Understanding the Significance of the Teenage Mother in Contemporary Parenting Culture

This paper attempts to understand the prominence given to teenage pregnancy in policy discussions since the late-1990s by contextualising it within a broader analysis of the contemporary \'culture of parenting\'. The emerging field of parenting culture studies has begun to develop an analysis of the key features of policy, practice and informal culture. Three key concepts are discussed to shed an alternative light on the issue of teenage pregnancy and parenthood with the hope of further developing the healthy debate that has emerged in recent years in response to policy priorities: the development of \'parental tribalism\' whereby differing parental choices and behaviour become a site for identity formation; the idea of a deficit at the level of parenting and intimate familial relationships; the reconceptualising of the parent as an autonomous, authoritative adult to a more infantilised imagining. The teenage mother, herself neither adult nor child, becomes emblematic of these developments.Teenage Pregnancy; Parenting; Sexuality; Adulthood; Family Policy

What is 'the Problem' of Singleness?

Over the past 30 years there has been a considerable increase in the number of people living alone; in the UK, the proportion of one-person households almost doubled between 1971 and 2000, rising from 17% to 31% of households (ONS, 2002). The research drawn on here explores the experience and representation of a rapidly growing sub-group of one-person households identified by Hall et al (1999) as female, metropolitan, managerial/professional, educated and mobile. The paper concentrates on questions surrounding the identity of those who have been termed the 'new single women' (Whitehead, 2003). In much of the specific 'single women' literature, the 'problem' of the single woman has been understood as residing in her social construction; her stigmatisation and marginalisation as an 'other', relative to the norms of heterosexual partnership and motherhood. It is argued here that significant contextual changes in the landscape of interpersonal relationships demand a reconsideration of the way in which singleness is understood sociologically. The paper draws on semi-structured, in-depth interviews conducted in London and the South-East with a small sample of women (15) fitting the characteristics identified by Hall et al. They were aged 34-50, never-married , currently lived alone, were not in a relationship and had never had children. All who volunteered for interview were heterosexual. The women were recruited using a snowball method with the reasoning that 'word-of-mouth' would recruit a more varied range of individuals than might respond to a public call for those who self-identified as 'single' to come forward. Part of the interview schedule was constructed to elicit information concerning how the women negotiated their identity and the way in which they related themselves to the category of 'single woman'. The women were asked how they defined themselves, what they thought of the term spinster, and when they felt their singleness mattered (to themselves and to other people). They were also asked about their relationship and employment history, their daily lives and their future plans.Single Woman, Singleness, One-Person Households, Identity, Social Construction, Interpersonal Relationships, Family, Childless

The peculiar joylessness of neuroparenting

Jan Macvarish interrogates the ‘new’ science of neuroparenting, and the idea that parents are the ‘architects’ of their babies’ brains and therefore of their future happiness and life chances. She argues that this assumption has a persistent cultural and political power, and explores the role of expert advice and parental instincts. Jan is a researcher and lecturer with the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies, University of Kent. Her research interests are located in sociology, and social and health policy

The ‘First Three Years’ Movement and the Infant Brain: A Review of Critiques

This article reviews a particular aspect of the critique of the increasing focus on the brain and neuroscience; what has been termed by some, ‘neuromania’. It engages with the growing literature produced in response to the ‘first three years’ movement: an alliance of child welfare advocates and politicians that draws on the authority of neuroscience to argue that social problems such as inequality, poverty, educational underachievement, violence and mental illness are best addressed through ‘early intervention’ programmes to protect or enhance emotional and cognitive aspects of children's brain development. The movement began in the United States in the early 1990s and has become increasingly vocal and influential since then, achieving international legitimacy in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the UK and elsewhere. The movement, and the brain-based culture of expert-led parent training that has grown with it, has been criticised for claiming scientific authority whilst taking a cavalier approach to scientific method and evidence; for being overly deterministic about the early years of life; for focusing attention on individual parental failings rather than societal or structural problems, for adding to the expanding anxieties of parents and strengthening the intensification of parenting and, ultimately, for redefining the parent–child relationship in biologised, instrumental and dehumanised terms

Siblings, contact and the law: an overlooked relationship?

The primary aim of the project is to fill a knowledge gap and enhance engagement with key stakeholders working in family justice about contact between siblings in public law proceedings, an issue that affects an increasing number of vulnerable children. By identifying the impact of the shifting legal framework and practitioner and expert assumptions about siblings underpinning current legal decision-making, it aims to provide a firm foundation for developing new materials to guide policy, and promote reflexive practice. And in establishing a new research agenda in law about an overlooked issue, it will provide a firm foundation for identifying further questions for research and policy reform. The research will involve a mapping review of the law, cases and socio-legal research about child siblings and contact and interviews with members of the judiciary, legal practitioners and guardians. Guided by a Young People’s Participation Group the study will at all stages involve and be informed by the views and perspectives of young people

Constructions of Parents in Adverse Childhood Experiences Discourse

In December 2017, the House of Commons Parliamentary Science and Technology Committee put out a call for submissions to an Inquiry which would consider the evidence-base for early intervention policies, with a particular focus on ‘Adverse Childhood Experiences’ or ACEs. This paper analyses those submissions and the transcripts of the Inquiry’s oral sessions in the belief that they constitute a useful window through which to explore the types of claims being made in ACEs discourse. Our aim is to assess whether the ACEs phenomenon represents a continuity with what has been termed the ‘first three years movement’ (Thornton, 2011a and b): social policy and philanthropic activism which focuses on the earliest years of life in the name of preventing social problems ‘down the line’. In particular, we consider constructions of parents as determinate of these social problems through their influence on their children and the ways in which these are gendered in new ways

The 1967 Abortion Act fifty years on: Abortion, medical authority and the law revisited

The recent 50th anniversary of the 1967 Abortion Act provides the opportunity to revisit what has been termed the ‘remarkable authority’ this Act ascribes to doctors. This paper does so using as its starting point a seminal commentary on this question by the renowned medical sociologist Sally Macintyre, published in this journal in 1973 as ‘The Medical Profession and the 1967 Abortion Act in Britain’. We revisit themes from that paper through an analysis of the findings of interviews with 14 doctors who, throughout lengthy careers, have provided abortions and led the development of the abortion service in England and Wales. We contrast our findings with Macintyre’s, and argue that our interviews highlight the shifting meaning of medical authority and medical professionalism. We show that those doctors most involved in providing abortions place moral value on this work; uphold the authority of women (not doctors) in abortion decision-making; view nurses and midwives as professional collaborators; and consider their professional and clinical judgement impeded by the present law. We conclude that medical sociologists have much to gain by taking abortion provision as a focus for the further exploration of the shifting meaning of medical authority

Growing better brains? Pregnancy and neuroscience discourses in English social and welfare policies

In recent years, English welfare and health policy has started to include pregnancy within the foundation stage of child development. The foetus is also increasingly designated as ‘at risk’ from pregnant women. In this article, we draw on an analysis of a purposive sample of English social and welfare policies and closely related advocacy documents to trace the emergence of neuroscientific claims-making in relation to the family. In this article, we show that a specific deterministic understanding of the developing brain that only has a loose relationship with current scientific evidence is an important component in these changes. We examine the ways in which pregnancy is situated in these debates. In these debates, maternal stress is identified as a risk to the foetus; however, the selective concern with women living in disadvantage undermines biological claims. The policy claim of neurological ‘critical windows’ also seems to be influenced by social concerns. Hence, these emerging concerns over the foetus’ developing brain seem to be situated within the gendered history of policing women’s pregnant bodies rather than acting on new insights from scientific discoveries. By situating these developments within the broader framework of risk consciousness, we can link these changes to wider understandings of the ‘at risk’ child and intensified surveillance over family life

Self-Efficacy: Addressing Behavioural Attitudes Towards Risky Behaviour - An International Literature Review

The present report summarizes the work of the cross-frontier group which was established, within the framework of Interreg IV, to consider the concept of self-efficacy. A first full-scale study entitled "Let's Talk/Parlez-moi d'amour" had already been undertaken, under the aegis of the Interreg III programme, by several of the partners involved, to examine perceptions in Kent and the Somme of teenage pregnancy as a social phenomenon. This initial project was concluded in 2007 by a conference in Amiens, Somme, during which the French and English research groups were able to present and discuss their findings

Teenager Parents' Views and Experiences of Sex and Relationships Education, Sexual Health Services and Family Support Services in Kent. Service Users Report, Postnatal

This document reports on the second part of a study exploring the views and experiences of teenage parents across Kent. The young people had been interviewed during the third trimester of the pregnancy and were interviewed again approximately one year after the birth of their child. The research was conducted as part of a larger study into teenagers' views and experiences of sex and relationships eduction, sexual health services and family support services in the county