Sociology of Family

This is the first book to take a sociological approach to grandparenting across diverse country contexts and combines new theorising with up-to-date empirical findings to document the changing nature of grandparenting across global contexts.

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’.

This is a qualitative study that documents the daily lives of vulnerable lone mothers and their children in Denmark. Loss of rights, gender and ethnic inequality, and family violence all emerge as key themes with international implications. Policy and practice recommendations are made with wide-ranging applications for an international audience.

This book examines the relationship between health and domestic violence. In a qualitative study of the attitudes of health professionals and the women with whom they come into contact, it gives voice to a range of issues which urgently need to be addressed providing guidance for training and practice, as well as recommendations for policy makers.

This report outlines how employees and managers in three sectors - banking, grocery retail and local authorities - have experienced the 'family-friendly employment' options available in their place of work.  

This book examines the nature and meaning of 'empowerment' in the child welfare context using the family group conference approach to decision making in child welfare and protection. The authors evaluate the FGC approach so that current practice can be improved and lessons learned for other areas of work with children and families.

Based on involved creative, qualitative work with families in India and the UK who live in different contexts, this book illuminates how environmental practices are negotiated within families, and how they relate to values, identities, and society.

Shedding light on the challenges and experiences of women and families within the criminal justice system, this book considers issues of intersectionality, violence and gender. Accessible to both academics and practitioners and with real-world policy recommendations, this collection demonstrates how positive change can be achieved.

Drawing on interviews with key international informants across 16 countries, this book examines how child support systems often fail to transfer payments from separated fathers to mothers and their children. It identifies how the gender order is entrenched through child support failure and offers possibilities for feminist reform.

As the new Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service takes over responsibility for the work previously undertaken by family court welfare officers, the experiences of the parents and children reported in this study will provide an invaluable service user perspective for the benefit of policy and practice.

The enduring and multi-faceted significance of families in society, and their value as a focus for the exploration of social change have ensured that families remain a prominent focus of academic enquiry. This book proposes a new conceptual framework that both challenges and attempts to reconcile traditional and contemporary approaches.

This book analyses the specific ways in which family lives have changed and how they have been affected by the major structural and cultural changes of the second half of the twentieth century.