‘Cleaning Your Glasses’: A Prerequisite for ‘Catching Your Child Being Good’

Used widely throughout the parenting literature, the phrase ‘Catch them being good’ encapsulates much of current practice that has been shown to be effective in reducing instances of non‐compliance in children with complex and challenging behaviours. ‘Catching your child being good’ is obviously in line with the strategies of praise, encouragement and positive reinforcement. But for some parents, ‘Catching their child being good’ after long periods of defiance becomes almost an impossible task. Metaphorically speaking, ‘Cleaning your glasses' is a necessary prerequisite for effectively ‘catching your child being good’. This metaphor and an associated six‐phase therapeutic intervention seek to enhance a parent's ability to ‘Catch their child being good’, by working through parental distortions, restraints and negativity. This paper introduces the metaphor's origin and use; describes keys concepts; and gives a detailed case example to highlight the advantages and limitations of the intervention.     

Resilience and Survival: Black Teenage Mothers ‘Looked After’ by the State Tell their Stories About their Experience of Care

‘Looked after’ young people are among the most disadvantaged members of our society. While their disadvantaged status should not be ignored, poor outcomes are often emphasised at the expense of good ones. This article reports a study that adopts the concept of resilience to understand the narratives of the participants’ experience of care and foster care. A total of 15 young mothers, aged 16–19 and mainly from black African backgrounds, were interviewed. Despite lacking a ‘secure base’, informants invested in a sense of moral identity and a source of self‐directedness, which enabled them to move from victim of circumstances to individuals who overcome their circumstances.     

Children as ‘Being and Becomings’: Children,Childhood and Temporality

Notions of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ are intrinsic to childhood research. Whilst the ‘being’ child is seen as a social actor actively constructing ‘childhood’, the ‘becoming’ child is seen as an ‘adult in the making’, lacking competencies of the ‘adult’ that he or she will ‘become’. However, I argue that both approaches are in themselves problematic. Instead, theorising children as ‘being and becomings’ not only addresses the temporality of childhood that children themselves voice, but presents a conceptually realistic construction suitable to both childhood researchers and practitioners.     

Managing ‘Spoiled Identities’: Parents’ Experiences of Compulsory Parenting Support Programmes

While recent years have seen a rapid growth of research exploring the usefulness of parenting support programmes, no empirical research to date has specifically explored experiences of compulsory parenting support. The present study examines the narrative accounts of 17 parents who, through a Parenting Order, were made to participate in such programmes. Findings suggest that the particular nature of court‐sanctioning, and the ‘spoiled identity’ it produces, shapes how parents subsequently experience their parenting support. It concludes that government rhetoric should not use findings from voluntary attendance to support extending the use of compulsory parenting support programmes.     

The ‘Feminization’ of Management? Issues of ‘Sameness’ and ‘Difference’ in the Roles and Experiences of Female and Male Retail Managers

Explanations of women’s poor representation in senior management usually emphasize differences between women and men managers’ experiences, circumstances and aspirations, and the gendered character of organizational structures and processes. Whilst these may all disadvantage women, some writers have suggested recently that women managers may differ in style and orientation in ways particularly appropriate for today’s developing organizations. This paper explores issues of ‘sameness’ and ‘difference’ between women and men managers in retailing. Whilst both male and female store managers wanted to downplay gender differences and adopt a ‘gender neutral’ approach, they also associated a number of advantages and disadvantages with being a woman manager in certain contexts. Rapid sectoral change had caused companies to reassess the desired attributes and competences of managers; associated both with an enhanced valuing of ‘feminine’ qualities and with a more ‘objective’ and ‘clinical’ approach to assessment. Despite their equal numbers at entry points women remained poorly represented at senior levels, suggesting that subjective and informal processes were important determinants of women and men’s progress. Given management is inherently a process enacted by individual managers within a social context the extent to which it can be conceived in gender neutral terms is questioned since individuals are inevitably discussed and identified in terms of their gender.     

Hopes and Fears: Teenage Mothers’ Experiences of Intimate Partner Violence

Research has shown that pregnancy and motherhood increase the risk of experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV) — physical, sexual and emotional — in relationships. Much of this research, however, explores this issue in relation to adults and little attention has been given to the experiences of pregnant teenagers or teenage mothers in violent relationships. This paper focuses on three main areas to explore this, disadvantage, sexual negotiations and stigma, and draws upon interviews conducted by the authors with 16 teenage mothers in the UK as part of a wider study about IPV in the relationships of disadvantaged young people.     

‘Have You Got a Boyfriend or are You Single?’: On the Importance of Being ‘Straight’ in Organizational Research

The article focuses on heterosexuality as a covert feature of organization studies as well as of organizational research. In fact, while organization studies have discussed the gendered and the gendering aspects of organizational practices and organizational theory, the implication of heterosexuality has yet to receive intensive analysis in these fields. And while the mutual and reflexive constitution of the observer and the observed has been the topic of a considerable amount of research, the dimension of (heterosexual) desire in this process of mutual constitution is still largely unexplored. Referring to three different episodes that occurred while the author was doing organizational ethnography, the article suggests that a heterosexual model of desire is called into action both in organizational and research activities and that focusing on it can be an occasion to question not only the gender (and heterosexual) biases of organizational practices but also the way in which gender and sexuality are mobilized while doing research. In particular, on the basis of the concept of cathexis, the article shows how heterosexuality is learnt and enacted as a situated practice and through a variety of processes: performing power, negotiating and displaying that one belongs to an organizational culture, obscuring the hetero‐normativity of professional identities and neglecting the emotional engagement that characterizes research activities and that exposes the researcher to an otherwise vulnerable position.     

From ‘weak’ to ‘strong’ multifunctionality: Conceptualising farm-level multifunctional transitional pathways

Building on normative conceptualisations of multifunctionality as a decision-making spectrum bounded by productivist and non-productivist action and thought, this paper analyses farm-level multifunctional agricultural transitions. First, the paper suggests that it may be possible to categorise different farm types along the productivist/non-productivist multifunctionality spectrum, and that transitional potential from weak to strong multifunctionality often differs between different categories of farms and types of farm ownership. Second, the paper conceptualises multifunctional transitional processes at farm level over time, and introduces the notions of multifunctional path dependency and decision-making corridors, the latter of which can be understood as ‘bundles’ of decision-making opportunities bounded by productivist and non-productivist action and thought. The analysis suggests that system memory plays an important role in defining the likelihood of multifunctional actions, and argues that transitional ruptures—sudden breaks in transitional pathways—often characterise farm-level transitions. The paper concludes by highlighting the methodological challenges awaiting future researchers of multifunctional agricultural transitions.     

‘Blair's children’: young women as ‘aspirational subjects’ in the psychic landscape of class

This paper engages with the subjective experience of ‘doing’ aspiration, teasing out the psychic and social costs that accompany this as a classed process. It draws on a qualitative study of young women located in further education and contemplating their futures under New Labour, locating how the political rhetoric of aspiration gets institutionalized within school practices; how it intersects with maternal expectations and practices of involvement; and how these are lived and managed by subjects located in different positions in class‐inflected social space. In attending to the tangled web of institutional, intergenerational and affective practices which shape young women's aspirations, the paper seeks to interrupt the celebratory and simplistic rhetoric of aspiration that characterizes the contemporary socio‐political register of neoliberalism. As these ideals become further entrenched by the current Coalition government, there is an even greater urgency for such sociological enquiries.     

Ideologies & Narratives in Relation to ‘Fat’ Children as Bullies, ‘Easy Targets’ and Victims

In this study, we explore narratives in relation to ‘fatness’, drawing on focus group interviews with parents, early years practitioners, teachers and young people. The study is located in a larger study on bullying and resilience, with no specific focus on obesity or ‘fatness’. Analysis of the interview data highlighted a recurrent focus on ‘fatness’ within the participants’ narratives, by labelling and stigmatising the ‘fat kid’ and ‘bigger children’. We conclude that obesity and fatness, as abnormalities, are now included in commonsense talk in relation to ‘easy targets’, victims and bullies.     

A theory of age exclusion through closure: ‘Chronological age’ to ‘clinical need’

In an approach, I term ‘age exclusion through closure,’ I describe the exclusion of older people, from the workforce, and from hospital-based continuing care in Britain. Nineteenth century socioeconomic changes—the introduction of workplace technology, social surveys, the New Poor Law, and workhouse isolation, culminated in workforce exclusion on the grounds of chronological age. In the 20th century, the Poor Law ‘therapy’/‘succour’ divide, was recast in the Welfare State ‘health’/‘social care’ divide. Socioeconomic changes—the rising cost of health care, demographic change, the development of geriatric medicine, and economic restructuring, have served to allocatively ration ‘continuing care’ at this interface through the criteria of ‘clinical need.’ To conclude, age has become forged to clinical need, to become a formidable force of exclusion and exploitation perpetuating Poor Law closure between those ‘able’ and ‘unable’ to work, and creating a consequent ‘process of subordination’ within Welfare State capitalism.     

‘You Feel It in Your Body’: How Australian Children and Young People Think about and Experience Feeling and Being Safe

In 2012, the Australian Government announced the establishment of a Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The aim of the Royal Commission is to understand how and why sexual abuse occurred within Australian institutions and to provide guidance as to how future abuse might be prevented. The Royal Commission commissioned a mixed methods study to explore what children need to be safe and to feel safe, to explore how they determine their level of safety, and their observations about how institutions act to prevent and respond to safety issues. This article reports on the findings from the first phase of the study that involved focus groups carried out with children aged 4–17 years from different types of institutions. The discussion focused particularly on how children conceptualise safety and how they make judgments about their levels of safety. Children and young people's conceptualisation of safety had multiple dimensions, which include the idea that being safe and feeling safe are two distinct, interrelated but sometimes non‐concurrent experiences; that safety is identified and experienced as a set of feelings; trusting relationships are the foundation of safety; familiarity helps children feel safe; and safe environments are those that are ordered and orderly.     

‘Being called sisters’: Masculinities and black male nurses in South Africa

This study contributes to an understanding of the geographies of masculinities, by demonstrating how black South African male nurses negotiate hegemonic masculinity through citing masculine gendered acts. The research draws on qualitative data gathered from interviews with 15 black male nurses aged between 26 and 50 years who have worked in the paediatric, trauma, orthopaedic, oncology and midwifery fields for a period of not less than two years. It is argued that the colonially imposed hierarchies of race, gender and occupation merge with culturally specific pre‐existing African masculinities, and that this informed how the black male nurses experienced their gender identity in the occupation. The study demonstrates how, because of their career choice, the gender identities of the male nurses were positioned as marginalized and subordinate to the modes of a hegemonic masculinity, a gender identity only available to them momentarily. In this context, it was found that the modes of gender performativity in which the nurses negotiated and subverted their subordinate and marginal status was with the complicity of patients and other healthcare workers. This upheld the more generally assumed hegemony of masculinity in the hospital workplace. The study traces these experiences to the discourses of black masculinities during South Africa's pre‐colonial, colonial and apartheid eras and in the present day. In doing so, this study contributes to an understanding of the geographies of masculinities by demonstrating the locally specific modes of masculine performativity through which black male nurses negotiate their gender in South Africa.     

Metamorphosis: From ‘Nice Girls’ to ‘Nice Bitches’: Resisting Patriarchal Articulations of Professional Identity

This article explores the random strategies women adopt in resisting patriarchal articulations of their professional identity and the kind of organizational discourses women’s resistance brings about. The focus is on describing the context, dynamics of contradictory tensions and ambivalence inherent in situations of resisting. The article draws upon the authors’ own experiences in academia. In addition to participatory observation, the authors are using themselves as research instruments that enable them to highlight the emotions and ambivalent dynamics in the construction of gendered identities and power relations in organizations. The study indicates that there are several sets of rules in motion in one and the same social situation, such as the rules of organizational behaviour, rules of friendship and the rules of gender relations in public places. By describing two overtly sexualized discourses that women’s resistance brought about, the article highlights that organizational sexuality does not necessarily differ in kind or in degree from ‘street sexuality’ or sexuality in semi‐public places. The study’s findings argue that it is important to extend research to both informal and semi‐formal organizational gatherings. These liminal spaces are important sites of communicative struggles over organizational meanings and identities.     

‘A Place of Our Own'? Teenage Mothers’ Views on Housing Needs and Support Models

Since 2003, government policy has required local authorities to provide support when they house lone teenage parents seeking accommodation. This qualitative study addresses young mothers’ routes into housing need and their experiences of housing access and support, drawing on interview and focus group data collected in 2003. The findings emphasise mothers’ preferences for forms of support which facilitate moves towards increased choice and independence. Reinforcing messages from other research, these findings also show a gap between concepts of ‘support’ embodied in government policy and those which inform practice, within agencies and among young people. © 2006 The Author(s). Journal compilation Copyright © 2006 National Children's Bureau.