Val Gillies

‘It's a connection you can't get away from’: Brothers, Sisters and Social Capital

Using the theoretical framework of social capital, this paper explores the resources and support children and young people derive from their siblings. A prevailing representation of siblings as passive dependents competing for limited reserves of family social capital is undermined by our empirical study of being and having a brother or sister. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 44 children and young people from 16 sibling sets, we show how brothers and sisters generate significant social resources for each other within and outside their families. In particular, we demonstrate how younger siblings rely on older brothers and sisters to cope with the demands of growing up and becoming adult.

Brain science and early years policy: Hopeful ethos or ‘cruel optimism’?

Ideas that the quality of parental nurturing and attachment in the first years of a child’s life is formative, hard-wiring their brains for success or failure, are reflected in policy reports from across the political spectrum and in targeted services delivering early intervention. In this article we draw on our research into ‘Brain science and early intervention’, using reviews of key policy literature and interviews with influential advocates of early intervention and with early years practitioners, to critically assess the ramifications and implications of these claims. Rather than upholding the ‘hopeful ethos’ proffered by advocates of the progressive nature of brain science and early intervention, we show that brain claims are justifying gendered, raced and social inequalities, positioning poor mothers as architects of their children’s deprivation.

Farewell to family? Notes on an argument for retaining the concept

Recent conceptual and in-depth research discussions have seen a shift away from use of the term ‘family’, towards ideas focusing on personal life, intimacy and kinship. In these Notes we argue for retention of the concept, we consider the implications of this conceptual withdrawal in terms of family researchers’ ability to engage with how families are invoked in ever-intensifying ways in the public political, and the importance of being able to address how this interacts with and shapes everyday family lives and experiences.

Early intervention and evidence-based policy and practice: framing and taming

In this article, we highlight some critical matters in the way that an issue is framed as a problem in policymaking and the consequent means of taming that problem, in focussing on the use and implications of neuroscientific discourse of brain claims in early intervention policy and practice. We draw on three sets of analyses: of the contradictory set of motifs framing the state of ‘evidence’ of what works in intervention in the early years; of the (mis)use of neuroscientific discourse to frame deficient parenting as causing inequalities and support particular policy directions; and of the way that early years practitioners adopt brain claims to tame the problem of deficient parenting. We argue that using expedient brain claims as a framing and taming justification is entrenching gendered and classed understandings and inequalities.

Brave new brains: sociology, family and the politics of knowledge

This article critically explores sociological arguments for greater biosocial synthesis, centring contemporary developments in public policy to demonstrate how such a reframing of humanity tends to reinforce existing political orders and socially patterned normativities. The case for further amalgamation of the social and life sciences is examined to suggest that production of somatic markers of truth from relational encounters largely relies upon an anaemic and politically contained version of the social as acquired in early childhood. More specifically, the gendered, classed and culturally specific practice of parenting children has come to occupy a new significance in accounts of social brains and environmentally reactive genomes. This is highlighted through a discussion of ‘early intervention’ as a heavily biologized policy rationale framing opportunities for biosocial collaboration. It is argued that late capitalist objectives of personal investment and optimization are driving this assimilation of the social and life sciences, pursuing an agenda that traces and rescores long-standing social divisions in the name of progress.

Challenging the politics of early intervention: who's 'saving' children and why

A vital interrogation of the internationally accepted policy and practice consensus that intervention to shape parenting in the early years is the way to prevent disadvantage. Given the divisive assumptions and essentialist ideas behind early years intervention, in whose interests does it really serve? This book critically assesses assertions that the ‘wrong type of parenting’ has biological and cultural effects, stunting babies’ brain development and leading to a life of poverty and underachievement. It shows how early intervention policies underpinned by interpretations of brain science perpetuate gendered, classed and raced inequalities. The exploration of future directions will be welcomed by those looking for a positive, collectivist vision of the future that addresses the real underlying issues in the creation of disadvantage - See more at: https://policypress.co.uk/challenging-the-politics-of-early-intervention#sthash.0FnbgHuD.dpuf

Past/Present/Future: Time and the Meaning of Change in the ‘Family’

Flux is an essential characteristic of ‘family’ life. The inevitable passage of chronological time, characterized by constantly evolving circumstances and life experiences, mean that change and transition are major features of every individual’s life. But such themes are most commonly associated with ‘youth’ as a particular phase of life and studied within the context of the move from childhood to adulthood. Studies tend to focus exclusively on the young person’s experience of change, underestimating the significance of the embedded, relational nature of transitions to adulthood. Consideration of the young person’s social context in the form of ‘family’ relationships is generally confined to a psychological analysis of variables influencing developmental outcomes (Gillies et al. 1999). Yet, such a one-dimensional focus on young people as the sole object of change risks obscuring the important turning points and continuities experienced by other ‘family’ members, concurrent with the process of ‘growing up’.