Description
Book SynopsisThis book is a vital new resource in the sociological study of family life in the 21st century. The chapters in this volume explore a diverse range of family and intimate life experiences, such as personal choices about reproduction and how life choices and family forms are mediated by factors including geographical location, race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, income and government policy.
Through a series of evidence-based chapters, leading sociologists explore a diverse range of family and intimate life experiences and the contexts within which they are lived and experienced. Each chapter delves into the lives and experiences of people whose choices in some way seem to disrupt normative and traditional ideas of family, parenting and childhood. Family patterns and experiences of living apart together, troubled families, children in care, culture, coupledom, same-sex families and digital technology are covered and examined innovatively through theoretical engagement.
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Trade Review
'This book is unique in being the first of its kind to use disruptive ambiguity to fuel critical thinking of the normative understandings of family and life trajectories. It achieves this by challenging the inertia of embedded cultures and policies which still frame reality for non-normative families – a triumph for the creation of an authentic discursive place for societal progress'.
Professor Catherine Hayes, University of Sunderland, UK
'I would like to endorse this volume, which offers readers engagement with innovative work – both in terms of topic and/or methodology – in the field of family sociology. The book has an international appeal and both the editors and contributors are acknowledged experts in this field. The book aims to disrupt normative or expected accounts of family and the life course and – following the recent death of David HJ Morgan – it is encouraging to see that the volume intends to extend and rethink Morgan's work on family practices. I endorse and very much look forward to reading this publication'.
Dr Stephen Hicks, University of Manchester, member of the Morgan Centre for Research into Everyday Lives
'An important and timely collection taking forward scholarship in the field of family sociology. This volume draws on a range of empirical research projects investigating many hitherto under-researched life stages and family formations – methodologically innovative and theoretically ambitious, it will be of interest to researchers as well as practitioners working beyond the academy'.
Dr Charlotte Faircloth, Thomas Coram Research Unit, UCL Social Research Institute
Table of Contents1. Introduction: Negotiating families and personal lives in the 21st Century 2. Identity and kinship in lesbian parental families 3. Misrecognising ‘complex’ families: a social harm perspective 4. Understanding personal lives: after individualisation 5. Disrupting doxa about children in care: Research from England 6. Negotiating intimacy and family at distance: Living apart together (LAT) relationships in China 7. Of salsa and singlemuslim.com: ethnographic insights about identity shifts and changed self-concepts in middle aged women’s post-separation/divorce transitions 8. Exploring understandings of domestic violence with women in Sunderland: Negotiating and positioning emotionality within sensitive research 9. Displaying family in a digital age: How parents negotiate technology, visibility and privacy 10. Situating visual stories using photo elicitation and biographical narrative methods: Visual representations of family life in South Africa 11. Socially just, authentic research with families in Jamaica, Australia and the UK 12. Looking ahead: What does this mean for the sociology of families and personal lives in the future?
