Family Troubles?

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.

"This brilliant book provides a wealth of insights that make it essential reading for academics and students across the social sciences, and for policy makers and practitioners." Harry Ferguson, Professor of Social Work, University of Nottingham

• PrefaceTroubling normalities and normal family troubles: diversities, experiences and tensions ~ Jane Ribbens McCarthy, Carol-Ann Hooper and Val GilliesPart 1: Approaching Family Troubles? Contexts and MethodologiesCultural context, families and troubles ~ Jill KorbinRepresenting family troubles through the 20th century ~ Janet FinkThe role of science in understanding family troubles ~ Michael RutterFamily troubles, methods trouble: qualitative research and the methodological divide ~ Ara FrancisPart 2: Whose Trouble? Contested Definitions and PracticesDisabled parents and normative family life: the obscuring of lived experiences of parents and children within policy and research accounts ~ Harriet Clarke and Lindsay O’DellNormal problems or problem children? Parents and the micro-politics of deviance and disability ~ Ara FrancisTroubled talk and talk about troubles: moral cultures of infant feeding in professional, policy and parenting discourses ~ Helen LomaxChildren’s non-conforming behaviour: personal trouble or public issue? ~ Geraldine BradyRevealing 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 CooperPart 3: The Normal, the Troubling and the Harmful?Troubling loss? Children’s experiences of major disruptions in family life ~ Lynn Jamieson and Gill HighetThe 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 MannayThinking about sociological work on personal and family life in the light of research on young people’s experience of parental substance misuse ~ Sarah WilsonThe trouble with siblings: some psychosocial thoughts about sisters, aggression and femininity ~ Helen LuceyChildren and family transitions: contact and togetherness ~ Hayley DaviesPart 4: Troubles and transitions across space and culture‘Troubling’ or ‘ordinary’? Children’s views on migration and intergenerational ethnic identities ~ Umut ErelColombian families dealing with parents’ international migration ~ Maria Claudia Duque-PáramoFamilies left behind: unaccompanied young people seeking asylum in the UK ~ Elaine Chase and June StathamYoung people’s caring relations and transitions within families affected by HIV ~ Ruth EvansEstimating the prevalence of forced marriage in England ~ Peter Keogh, Anne Kazimirski, Susan Purdon and Ruth MaiseyPart 5: Working with FamiliesEuropean perspectives on parenting and family support ~ Janet BoddyWhat supports resilient coping among family members? A systemic practitioner’s perspective ~ Arlene VetereTroubled and troublesome teens: mothers’ and professionals’ understandings of parenting teenagers and teenage troubles ~ Harriet Churchill and Karen ClarkeContested family practices and moral reasoning: updating concepts for working with family-related social problems ~ Hannele ForsbergWorking with fathers: risk or resource? ~ Brid FeatherstoneWhat is at stake in family troubles? Existential issues and value frameworks ~ Jane Ribbens McCarthy