Family Trouble: Middle-Class Parents, Children's Problems, and the Disruption of Everyday Life
Autor Ara Francisen Limba Engleză Hardback – 17 sep 2015
Our children mean the world to us. They are so central to our hopes and dreams that we will do almost anything to keep them healthy, happy, and safe. What happens, then, when a child has serious problems? In Family Trouble, a compelling portrait of upheaval in family life, sociologist Ara Francis tells the stories of middle-class men and women whose children face significant medical, psychological, and social challenges.
Francis interviewed the mothers and fathers of children with such problems as depression, bi-polar disorder, autism, learning disabilities, drug addiction, alcoholism, fetal alcohol syndrome, and cerebral palsy. Children’s problems, she finds, profoundly upset the foundations of parents’ everyday lives, overturning taken-for-granted expectations, daily routines, and personal relationships. Indeed, these problems initiated a chain of disruption that moved through parents’ lives in domino-like fashion, culminating in a crisis characterized by uncertainty, loneliness, guilt, grief, and anxiety. Francis looks at how mothers and fathers often differ in their interpretation of a child’s condition, discusses the gendered nature of child rearing, and describes how parents struggle to find effective treatments and to successfully navigate medical and educational bureaucracies. But above all, Family Trouble examines how children’s problems disrupt middle-class dreams of the “normal” family. It captures how children’s problems “radiate” and spill over into other areas of parents’ lives, wreaking havoc even on their identities, leading them to reevaluate deeply held assumptions about their own sense of self and what it means to achieve the good life.
Engagingly written, Family Trouble offers insight to professionals and solace to parents. The book offers a clear message to anyone in the throes of family trouble: you are in good company, and you are not as different as you might feel...
Francis interviewed the mothers and fathers of children with such problems as depression, bi-polar disorder, autism, learning disabilities, drug addiction, alcoholism, fetal alcohol syndrome, and cerebral palsy. Children’s problems, she finds, profoundly upset the foundations of parents’ everyday lives, overturning taken-for-granted expectations, daily routines, and personal relationships. Indeed, these problems initiated a chain of disruption that moved through parents’ lives in domino-like fashion, culminating in a crisis characterized by uncertainty, loneliness, guilt, grief, and anxiety. Francis looks at how mothers and fathers often differ in their interpretation of a child’s condition, discusses the gendered nature of child rearing, and describes how parents struggle to find effective treatments and to successfully navigate medical and educational bureaucracies. But above all, Family Trouble examines how children’s problems disrupt middle-class dreams of the “normal” family. It captures how children’s problems “radiate” and spill over into other areas of parents’ lives, wreaking havoc even on their identities, leading them to reevaluate deeply held assumptions about their own sense of self and what it means to achieve the good life.
Engagingly written, Family Trouble offers insight to professionals and solace to parents. The book offers a clear message to anyone in the throes of family trouble: you are in good company, and you are not as different as you might feel...
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9780813570532
ISBN-10: 0813570530
Pagini: 192
Ilustrații: 4 tables
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 14 mm
Greutate: 0.41 kg
Ediția:None
Editura: Rutgers University Press
Colecția Rutgers University Press
ISBN-10: 0813570530
Pagini: 192
Ilustrații: 4 tables
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 14 mm
Greutate: 0.41 kg
Ediția:None
Editura: Rutgers University Press
Colecția Rutgers University Press
Notă biografică
ARA FRANCIS is an assistant professor of sociology at the College of the Holy Cross, in Worcester, Massachusetts..
Cuprins
Preface
1 Parents in Trouble
2 Constructing Trouble, Losing Certainty
3 Elusive Remedies and Disrupted Routines
4 Stigma and Disrupted Relationships
5 Unmet Expectations and Emotional Turmoil
6 Disrupted Selves, Making Sense and Making Do
7 Family Trouble
Appendix A
Appendix B
Bibliography
Index
1 Parents in Trouble
2 Constructing Trouble, Losing Certainty
3 Elusive Remedies and Disrupted Routines
4 Stigma and Disrupted Relationships
5 Unmet Expectations and Emotional Turmoil
6 Disrupted Selves, Making Sense and Making Do
7 Family Trouble
Appendix A
Appendix B
Bibliography
Index
Recenzii
"An exquisite and magnificent piece of sociological scholarship, Family Trouble is clear, interesting, and highly engaging. Francis’s study and analysis are rich and nuanced as she covers the many dimensions of the phenomenon she calls 'family trouble.'"
“This smart, engaging book demonstrates the complicated nature of parenthood - a salient identity for most adults in the United States today. Especially impressive is Francis’s ability to weave through multiple sociological constructs and subfields, including medicalization, stigma, identity, emotion work, gender, and disability.”
"Family Trouble offers rich, empirically based insights into the everyday, relational and emotional processes that mark the distinctive forms of 'concerted cultivation' pursued by contemporary middle-class American families with 'problemed' children."
Descriere
In Family Trouble, a compelling portrait of upheaval in family life, sociologist Ara Francis tells the stories of middle-class men and women whose children face significant medical, psychological, or social challenges. Children’s problems, she finds, begin a chain of disruption that touches virtually every aspect of the parents’ lives, leading them to reevaluate deeply held assumptions about their own sense of self and what it means to achieve the good life.