Vanessa May

Self, Belonging and Social Change

One of the central interests of sociology is the relationship between self and society, and in particular how social change affects individuality, constraining or liberating the selves that we can be. This article proposes that because a sense of belonging plays a central role in connecting the person to the social, it can act as a window into studying the relationship between social change and the self. Furthermore, belonging offers a complex person-centred and dynamic approach that avoids reifying social structures, but rather depicts them as actively lived. A focus on belonging thus allows a dynamic examination of the mutual influence between self and society, and of how everyday practices are both regulated and creative, and hence generative of social change.

Ambivalence and the paradoxes of grandparenting

This paper focuses on ‘normative talk’ about grandparenting. It is based on a secondary analysis of a study involving 46 interviews with grandparents. It identifies two main cultural norms of grandparenting that emerged from the data – ‘being there’ and ‘not interfering’. There were very high levels of consensus in the study that these constituted what grandparents ‘should and should not’ do. However, these two norms can be contradictory, and are not easy to reconcile with the everyday realities of grandparenting. The study found that norms of parenting and also of self determination were also very important for the grandparents in the study. They had a keen sense of what being a ‘good parent’ (to their own adult children) should mean – especially in terms of allowing them to be independent – but this could sometimes conflict with their sense of responsibility to descendant generations of grandchildren. Using the concept of ambivalence and drawing on the accounts of grandparents in the study, the paper explores and offers an explanation for both the coexistence and conflict between different sets of norms, as well as for the remarkably high levels of consensus about ‘being there’ and ‘not interfering’. The paper concludes with a discussion of some of the limitations of the data and the analysis, and with suggestions for the development of further work in this area.

Sociology of Personal Life

What can Sociology tell us about our personal lives, families and intimate relationships? This book explains how key theoretical perspectives and relevant contemporary research in the discipline can shed new light on even the most familiar areas of our everyday worlds. From friendships and pets, to political engagement and social legislation, the text shows how distinctions and connections can be drawn between our public and private lives. Each chapter explores a familiar topic that illustrates how individual relationships and lives can be shaped by social contexts, and how personal choices shape the wider social world. Using vivid case examples drawn from topical areas of debate, such as marriage rights and the role of social networking, the book is clearly laid out and easy to read. It gives useful explanations of theory and invaluable advice on how to carry out research on personal lives and relationships. This is essential reading for students of Sociology interested in family, relationships and beyond.

Lone motherhood past and present: The life stories of Finnish lone mothers

The aim of this study is to examine how Finnish lone mothers of two age cohorts construct their lone motherhood and also to show how the meanings ascribed to social phenomena are socially and historically embedded. Finland presents an interesting case for studying the links between the social and the individual because the country has experienced rapid social shifts since World War II. It is shown how specific social contexts to some degree set the parameters for how social phenomena are understood and interpreted, as shown by the differences in how two cohorts of life-story writers construct lone motherhood.

Lone Motherhood as a Category of Practice

This paper offers a critical examination of the category ‘lone mother’, which tends to be viewed as an identity category by both ‘lay’ people and social scientists. This in turn leads to the category ‘lone mother’ becoming reified, while the socially constructed nature of it remains hidden. The aim of this paper is to find a way of analyzing the lives of lone mothers without making totalizing claims about these women as individuals, but at the same time without depoliticizing the category ‘lone mother’. I argue that adopting Youngs (1995), concept of ‘serial collectivity’ in the study of lone motherhood would enable social scientists to avoid positing that ‘lone motherhood’ is a unified category or the basis of self-understanding, while at the same time being able to make pragmatic political claims regarding the inequalities that lone mothers face. Furthermore, this paper argues for studying ‘lone motherhood’ as a category of practice, focusing on how the category is defined, by whom, and to what ends, and the effects this has on the lives of ‘lone mothers’.

Childcare and parental work schedules: a comparison of childcare arrangements among Finnish, British and Dutch dual-earner families

This study examined the association between parental work schedules and non-parental childcare arrangements among dual-earner families in Finland, the Netherlands and the UK. Data from the ‘Families 24/7’ web survey were used, including 937 parents with children aged 0–12 years. Results showed a negative association between non-standard work and formal childcare across all countries. A similar association was found for using a combination of formal and informal childcare, whereas solely using informal childcare was not associated with work characteristics. Country differences showed that, compared with Finland, the probability of using formal childcare was lower in the Netherlands, whereas the probability of using informal childcare was higher in the UK. Interaction effects showed that the negative association between non-standard work and formal childcare was stronger in the Netherlands, compared with Finland. Also, the positive association between working hours and formal childcare was weaker for Dutch and British parents. This study identified the challenges that parents face when arranging childcare outside of office hours. Although the supply of formal childcare seems to be insufficient, using informal childcare introduces other potential problems. Because a considerable proportion of employees work non-standard hours, governments should help these parents in meeting their need for high quality childcare.

Meanings of lone motherhood within a broader family context

In this paper, the theoretical approach to the concept of lone motherhood is adopted from ‘new’ family sociology where families are understood to be dynamic processes constituted by webs of relationships. I analyse life stories written by lone mothers in order to examine the meanings that they give to their lone motherhood in relation to their larger family context. This approach reveals that, along with the concept ‘family’, the category ‘lone motherhood’ can be questioned. The life stories show that as with all families, the representations of ‘the lone mother family’ vary. Lone motherhood emerges less as a distinct family form and more as an experience coloured by the lone mothers position in a web of family relationships, as well as her place in her broader personal, social and historical context.

Belonging from afar: nostalgia, time and memory:

Belonging is a fundamentally temporal experience that is anchored not only in place but also time, yet this dimension of belonging has so far remained under-researched. Based on an analysis of 25 British Mass Observation Project accounts I argue that a focus on the temporal location of belonging contributes to our knowledge about how memory is used to create a sense of belonging, and the consequences this has for the self. The paper is structured around two interrelated arguments. First, that the temporal location of belonging – either in the past or the present – has consequences for how time is experienced and how memory is utilized in creating a sense of belonging. Second, that nostalgic belonging from afar, of which three types are identified in the MOP accounts, should not be understood merely as a way of disengaging with the present. Past sources of belonging can endure in a virtual sense through the act of nurturing the connection in memories and can be used to ‘warm up’ and give vitality to the present. Thus this paper contributes to our understanding of how people can creatively use different forms of temporal belonging to create a sense of a continuous self.

Mothers’ non-standard working and childcare-related challenges: A comparison between lone and coupled mothers

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to particularly focus on lone-mother families, comparing the childcare-related challenges experienced by working lone mothers and coupled mothers in three European countries in the context of a 24/7 economy and non-standard working hours (e.g. evening, night and weekend work). Design/methodology/approach – This study utilises survey data from Finnish, Dutch and British working mothers (n=1,106) collected as part of the “Families 24/7” research project. Multivariate regression analysis is used to analyse the associations between childcare-related challenges, maternal non-standard working, lone motherhood and country of residence. Findings – The results indicated similar results across the three countries by showing that working lone mothers experience childcare-related challenges more often compared with coupled mothers. Furthermore, an increase in maternal non-standard working associated positively with increased childcare-related challenges in both lone mother and c...

Everyday Belonging and Ageing: Place and Generational Change

In this paper, we discuss findings from a study on intergenerational relationalities in order to examine some aspects of how people over 50 years of age experience belonging in their everyday lives. Belonging emerged not as a single unitary ‘thing’, but a complex intersecting of relational, cultural and sensory experiences. We explore how people, place, time and cultural context intertwined in peoples sense of belonging to place. Although much previous research on belonging has largely focused on geographical movement, we found that temporal movement, at an individual level in the form of ageing and at a collective level in terms of generational change, proved to be an important layer of our participants’ experiences of belonging and not belonging. Furthermore, we argue that people often come to understand and speak of temporal shifts in belonging in embodied terms, based on their sensory engagement with the world. The paper concludes by considering the consequences of this additional aspect of the experience of belonging for the study of belonging as a social and personal process, and how our findings contribute to debates around ‘ageing well’.