Investigating Families


Book Description

"For many parents, a knock on the door from a state agency with the power to take their children is their worst fear. This experience is widespread and concentrated overwhelmingly in poor communities and communities of color. One in three children nationwide-and over half of Black children-come into contact with Child Protective Services during childhood. This book draws on in-depth fieldwork to examine the U.S. child welfare system, providing a window into the inner workings of CPS and the lives of mothers drawn into its orbit. Kelley Fong draws on extensive, multi-perspective qualitative data across two states, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Child Protective Services investigations have largely eluded ethnographic observation, but Fong had the opportunity to observe investigative visits and interview assigned investigators as well as mothers involved in these cases. She also reviewed case records, conducted follow-up interviews, and attended staff meetings and trainings for investigators. In examining the data, Fong demonstrates how CPS reports are socially produced, and in a context of austerity and structural racism, how CPS reporting becomes a solution to the dilemmas and constraints faced by frontline educational, medical, law enforcement, and other professionals, offering an outlet for their rehabilitative aspirations and a way to compensate for their limitations. Challenging Motherhood argues that CPS reports reframe adverse experiences often rooted in trauma and marginality-such as domestic violence, substance use, and homelessness-as child mistreatment. Ideologies and inequities of race, class, and gender place poor mothers of color in particular under CPS investigation"--




Researching Families and Communities


Book Description

Researching Families and Communities: Social and Generational Change explores the concepts and perspectives that guide research and the methods used to explore change during the last half of the 20th century and into the new millennium. It highlights the complexities of continuities alongside change, the importance of the perspectives that shape investigation, and the need to engage with situated data.




Researching Families and Relationships


Book Description

This collection focuses on the real life experiences of conducting emprical research about families and relationships, with an emphasis on the actualities of doing research and the experiences of being a researcher.




Torn Apart


Book Description

An award-winning scholar exposes the foundational racism of the child welfare system and calls for radical change Many believe the child welfare system protects children from abuse. But as Torn Apart uncovers, this system is designed to punish Black families. Drawing on decades of research, legal scholar and sociologist Dorothy Roberts reveals that the child welfare system is better understood as a “family policing system” that collaborates with law enforcement and prisons to oppress Black communities. Child protection investigations ensnare a majority of Black children, putting their families under intense state surveillance and regulation. Black children are disproportionately likely to be torn from their families and placed in foster care, driving many to juvenile detention and imprisonment. The only way to stop the destruction caused by family policing, Torn Apart argues, is to abolish the child welfare system and liberate Black communities.




Investigating Social Problems


Book Description

For the Third Edition of Investigating Social Problems, editor A. Javier Treviño, has gathered a panel of top experts to thoroughly examine all aspects of social problems, providing students with a contemporary and authoritative introduction to the field. Each chapter is written by a well-known specialist on the topic being covered. This unique, contributed format ensures that the research and examples described are the most current and relevant available. In addition, the experts use both general theoretical approaches (structural functionalism, conflict theory, symbolic interactionism) as well as specialized theories chosen to bring additional insight and analysis to their assigned topics. The text is framed around three major themes: intersectionality (the interplay of race, ethnicity, class, and gender), the global scope of many problems, and how researchers take an evidence-based approach to studying problems. This title is accompanied by a complete teaching and learning package.




Investigating Family, Food, and Housing Themes in Social Studies


Book Description

Investigating Family, Food, and Housing Themes in Social Studies asks students to critically examine their own culture by contrasting it with the daily lives of average people in the past. What people ate, where people lived, and the functions of families are examined and contrasted to subjective, cultural ideals prescribing what families, food, and housing ought to have been. The relationship between housing, food, and family and social class, status, and gender are emphasized. Each chapter includes essential questions to focus student inquiry; historical overviews focused on changes in family, food, and housing from the pre-industrial era, through its transformation during the Industrial Revolution and into the twentieth century; learning activities; and primary source documents and images. This unique approach to teaching history and social studies supports thematic instruction, culturally responsive teaching, place-based education, and literacy in the elementary, middle, or secondary classrooms.







Principles of Social Research Methodology


Book Description

This book is a definitive, comprehensive understanding to social science research methodology. It covers both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The book covers the entire research process, beginning with the conception of the research problem to publication of findings. The text combines theory and practical application to familiarize the reader with the logic of research design, the logic and techniques of data analysis, and the fundamentals and implications of various data collection techniques. Organized in seven sections and easy to read chapters, the text emphasizes the importance of clearly defined research questions and well-constructed practical explanations and illustrations. A key contribution to the methodology literature, the book is an authoritative resource for policymakers, practitioners, graduate and advanced research students, and educators in all social science disciplines.




Parenting Matters


Book Description

Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.




Shattered Bonds


Book Description

Shattered Bonds is a stirring account of a worsening American social crisis--the disproportionate representation of black children in the U.S. foster care system and its effects on black communities and the country as a whole. Tying the origins and impact of this disparity to racial injustice, Dorothy Roberts contends that child-welfare policy reflects a political choice to address startling rates of black child poverty by punishing parents instead of tackling poverty's societal roots. Using conversations with mothers battling the Chicago child-welfare system for custody of their children, along with national data, Roberts levels a powerful indictment of racial disparities in foster care and tells a moving story of the women and children who earn our respect in their fight to keep their families intact.