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The western world has a rapidly aging population. Depression and anxiety in combination with physical health problems are common and approaches are required to help people successfully negotiate the challenges of aging. This volume explores the contribution made by the concepts of self-compassion and mindfulness, considering the role they may play in helping us understand vulnerability to later life mental health problems and in psychological interventions for older people. Chapter I provides a critique of the research on mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) with older people, considering their acceptability, accessibility and usefulness. The reviewed literature comprises a small evidence-base, with many methodological weaknesses. However, it suggests MBI’s show promise in terms of effectiveness and accessibility as psychological approaches for older people. Directions for future research are discussed. Chapter II describes an empirical investigation into the relationships between self-compassion, and depression and anxiety in older people, comparing clinical and community samples. Levels of self-compassion were found to be lower in the clinical sample and associated with higher levels of depression and anxiety. The component aspects of self-compassion were also considered separately and the research is discussed in the context of the growing evidence-base. Implications for mental health service provision and future research are considered. Chapter III presents the author’s reflections on her own and participants’ reactions to the concept of self-compassion. This includes consideration of the influence of cultural and cohort factors.

The research reported in this thesis is an investigation of identities of primary school leavers (10-13 years old) residing on the Caribbean territory, St. Kitts. Through two main phases and a pilot of an ethnography conducted intermittently between 2008 and 2011, I explored volunteer-participants' individual and collective identities. In particular, I explored their aspirations for the future and everyday living, the influences they perceive, and conceptualizations of and aspirations for the Caribbean. The aim was to gain insights into their understanding of Caribbean, thus, illuminating Caribbean-identity; two terms fuelling debates in the Social Science literature alleging a Caribbean-identity crisis. One of the main innovations of the design was my partnership with a group of primary school leavers who were trained to help as co-researchers to collaboratively generate and partially analyse data. The findings suggest participants have very positive perceptions of themselves as individuals; however, their identities seem more localized. They generally aspire to migrate, especially to America, to achieve success, and their conceptions of Caribbean vary greatly and seem uncertain while their overarching-aspiration for their island and region is for them to become "better" places socially, economically, politically, culturally, and environmentally. In part, this main finding conflicts with the idea of an identity-crisis on an individual-level, but supports ideas of a lack of a resolute sense of self on a regional-collective level for participants. Equally important, participants report many positive impacts resulting from their involvement. For some, the process contributed clarity about self and aspirations, and for others, it helped with not only a clearer-perspective, but also the development of life-skills.

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Recent scholarship in the late eighteenth/early nineteenth century has explored the active roles of middling and genteel women in the home, redefining such ‘leisure’ activities as polite conversation, tea-making, and embroidery as ‘work’, thereby relocating women’s activities into broader webs of productive relations. The majority of this scholarship has remained largely historical in nature, and my thesis moves this field forward by examining these work/leisure activities in close relation to the developing novel form and its inherent narratological and ideological possibilities, in the period 1770-1820. I analyse the novel and the specific perspectives on work and leisure it generates in relation to narrative mimesis, and the works of Hannah Arendt, Karl Marx, and Arlie Hoschild. Using these diverse theories and theorists, I am able show the autonomy, relaxation, and pleasure women’s activity could potentially give in the period, and therefore show its leisure functions, whilst at the same demonstrate the importance of women’s activity in broad social structures, thereby emphasising their status as work. My first three chapters move through women’s engagement with needlework, musical accomplishment, and reading in that order. As such, I create a progression from needlework, understood as work as such; to musical accomplishment, which is more closely aligned with leisure but which nevertheless required patience and commitment; to the reading of novels, which was usually understood as a purely personal, introverted experience requiring no active effort. I therefore move from activity well understood as work through to activity understood as pure leisure, and gradually break down the work/leisure binary my showing both work and leisure functions within all three activities. My final two chapters extend this argument by considering the seemingly spontaneous acts of falling in love and feeling sympathy within a framework of work, thereby locating emotions within the context of my argument.

Research shows a predominantly female orientated approach to the study of fertility and childbearing. Prior to the 1990s men were missing from this research by design. Women were asked to report their partner’s childbearing preferences and behaviours and thus the true attitudes and opinions of men were largely unknown. Although men are no longer missing from this research, their participation rates are disproportionally low compared to women. The aims of the studies to be presented in this thesis were to better understand the childbearing preferences and behaviours of men, establish reasons for why men have disproportionately low participation rates in the research on childbearing, identify who and what could be a target of behaviour change interventions aimed to increase participation in childbearing research and identify whether the implementation of such interventions increase male participation. The work presented in this thesis demonstrates that, as with women, a number of factors influence whether and when men begin parenthood. However, there is diversity between men and women in terms of what factors they consider to be important and influential in the preconception decision-making process. Men overall wanted to be fathers but did not want to be involved beyond being the breadwinner of the family.Therefore results highlight the need to consider the childbearing preferences and behaviours of men in order to understand contemporary fertility trends and identify unmet needs in policy and research that concern men. Notwithstanding this, the disproportionally low participation rates of men in the research on childbearing ultimately means that the research base is not providing a good account of male attitudes towards whether and when to have children. When given the opportunity to participate in childbearing research men participate significantly less than women actively excluding themselves from the research as a result of less favourable attitudes towards the behaviour. The modification of attitudes is thus identified to be the mechanism that would most likely elicit intention (and potentially behaviour) change. The implementation of persuasive messages aimed to modify attitudes towards participation in childbearing research increased the perceived relevance of the behaviour but had little effect on attitude, intention and research behaviour. Overall, the work presented in this thesis demonstrates that raising public awareness that childbearing is an issue that affects men as well as women is likely to be key to integrating men into family life and increasing their participation in childbearing research.

With dramatic changes in family-related behaviours in the past 50 years, there has been an increasing awareness and acceptance of different family arrangements. Subsequently, measuring and studying people’s attitudes towards issues such as commitment to marriage, acceptance of alternative family forms, parental separation and gender roles has gained a lot of attention among those working in the fields of sociology, social psychology and demography. The majority of studies examining the relationship between family-related attitudes and behaviour have focused on either the selection or adaptation effects of attitudes, with fewer (particularly of those using British data) specifically addressing the possibility of both processes taking place. This study’s main goal is to address the latter using the data of two British cohorts born 12 years apart: the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS) and the 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS). The cohort’s attitudes are measured by a scale consisting of three items which relate to: marriage being a lifelong commitment, a divorce being easily obtainable these days and the acceptability of parental separation. This work adopts the perspective of value orientation and life course position which implies a recursive nature of attitudes and behaviour whereby behaviour is influenced by people’s values (the selection effect of attitudes) and these values, in turn, adjust following changes in people’s circumstances (the adaptation effect of attitudes). The availability of attitude statements at two time points for each cohort (at age 26 and 30 for BCS; at age 33 and 42 for NCDS) and rich partnership history data allows for such analyses to be carried out as the order of events can be established. Firstly, this research utilises bivariate and multivariate techniques to investigate the determinants of attitudes. Further, it implements regression analyses to explore the relationships between attitude scores and: a) transition to first marriage for non-cohabiting cohort members (BCS and NCDS); b) transition to first marriage of cohabiting cohort members (BCS) and c) dissolution of first marriage (NCDS). The main findings show some evidence of both the selection and adaptation effects of attitudes in relation to marital transitions for both cohorts, indicating the importance of attitudes in shaping people’s behaviour and at the same time showing the tendency of attitudes to change in line with an individual’s personal circumstances.

This thesis examines the development of representation in typically developing children and in young children with Down's Syndrome. The focus on representation allows us to adopt a general approach to development in infancy spanning domains such as motor development, language, object permanence, imitation, and symbolic play. Theoretical approaches to children with Down's Syndrome have been dominated by the `delay versus difference' controversy. This perspective suggests that development in children with Down's Syndrome should proceed with a sequence and structure similar to that observed in typically developing children. In this thesis it is argued, in contrast, that children with Down's Syndrome present a number of challenges to the organisational perspective. This thesis examines the strengths and weaknesses in the development of children with Down's Syndrome and attempts to identify the structural links between domains which are threatened by such a profile. These results of empirical studies detailed in this thesis suggest that development across domains such as language, motor development and object permanence appears to be relatively coherent. However, children with Down's Syndrome show subtle differences in their performance on object permanence and symbolic play tasks which suggests deviation from the typical pattern of structural coherence. Specifically, children with Down's Syndrome appear to adopt a more imitative strategy in solving object permanence tasks and in their symbolic play. The prevalence of imitation as a strategy may be indicative of a shallow level of processing. Alternatively, it may also be argued that children with Down's Syndrome adopt a different representational style in performing tasks. These subtle difference in the style with which children approach task suggest that the learning and consolidation process may differ between children with Down's Syndrome and the typically developing population. Such findings may have important consequences for intervention.

The aim of this research was to explore fatherhood from a man’s perspective. How do fathers respond emotionally when they experience fatherhood for the first time? What influences these responses? When fathers feel unable to share difficulties with their partner do internet discussion sites provide an effective medium for fathers to access support and advice? Given the important role fathers play in the lives of their children, what factors might lead them to disengage and cease contact? These questions are addressed within the thesis. Chapter 1 provides a review of the literature and aims to focus on exploring the father-child relationship from the father’s perspective and potential hurdles and barriers fathers may have to negotiate when developing and maintaining involvement with their child. Chapter 2 details the main paper. This Grounded Theory study explores the salient emotional experiences of nine fathers, three to six months after the birth of their first child. Emotional responses appear to be influenced by the father’s personal history and the social and interpersonal context. Feelings of attachment to the child are linked to the early attachment experience at birth and subsequently to interplay between instability, turmoil and positive change or growth. Methodological issues and clinical implications are discussed. Chapter 3 details the brief paper. A topic area on an on-line internet discussion forum for fathers was examined in detail using narrative analysis. Findings revealed evidence of significant emotional expression, yet limited emphatic emotional or informational support. Two types of contributors were identified, those using a ‘conversational’ dialogue and those only expressing their views/experience. Future research and developments within the internet are discussed. Chapter 4 offers a reflective review of entering a father’s world as a researcher and includes reflections on the research process, my role as a researcher and the research findings.

Social support has been shown to reduce the effects of stress and help individuals to cope. However, research suggests that the effects of social support depend on whether there is a match between the type of support offered and the needs of a particular situation, and from whom the support is offered. The aim of this study as a whole was to examine the social support experiences particular to women who are faced with the distressing problem of chronic pelvic pain (CPP). The literature review (chapter one) revealed that although pain is defined as a subjective experience, research in this field has rarely been concerned with the experience of CPP from the perspective of the women who suffer it. The first study (chapter two) therefore aimed to gain a detailed description of social support transactions as experienced by women with CPP. Eight women with CPP were interviewed about what has been helpful and unhelpful in terms of social support from their partners, families, friends, acquaintances, doctors, nurses and other women with CPP. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) of interview transcripts revealed both helpful and unhelpful efforts at support from the various support providers. Findings are discussed in relation to extant literature and in terms of their clinical implications. The second study (chapter three) was concerned specifically with social support from partners. Standardised measures of pain experience, social support and psychological well being were administered to 29 women with CPP. Correlational analysis revealed significant associations between particular perceptions of partner support behaviours and depression and pain severity. Finally, the research review (chapter four) reflects on the extent to which this research project fulfils evolving criteria for the assessment of qualitative research.