scholarly journals ‘I’m Mum and Dad in One, Basically’: Doing and Displaying ‘Good Lone Motherhood’

Sociology ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 003803852110376
Author(s):  
Nicola Carroll ◽  
Tray Yeadon-Lee
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Nuclear Family ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Structural Constraints ◽  
Maternal Identity ◽  
Popular Discourse ◽  
The North ◽  
Lone Mothers ◽  
Emotional Demands

Popular discourse continues to equate ‘good’ motherhood with middle class, heterosexual coupledom and lone motherhood with dysfunctionality, despite ever-increasing diversity in family life. Drawing on interviews with lone mothers in two locations in the north of England, this article introduces the concept of ‘good lone motherhood’ to capture a process whereby women internalise nuclear family ideology while simultaneously resisting stigma and taking pride in their achievements in fulfilling practical and emotional demands of lone parenting. Application of a family practices framework is expanded through insights into what ‘doing’ good lone motherhood entails in everyday life and how it is ‘displayed’ to different audiences. Taking a comparative approach involving women in areas with contrasting socio-economic profiles highlights the contextual nature of display. Analysis of agential reflexivity and structural constraints demonstrates ways in which gender and class disadvantages can undermine capacity to ‘successfully’ convey a positive maternal identity.

scholarly journals Quality of family life in the north of Kosovo and Metohija

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (15) ◽  
Author(s):  
Snežana Milivojević
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Quality Oflife ◽  
The North ◽  
Living Space ◽  
Quality Of Family Life

This paper provides an analysis of family and everyday life of twonuclear Serbian families living in the territory of the municipalityof Severna Kosovska Mitrovica. The families in question belong tothe working class and low-middle class respectively, the former beingurban, the latter rural. The paper aims at viewing, by means ofthe method of qualitative analysis – case study and problem-centredinterview, mutual interdependence between the quality offamily relations, living space standard, and the overall quality oflife in the area concerned.

Family Life in Lower and Middle Class Homes

1952 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carson McGuire
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Family Life

scholarly journals The First Mrs. Rochester: Wrongful Confinement, Social Redundancy, and Commitment to the Private Asylum, 1883‑1923

2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-167
Author(s):  
Cheryl Krasnick Warsh
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Birth Rate ◽  
High Standard ◽  
Case Histories

Abstract Historians have debated the growth of asylums as either a movement towards social control or as a benevolent reform; yet commitment was primarily initiated by kin. The rapid overcrowding of asylums reflected the success of institutions in responding to family crises. Through analysis of 1,134 case histories of a private asylum, the Homewood Retreat of Guelph, Ontario, the dynamics of the late Victorian and Edwardian middle-class household are evident in the circumstances which culminated in the decision to commit. Urban industrialization and the declining birth rate rendered households less able to care for the insane, while the permeation of capitalist relations into family life rendered the heads of households less willing to care for nonproductive adult members, particularly socially redundant women. The diagnosis of neurasthenia enabled members of the middle class to institutionalize kin for behaviour which, although not violent or destructive, was irritating and antagonistic, thereby reflecting the high standard of middle-class proprieties.

Structural constraints and the school choice strategies of black American middle-class parents

2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 490-505
Author(s):  
Annette Lareau ◽  
Elliot B. Weininger ◽  
Catharine Warner-Griffin
Keyword(s):  
School Choice ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Black American ◽  
Structural Constraints

The Middle Classes in Non-Western Societies: Inner Dynamics and Self-Assertion Perspective

2015 ◽  
pp. 95-105
Author(s):  
A. Volodin
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
The State ◽  
Western World ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
Stage Of Development ◽  
The Social

The present article focuses on the entity of middle classes in non-Western societies. The social formation of this kind is a relatively new phenomenon. As far as the modern Western societies are concerned, the social and political “materialization” of the above-mentioned entity has covered the period of no less than five centuries. The middle class in modern transitional societies began to emerge quite recently, with a few notable exceptions, after gaining sovereignty. That is one of the reasons why political systems in the non-Western world are mostly fragile and susceptible to instability of different kinds and origins. The so called “Arab awakening” gives a vivid example for the “underdevelopment” of indigenous middle classes. Whilst in the advanced industrial societies middle classes were (and are) the building blocks of social structure, economic and political development, elite recruitment, etc., among the non-Western societies (with the salient exception of the North-East Asia) the process of the middle class institutionalization as well as its economic and political self-assertion is still under way, somewhere at the initial stage of development. Comparing various non-Western societies from the middle class inner dynamics as well as self-assertion perspective, the author concludes that in the ultimate analysis, the maturity of this process is dependent on the pro-active and creative role of the State. The latter serves as the main driving force of the middle class consolidation and the instrument of political and economic systems for increasing and advancing development. The cases of India, on one hand, and Indonesia, on the other, demonstrate convincingly that the State remains the leading institution of the society able to accelerate economic growth and development, but also to stimulate the emergence and socio-political assertion of the middle class in contemporary non-Western world.

scholarly journals The Impact of the North Coast Highway on Socioeconomic Status and Family Life of Residents in Bogue Village, Jamaica

2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Donovan McGrowder ◽  
Lennox Anderson Jackson ◽  
Rohan Forrester ◽  
Carla Edie ◽  
Angella Crawford ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Family Life ◽  
North Coast ◽  
The North ◽  
The Impact

Family policy for all South African families

2016 ◽  
Vol 60 (5) ◽  
pp. 1189-1200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marlize Rabe
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
South African ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Family Policy ◽  
White Paper ◽  
Family Diversity ◽  
Vulnerable Families ◽  
African Families

The ‘White Paper of Families in South Africa’ is critically analysed in this article. It is shown that although family diversity is acknowledged in the aforementioned document, certain implications of the document undermine such professed diversity, not all caretakers of children are acknowledged and supported, and financially vulnerable families are not strengthened. Instead, narrow ideals of family life are at times promoted, suggesting middle-class heterosexual values. It is argued here that the realities of family life should be accepted as such and family in different forms should be supported consistently, not subtly pushed to conform to restricted interpretations of what families should be like.

Coming Home to The Brady Bunch

2019 ◽  
Vol 101 (4) ◽  
pp. 430-460
Author(s):  
Miroslava Chávez-García
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Visual Analysis ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Class Differences ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Upper Middle Class ◽  
Racial Ethnic

The television sitcom The Brady Bunch (1969–1974) and its subsequent reruns presented upper-middle-class whiteness and a version of idealized family life as normative. Its underrepresentation of racial, ethnic, and class differences did more than serve as a form of escapism for young Latina/o television watchers—it impacted their sense of identity and self-esteem, their attitudes toward their own parents, and their own later modes of parenting, as the author’s personal experience illustrates. At the same time, the series’ few episodes that did depict minority characters encouraged stereotyping that influenced the larger population. A content and visual analysis of episodes of The Brady Bunch confirms the sitcom’s repeated themes of gender and sexuality and its near absence of focus on differences of race, ethnicity, and class.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document