Children, Young People and Families - Research

Written by an international list of contributors, this book presents highly nuanced accounts of children and childhoods across global political time. The analysis demonstrates how international relations is quite deeply invested in a particular rendering of childhood as, primarily, a time of innocence, vulnerability and incapacity.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Guangdong, China, this book explores the various tactics queer people employ to have children and to form queer or ‘rainbow’ families. It unpacks people’s experiences of cultivating, or losing, kinship relations through their negotiation with biological relatives, cultural conventions and state legislations.

Drawing on the multinational qualitative study ‘Children’s Understandings of Well-being’ (CUWB), this book offers practical insights into conducting fieldwork across diverse contexts. Featuring experts from 13 countries, the book provides valuable perspectives for researchers across a wide range of academic settings.

This book explores the relationships between parents and the social workers making judgements about children involved in child protection cases. It is a powerful tool for students, practitioners and researchers to evaluate future policy and practice models, aiming for the best possible outcomes for families.

Bringing concepts from critical transitional justice and critical peacebuilding into dialogue with education, this book examines the challenges faced by youth in the post-conflict settings of Bougainville and Solomon Islands, illustrating the vital importance of education in post-conflict recovery.

This book introduces the concept of 'doing society' by exploring how Finnish youth engage in political action beyond traditional forms. Combining empirical research and theoretical innovation, it offers a holistic view of youth participation, redefining political action to include non-conventional and non-verbal expressions.

This book explores Chinese young men’s views of manhood and develops a new concept of ‘elastic masculinity’ which can be stretched and forged differently in response to personal relationships and local realities.

Alice Bradbury discusses how the meritocracy myth reinforces educational inequalities and analyses how the recent educational developments of datafication and neuroscience might challenge how we classify and label children as we rebuild a post-pandemic schooling system.

Drawing on empirical research, this book provides an innovative exploration of youth and work, showing how youth identities are connected with the dynamics of labour and value in contemporary capitalism.

This compelling book examines parental leave policies in Nordic countries, looking at how these laws encourage men towards life courses with greater care responsibilities. It considers the impact that these policies have had on gender equality and how they have led to a re-gendering of men by promoting ‘caring masculinities’.

Drawing on access to prominent policy makers, Purcell examines the origins and impact of children’s services reform under recent Labour and Conservative-led governments, including Labour’s Every Child Matters programme and the Munro Review. He also reassesses the impact of high-profile child abuse cases, including Victoria Climbié and Baby P.

Mayo demonstrates how, through popular education and participatory action research, communities can develop their own understandings of their problems. Using case studies that illustrate popular education approaches in practice, she offers pedagogies of hope and shows how communities can engineer impactful and democratic forms of social change.