Families, Parenthood and Childhood Flashcards
1
Q
Families, Parenthood and Childhood Primary Literature
Bösche and Hansen
A
- First children’s book to discuss homosexuality. Bösche has spoken of her motivation in writing the book: “I wrote Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin back in 1981 because I became aware of the problems which some children face when meeting family groupings different from the ones they are familiar with, i.e. mum and dad, possibly mum and dad divorced, maybe a step-parent” Categorised as “homosexual propaganda” by the tabloid press in the UK, led to notoriety.
- 1986 - controversy - book in school library, in inner London. Complaint lodged - found that Education Authority had not approved it for younger children, and it was only supposed to be shown to older children “in exceptional circumstances” and following consultation with parents.
- Book condemned by Kenneth Baker, the Secretary of State for Education. Frances Morrell, the leader of the Inner London Education Authority, said that the very limited use of the book in local authority schools was consistent with the government’s requirements on sex education. Contributed towards the Conservative Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988, which forbade the promotion of homosexuality by local government.
2
Q
Families, Parenthood and Childhood Primary Literature
Jacqueline Burgoyne
A
- The Listener, 1983
- Concerning the impact of unemployment during the Thatcher years on marriage. Subversion of the patriarchal bargain was a ‘bad thing’. “For these couples, spending more time together was more often seen as a ‘bad thing’ as they began to suffer what the community physician, Professor Eric Wilkes, has described as a ‘toxic overdose of each other’s company’.
- Context: miners’ strike.
3
Q
Families, Parenthood and Childhood Primary Literature
John Heilpern, NOVA
A
- NOVA, 1973
- Sheridan Morely
- Intellectual – from Oxford
- Very pessimistic – cannot determine place in family and resents being stripped of ‘the old romantic role of the father’. Uses self-deprecation to mask the inequity of task allocation within the household. “Shambling, lazy, eager to help out but clumsy”. Similar to other respondents, suggests women were naturally more gifted at domestic projects, whereas he ‘can load a washing-up machine without breaking more than two plates at a time’… ‘My wife is much better at it’
- John Gale
- Different, emotional response compared to Morely – more compassion for children and more open about his flexible identity – “but being a father has made me very vulnerable through my children”
- Changes the romanticism of the Victorian period for rebuke – “HE wasn’t a disciplinarian? ‘ No, because that sounds to me Victorian, inflexible and fairly inhuman’”
- Liberal parent, reflecting the permissiveness argument of Todd and Young – surprisingly accepting of his son taking drugs, as he sees comparable to ‘stealing apples’.
- Brian Worth
- Emphasis of class (not so) subtlety introduced: ‘Mr Worth offered me a cup of Fortnum & Mason Russian Blend Tea as we settled down to talk in the sitting room of his large Georgian home’
- Initially discusses how he sought a life with a ‘good time’, which children impeded
- Compared to Gale, Worth did hit his children = but he does attempt to check this, in recognition that the tide of opinion was turning against the idea.
- ‘Well, I wouldn’t say I’m the head of the family. I’m the titular head. A marriage is composed of two people and compromise. I’m the mouth through which the oracle speaks.’
- Peter Crouch
- Some pushback against Todd & Young – “I used to think: give total freedom to a child. Now I’m not so sure.”
- ‘What would he do if, when his daughter’s older, she came home pregnant? ‘I’d say it was bad luck and help in any way I could’
- A J Ayer
- Oldest father mentioned. Stressed how he didn’t want his son to become Christian, but would enjoy the debate it would bring if he did become one.
- “I’m not in fact very helpful around the house – not at all out of principle but simply because I’m not very good at it. It doesn’t come naturally.’
- ‘Well, in those days the father was just a name, an authority who was first invoked by mummy and then by nanny – and the children saw nanny most of all. Dad was a kind of Olympian presence who handed down permissions, punishments and rewards’
4
Q
Families, Parenthood and Childhood Primary Literature
NCDS 1969
A
- National Child Development Study - NCDS follows the lives of over 17,000 people born in England, Scotland and Wales in a single week of 1958. Also known as the 1958 Birth Cohort Study, it collects information on physical and educational development, economic circumstances, employment, family life, health behaviour, wellbeing, social participation and attitudes.
- Boys typically towards engineering, manual profession, sports (think: ENFIELD). High variability in quality of text. Females tended towards domesticity, teaching; specific imagery of what their ideal husband would look like (N17321F- Details specifically husband – 5ft 10, no beard, black hair, blue eyes – enjoys football) N26950F most lucid response, but still gendered.
- Alissa Goodman - computational analysis of NCDS data in 1969.
- Boys (largest words): football, car, wife, making, pilot, army, driver, fishing, driving
- Girls: Children, nurse, tea, hair, enjoy, children, husband, school, baby.
- Comment on systematic nature. Sociological nature.
5
Q
Families, Parenthood and Childhood Primary Literature
Donald Winnicott - The Child, The Family, The Outside World
A
- English paediatrician and psychoanalyst who was especially influential in the field of object relations theory. The way people relate to others and situations in their adult lives is shaped by family experiences during infancy. Also, pioneered True and False Selves. Argued narcissists need to control others - esp. Their children.
- 1964 Book - brought back the role of the father, but still emphasised the mother - ‘the richness of detail increases and with this the bond between father and mother can become even deeper’.
- Mother - soft; father - hard.
- Sexual union of parents which dictates normative behaviour.
6
Q
Families, Parenthood and Childhood Primary Literature
Bowlby
A
- 1951 - Maternal Care and Mental Health. Important term. Emphasises desirability of continuity in relations between child and mother.
- Bowlby - psychologist, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst. Interested in child dev. And attachment theory. WWI - Bowlby’s father sent to war. Little contact. Suggested impacted perception of attachment. 10yrs -> boarding school. 1973 -> Separation: Anxiety and Anger - Bowlby admits that this was a bad time for him; though supports sending at later age - even in 1951 defending boarding as a method to address ‘maladjustment’.
- Believed to lock women into domestic servitude.
7
Q
Families, Parenthood and Childhood Primary Literature
1951 Film Festival of Britain, Family Portrait (Wessex Film Production)
A
- Film Festival of Britain - Kenneth O. Morgan - ‘the Festival made a spectacular setting as a showpiece for the inventiveness and genius of British scientists and technologists.’
- Driven by Herbert Morrison, conceptualised in 1947, aimed to mark centenary of Great Exhibition 1951. Focus -> British achievements, government funded.
- Labour was losing support, Festival was to bolster feeling of successful recovery.
- Humphrey Jennings - a founder of MO, documentary film maker; active as wartime producer from 1940 onward. Narrated by Michael Goodliffe (usually cast as a doctor, lawyer and officer). Wessex Film Production.
- Film is self-conscious in taking four nations perspective. Demonstrated unity and ingenuity between people brought about world-changing inventions.
8
Q
Families, Parenthood and Childhood Secondary Literature
Summarise the findings of
Selina Todd and Hilary Young - Baby-Boomers to Beanstalkers
A
- Whilst 1950s and 60s presented as rebellion of generations, older generation funded the younger. Disjuncture with images of Teddy Boys output by news. Post-war teenager’s leisure consumption testified not only to post-war affluence but also to working-class parents’ exhortations to their children to carve out a different life to what was known pre-war.
- Adam Franklin - the home also became an important leisure venue as people took pleasure in the comfort of modern housing and their ability to offer hospitality.
- The word ‘teenager’ was an American import, but Clement Attlee’s Labour government of 1945–50 did much to give it a British persona. In 1948 the schoolleaving age rose to fifteen and state schools were obliged to register their leavers with a new Youth Employment Service that assisted teenagers in finding work.
- 1959 – Mirror – Beanstalk Generation – capturing the health and affluence of the Baby-boomers.
- Teenagers enjoyed even bigger proportionate wage rises than adults. Between 1955 and 1960 girls’ weekly earnings rose by almost 30 per cent to just under £4 – almost half an adult male worker’s average wage packet – while boys’ earnings rose by almost 40 per cent to £7 – almost two-thirds of a man’s wage. Going ‘beatnik’ describes the process of questioning the conformity and hardwork that economic security required. In 1963, St Ives Council ‘declared war’ on ‘beatniks’ who ‘sprawl on the sands’, ‘lounge on the harbour wall’ and sleep on the beach.
- The post-war teenager celebrated the capacity of working-class people to align modernity with affluence and unprecedented opportunity.
9
Q
Families, Parenthood and Childhood Secondary Literature
Summarise the findings of
Stephen Brooke - Gender and Working Class Identity in Britain During the 1950s
A
- Polish emigre and long-time student of the British working classes, Ferdinand Zweig, noted that ‘working-class life finds itself on the move towards new middle-class values and middle-class existence… described as a deep transformation of values… new ways of thinking and feeling, a new ethos, new aspirations and cravings.”
- The persistence of wage disparity would have been much more obvious. Strikes by female workers at Ford’s Dagenham plant in 1968 and Lucas’ Acton factory the following year brought this disparity to the public eye.
- In a comparative study of slum and estate dwellers in Oxford in the fifties, J.M. Mogey suggested that with the move from an older working class community to a newer one came “a new set of expectations.”
- Young, Willmott, Zweig and Mogey suggested that changes in gender identities had, for the most part, occurred harmoniously. This did not corroborate with Coal is Our Life, which showed continuity in gender experience in Ashton (West Yorkshire), but with disruption within that order.
10
Q
Families, Parenthood and Childhood Secondary Literature
Summarise the findings of
Angela Davis - A Critical Perspective on British Social Surveys
A
- Family was treated as of prime importance in sociological surveys, but this did not necessarily reflect the reality on the ground. The article focuses on married life, and how limitations in contemporary studies can be explained. It accuses such studies of being a product of post-war optimism rather than by patriarchal beliefs.
- The nuclear family as the normal family was the product of Mogey. Social studies reflected this truism.
- Most studies focused on a reassuring family life, but only focused on men in the family at the expense of the happiness of women.
11
Q
Families, Parenthood and Childhood Secondary Literature
Summarise the findings of Matthew Thomson - Lost Freedom
A
- Bowlbyism helped to justify reliance on the family, and women in particular, as the central providers of childcare. In emphasizing the importance of freedom to play and relationships, it also offered a social democratic vision of child development that could be in tension with the narrow landscape of home.
- Attachment psychology – the notion that long-term damage would be caused to young children who were separated from and deprived of (particularly maternal) love and affection, is the core of Bowlbyism. Two ideas: 1) Love and protection of home and family was critical to child development; 2) Play, freedom and social relations were also important.
- Bowlby famously described the importance of attachment in the first years of life as akin to that of the vitamins which had come to be recognized as such an essential element in child growth. Worked with Labour’s Evan Durbin to emphasise the importance of a liberal and loving style of childcare in fostering mental health and social relations for democratic soc.
- Bowlbyism is often portrayed as halting the advance of the emancipation of British women. The critique has become so commonplace that it defines in part what Bowlbyism is.
