The Early Years in England has seen heavy investment since New Labour came into power in 1997. This distinct educational stage has been highlighted in the media as having the potential to alleviate socio-economic inequalities. The first year of compulsory schooling in England, the Reception year, is the period in which children are inducted into becoming both learners and pupils in a formalised system. It is also the period during which children are considered to be in the high season of imaginative play. Play forms a fundamental part of the Early Years Foundation Stage guidelines, though the nature of what constitutes play is contested by critics and practitioners. With the EYFS framework document stating that all areas of learning must be implemented through planned, purposeful play, tensions arise between freely-chosen, child-led play and adult-led activity. Critics of government interventions have decried the ‘schoolification’ of the Early Years and claim a ‘squeezing out’ of opportunities for freely-chosen play, which they warn has the potential to damage children’s learning dispositions. This ethnographic case study focuses on the freely-chosen socio-dramatic play of seven children, in the context of their Reception classroom culture. This is based on a socio-cultural theoretical framework and the premise that such play is where rich experience resides; play which is socially, emotionally, and cognitively challenging. Socio-dramatic play comprises children involved in imitative role-play, which lasts longer than ten minutes, uses objects in a make believe context, is between two or more players, and centres on verbal communication (Smilansky, 1968). Data generation took place over 8 months, employing fieldnotes generated through participant observation, loosely-structured interviews, and researcher reflections. This is set alongside discourse analysis exploring how play and role-play are conceptualised in policy documentation. Microethnographic analyses are made of video data gathered during socio-dramatic play. To put the child’s experience at the centre of the study, artefacts created by children, images, and children’s dialogue are incorporated in the analysis. Findings are presented through a combination of evocative ethnographic prose and a multi-modal analysis of video data. Through an inductive analytical process, themes emerged from the data highlighting the complex nature of the socially situated play activity. The negotiation of social relationships through play is explored, identifying play as a liminal activity in an identity transition stage through which children are learning how to do school and how to be pupils. Socio-dramatic play is proposed as offering a unique conceptual space in which players can explore expressions of bodily freedom alongside the requirements of the bodily comportment and control which are demanded by school routines. I argue that practitioners should pay attention to the materiality of play: spaces and artefacts which are provided for, and used by, children. Drawing on the analysis, implications for practice are suggested, with reference to techniques by which adults can interact in play in ways which prioritise the child’s emerging needs and interests.

This thesis examines the development of the Irish child protection system up until the present day. It argues that child protection law and policy has continually reconstructed children, and the risks that they face. In particular, it posits that there has been a radical revision of social and legal thinking about children owing to the reflexive nature of late modernity. In essence, the thesis argues that child protection work has come to be characterised by a new discursive practice. This new approach draws on high levels of legal regulation and recognition that such work takes place in a risk society. Historical literature on the conceptualisation of children within child protection has tended to adopt a binary approach, whereby children are seen as either a threat or as a victim. Additionally, the last twenty years have seen occasional attempts to analyse Irish social policy in the context of the transition from simple to late modernity. However, these studies have not considered the role played by law in significant detail, as most have been considered from a historical or sociological perspective. The result of this is that one of the main factors influencing how children lived, and the risks they faced, has been ignored in writing about childhood. Additionally, child law has also only recently developed as an area of study in its own right within legal research. This thesis therefore aims to contribute to the existing literature by assessing the historical development of legal rules governing child protection practice in light of sociological theory. Drawing on both legal and sociological literature, the thesis seeks to argue the binary approach to childhood rooted the victim/threat duality is incomplete, and that a greater role need to be afforded to the conceptualisation of children as agents. I argue that this binary should be replaced by a more complex understanding of how children were thought about by law and by social policy under the conditions of simple modernity. I argue that children were first regarded as objects of discipline, subjected to rigid systems of control. Latterly, they were regarded as objects of concern, whereby they were recognised as having interests that required protection, but were simultaneously denied any level of agency. The final stage in the transformation of social and legal thinking about children in Ireland was the transition of children from object to subject. With the movement from simple to late modernity came an outbreak of child protection scandals, focused on the lack of intervention by the social services in abusive families, and on abuse in community organisations, most especially by the Roman Catholic Church. These scandals occurred against a backdrop of a radical realignment of social relations whereby traditional sites of institutional power were challenged and traditional social and familial hierarchies problematized. This thesis claims that child protection scandals were an intrinsic part of these social and cultural changes, which created the conditions whereby the socio-political construction of children could be revisited. Children now came to be recognised as rights-bearing subjects of the law, not only morally deserving or worthy, but capable of exercising agency in a meaningful sense. As children increasingly came to be recognised as having interests (and later on as having rights) the concerns of child protection law changed to focus more on the risks faced by children. Under conditions of simple modernity, children were recognised as being vulnerable to dangers, but these were frequently deemed to be “moral dangers” leading to the disciplining of children themselves and their families, and to attempts to eliminate risk through severe punishment. As reflexivity took hold, however, the understanding of these risks changed, with traditionally respected authority figures now regarded as the prime sources of risk. Risk has gradually, therefore, come to play a dominant role in legislation affecting children, and the attempted elimination of risk has yielded to the management and assessment of risk as a primary aim of child protection law and social work. The thesis draws on a wide range of primary and secondary sources including legislation, case law and official reports and media reports of child protection inquiries. It also utilises insights developed through an extensive examination of parliamentary debates on child protection matters. These materials are assessed through the lens of critical discourse analysis in order to explore in an original fashion the relationship between law, social policy and social theory as they effect child protection. In doing so, it makes a contribution to both social policy and legal literature about children. While the thesis utilises Irish sources, its claims about the reconstruction of children and child protection could be applied in other societies that have undergone the transition to reflexive modernity.

The subject of young fatherhood has not been widely addressed in academic research, and until recently most studies on young parenthood have concentrated mainly on teenage mothers. This thesis explores how men who became fathers at a young age narrate their experiences of fathering and their perceptions of fatherhood. The focus is thus both on the practical experience of being a father as well as in the values the young men hold in relation to fatherhood and fathering. Such exploration is done in relation to being a man, being young and coming from what is typically considered a socially excluded background. The findings are based on individual qualitative interviews with 22 young men from ethnic minority backgrounds who were living in London, mainly in areas of social deprivation. This study adds to the growing body of research on young fatherhood generally and to research on the father-child relationship specifically. Drawing on structuration theory, discourse and social capital as the theoretical basis, this thesis explores how young men build, practice and understand their role as fathers and their one to one relationship with their child or children. The specific focus on the father-child relationship springs from the limited research on this aspect of young fatherhood. This study found that when it comes the practice of fathering there are little differences between young and older fathers: their worries, their hopes and their future projections can be considered similar. The research highlighted that fathers aimed to make a positive contribution to their children’s lives by caring for them in the early days and also later on, by playing and educating them. The relationship with the mother appeared to be an essential part of the experience of fatherhood, both in relation to quality and quantity of contact. This thesis found that young men emphasised the influence of family and community background in shaping their experiences of fatherhood. The findings of this study shed light into the practice of fathering amongst young men and contribute to understanding young parents’ relationship dynamics from the male perspective. Finally, it helps understand the influence of background on young fathers’ life chances and future prospects. Overall, the young men in this research were able to fulfill their desire to be there for their children, sometimes in adverse circumstances and against a variety of hurdles. And despite the problems encountered, the young men offered a positive view on the experience of fatherhood, focusing not only on the tensions but also on the rewards of being a father.

This thesis sought to provide new insight into the lives and experiences of mothers of children with disabilities in the rural (Kaoma) and urban (Lusaka) settings of Zambia. A detailed literature review revealed that there is a dearth of research that has focused on the views of mothers parenting children with disabilities within the Zambian social and cultural context. Qualitative, biographical interviews were undertaken with thirty mothers whose child had a disability significant enough to qualify for intervention services at the time of the interviews. This study drew on a framework using insights from the social model of disability, feminist intersectionality and the social empowerment model. The methodology was informed by interpretivism, social constructionist grounded theory, feminist intersectionality theories, and data analysis was carried out concurrently with data collection. Findings revealed that disability is still surrounded by stigma and prejudice. It was associated with punishment and bad omen. The diagnosis of a child’s disability had an impact on mothers as it resulted in a liminal (suspended) state and a biographical disruption as they had to reorient their lives. Mother-blame was common and they were often ostracised by their significant others and the communities. Divorce was common especially among first-time mothers whose child had cerebral palsy. Divorce was an unexpected disruptive event that had socioeconomic impact on mothers. They had to bear the burden of caregiving in the absence of support from their partners. Some gave up their employment because of the demands associated with caregiving resulting in financial deprivation. Mothers also experienced loss of agency over their future and that of their child. More power was allotted to husbands than mothers with regard to decision making at home. The study makes a deeper, and more nuanced, contribution to the scarce literature on mothering children with disabilities in Zambia and globally.

This thesis explores the causes and consequences of growing flexibility in gender divisions of labour in Kitwe, Zambia. It examines the relationship between four contemporary trends (1990-2011): worsening economic security, growing flexibility in gender divisions of labour in the form of increasing female labour force participation and occupational desegregation, and the weakening of gender stereotypes. The evidence for these trends comes from census data, earlier ethnographies and my own qualitative research (April 2010 − March 2011). The analysis draws upon a theoretical framework that interprets sex-differentiated practices as resulting from internalised gender stereotypes, cultural expectations and patterns of resource access. The substantive chapters of the thesis consider alternative hypotheses. Did worsening economic security trigger flexibility in gender divisions of labour, which then weakened gender stereotypes (Chapter 4)? Alternatively, was such flexibility actually contingent upon a prior rejection of gender stereotypes, due to particular formative experiences (Chapter 5) or gender sensitisation (Chapter 6)? This thesis argues that worsening economic security led many families to sacrifice the social gains accrued by complying with cultural expectations of gender divisions of labour in exchange for the financial benefits of female labour force participation. But occupational desegregation is partly attributed to a prior rejection of gender stereotypes. Flexibility in gender divisions of labour seems to undermine gender stereotypes and related status inequalities, by enabling exposure to a critical mass of women performing roles that they were previously presumed to be incapable and that are valorised because they were historically performed by men. Common forms of gender sensitisation in Zambia were rarely said to be independently persuasive; impact generally appears contingent upon exposure to a critical mass of women in socially valued domains. Sensitisation also seems more effective when it enables participants to see that others also endorse gender equality. This can increase confidence in the objective validity of one’s own egalitarian beliefs and also shift cultural expectations.

The demographic literature has tended to interpret the postponement of childbearing, experienced in developed countries over the past three decades, as beneficial for families. As women who postpone their first birth accumulate resources before they become mothers, an increasing maternal age at first birth is expected to be positively associated with children’s wellbeing. Existing evidence is only partially able to support these arguments, primarily for two reasons. Firstly, the demographic literature has been mainly preoccupied with the social aspects of postponement, ignoring that, as showed by the medical literature, older childbearing may involve health complications and result in worse outcomes for children. Indeed, the link between postponement and child wellbeing may depend on how late the birth occurs. Secondly, the “weathering” hypothesis literature argues that the link between maternal age and child wellbeing is heterogeneous for population subgroups. Ethnic minority women may have fewer opportunities to acquire resources even if they postpone childbearing. Because of the disadvantage and racism they endure, they may experience a more rapid deterioration of their health, which implies that their children’s wellbeing might worsen, rather than improve, with increasing maternal age at birth. The original contribution to knowledge of this thesis is that of investigating the way childbearing postponement is associated with family and child wellbeing by integrating and reconciling different perspectives on maternal age, which have so far been developed and applied relatively independently. The research focuses on the U.K. context, on first births and compares (children born to) Black and White mothers. The results, on average, support the arguments of the demographic literature as first born children of older mothers (30+) fare significantly better than children of younger mothers, although, consistent with the medical literature, the benefits cease to accumulate at particularly advanced maternal ages. However, consistent with the “weathering” hypothesis literature, the results suggest that when analysed separately for Black and White mothers, the association between maternal age and child wellbeing varies across these groups. Indeed, Black/White gaps in child low birth weight widen with increasing maternal age at first birth. The results also reveal that when Black mothers delay childbearing to older ages, they do not experience the same accumulation of resources as White mothers do, suggesting that childbearing postponement may reflect qualitatively different processes for these groups.

Aims. Research on women's health and the effects of multiple roles is associated with women's increased labour force participation in the post war period in the West. Competing theoretical approaches view women's work out of home either negatively or positively. Developing countries such as Iran, on their way towards industrialisation, are subject to socioeconomic changes similar to those in the West. This thesis investigates the extent to which the recently accelerated trend towards women's labour force participation in Iran affects women's health, either positively or negatively, and explores the relevance of Western theoretical approaches in a different cultural context. It is the first known study of its kind in Iran. Method. A primary survey was conducted of a representative sample of working and nonworking mothers in Tehran in 1998 (N=1065, 710 working mothers, with a response rate of 84.5% and 355 non-working mothers with a response rate of 88.1 %). Three main explanatory factors were examined (socio-demographic, work and work-related, and social-life context variables) alongside a range of mental and physical health outcome variables. Results. Unlike in the West, where women's paid work is generally associated with better health, statistically significant differences between working and non-working women were not found in Tehran. It is argued that this is a result of the counter-balance of the positive and negative factors associated with paid work, such as increased stress on the one hand and self esteem on the other. Iranian society's particular socio-cultural climate has contributed to this finding, with its dominant sex-role ideology; the priority and extra weight placed on women's traditional roles as wives and mothers, and the remarkably influential impact of husbands' attitudes on women's health. Among working women, however, significant improvements in health were related to certain factors: better psycho-social and physical conditions in paid work; higher occupational class; higher self-esteem; working outside the home, rather than doing paid work in the home; approval of paid work by husbands; and lower levels of role conflict.

Chapter One examines the literature on children’s experiences of domestic violence. The research reviewed indicates that within the same family children can have different experiences of domestic violence. Within the literature five common themes were identified; children’s experiences of abuse, responses to and effects of domestic violence, coping and sense making, impact on relationships and access to services and support. Children consistently experienced feelings of fear towards the perpetrator and a sense of responsibility for their mother’s well-being. Further qualitative research was recommended to identify different children’s resilience’s. Chapter Two explores the unique perspective of mother’s experiences of their relationship with their children within the context of domestic violence. IPA analysis indicated that domestic violence led the women to experience shame and see themselves as a ‘bad mother’. They attempted to distance themselves against this uncomfortable emotion by experiencing their child as a ‘bad child’. There were areas of resilience and agency as the women interviewed altered their parenting style and consequently their relationship with their child once leaving the relationship. Chapter Three provides reflections on the research journey. This includes the author’s experiences of methodological and ethical issues relating to conducting research with women who have experienced domestic violence, particularly with regards to the utilization of the principles of feminist and empowering methods.

Food retains a central importance in family life, which extends beyond its nutritional necessity. Through in-depth interviews with 39 mothers of pre-school children, this study focuses on how mothers negotiate the complex and competing priorities of feeding their children. Mothers are expected to feed their children, according to expert definitions of appropriate nutrition, whilst taking account of individual food preferences and structural constraints. The ways that feeding children intersects with the construction of ‘good’ mother or how mothers negotiate external information and advice on feeding their children has not been the focus of much research. This research considers these issues at a time when government policy remains focused on health, lifestyles and obesity. This study shows that mothers feel the responsibility of motherhood strongly whilst accepting their accountability. It also shows that feeding children is one of the main concerns of mothers of young children and one that occupies a great deal of time. By talking to mothers of different ages and living in different social circumstances, this study shows that all mothers accept the links between food and health and all take account of these links as they look to their children’s future health. All mothers seek external sources of information and advice but sources differ with mothers’ age and social class. Expertise is found not to be the preserve of those with formal qualifications as mothers talked of how expertise is negotiated. Mothers therefore work hard to negotiate their own versions of good motherhood through their food decision-making. By focusing on the aspects of feeding children that are considered the most important at any given time, mothers are able to negotiate their own sense of good motherhood.

Considered one of the most controversial phenomena produced by the processes of economic globalization, the expansion of the sex industry and the radical shift in its composition and organization have received much attention in the last two decades, both academic and political. My research aims to interrogate the largely unexplored transformations that have affected the urban geography of prostitution and the evolution of local regulatory systems. In the context of a metamorphosis of the local sex markets, coincided with the accelerated growth of international women’s migration from the last decades of the century, these pages present an original empirical study on the relationship between prostitution, communities and local authorities in the major cities of the Italian region of northeast: the Emilia-Romagna. The survey focuses on street prostitution and observes three processes that in the last twenty years contribute to the crisis of the existing ones and the production of new urban regulation of sex work: 1) the settlement of migrant prostitution in the geography of territory; 2) the impact of spatial configurations of street prostitution on the communities; 3) the institutional mediation carried out by the local policy makers (first of all the Majors) on the effects of globalization of the sex market in the urban context. The comparison between cities is based on the hypothesis that the geopolitical dynamics between the different territorial systems operate as an organizing principle in the production of specific rules and practices on the prostitution issue.