Filling the Glass: Gender Perspectives on Families (original) (raw)
Related papers
Gender, Feminist, and Intersectional Perspectives on Families: A Decade in Review
Journal of Marriage and Family, 2020
This review of the gender, feminist, and intersectional literature on families from 2010 to 2019 examines the following three streams of research, theorizing, and praxis: (a) the framing of gender as systemic social stratification and inequalities, (b) the application of feminist perspectives and praxis to highlight and change power disparities in private and public spheres; and (c) the application of intersectionality perspectives to examine and redress social inequities, privilege, and oppression. Collectively, these streams represent variations of a critical theoretical perspective on families. This article has the following three aims: (a) examine how the critical approaches of gender, feminist, and intersectional theories have been used to frame the study of family life during the past decade; (b) identify and assess empirical exemplars in the family literature that highlight the explicit application of these critical approaches; and (c) discuss future directions to push the study of families forward toward more inclusivity and relevance. Gender, feminist, and intersectional approaches offer critical analyses of how women, men, and children in different kinds of families experience privilege and marginalization in private and public contexts based on their gender, race, social class, sexual and gender orientations,
A Mother's Work: Two Levels of Feminist Analysis of Family-Centered Care
American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 1992
The following case describes 5 years of a mother’s care for her child with multiple chronic conditions, in the neonatal intensive care unit and at home. Because caregiving is primarily a female activity, a feminist approach is used. This mother’s efforts on behalf of her son show how work within the domains of direct medical care, normal mothering care, coordination of equipment and supplies and professionals, and synthesis of meaning emanated from her definition of motherhood. The case suggests interventions in family-centered care, offers an examination of two levels of feminist analysis for their usefulness to occupational therapy, and provides an opportunity to examine the topic of motherhood within feminism.
Understanding work and family through a gender lens
Community, Work & Family, 2004
Since gender change is reshaping work and family life, a gender lens is needed to understand work-family links and transformations. A gender lens enriches the study of work and family issues by prodding researchers to transcend gender stereotypes, to see gender as an institution, to recognize the multifaceted nature of recent social change, and to acknowledge the strengths and needs of diverse family forms. A gender framework also helps researchers focus on the link between individuals and institutions, the dynamics of social and individual change, and the structural and cultural tensions created by inconsistent change. This framework is illustrated with selected findings from my research on young women's and men's experiences growing up in diverse families and their emerging strategies for integrating family and work. Etant donné que l'évolution du concept de différence sexuelle transforme actuellement vie professionnelle et vie de famille, un nouvel angle optique sur la question doit être utilisé pour comprendre les différents liens entre la sphère professionnelle et la sphère familiale ainsi que leurs transformations. Emprunter une telle optique enrichit l'études des problèmes professionnels et familiaux parce qu'elle incite les chercheurs à transcender les stéréotypes liés à cette différence des sexes, à considérer cette dernière comme une institution plutôt qu'un attribut individuel, à reconnaître les multiples aspects de cette récente évolution sociale et à admettre la force et les besoins de structures familiales différentes. Un tel cadre d'analyse aide aussi les chercheurs à se focaliser sur le lien entre individus et institutions, sur les dynamiques de transformations sociales et individuelle et sur les tensions structurelles et culturelles que crée cette transformation inégale. Ce nouveau cadre d'analyse se trouve ici présenté à travers une sélection de découvertes faites au cours de ma recherche actuelle qui porte sur les expériences d'hommes et de femmes élevés dans des familles atypiques et sur les stratégies identitaires que ces hommes et ces femmes ont adopté afin d'équilbrer vie de famille et vie professionnelle.
Women and the Family: Two Decades of Change
Contemporary Sociology, 1985
The first one-way mirror used to observe families should be preserved in the Smithsonian Institution. This simple invention has catalyzed revolutionary developments in family therapy, enabling supervisors and consultants to be actively involved in implementing change. Cloë Madanes is a recognized master in this method of training. Behind The One-way Mirror presents her thinking about problems and their solution in her role as a family therapy supervisor. She guides the reader, as she does the trainee, in formulating hypotheses and in testing strategies of intervention. This volume extends the work presented in Madanes's earlier book (1). She proposes a strategic, problem-solving model of therapy based on ideas about the use of metaphor, planning, and hierarchy in families. Through case studies, she presents a step-by-step process of assessment and intervention. Madanes attends to the metaphorical sequences of interaction involving symptoms, to the planning ahead by family members that is attempted through symptomatic behavior, and to the power imbalances that necessitate the symptoms. A specific strategy is designed to shift the family organization so that the presenting problem is resolved. In this volume, Madanes focuses on indirect intervention strategies, which she finds are often necessary in difficult cases. The book is organized into five chapters. The first presents Madanes's conceptual frame for understanding relationships and for planning strategies for change. Chapter 2 explores the possibility that relations between two individuals are dependent upon involvements with a third person, who functions as a metaphor for covert conflict. Issues of hierarchy and power are discussed in regard to relationship contracts. Chapter 3 presents the novel approach of influencing parents through their children, strategically reversing the generational hierarchy by putting the children in charge of their parents' well-being; this is done in order to provoke the parents to take responsibility for change. Chapter 4 discusses the use of humor in therapy, and the final chapter presents eight dimensions therapists may use to conceptualize problems. Madanes briefly describes paradoxical strategies that might be selected according to the therapist's conceptualization. Madanes's creativity shines most brightly in her many case studies, which reveal the novel ways she recasts problems and the highly inventive strategies she fits to particular situations. Her originality in the construction of playful metaphors, fantasies, and make-believe interventions is a highlight of the book. From my own work (2) with severely dysfunctional families, I share her conviction that families struggling unsuccessfully with difficult problems respond well to interventions that lighten and transform their hopelessness and sense of failure. Such playfulness, if employed without sensitivity, could run the risk of cleverness that is fun only for the therapist. Madanes, however, demonstrates both sensitivity and caring in the cases presented here. The case illustration "Pretending to Be Nurses" (p. 7) is a gem. Here Madanes addresses the problem of a mother's neglect in the care of her daughter's diabetes. She recognizes that the needs of the mother have also been neglected; mother suffers from diabetes herself, was abandoned by her husband, and lacks economic and social supports. Madanes calls attention to a common issue in cases of abuse and neglect: that the parents feel abused and neglected by authorities, in this case medical. An indirect strategy of intervention puts the mother benevolently in charge of her daughter without exercising authority over her. To accomplish this, the therapist asks mother and daughter, each in turn, to pretend to be a nurse to the other, even adding the theatrical touch of donning nurses' uniforms when they do so. The rationale for the strategy is well presented, and the planning of each stage of therapy is clearly described. The follow-up information confirms the effectiveness of Madanes's unique approach. Madanes writes in a straightforward, pragmatic way, and seems to assume that the reader has a basic knowledge of family systems theory and of strategic family therapy. There is, however, some conceptual unclarity and inconsistency. The most serious problems occur in the overuse of the term metaphor and in related assumptions about causality. Every presenting problem is viewed "as a metaphor for and a replacement of" some other (covert) relationship problem. In one case example, the therapeutic strategy is based on the hypothesis that the presenting conflict between a dysfunctional son and his father was a metaphor for, and replaced, an avoided conflict between the father and another son. The son is even referred to as "a metaphor for someone else: his brother" (p. 40). The second relationship is hypothesized to be the "true source" of the first conflict. The therapeutic goal, then, is to "take the problem back to where it originated" (p. 40) so that it can be discussed, thereby freeing the symptomatic son from replacing his brother. Even the chapter title, "Discovering the Source of the Conflict" suggests that there is always a covert source, or origin, of presenting problems that is the "real" problem and the "true" meaning and "cause" of symptoms. Such linear-causal terms and references scattered throughout the text are inconsistent with the systems paradigm of circular causality on which family therapy is based. Such assumptions need to be better thought through lest they slide into the sort of inferential, deterministic interpretations that systems theorists have rightly attacked.
International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 2014
To some extent, policy-relevant research on families and households addresses timeless questions designed to understand the processes that lead to particular social practices and outcomes for parents, children and professionals. Yet, the social contexts in which families and households negotiate their everyday practices are necessarily dynamic, as are research methods. In order to stay relevant, therefore, it is crucial that researchers update their theoretical frameworks and methods as well as their orientation to the social context. Julia Brannen's successful accomplishment of research over the last 40 years exemplifies the ways in which continuing to do relevant research is not simply a question of remaining relevant, but also requires conceptual and methodological reframing over time. This paper traces some of the theoretical and methodological shifts and adjustments that have served to keep Julia Brannen's research cutting edge, exciting and policy relevant. It does so both by considering how her preoccupations have shifted, expanded and remained and illustrating these shifts by drawing on literature more broadly.
The Gendered Dynamics of Power in Disputes Over the Postseparation Care of Children
Violence Against Women, 2012
A dichotomized picture of postseparation parents has emerged in family law that juxtaposes violent relationships with those that are "normal." Domestic violence scholars and advocates have played a role in reproducing this picture in their quest to secure protection for women and children. Although sympathetic, we argue this construction generates a number of problems: in particular, it obscures the gender power dynamics in relationships where women have not experienced violence. Interviews with separated mothers in dispute over contact arrangements reveal that there are significant continuities in the gender power dynamics they experience, despite differences in their exposure to male partner violence.
Just Policy: A Journal of …, 2009
Debates concerning the organisation of care are now firmly on the public agenda, most obviously through ongoing controversy over the tensions between the demands of the labour market and those of the household. Recent social and political changes have important implications for the family's, especially women's, capacity and preparedness to provide the care that is essential to human wellbeing and social life. In what is variously referred to as the ‗new economy' or the ‗new capitalism', and accompanying ‗postwelfare' state, a major shift in social policy has been premised on the superiority of the social relations characteristic of the market. Yet as leading feminist theorists have pointed out for years (Waring 1988, Kitttay 1999, Folbre 2004, Fineman 2004, both economy and state are not only enmeshed with each other but each is highly dependent on the unpaid household and caring labour largely undertaken by women in families and communities.
Paternal and Maternal Gatekeeping? Choreographing Care
Sociologia, 2018
Feminist scholarship has continued to map the multiple ways in which practices of caring and paid work sustain gender inequality. A recurrent focus has examined how caring and paid work “choices” are made and their corresponding gendered effects, particularly for women in the home, work place and beyond. In spite of shifts in education, employment and equality-focused legislation, the sharing of familial caring responsibilities for children has been particularly resistant to significant change. One attempt to explain this obduracy has been through the concept of “maternal gatekeeping” developed in the 1990s. This concept typically describes and measures maternal behaviours that “block” paternal involvement and so apparently “protects” maternal privilege/power. However, as societal ideals — and some practices — of involved fatherhood shift, a more critical engagement with the concept of “gatekeeping” as a singularly maternal practise, is timely. Drawing upon findings from two compara...
Potential versus Reality: the importance of resources in challenging gendered family practices
Sociologia, 2018
Family life is recognised as a central domain for the achievement of greater gender equality. Transformations in fatherhood policies have been key in signalling the value of both mothers and fathers as parents and reflecting new discourses about the ability and need for men and women to care. Meanwhile persistent inequalities in this sphere — in relation to the undertaking of practical care, and overall responsibility for household management — have been suggested as limits on progress. This article draws on studies in the UK that examine the relationship between gender, parenting, and poverty to suggest that overall empirical evidence continues to highlight the ongoing ways in which the allocation of financial resources within households, and the nature and extent of parental obligations to children, result in mothers continuing to do more in ways that seem unlikely to be further transformed without significant intervention and a shift in focus.