Abstract
This book is about the everyday experiences of parenthood and family life of a group of young middle-class couples living in Scotland. Although parenthood manuals abound, there are relatively few accounts from the parents themselves.1 Most of us become parents, and everyone has opinions on how to bring up children, but although much of this valuable information circulates in conversation it is seldom recorded, let alone examined analytically. Hopefully this book will be of interest to the lay person who perhaps has his or her own theories about what actually goes on in families, as well as to the student of family behaviour who is interested in a systematic empirical analysis.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes and References
Some recent examples are: A. Oakley, Becoming a Mother (London: Martin Robertson Press, 1979).
J. Busfield and M. Paddon, Thinking About Children: Sociology and Fertility in Post-war England (Cambridge University Press, 1977).
See for example: J.M. Pahl and R.E. Pahl, Managers and their Wives: A Study of Career and Family Relationships in the Middle Class (London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1971).
S. Edgell, Middle Class Couples: a study of segregation, domination and inequality in marriage (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1980).
R. Rapoport and R.N. Rapoport, Dual Career Families (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971).
See for example: D. Cooper, The Death of the Family, (London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1971).
K. Millet, Sexual Politics, (New York: Doubleday, 1970).
R.V. Speck, The New Families, (London: Tavistock, 1972).
C. Saflios-Rothschild, ‘Family Sociology or Wives’ Family Sociology? A Cross Cultural Examination of Decision Making’, Journal of Marriage and the Family (1974) pp. 290–301.
R. Rapoport, R.N. Rapoport and V. Thiessen, ‘Couple Symmetry and Enjoyment’, Journal of Marriage and the Family (1974) pp. 588–91.
R.D. Hess and G. Handel, ‘The Family as a Psychosocial Organisation’, in G. Handel (ed.), The Psychosocial Interior of the Family (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1968).
See for example: J. Newson and E. Newson, Patterns of Infant Care in an Urban Community (Pelican, 1965), (first published by George Allen & Unwin, 1963).
H. Gavron, The Captive Wife (Pelican Books, 1968), (first published by Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966).
U. Bronfenbrenner, ‘The Roots of Alienation’, in N. Talbot (ed.), Raising Children in Modern America (Boston: Little, Brown, 1976).
R.Q. Bell, ‘A Reinterpretation of the Direction of Effects in Studies of Socialisation’, in Psychological Review (1968)pp. 81–95.
The seminal articles about the initial impact of parenthood are: E.E. Le Masters, ‘Parenthood as Crisis’, Journal of Marriage and Family Living (1957) pp. 352–5.
A.S. Rossi, ‘Transition to Parenthood’, Journal of Marriage and the Family (1968) pp. 26–39. However, much of the extensive American work on parenthood adopts this unidirectional approach. A significant exception to this is the work on changes in the family life cycle. For a summary see:
W.R. Burr, Theory Construction and Sociology of the Family (New York: John Wiley, 1973).
R. Rapoport, R.N. Rapoport and Z. Strelitz with S. Kew, Fathers, Mothers and Others: Towards New Alliances (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977).
T. Parsons and R.F. Bales, Family, Socialisation and Interaction Processes (New York: Free Press, 1955).
E. Bott Family and Social Network (London: Tavistock 1957) ch.VII.
E.M. Lemert, Human Deviance, Social Problems and Social Control (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1972).
See for example: M.P. Fogarty, R. Rapoport and R.N. Rapoport, Sex, Career and Family (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1971).
M. Komarovsky, ‘Learning Conjugal Roles’, reprinted in J. Heiss (ed.), Family Roles and Interaction (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1968). Here the author presented a brief section on ‘The Marriage Partner as a Socialising Agent’.
For a general exposition of this approach see: H.S. Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1969).
E.W. Burgess, ‘The Family as a Unity of Interacting Personalities’, The Family (1926) pp. 3–9.
W.D. Winter and A. Ferreira (eds.), Research in Family Interaction (Palo Alto, California: Science and Behaviour Books, 1969).
Much of the work of Alfred Schutz has been collected in: M. Natanson (ed.), Alfred Schutz: Collected Papers Vol. 1 (2nd ed.), (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1967).
A. Brodersen (ed.), Alfred Schutz: Collected Papers Vol. 11 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964).
M. Phillipson, ‘Phenomenological Philosophy and Sociology’, in P. Filmer et al. New Directions in Sociological Theory (London: Collier Macmillan, 1972) p. 143.
P.R.L. Berger and H. Kellner, ‘Marriage and the Construction of Reality’, in H.P. Dreitzel (ed.), Recent Sociology No. 2 (London: Collier-Macmillan, 1970).
Since I devised my own research strategy I have come across two books which seem to offer some extremely useful practical advice concerning methodology. See: L. Schatzman and A.L. Strauss, Field Research: Strategies fora natural sociology (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1973).
J. Lofland, Analysing Social Settings (London: Wadsworth, 1971)
H. Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1967).
A.V. Cicourel, Theory and Method in a Study of Argentine Fertility (New York and London: John Wiley, 1974).
B.G. Glaser and A.L. Strauss, The Discovery of Grounded Theory (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968).
Copyright information
© 1982 Kathryn C. Backett
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Backett, K.C. (1982). The Objectives and Approach of the Study. In: Mothers and Fathers. Edinburgh Studies in Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-05204-2_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-05204-2_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-05206-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-05204-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)