Family & Relationships

This book brings together international academics, policy makers and practitioners to build bridges between the real-world and scholarship on breastfeeding.

It asks the question: How can the latest social science research into breastfeeding be used to improve support at both policy and practice level, in order to help women breastfeed and to breastfeed for longer?

The edited collection includes discussion about the social and cultural contexts of breastfeeding and looks at how policy and practice can apply this to women’s experiences.

This will be essential reading for academics, policy makers and practitioners in public health, midwifery, child health, sociology, women's studies, psychology, human geography and anthropology, who want to make a real change for mothers.

The five Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, are well-known for their extensive welfare system and gender equality which provides both parents with opportunities to earn and care for their children. In this topical book, expert scholars from the Nordic countries, as well as UK and the US, demonstrate how modern fatherhood is supported in the Nordic setting through family and social policies, and how these contribute to shaping and influencing the images, roles and practices of fathers in a diversity of family settings and variations of fatherhoods. This comprehensive volume will have wide international appeal for those who look to Nordic countries and their success in creating gender equal societies.

Available Open Access under CC-BY licence. How do environmental policies link to dynamic and relational family practices for children and parents? This Policy Press Short presents innovative cross-national research into how ‘environment’ is understood and negotiated within families, and how this plays out in everyday lives. Based on an ESRC study that 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. In doing so, it contributes to understanding of the ways in which families and childhood are constructed as sites for intervention in climate change debates. In an area that is increasingly of concern to governments, NGOs and the general public, this timely research is crucial for developing effective responses to climate change.

Are Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) connecting families? And what does this mean in terms of family routines, relationships, norms, work, intimacy and privacy? This edited collection takes a life course and generational perspective covering theory, including posthumanism and strong structuration theory, and methodology, including digital and cross-disciplinary methods. It presents a series of case studies on topics such as intergenerational connections, work-life balance, transnational families, digital storytelling and mobile parenting. It will give students, researchers and practitioners a variety of tools to make sense of how ICTs are used, appropriated and domesticated in family life. These tools allow for an informed and critical understanding of ICTs and family dynamics.

After years of research and reflection on the work of the interdisciplinary family justice system Mervyn Murch offers a fresh approach to supporting the thousands of children every year who experience a complex form of bereavement following parental separation and divorce. This stressful family change, combined with the loss of support due to austerity cuts, can damage their education, well-being, mental health and long-term life chances. Murch argues for early preventative intervention which responds to children's worries when they first present them, without waiting until things have gone badly wrong. His radical proposals for reform involve a much more coordinated and joined up approach by schools, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, and Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. This book encourages practitioners and academics to look outside their professional silos and to see the world through the eyes of children in crisis to enable services to offer direct support in a manner and at a time when it is most needed.

In 1990, disturbing television footage emerged showing the inhumane conditions in which children in Romanian institutions were living. Viewers were shocked that the babies were silent. The so-called ‘Romanian orphans’ became subjects of several international research studies. In parallel, Romania had to reform its child protection system in order to become a member of the European Union. This book sheds light on the lived experiences of these children, who had become adults by the time the country joined the EU. Uniquely, the book brings together the accounts of those who stayed in institutions, those who grew up in foster care and those who were adopted, both in Romania and internationally. Their narratives challenge stereotypes about these types of care.

The issue of Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) is firmly in the public spotlight internationally and in the UK, but just how well is it understood?

To date, many CSE-related services have been developed in reaction to high profile cases rather than being designed more strategically. This much-needed book breaks new ground by considering how psychosocial, feminist and geo-environmental theories, amongst others, can improve practice understanding and interventions.

Edited by one of the leading scholars in the field, this is an essential text for students and those planning strategic interventions and practice activities in social, youth and therapeutic work with young people, as it supports understanding of how CSE arises and how to challenge the nature of the abuse.

The challenge of violence against women should be recognised as an issue for the state, citizenship and the whole community. This book examines how responses by the state sanction violence against women and shape a woman’s citizenship long after she has escaped from a violent partner. Drawing from a long-term study of women’s lives in Australia, including before and after a relationship with a violent partner, it investigates the effects of intimate partner violence on aspects of everyday life including housing, employment, mental health and social participation. The book contributes to theoretical explanations of violence against women by reframing it through the lens of sexual politics. Finally, it offers critical insights for the development of social policy and practice.

How can we prevent intimate partner violence (IPV)? And how do we define and measure “success” in preventing it? This book brings together researchers and practitioners from a wide range of fields to examine innovative strategies and programs for preventing IPV. The authors discuss evaluations of current prevention efforts, paying particular attention to underserved groups, including racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants and refugees.

Among the issues addressed are primary prevention programs that target adolescents and young adults, strategies designed to engage men and boys, IPV screening in different settings, the impact of the criminalization of IPV on minority populations, restorative justice programs, interventions for women who use violence, and innovative shelter programming to prevent re-victimization. The volume concludes by identifying the gaps in knowledge about effective prevention and highlighting the most promising future directions for prevention research and strategies.

Child sexual exploitation (CSE) is now high on the social care agenda, but what is it? How is it different from other forms of child sexual abuse? This important book puts forward the rarely heard voices of children and young people who have experienced CSE and the professionals who have worked with them to answer these questions.

Taking a critical perspective, Hallett also addresses the possibility that further problems might arise from the framing of ‘child sexual exploitation’, which can have serious implications for the ways that society responds to CSE and to the children and young people caught up in it.

Central to the discussion are themes such as youth, childhood, care and power, making for an important sociological contribution to this under-researched field.

The book challenges the dominant way of thinking about CSE and, with new and valuable practice and policy relevant insights, is also essential reading for those working or training to work with children and young people.

The need for children and young people to learn about violence against women and girls (VAWG) has been voiced since the late 1980s. This is the first ever book on educational work to prevent VAWG, providing the most comprehensive contribution to our knowledge and understanding in this area. By bringing together international examples of research and practice, the book offers insight into the underpinning theoretical debates and key lessons for practice, addressing the complexities and challenges of developing, implementing and evaluating educational work to prevent VAWG. This multidisciplinary book will be of interest to educationalists, VAWG and child welfare practitioners, policy makers, researchers and students.