Youth, Dependence and the Problem of Support

  • Gill Jones
Chapter

Abstract

There has been very little research on the parenting of young people: what it involves, who does it, how it is offered and received, or how it changes with age and over time. Equally, while there has been an increasing policy emphasis on supporting families (latterly as a means to combating social exclusion), the emphasis has been on the parenting of young children. UK Government policies affecting the family lives of young people thus draw on a blank sheet, largely uninformed by research evidence. This was clear from the Green Paper ‘Supporting Families’ (Home Office, 1998), which followed the existing research agenda in concentrating on the parenting of younger children, but focused only on those aspects of youth defined as social problems, targeting such issues as teenage pregnancy, offending and truancy. Even in the changed policy environment of the post 1997 Labour Governments, the family context in which young people become adult has been largely ignored (Social Exclusion Unit, 2000). While those identified as socially excluded and/or living in poor neighbourhoods have received policy and research attention, the everyday problems of the majority remain, in both research and policy, within the ‘black box’ of family life.

Keywords

Young People Family Life Parental Home Family Policy Policy Term 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2003

Authors and Affiliations

  • Gill Jones

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