Troubling children's families: who's troubled and why? Approaches to inter-cultural dialogue

This article draws on multi-disciplinary perspectives to consider the need and the possibilities for inter-cultural dialogue concerning families that may be seen by some to be ‘troubling’. Starting from the premise that ‘troubles’ are a ‘normal’ part of children’s family lives, we consider the boundary between ‘normal’ troubles and troubles that are troubling (whether to family members or others). Such troubling families potentially indicate an intervention to prevent harm to less powerful family members (notably children). On what basis can such decisions be made in children’s family lives, how can this question be answered across diverse cultural contexts, and are all answers inevitably subject to uncertainty? Such questions arguably re-frame and broaden existing debates about ‘child maltreatment’ across diverse cultural contexts. Beyond recognizing power dynamics, material inequalities, and historical and contemporary colonialism, we argue that attempts to answer the question on an empirical basis risk a form of neo-colonialism, since values inevitably permeate research and knowledge claims. We briefly exemplify such difficulties, examining psychological studies of childrearing in China, and the application of neuroscience to early childhood interventions in the UK. Turning to issues of values and moral relativism, we also question the possibility of an objective moral standard that avoids cultural imperialism, but ask whether cultural relativism is the only alternative position available. Here we briefly explore other possibilities in the space between ‘facile’ universalism and ‘lazy’ relativism (Jullien, 2008/2014). Such approaches bring into focus core philosophical and cultural questions about the possibilities for ‘happiness’, and for what it means to be a ‘person’, living in the social world. Throughout, we centralize theoretical and conceptual issues, drawing on the work of Jullien (2008/2014) to recognize the immense complexities inter-cultural dialogue entails in terms of language and communication

Parental death as a vital conjuncture? Intergenerational care and responsibility following bereavement in Senegal

This article explores the ways that parental death represents a 'vital conjuncture' for Serer young people that reconfigures and potentially transforms intergenerational caring responsibilities in different spatial and temporal contexts. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with young people (aged 15-27), family members, religious and community leaders and professionals in rural and urban Senegal, I explore young people's responses to parental death. 'Continuing bonds' with the deceased were expressed through memories evoked in homespace, shared family practices and gendered responsibilities to 'take care of' bereaved family members, to cultivate inherited farmland and to fulfil the wishes of the deceased. Parental death could reconfigure intergenerational care and lead to shifts in power dynamics, as eldest sons asserted their position of authority. While care-giving roles were associated with agency, the low social status accorded to young women's paid and unpaid domestic work undermined their efforts. The research contributes to understandings of gendered nuances in the experience of bereavement and continuing bonds and provides insight into intra-household decision-making processes, ownership and control of assets. Analysis of the culturally specific meanings of relationships and a young person's social location within hierarchies of gender, age, sibling birth order and wider socio-cultural norms and practices is needed

Making Sense of Family Deaths in Urban Senegal: Diversities, Contexts, and Comparisons

Despite calls for cross-cultural research, Minority world perspectives still dominate death and bereavement studies, emphasizing individualized emotions and neglecting contextual diversities. In research concerned with contemporary African societies, on the other hand, death and loss are generally subsumed within concerns about AIDS or poverty, with little attention paid to the emotional and personal significance of a death. Here, we draw on interactionist sociology to present major themes from a qualitative study of family deaths in urban Senegal, theoretically framed through the duality of meanings-in-context. Such themes included family and community as support and motivation; religious beliefs and practices as frameworks for solace and (regulatory) meaning; and material circumstances as these are intrinsically bound up with emotions. Although we identify the experience of (embodied, emotional) pain as a common response across Minority and Majority worlds, we also explore significant divergencies, varying according to localized contexts and broader power dynamics

‘My life's properly beginning’: young people with a terminally ill parent talk about the future

This paper explores how young people who are living with a parent who is dying talk about the future. Drawing on a qualitative, interview study, I argue that young people are able to move imaginatively beyond the death of a parent, and in doing so, to maintain a sense of biographical continuity. While thinking about the future, most were able to generate an alternative to the ‘harm story’ typically associated with parental loss. Furthermore, the facility to engage with parental absence in the present enabled young people to make sense of living with dying, and gave meaning to their imagined futures. These findings suggest that young people's narratives of the future may act as a symbolic resource to draw on, albeit one requiring adequate material and social resources to construct. The paper extends the notion of continuing bonds derived from post‐bereavement accounts to suggest that relational experiences of the dead begin prior to bereavement, and may facilitate everyday living in anticipation of significant loss. Enabling young people to imaginatively explore the future may support them in getting by when they are living in these difficult family circumstances

Revisiting Qualitative Data Reuse

Secondary analysis of qualitative data entails reusing data created from previous research projects for new purposes. Reuse provides an opportunity to study the raw materials of past research projects to gain methodological and substantive insights. In the past decade, use of the approach has grown rapidly in the United Kingdom to become sufficiently accepted that it must now be regarded as mainstream. Several factors explain this growth: the open data movement, research funders’ and publishers’ policies supporting data sharing, and researchers seeing benefits from sharing resources, including data. Another factor enabling qualitative data reuse has been improved services and infrastructure that facilitate access to thousands of data collections. The UK Data Service is an example of a well-established facility; more recent has been the proliferation of repositories being established within universities. This article will provide evidence of the growth of data reuse in the United Kingdom and in Finland by presenting both data and case studies of reuse that illustrate the breadth and diversity of this maturing research method. We use two distinct data sources that quantify the scale, types, and trends of reuse of qualitative data: (a) downloads of archived data collections held at data repositories and (b) publication citations. Although the focus of this article is on the United Kingdom, some discussion of the international environment is provided, together with data and examples of reuse at the Finnish Social Science Data Archive. The conclusion summarizes the major findings, including some conjectures regarding what makes qualitative data attractive for reuse and sharing. </jats:p

Visions in monochrome: Families, marriage and the individualisation thesis

This paper takes issue with the way in which the individualisation thesis – in which it is assumed that close relationships have become tenuous and fragile - has become so dominant in ‘new’ sociological theorising about family life. Although others have criticised this thesis, in this paper the main criticism derives from empirical research findings carried out with members of transnational families living in Britain whose values and practices do not fit easily with ideas of individualisation. It is argued that we need a much more complex and less linear notion of how families change across generations and in time

Childcare, choice and social class: Caring for young children in the UK

This paper draws on the results of two qualitative research projects examining parental engagements with the childcare market in the UK. Both projects are located in the same two London localities. One project focuses on professional middle class parents, and the other on working class families, and we discuss the key importance of social class in shaping parents' differential engagement with the childcare market, and their understandings of the role childcare plays in their children's lives. We identify and discuss the different "circuits" of care (Ball et al 1995) available to and used by families living physically close to each other, but in social class terms living in different worlds. We also consider parents' relationships with carers, and their social networks. We conclude that in order to fully understand childcare policies and practices and families' experiences of care, an analysis which encompasses social class and the workings of the childcare market is needed

Migrant family display: a strategy for achieving recognition and validation in the host country

This article draws on the narratives of 10 migrant families living in a predominantly White British northern UK city, Hull, and brings together the typically distinct fields of the sociology of family, transnational family studies and migration studies. By uniquely applying the lens of family display to migrant family accounts, this article offers a timely new way to understand the strategies migrant families employ when negotiating recognition and validation in an increasingly globalised world. Existing applications of family display focus on what might be referred to as unconventional families: same-sex couples, dual-heritage families, single-parent households, and families living in commercial homes. Furthermore, previous migration studies consider the strategies employed by migrant individuals, sometimes within a family, but do not do so through the lens of family display. The concept has not, then, been applied to migrant families and their everyday lives, and with a specific focus on understanding the influence of audience in family display. This article, therefore, contributes to migration and transnational family studies by providing a new way of understanding migrant family lives, and also advancing the concept of family display in three clear ways: by showing that migrant families do display family to audiences beyond the family–including the State–so as to present as a ‘legitimate’ family; by expanding understanding of how family display is enacted; and by arguing that broader narratives influence those related to ‘family’ and impact on how and why migrant families engage in family displays

Family Trouble: Heteronormativity, emotion work and queer youth mental health

Conflict with the family about sexual orientation and gender diversity is a key risk factor associated with poor mental health in youth populations. Findings presented here derive from a UK study that employed an interdisciplinary critical mental health approach that de-pathologized emotional distress and conceptualised families as social and affective units that are created through everyday practices. Our aim was to explore how family relationships foster, maintain or harm the mental health and wellbeing of LGBTQ+ youth. Data were generated through exploratory visual, creative and digital qualitative methods in two phases. Phase 1 involved digital/paper emotion maps and interviews with LGBTQ+ youth aged 16-25 (n=12) and family member/mentor interviews (n=7). Phase 2 employed diary methods and follow-up interviews (n=9). The data analytic strategy involved three stages: individual case analysis; cross-sectional thematic analysis; and metainterpretation. We found that family relationships impacted on queer youth mental health in complex ways that were related to the establishment of their autonomous queer selves, the desire to remain belonging to their family and the need to maintain a secure environment. The emotion work involved in navigating identity, belonging and security was made difficult because of family heteronormativity, youth autonomy and family expectations and had a stark impact on queer youth mental health and wellbeing. Improving the mental health of LGBTQ+ youth requires a much deeper understanding of the emotionality of family relationships and the difficulties negotiating these as a young person

'It’s like saying “coloured"' : understanding and analysing the urban working classes

This paper draws on data from a qualitative project exploring the engagement of working class families in London with childcare. It is a first attempt to throw some light on our usage of the term ‘working class’, and consider what forms ‘working class-ness’ takes in relation to our respondent families. We discuss some recent sociological literature on the working class(es) in order to understand the emphasises and focuses of other research. We emphasise the heterogeneity of the working class(es), the differences in attitude and experiences based on place, gender, occupational status, education, age and family membership. Then we consider our respondents in relation to their strategies and exercise of agency, their engagement with the labour market, and their embedded-ness in social networks. We conclude that one way of understanding the lives of urban working class families is to consider the extent to which they ‘manage or struggle to cope’, a focus which emphasises process, activity and the differential degrees of agency which the respondents are able to exercise