
An ordinary complexity of care: moving beyond 'the family' in research with children
For some time, studies of care in personal relationships have managed to move beyond a taken-for-granted focus on the nuclear family. In addition, studies of children and care have shown children's active engagement in doing care. In the project presented here, these two factors have
been combined by allowing children to talk about and reflect on their everyday life and caring situation, without preconceived assumptions of in what relationships and under what circumstances care is 'done'. The results reveal that there are significant practices and relationships of care
around children outside the nuclear family. I argue that an 'ordinary complexity of care' exists in children's lives, and these caring practices and relationships need to be taken into account in studies and conceptualisations of children and care. To capture this, the researcher must conduct
careful methodological and conceptual work to allow the research participants to include 'others' in their telling of their everyday life.
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Keywords: CARE; CHILDREN; FAMILY; METHOD; PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS
Document Type: Research Article
Affiliations: Email: [email protected]
Publication date: July 2016
Families, Relationships and Societies (FRS) is a social science journal designed to advance scholarship and debate in the growing field of families and relationships across the life course. It explores family life, relationships and generational issues from interdisciplinary, social science perspectives, whilst maintaining a solid grounding in sociological theory and methods and a strong policy and practice focus.
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