he undergoes, more particularly at the hands of three of the main agents of socialization, namely, the family, the school and the peer group. For the child his parents are the main point of juncture between two important systems-the family and the economy. At each stage of economic socialization roles may be rehearsed in such a way that transition to the next stage is more easily accomplished.

The article presents information related to kinship and occupational succession in mid-nineteenth century England. The author discusses whether there were "definable descent groups" in mid-nineteenth century England. Marriage was one mechanism used among certain families of the upper middle-classes in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to maintain and reinforce kin and affinal connections with other patrinominal families. The occupational patrinominal kin nucleus was another. The research data reveals that while the maternal kin played an important role in the life of any individual as they do in most societies, the important structural principle was patrinominal and it was with the patrinominal family that the individual identified himself. Women after marriage still retained dose ties with their patrinominal family owing to the system of marriage settlements, trusts and jointures. Ties with the female patrinominal families were preserved by means of family names, but these again, after the first generation from the original alliance, were usually transmitted through the paternal line and trusts created on behalf of daughters generally expired with their issue. Some families in both professions and commerce tended to form occupational patrinominal kin nuclei some of which appear to have been exclusive in the sense that non-patrinominal kin and non-kin were excluded.

This article presents views of several professionals regarding their respective occupations. Studies of a leisure which have hitherto focused on social class differences are now developing the theme that there are occupational differences within class and status groupings which play a large part in determining the style of leisure, family behaviour, political orientations, as well as more general values. Respondents were also asked to say how they would spend a hypothetical extra two hours each day. The answers to this open question were coded into a number of categories. Many respondents gave multiple replies and these were apportioned among the categories to give percentages of time preferences stated by occupational and others. Some interesting differences were observed from notably the greater preference of bank people for relaxing and sleeping and their lesser preference for reading. The married youth employment officers predictably opted for more time for home, garden and family, at the expense of most other things except work and study.

This article discusses factors relating to an adoption decision by mothers of illegitimate infants. The author reports that from a preliminary study of adoption cases, it appeared that the decision for adoption was related primarily to characteristics such as, the attitude of the baby's maternal grandparents, the presence of older siblings, difficulties within the maternal family and the youth of the baby's mother. The intended marriage of the women to a man not the father of her child and her outright rejection of the baby, were factors which appeared to be decisive for adoption where they did occur, but this was infrequently and they have not been considered in the analysis. Income was excluded partly because there was a very narrow range and partly because what was thought likely to be of greater importance was the economic support provided by the family, rather than a basic wage. Results of the study suggest that it is possible to distinguish those who are likely to have the child adopted from those who are not, since certain characteristics, which are strongly associated with an adoption decision can be identified.