From the vantage point of forty years in social research and the study of families, Julia Brannen offers an invaluable account of how research is conducted and ‘matters’ at particular times. This fascinating work covers key developments in the field that remain of vital concern to society and demonstrates how social research is an art as well as a science – a process that involves craft and creativity.

First published in 1991, Managing Mothers (now with a new preface by the authors) provides a detailed, authoritative inside story of the lives of parents, and particularly mothers, who return to work after the birth of a first child. It is based on a study of couples who have combined the transition to parenthood with two full-time jobs in the labour market. The authors provide extensive personal accounts from interviews and statistical data that shed light on the experience and s...

In the early 1980s it was fashionable to suggest that marriage as an institution was in trouble, but there were widely differing views as to whether or not this was really so. Originally published in 1982, this title started as a small-scale exploratory study of clients with marital problems and how they came to seek help. Using a sociological approach to marriage, the authors compare the medical and non-medical settings the clients attended and looks at their social networks as a way to s...

With dual-working households now the norm, Food, Families and Work is the first comprehensive study to explore how families negotiate everyday food practices in the context of paid employment.As the working hours of British parents are among the highest in Europe, the United Kingdom provides a key case study for investigating the relationship between parental employment and family food practices. Focusing on issues such as the gender division of foodwork, the impact of fam...

This edited book guides students and researchers through the processes of researching everyday stories about families. Showcasing the wide range methods and data sources currently used in narrative research, it features:Examples of real research into historical and contemporary family practices from around the world.Coverage of both traditional and cutting-edge topics, like multi-method approaches, online research, and paradata.Practical advice from leadin...

Much academic work on families and households has focused in the past on the adult members. However, a surge of interest in children's issues has occurred recently in the social sciences. A key theoretical assumption in this area of research is that children's relationships and cultures are worthy of study in their own right and that children play an active part in the construction of these cultures and relationships.; This work provides perspectives on children in their family contexts. I...

Engaging systematically with severe forms of poverty in Europe, this important book stimulates academic, public and policy debate by shedding light on aspects of deprivation and exclusion of people in absolute poverty in affluent societies. It examines issues such as access to health care, housing and nutrition, poverty related shame, and violence.The book investigates different policy and civic responses to extreme poverty, ranging from food donations to penalisation and “social c...

Connecting Children focuses on children's understandings of care and their views of different family lives. It portrays the lives of children aged 11-12 and shows how families connect children in different ways both in the household but also in their wider kinship networks. The children studied reflect upon family life and especially upon situations where their own family lives change dramatically, such as when parents divorce or are unable to care for them.This book will b...

The SAGE Handbook of Social Research Methods is a must for every social-science researcher. It charts the new and evolving terrain of social research methodology, covering qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods in one volume.The Handbook includes chapters on each phase of the research process: research design, methods of data collection, and the processes of analyzing and interpreting data. The volume maintains that there is much more to research than learning...

Originally published in 1987, now with a new preface, the focus of this book is the distribution of material resources, notably money, work, care and food, within and between households. Hitherto, social policy research had tended to roll households and families into one and consider them as ‘private’ spheres which only connected with society via the male head of household – the ‘breadwinner’. Examination of resource distribution had stopped short at the door of the household.The c...

First Published in 1996. Research on childhood is a growing area of interest in social policy. Covering both familial and institutional settings, this book explores relevant issues, including the female workforce and changing family forms.

This book focuses on a key issue in the methodology of the social and behavioural sciences: the mixing of different research methods. The extent to which qualitative and quantitative research differ from one another has long been a subject of debate. Although many methodologists have concluded that the two approaches are not mutually exclusive, there are few books on either the theory or the practice of mixing methods. Mixing Methods: Qualitative and Quantitative Research presents a compre...