Literature Review: Factors affecting attendance at parent training are presented and consideration is given to theoretical models which might be applied to this field. It is revealed that single parents, those of lower socio-economic status, lower income and experiencing mental health difficulties are less likely to attend. Therapist characteristics including experience, warmth and empathy and the use of administrative strategies all predict increased attendance. Parental motivation and expectations do not have clear roles in affecting parent training attendance. Methodological issues such as inconsistent definitions of attendance and small sample sizes are discussed, as are cautions about generalising findings from specific samples. The health belief model and the theory of planned behaviour are reviewed and considered to have potential for further study concerning attendance at parent training. Research Report: The investigation of a strategy to increase attendance at parent training is presented. One group of parents receive an experimental intervention to develop implementation intention's to overcome barriers to attendance, the control group do not. The two groups are compared on their attendance at parent training. Descriptive statistics indicate that parents in the experimental group do participate in more parent training sessions than the control group, however this trend failed to reach statistical significance. Parents with stronger intents to attend were statistically more likely to complete parent training. The development of implementation intentions prior to attendance was not found to enhance the clinical gains of parents attending parent training. Further research is recommended to explore the relevance of the theory of planned behaviour to parent training. Critical Appraisal: The origins of the project, its organisation and implementation are described. Points of learning are discussed, dissemination plans detailed and areas for continuing professional development expressed.

Teenage pregnancy has been the subject of policy development over the lifetime of the current British government. Viewed from an overwhelmingly negative standpoint, young parenthood is recognised as a feature of impoverished communities while policies focus on technical and educational „solutions‟ to reduce the levels of conceptions to under-eighteens in these areas. This thesis aims to explore the processes which lead to early pregnancy and parenthood, informed by a narrative research perspective. Guided by the noted absence in the literature of research that attends to the contextualised experiences of young women who become pregnant, this research was undertaken to listen to the experiences of a small group of young women within individual interviews. The research question asked what the meaning of pregnancy was for young women who had become pregnant at an age considered „early‟. The analysis of qualitative material obtained from two research sites found that childhood experiences and individual adversity were the structuring features of most of the narratives obtained from the young women who had become pregnant. The narratives related to motherhood were interpreted as having a temporal quality, that is to say that the dimension of time was relevant to the behaviour of the young women in that they appeared to be „in a hurry‟ in relation to becoming romantically attached and achieving pregnancy, even where pregnancy was not actively planned or desired at that time. Furthermore, the narratives revealed a highly restorative aspect to pregnancy and motherhood that was connected to overcoming earlier adversity and childhood experiences, where sufficient support was available. In conclusion, these temporal and restorative aspects appear to be in dynamic relation to each other and suggest a meaning for early pregnancy and parenthood for young women that is at odds with current policy directions.

No description available.

Adoption theory, policy and practice have undergone considerable change in the period between the introduction of the Adoption Act (1976) and the Adoption and Children Act (2002). In this period, in particular, adoption has increasingly come to be understood within the context of an ethic of 'openness'. This has had implications for the day to day lives of members of the adoption triad, that is, adoptive parents, adoptees and birth family members, and their attempts to 'make adoption work’ across their lifecourse. The thesis draws on theories of family and kinship in order to develop understandings of day to day family practices that emerge in adoptive families and the way these shape and are shaped by adoption discourse. The thesis provides an analysis of local and national statistical data and the biographical accounts of twenty two adoptive parents who had children placed with them between 1977 and 2001. These were all domestic 'stranger' adoptions. From the adopters’ narratives it was apparent that the core and ongoing challenge facing adoptive parents was to find a unique way of 'doing' adoptive family life which acknowledged the importance both of biological ties and legal kinship. This was the ease regardless of the year of the adoption and continues to challenge these families today. The thesis explores the tasks which flow from this core challenge, that is, developing and maintaining family relationships between adopters and adoptees where none previously existed, finding a place for birth relatives within the adoptive kinship model and developing a positive identity as a non conventional family. The thesis challenges the conceptualisation of adoptive relations as 'fictive kinship' and biological connectedness as 'real' kinship and presents evidence of the fragility of both the biological family and the adoptive family where there has been a legal adoption of a child. At the same time the thesis reveals the ability of both biological and adoptive family ties to endure over time despite cultural barriers. The study also reveals that existing typologies of adoption as 'confidential', 'mediated' and 'fully disclosed' fail to capture the complexity of adoptive family life. A new definition of both adoptive kinship and 'openness' in adoption are developed and the implications of these redefinitions for adoption policy and practice are explored

There is now extensive evidence that fathers make a difference to children's lives. When they are positively involved, children have fewer behaviour problems, better mental health and more successful relationships later in life. When fathers are not involved in children's lives, or perpetrate abuse to their children, they cause harm to children's development and wellbeing. Although child welfare services are required to engage fathers, research continues to show that practitioners focus on mothers and avoid, ignore or neglect fathers. This study is concerned with the engagement of fathers in the particular context of parenting services. By collecting 31 recordings of the first telephone calls made by service practitioners to the referred parent, it examines the ways that fathers are talked about in relation to their involvement in t he service. The study uses the principles of Conversation Analysis to make very detailed transcriptions of the recordings that facilitate a fine grained analysis of the conversations as they proceed turn by turn. By examining how the participants display to each other their understandings of the situation, a trajectory can be traced of how the topic of fathers is introduced, their involvement negotiated and then brought to a close within the context of their unfolding interaction. The study found that speakers only succeeded in recruiting fathers to the next stage of the service when the practitioner had taken specific interactional steps to facilitate it. The sequences necessary for the father to be recruited are considered in detail and mapped to an overall sequence of tasks followed in the calls. Implications for further research and practice in the field of engaging fathers are also considered, including a map of practice that will be of use to practitioners and which can be developed by further research in the field

This thesis presents a qualitative study of adoptive parents, children, young adults and experts' accounts of communication within families about a child's past. Until now, this particular aspect of international adoption in Italy has received little attention. The aims of this study are to understand how both parents and adoptees' deal with and manage the origins of adoptees, and also experts' views of this communication. In addition, this research explores the potentiality of the use of 'life-story work' amongst this specific sample. This study uses in-depth interviews to unravel the experiences of ten adoptive parents with their five adopted children and five young adopted adults. It also includes the perspectives of seven experts. The findings are embedded in the Italian social and cultural context, which contributes to shaping the meaning of the accounts collected. The findings show that all of the families had developed an adoption story. Visual aids and documents, help and support the telling of these stories. Furthermore, the various stories served different functions: they enabled communication, they presented challenges, and they emphasised the relationships with the actors involved in international adoption. The findings show diversity in the approaches to communicative openness: the practices presented by the sample families in this research are organised according to four different approaches to communication. The differences amongst the families, children and young adults are linked to the amount of information available to the families; the child's attitude to his or her past; the influence of the actors involved in the adoption; the way in which adoptive kinship is understood; the way in which the laws are applied, and the ways in which children's voices and needs are accounted for by families and accredited bodies.

No description available.

Being only 6% of all single mothers, never-married single mothers in Taiwan are a group of mothers which have been neglected for long time. Public perception of these mothers has been harsh and they are associated with infanticide, abortion or welfare dependency. Although often needing welfare, while in the welfare system, adult mothers are often excluded from certain child-related benefits and categorised together with teenage mothers despite their diverse needs. Inevitably, they need to deal with the process of stigmatisation and poverty within the East Asian context, given that marriage is still the predominant form of marital status and the male breadwinner model is prevalent in this region. This research, therefore, aims to explore the underlying reasons for their decision to be mothers in such circumstances; the financial and interpersonal consequences facing never-married single mothers; and the strategies they develop to deal with their lives within the Taiwanese context. This research conducted in-depth interviews with 30 adult never-married single mothers in Taiwan, and used the Ecomapping (or Sociogram) technique to elicit rich data and to visualise change in their social networks. The findings highlight that their decisions to become mothers mirrored the gendered expectation from Confucianism when it emphasises the importance of motherhood. This has offered them a ‘space’ to justify themselves as a never-married single mother. However, the challenges facing them following their unwed pregnancy were significant and led to them being financially disadvantaged and socially stigmatised. This study reveals their strategies of economic survival and explores how they manage their stigmatised lives according to the level of resources they could access and deploy and the quality and strength of their social and familial relationships. According to the findings, it is argued in this research that as a women/mother in the Taiwanese context, it is financially and socially risky for them to choose another pathway (i.e. becoming a mother without getting married) to fulfil the goal of their lives. Unless this society becomes more permissive and the state facilitates a secure employment environment for women as a whole, only trivial agentic actions applied by these individual mothers aimed at confronting the existing social norms will be observed and they could hardly transform the context.

Fathers, fathering and fatherhood have been the subjects of much contemporary debate and investigation. The study’s aims and research questions were informed by the existing body of fatherhood research which has been, predominantly, constructed and undertaken in relation to an ‘unproblematic norm’ of fatherhood, in which it is presumed that ‘good fatherhood’ is experienced. This study, therefore, sought to explore – through a series of ten case studies – fathers, everyday fathering and notions of ‘good fatherhood’ within ‘normative’ contexts. In doing so, the study took a relational approach, drawing on the perspectives of fathers, mothers and children in recognition of the potential of each family member to deepen and broaden understandings of fathers, fathering and fatherhood. Findings highlight the common and divergent ways in which fathers and fathering were understood, experienced and ‘done’ both within and between families, and over time and space. The multiple meanings and concepts which are entangled with fathering practices were also revealed. The study has further shown that ‘family display’ is a useful tool for exploring the nuances of contemporary notions of ‘good fatherhood’. Using the lens of ‘family display’, the value placed upon ‘intimate fatherhood’ by fathers, mothers and children in normative contexts was demonstrated. This study has also contributed new and nuanced understandings to existing work on ‘intimate fatherhood’ by showing that intimate fathering practices are those which can be claimed as fathering (rather than parenting more generally) and are characterised by communication and mutuality between fathers and children. Through such intimate fathering practices, family members felt that fathers and children were able to nurture and sustain close relationships.

In Britain in the twenty-first century stepfamilies are numerically common but difficult to define since they may cross household boundaries. This has meant that stepmother families, who are often non-residential, are rarely included in research and there is a very limited literature which considers the perspectives of stepmothers themselves. However, there have been research findings suggesting greater stress for stepmothers than stepfathers. In a neoliberal climate there are increasing demands on parents, including fathers who do not live with the biological mother of their children, and this may contribute to particular stresses for stepmother families. This research used a synthetic narrative-discursive methodological approach, underpinned by feminist theory, to explore the identity work undertaken by stepmothers. In order to maximise the diversity of participants, data were drawn from a web forum for stepmothers and interviews with stepmothers of adult stepchildren. The analysis considers the discursive resources drawn upon as stepmothers negotiate potentially troubled identities. The empirical work is presented in three chapters: the first considers stepmothers talk about their (male) partners in which the men were often constructed as hapless, helpless or hopeless. The second looks at talk of home both as a physical and a relational space. In this stepmothers frequently demonstrated their own feelings of both invasion and exclusion, often not feeling ‘at home’. The third explores stepmothers’ talk in which the biological mothers of their stepchildren are often constructed as mad, bad and sometimes dangerous. The concluding chapter summarises the particular troubles with which stepmothers must contend highlighting the discursive resources that are drawn on and the constraints that these impose. Theoretical, methodological and empirical contributions are discussed including suggestions for policy. There are also discussions of future possibilities for extensions to this research exploring the experiences of the growing number of families with adult stepchildren.