Children’s Use of Knowledge of Place in Understanding Social Relations

The article explores how children use different types of knowledge of place to make sense of their relations to other children. The participants are children aged 11–12 in a small town in southern Sweden. The methodology used is place mapping with group interviews. A significant outcome is that the children connect emplaced and spatial knowledge in their efforts to understand themselves and others. Their emplaced knowledge is thus not separated from the spatial knowledge. Another significant result is that the participating children are engaged in an exchange of knowledge of place with other children and with adults.     

Favoured Free‐time: Comparing Children’s Activity Preferences in the UK and the USA

This study presents a comparative study of the free‐time activity preferences of 9‐ to 11‐year‐old children in the UK and USA, as drawn by them in art workshops. Six themes emerged relating to sport, outdoor play, family/peers, media, special occasions and other (indefinable) activities. The children’s talk about their drawings revealed additional preferences for ‘obsessive hobbies’, ‘doing nothing’, relationships with others, and the local environment. Whilst the emergent patterns displayed strong cross‐cultural similarities in free‐time activity choices and participation, as well as compliance with the conventional construction of ‘childhood’, the findings were context‐specific and locally inflected.     

Gutter to Garden: Historical Discourses of Risk in Interventions in Working Class Children’s Street Play

This article investigates interventions in the gutter play of British working class children in the first decade of the 20th century through their re‐location within Free Kindergartens. In contemporary literature, the street child was viewed through a binary lens, as both ‘at risk’ and ‘as risk’, reflecting wider societal discourses in a period of rapidly developing social policy. The paper interrogates the motivations of free kindergarten activists from the standpoint of a range of theory and builds on recent papers discussing 21st century urban childhoods. The findings suggest both historical continuities and discontinuities in the theorisation of risk, which have implications for current social policy, urban design and early childhood education. The questions raised include issues of children’s rights, citizenship, inclusion and cultural diversity.     

Violence and Vulnerability: Children’s Strategies and the Logic of Violence in Burundi

This study explores how children in conflict‐affected Burundi deal with violence in their everyday lives. Focusing on schools as a context in which children are prepared for further roles in society, child‐centred, qualitative and mixed‐methods research was conducted at 36 primary schools throughout Burundi. Findings reveal that children use a variety of strategies to deal with violence they encounter. These strategies reflect a learned ‘logic of violence’, matching dynamics of violence and vulnerability in society at large. Children’s strategies are ultimately aimed at reducing vulnerability to (future) violence and indicative of the omnipresence of violence and uncertainty in Burundi.     

Managing Children’s Friendships Through Interparental Relationships: Roles of Ethnicity and Friendship Context

Twenty African American and European American mothers of fourth‐grade students reflected on strategies for managing children’s friendships maintained across a variety of contexts. Ethnicity differentially located families within specific social contexts that yielded children’s friendships, then informed social processes as they unfolded within these contexts. Maternal knowledge concerning children’s friendships developed as a function of the types of relationships formed among parents encountered within different settings. Findings suggest that interparental relationships represent a key source of information about children’s friendships. Yet, maternal opportunities to establish such relationships differ on the basis of both ethnicity and the nature of contexts in which children’s friendships are maintained.     

Perspectives of Looked after Children on School Experience — a Study Conducted among Primary School Children in a Children’s Home in Singapore

Singapore is known for its well‐developed public education. Although there have been prolific studies and advancement in pedagogy of different groups of learners, the progress has yet to capture the interest of children in residential care, and their educational needs remain a field lacking in discussion. This study seeks to give these children a voice by answering three main questions: (1) What have the children experienced in school? (2) How do they feel about these experiences? (3) To what extent are the children’s experiences and feelings related to their background?A mixed‐method approach that encompasses both quantitative and qualitative instruments has been employed to find out from the Primary School children in a local Children’s Home their perspectives on school experience. The findings reveal that looked after children do encounter greater challenges in school because of their unique background and lack of resources. Most of them would need to rely on the authorities in both the school and the Home for support if better experience and performance in school are to be achieved.     

Context,Diversity and Engagement: Early Intervention with Australian Aboriginal Families in Urban and Remote Contexts

This article describes challenges met implementing an early intervention programme for Aboriginal parents and their children in the NT (Northern Territory) of Australia in the context of efforts to remediate Aboriginal disadvantage. The intervention is an adaptation of an 8‐ to 10‐week, manualised parenting programme designed for four‐ to six‐year‐old children with behavioural difficulties. It was implemented for both Aboriginal and non‐Aboriginal children in urban Darwin and for Aboriginal children in three communities of the Tiwi Islands, near Darwin. Measured outcomes of the programme were positive overall with different outcomes by gender and Indigenous status. There were marked differences in retention of families from different socio‐cultural backgrounds in the programme, with a significant loss of participants from referral through commencement to six‐month follow‐up. This drop‐out was most marked for urban Aboriginal participants, despite highly flexible strategies of engagement and cultural adaptation of the approach pursued in each setting. The research provides lessons for the contextualisation of preventive interventions in diverse community settings and shows that systematic attention to cultural ‘fit’ of the intervention logic and cultural competence in engagement of disadvantaged families with multiple problems are fundamental to sustainability.     

Going to the Courts Twice: A Critical Appraisal of the UK’s Policy of Re‐adoption for Intercountry Adoptions

The policy of re‐adoption for UK‐citizen parents of intercountry adopted children is designed to protect children and safeguard their best interests, but in fact may breach a variety of rights and international Conventions, and when applied to specific cases can lead to more harm than good. In this review, I want to argue that the policy of re‐adoption be reconsidered to minimise the distress to families when they return to the UK with their already legally adopted children. © 2011 The Author(s). Children & Society © 2011 National Children’s Bureau and Blackwell Publishing Limited.     

Symptoms of Mental Health Problems: Children’s and Adolescents’ Understandings and Implications for Gender Differences in Help Seeking

Amidst concerns that young people’s mental health is deteriorating, it is important to explore their understandings of symptoms of mental health problems and beliefs around help seeking. Drawing on focus group data from Scottish school pupils, we demonstrate how they understood symptoms of mental health problems and how their characterisations of these symptoms as ‘rare’ and ‘weird’ informed participants’ perceptions that peers, teachers and parents would respond to disclosure in stigmatising ways. Consequently, participants suggested that they would delay or avoid disclosing symptoms of mental health problems. We highlight subtle gender and age differences and outline implications for policy and practice.     

Return to Gender: An Analysis of Women’s Disadvantage in Postal Work

The workplace is a crucial locale for understanding three important issues in contemporary debates on gender and organizations; the processes by which work becomes gendered, the origins and nature of gender segregation and the role of trade unions in delivering gender equality. This article presents data from a study of workplace transformations in Royal Mail, and demonstrates the dynamic interplay of factors over time, which have sustained postal work in the UK as a gendered occupation and continues to disadvantage women in the workforce. The article shows that the position of women in postal work has been historically and contemporaneously linked to the relations between the trade union, management, male and female workers. The data illustrate that the power relations between the main actors have sustained the dynamic of women’s disadvantage. Furthermore, the processes that have sustained postal work as a gendered job continue to segregate men and women’s work at the level of the workplace.     

Engaging Parents in Parentline Plus’ Time to Talk Community Programme as Part of England’s Teenage Pregnancy Strategy: Lessons for Policy and Practice

Based on 65 interviews with professionals and parents conducted during 2007–2008, this 16‐month, mainly qualitative evaluation of Parentline Plus’ Time to Talk Community Programme (a preventative initiative within England’s teenage pregnancy strategy) found that a community development approach and an ethos of partnership with parents and professionals facilitated engagement. Respectful and realistic implementation involved skilled workers building relationships of trust. By consulting with other professionals and parents it was possible to establish local need and to build on existing provision. Initially, insufficient prior local consultation and negotiation created perceptions of an imposed initiative, led by outsiders, resulting in wary local parents and professionals. The engagement and evaluation processes are considered in relation to the short‐term nature of the initiative and potential conflicts between responding flexibly to the needs of parents and delivering targeted programmes.     

Seeking to Engage ‘Hard‐to‐Reach’ Families: Towards a Transferable Model of Intervention

This paper describes an exploratory evaluation of the Peers Early Education Partnership ‘Room to Play’, an innovative and experimental ‘drop‐in’ service seeking to attract and engage ‘hard‐to‐reach’ families in one of the most deprived areas of a Midlands city. Located in a shop unit of a busy community shopping centre, it offers play and learning activities for children, and provides opportunities for parents to talk to practitioners in a neutral and supportive environment. Through a mixed methods design, the authors attempted to document the core components of a potential transferable model of intervention, within challenging research constraints.     

To Christchurch with Love: Family,Neighbourhood and Community Responses to Earthquake‐Related Trauma

What follows is a response from far away to a city, its citizens and professional colleagues ravaged by a series of devastating earthquakes and aftershocks in 2010. It was an attempt to offer stories that could be easily circulated around professional circles and the populace. These might be considered to be ‘teaching tales’, which the author hoped would implicate community responses to what could be regarded as individual problems.     

‘Live to Work’ or ‘Work to Live’? A Qualitative Study of Gender and Work–life Balance among Men and Women in Mid‐life

Many contemporary studies of ‘work–life balance’ either ignore gender or take it for granted. We conducted semi‐structured interviews with men and women in mid‐life (aged 50 to 52 years) in order to compare their experiences of work–life balance. Our data suggest that gender remains embedded in the ways that respondents negotiate home and work life. The women discussed their current problems juggling a variety of roles (despite having no young children at home), while men confined their discussion of such conflicts to the past, when their children were young. However, diversity among men (some of whom ‘worked to live’ while others ‘lived to work’) and women (some of whom constructed themselves in relation to their families, while others positioned themselves as ‘independent women’) was apparent, as were some commonalities between men and women (both men and women constructed themselves as ‘pragmatic workers’). We suggest ways in which gender‐neutral theories of work–life balance may be extended.     

‘Between authenticity and pretension’: parents', pupils' and young professionals' negotiations of minority ethnic middle‐class identity

Despite an increasing sociological interest in the middle classes and their educational practices, research has largely concentrated on the white middle classes. This paper considers the case of the minority ethnic (ME) middle classes through empirical data from a small, exploratory study conducted in England with 36 minority ethnic, ‘middle‐class’ individuals (parents, pupils and young professionals) from a range of ME backgrounds. It is argued that participants experienced ME middle‐class identity as a profoundly conflictual and precarious space, negotiated through a matrix of relational classed and racialized positionings. ‘Authentic’ middle‐classness remains the preserve of white society due to racial inequalities and the dominance of whiteness as the popularly legitimated marker of middle classness. Moreover, attempts to define an acceptable, legitimate and principled ME middle‐class identity are compromised by the discursive threats of ‘inauthenticity’, ‘pretension’ and ‘misrecognition’.     

Home‐based Telework,Gender, and the Synchronization of Work and Family: Perspectives of Teleworkers and their Co‐residents

This article explores the relationship between work–family roles and boundaries, and gender, among home‐based teleworkers and their families. Previous literature suggests two alternative models of the implications of home‐based work for gendered experiences of work and family: the new opportunities for flexibility model and the exploitation model. Drawing on the findings of a qualitative study of home‐based workers and their co‐residents, we argue that these models are not mutually exclusive. We explore the gendered processes whereby teleworking can simultaneously enhance work–life balance while perpetuating traditional work and family roles.     

After a Long‐Term Placement: Investigating Educational Achievement,Behaviour, and Transition to Independent Living

This study describes the transition towards independent living of 123 former fostered young people reared for long periods in a private French organisation, SOS Children’s Villages. Three generations of care leavers were analysed through a postal survey and interviews. Their narratives show typical pathways after leaving care. Two‐thirds became independent without major problems by the age of 24–25. Analyses have shown that the absence of severe emotional and behavioural disorders, and diplomas obtained, improved their odds of becoming independent. Results suggest a vital need to implement appropriate therapeutic care during placement and to develop care leaver support well beyond the age of 18, in order to help them personally and academically and to ensure their successful transition to adulthood.     

The Role of Father’s Occupation on Intergenerational Educational and Occupational Mobility: The Case of Second‐Generation Chinese Americans in New York1

A considerable body of research has found a positive relationship between parents’ socioeconomic status and children’s educational achievement and attainment. The predictive role of parents’ socioeconomic status generally applies for most racial and ethnic groups, but that association does not always hold for groups that exhibit high levels of education, such as Asian Americans. This article considers the role of parents’ education and occupation on children’s educational and occupational attainment for Chinese Americans aged 18–32. The results corroborate the positive link between parents’ socioeconomic status and children’s educational and occupational attainments. Children of professionals command an educational and occupational advantage over children of entrepreneurs and children of manual workers. Yet, the children of entrepreneurs attend selective colleges and obtain professional occupations in proportions closely following those of the children of professionals. Although the educational attainments between the fathers who worked as entrepreneurs and those fathers engaged in manual work were comparable, it was the children of entrepreneurs who surpassed the children of manual workers with respect to educational and occupational achievement and attainment. This suggests that immigrant entrepreneurship contributes in the upward educational and occupational mobility of the children of entrepreneurs.     

Scaling Back and Finding Flexibility: Gender Differences in Parents' Strategies to Manage Work–Family Conflict

Studies show that fathers report work–family conflict levels comparable to mothers. The authors examine gender differences in work‐related strategies used to ease such conflicts. The authors also test whether the presence of young children at home shapes parents' use of different strategies. They address these focal questions using panel data from the Canadian Work, Stress, and Health study (N = 306 fathers, 474 mothers). The authors find that mothers with young children are more likely to scale back on work demands when compared with fathers with young children, but mothers and fathers with older children are equally likely to pursue these strategies. Furthermore, women with young children and men with older children are more likely to seek increased schedule control as a result of work–family conflict when compared with their parent counterparts. The authors situate these findings in the vast literature on the consequences of work–family conflict.     

Gender,the Work‐Life Interface and Wellbeing: A Study of Hospital Doctors

Long and unsociable hours and intensive work pressure have been dominant features of the medical profession, especially in hospital work. The increased presence of women in medical occupations, however, has stimulated debate about the nature and consequences of such work practices on doctors' wellbeing. Against the backdrop of this debate the article explores how factors relating to the work–lfe interface affect the wellbeing of a sample of hospital doctors. A key aim is to assess whether gender differences are discernible in the pattern of factors associated with perceptions of job burnout and intentions to quit. The research suggests that female doctors were more likely to experience job burnout than male doctors. It also shows that aspects of the work–life interface affect the wellbeing of all doctors but women tend to rely on different forms of social support from men to alleviate burnout and reduce the likelihood of leaving their job.