Todd L. Goodsell

Nurturing fathers: a qualitative examination of child–father attachment

This research investigates the meaning of child–father attachment where the child feels close to the father but distant from the mother. A categorical‐content narrative analysis was conducted of four transcripts of interviews with women who were becoming mothers for the first time and who exhibited this pattern. The analysis suggests the importance of nurturing fathering, and also that these fathers can differ in their motivations and in the social contexts of their fathering. Self‐assertive fathering and compensatory fathering are concepts suggested to capture this difference. The link between father involvement and child–father attachment is explored. Implications for practice and for future research are presented.

The Case of the Brick Huggers: The Practice of an Online Community

A hybrid community is one that exists simultaneously in the online and the offline environments. in such a community, the online world and the offline world can spill onto each other in ways that strengthen each other. We selected one such hybrid community (one based on rehabbing houses in a decaying inner city) and applied Denzins method of instances, supplemented by prior participant observation in the locality, to conduct a virtual ethnography of community building across the online–offline environments. Applying the analytic technique to 1,559 emails, we identified the ways in which communication and support within the hybrid community unfolded over a period of time. We concluded that an online community anchored in a common, material, offline reality blends the two worlds together in ways that are meaningful and useful to community members.

Fatherhood stories: Grandparents, grandchildren, and gender differences

The meanings of fatherhood conveyed in grandparent stories told by adult grandchildren vary both by the sex of the grandchild and by the sex of the grandparent who figures in the story. An inductive analysis was conducted of fatherhood stories involving grandparents as told by adult grandchildren (N = 79). Findings suggest that grandsons drew on stories about grandparents to present fatherhood as centered on work and recreation, and to suggest that women play supporting roles. Granddaughters’ stories were less positive, and suggested that women must make up for perceived deficiencies of fathers. This qualitative study is the first to explore same- and cross-sex similarities and differences in grandparents’ socialization of grandchildren into meanings of good fathering.

Scrapbooking: Family Capital and the Construction of Family Discourse

Through everyday activities, often performed by women, a version of family becomes reified for its members. Family discourse, linked to cultural capital via family capital, creates credentials and competence (family capital) in a particular family type and also a set of dispositions (family habitus) that inclines family members to act in ways consistent with normative standards of family. This article presents a holistic-content narrative analysis of one family’s eleven-volume scrapbook collection that revealed the process and content of their construction of reality. The scrapbooking mother seems to be equipping her children with family-based cultural resources and personal dispositions to situate them in future social interactions.

Family Status and Motivations to Run: A Qualitative Study of Marathon Runners

Family structure influences motivations to run. Drawing on qualitative, in-depth interviews with 33 amateur marathon runners, we investigated how people in various family situations talked about why they run. We found that while there were no major differences in stated motivations to start running or to run marathons, there were differences among the various family statuses for why people continue to run. We concluded that researchers and those who want to encourage long-term engagement in active leisure should consider family context as an important influence on peoples motivations to run.

Adapting Focus Groups to a Rural Context: Challenges and Strategies

Focus group research needs to be modified when the focus groups are to be conducted in a rural area or with a rural population. The authors argue for “seeing the rural”: for recognizing rurality as a social context that affects research. Based on experience with North American rural focus groups, the authors propose six aspects of the design of rural focus groups in which rurality should be taken into account: conceptualizing the rural place, identifying research participants, inviting residents to participate in a focus group, selecting a site for the focus group and scheduling it, conducting the focus group, and expressing appreciation. The article ends with an empirical investigation evaluating selected rural focus group recruitment strategies.

Diluting the Cesspool Families, Home Improvement, and Social Change

In recent years, the process of social change through improvement of residences in decaying neighborhoods—gentrification—has itself changed. Traditional families (married with children) and a broader spectrum of the social class spectrum are more likely to be involved. The present research takes an ethnographic perspective and considers the experiences and understandings of a set of families in one urban community as they attempt a variety of home improvement (do-it-yourself or DIY) projects. Although cultural and institutional representations of home improvement are found to be helpful, they frequently fail to capture the complexities of actual home improvement projects. The practical logic of home repair in this community involves leadership, responsiveness, continuing struggle, and compromise. To accomplish the work under circumstances in which ideals do not match reality, these families use humor, exchange, and trial and error. Their lives show that family, home, and community are inseparable in the everyday experience of home improvement.

Globally Embedded Community: Satisfaction and Attachment in Vance, Alabama

Community, as an imagined representation of a social collectivity, is necessarily dynamic and subjective. In the contemporary globalized world, rapid structural changes provide an opportunity to evaluate the extent to which structure and subjectivity interact to create particular patterns of community life. Using multiple regression analysis of data from Vance, Alabama, which suddenly entered the global arena with the announcement and construction of a large German automobile factory there, the argument made here is that structural and contextual models are insufficient on their own to account for community life. Especially as our communities become increasingly incorporated into the global economy, our understanding of community must incorporate the subjectivities of community members.