Baos and Bagpipes: Exploring sibling influence on the lived experience of Scottish-born Chinese individuals
Louise Ho has explored how, in the context of the Chinese diaspora in Scotland, the role of siblings extends beyond childhood companionship, delving into the complexities of cultural identity while also reflecting on their own experiences.
“My Father Told Me That If I Didn’t Get Married, I’d Be Done For.”
I am Chinese and it seems that I have always lived under the persistent prodding of my elders. From childhood, when I was urged to speak and walk, to my teenage years, when the pressure was on to study hard, and now, as an adult, to marry.
Young People and Contraception
Throughout human history, there has always been a desire and need to contracept. That is, a desire to prevent or be able to plan pregnancies or prevent against sexually transmitted infections (STIs).
In this blog, Dr Marie Larsson introduces her new research briefing, which outlines and summarises the key findings and insights from her research on young people’s experiences and practices with contraceptives in Sweden.
Struggling families in Britain: Addressing the absence of ethnic minority lone mother families in scholarly and policy work
Sarah Akhtar Baz writes on her doctoral research, which aimed to attend to the neglect of Pakistani and Bangladeshi lone mother families in both scholarly and policy work, focusing on the lived experiences of lone mothers living in a Northern English city.
How Streamers and Viewers Offer Support and Care on Twitch
The rise of live streaming platforms creates new ways for people to connect with one another, and for the provision of support and care that is completely mediated by technology.
Read more on Eva Duncanson’s research, which looks at the relationships between streamers and their viewers on the platform Twitch.
Family Estrangement and the Evolution of Social Policies to Recognise It
There are a growing number of media articles seeking to address a ‘new epidemic’ of family relationships going ‘no contact’. However, there has been surprisingly little research on why family ties are not lifelong and the impact of this.
How is the value of co-producing research understood?
Helen Berry began her doctoral research just over a year ago, exploring the co-production of research. But her journey through the subject matter began before that.
Read more on the challenges of defining co-produced research, what we know of its outcomes, and how Helen’s project is expected to add to collective efforts in troubling reductive framings of research ‘impact’.
What is care? And what does it look like? Co-creating the ‘Images of Care’ exhibition.
When you hear the word “care,” what images come to mind? Read more about a brilliant exhibition, ‘Images of Care’, which was developed out of extensive participatory research with the desire to show a more balanced view of care in later life.
“It’s all human stories” – Teachers’ Relational Agency to Accommodate Migrant Students in Scotland, Finland and Sweden
The Teaching That Matters for Migrant Students (TEAMS) Project aimed to uncover how teachers make use of relational agency in supporting migrant students in Scotland, Finland, and Sweden. Read Cecilia Gialdini, the projects Postdoc Fellow, on the projects findings.
Reconceptualising Resilience – A CRFR Seminar
At our final seminar last term, CRFR had the pleasure of welcoming our Associate Director, Lisa McDaid, and her colleague Stephanie Wyeth, from the University of Queensland to reflect and reconceptualise ‘resilience’. In this blog, CRFR Co-Director Emma Davidson, and CRFR PhD Student Maddi Bunker, offer there insights from the day.
NETREP Project Update
Have you thought about having (or not having) children or starting a family? This is the question we discussed with 55 participants interviewed in Scotland, Finland and Portugal in our ongoing research project.
Launch of Children and Society Special issue – Conceptualising and Researching Child and Youth Activism
We are thrilled to announce the launch of a new Children & Society special issue, ‘Conceptualising and Researching Child and Youth Activism’. Co-edited by colleagues at the Children and Young People Thematic Hub
Welcome to our newest CRFR Associate Directors
Welcome to our newest CRFR Associate Directors, Fiona McQueen and Guanyu Jason Ran, who introduce themselves and provide information on their research interests.
Shruti Chaudhry: CRFR’s new director
Shruti Chaudhry is Chancellor’s Fellow in sociology at the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh. She completed her PhD at Edinburgh sociology. Before arriving at Edinburgh, she worked in the field of gender and development in India.
Opportunities for connection and support around self-managed abortion
Abortion provision in the United Kingdom has undergone significant changes in recent years. 2018 saw permissions in Britain for home use of the second of two medications used in early medication abortion (EMA). And, in 2019, abortion was decriminalised in Northern Ireland.
Bleeding in the Field: Reflections on Fieldwork and Menstruation
Looking back at my fieldwork, I would have perhaps not felt that dilemma when I had to go out to meet a participant while experiencing excruciating pain, had I been primed to consider the possibility of such situations beforehand. I was not prepared to tackle this ‘problem’ during my research because of the entrenched notion of researchers as able bodies with the ability to align with the institutional level of productivity at a compressed time.
Imagine a Man: thinking about positive masculinity
The purpose of the research was to develop and deepen our understanding of the issues affecting boys and young men, learning how they felt about masculinity and growing up and the impact on risk taking. We found a more positive and complex story than we’d expected.
Companionship and family-building in the complex planetary future
What might the future look like in terms of how family and intimate lives are composed? How do cultural expectations of childbearing collide with changing family forms and challenging environmental, social, and economic contexts, and what does this mean for traditional notions of ‘the family’?
Newest CRFR Co-Directors, Michelle King-Okoye and Kaveri Qureshi
Our newest CRFR Co-Directors, Michelle King-Okoye and Kaveri Qureshi share some information about themselves, their research interests and their plans for CRFR.
Launch of a new Research Network on children’s human rights
Scotland is making great strides in implementing children’s human rights and human rights more broadly. To maximise the impact of these ground-breaking changes, Scotland’s research community needs to be poised to critique, support and evaluate this implementation.
Academic bodies – a reflection on the experience of pregnancy during PhD studies
My pregnancy wasn’t planned.
I was in the middle of writing my MSc by research dissertation and I just asked – the universe, God, the small bundle of cells growing inside me – “please, let me have this. Please don’t betray me now, we came this far.”
How do we choose between destitution and exploitation?
When a man drove up to Mark in an expensive car and offered him work, Mark thought it sounded excellent. It was 2009 and he’d fallen on hard times. In fact, he was homeless. The man said he’d pay Mark £50 a day, give him food and somewhere to stay.
A space for quiet activism: A ‘public living room’ in an Edinburgh library
What comes to mind when you think of activism? People gluing themselves to a road? Or, shouting and chanting with banners outside parliament? Did you know there is a quieter, more hidden form of organised political action which fosters and mobilises relationships as a key lever of change?
The secret pathways of relationality: uncoupling beyond the couple
‘What a foamy mixture a couple is. Even if the relationship shatters and ends, it continues to act in secret pathways, it doesn’t die, it doesn’t want to die’. So observes Olga, the protagonist in Elena Ferrante’s crushing novel The days of abandonment. Olga’s observations come from within the scene of her unravelling
Just the fault of religion?
Are some organisations more likely than others to sexually abuse children, due to their unique beliefs and behaviour? Or is it the risk factors they share with other, different organisations which enable abuse to continue unchecked?
Dis-connected lives? COVID-19’s impact on rural Scottish communities
Professor Philomena de Lima considers the many ways in which rural communities have been affected by the pandemic, while also offering some of her own insights of life in COVID-19 times from a Highlands and Islands perspective.…
How parents organised work and childcare during the pandemic
For the majority, the COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented situation. It has affected every sphere of life including work, education, leisure, and childcare. Parents have been more likely than non-parents to be furloughed and to have reduced income. Indeed, more than 30% of parents reported reduced income in the first three months of the pandemic, although this ratio had decreased to 17% by December 2020.
The Legacy of Orkney for Child Protection
Thirty years ago on 27 February at 7 am, police and social workers took nine children from four family homes on South Ronaldsay, Orkney, under Place of Safety Orders. These cited group sexual activity, including “ritualistic music, dancing and dress”. The case, with its “dawn raids,” became a cause celebre – and remains so to this day.…
Looking to capture practices of intimacy in times of social distancing
In Japan, COVID-19-time has been marked by avoidance of “the 3 Cs“: closed spaces, crowds and close-contact situations. The term, selected late last year as the most popular new word of 2020, encapsulates governmental advice, recommended but not legally enforced.…
Children’s hearing system fails to address child sexual exploitation
Research by Barnardo’s Scotland and the Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration considered 44 cases where child sexual exploitation (CSE) was referenced in reports (mostly by police or social work). They also considered 30 more cases where researchers identified the child as a very likely victim.…
Inclusion of parents and LGBTQ youth in teen dating violence research and prevention programs
In North America, teen dating violence among adolescents is a significant health concern. LGBTQ youth disproportionately experience bullying, peer aggression, suicide and peer harassment. In the United States, 1 in 9 adolescent women and 1 in 12 adolescent males have experienced a form of TDV…
South Asian child sexual abuse – what we need to know
The June report published by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) discusses how children and young people from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities (BAME) can face additional barriers to disclosing and reporting child sexual abuse. I have been researching one such barrier for three years, investigating how concepts of Shame and Honour in South Asian communities can amplify…
A conversation: indigenous knowledges and intersectionality
The Centre for Research on Families and Relationships is holding its seminar, ‘Intersectionality Families and Relationships – Colonisation, Climate Change, Children’s Rights: Has Covid-19 changed the agenda?’ on the 11th and 12th of November 2020. In this short blog, two of our guest speakers Helen Moewaka Barnes and Ros Edwards, talk…
Family conversations online and abroad during Covid-19: the differences between Chinese families with daughter and with son
International students at the uncertain stage between teenage and independent adulthood have been particularly vulnerable during lockdown. Many are living far from relatives, with limited social networks and lacking the experience to navigate this public health emergency. At the same time, forms of socialisation shifted.…
How resilient do we want our children and young people to be?
As a social worker I was fortunate to meet a number of children and young people who I would describe as ‘resilient’. The work of Gilligan (2001) was highly influential on my practice and I considered ways in which I might foster resilience in the children I worked with, particularly those children to whom we owed corporate parenting responsibilities
In the Shadow of a Pandemic: Harare’s Street Youth Experience COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown has had unprecedented impact on all our lives. In Zimbabwe, where two-thirds of the population live in poverty (World Food Programme, 2019), lockdown has exacerbated water and food shortages and seen curfews, roundups and forced removal of young people living on the streets.…
Doing friendship at a distance
Friendships are valued as a form of exchanging social support – information, resources and mutual confiding – and for the enjoyment of taking part in activities together, sharing humour and having fun. These diverse ways of ‘doing friendship’ contribute to our sense of self and belonging.…
Why we need to listen to families in fuel poverty about smart meters
Fuel poverty is a pressing issue, one likely to be magnified by the current COVID-19 pandemic. Many households will increase their energy use through spending more time at home at the same time as incomes may be reduced. Smart technology has been positioned by developers and government as potentially able to alleviate fuel poverty, yet there has…
Educating Children During and After Covid-19, Opportunity for Change?
When in January 2020 I first heard about a virus sweeping through China, I rolled into a big branded pharmacy and bought the last 2 remaining anti-viral hand-sanitiser. These types of items were already flying off the shelves. Those of us purchasing at that time would most likely be the ones preparing for a pandemic, we at best guessed the virus would be here very soon, and at
Family planning DURING COVID-19: A baby ‘bust’, not ‘boom’
The coronavirus pandemic is continuing to have a significant impact on women’s and couples’ reproductive lives. Social distancing and ‘stay at home’ measures have already seen a significant disruption to fertility treatment, maternity services and access to family planning services, leading to concerns…
Listening to young people during Covid-19 challenges common adult assumptions about their peer relationships
The experiences and perspectives of children and young people are generally missing from coverage and discussions of the Covid-19 pandemic and its effects. This is not a unique situation, as children’s status in society positions them as a marginalised group. In this blog post, I will focus on what children and young people’s experiences of …
Birth and beyond in a pandemic: Findings from a project with mothers in the England lockdown of spring 2020
When I found myself sitting with PPE-clad nurses in a GP surgery with my 8 week old infant being vaccinated amidst pin-drop silence in an empty clinic, I knew that I would raise her, locked down, unable to meet friends, my parents unable to fly in from India to see me, unable to attend post-natal clinics, unable to catch day-time moments of sleep with our 4 year old also home now, as nurseries closed…
COVID: Outside Our Door
A pandemic is outside our door, outside the safe walls of our little home. We’re both cooped up, inside two tiny rooms, trying to maneuver our way through another period of unchartered waters. Over the years, you grew from a small boy to a young man. And in this time…
The vicious circle of familism in housing and care during Covid-19 in Greece
COVID-19 impacts all aspects of family life and inter-generational relationships, through housing and informal systems of social care in Greece. In the centre of the political discourse is home and its association with care. ‘Stay safe’ is the wish among people both in personal and work-related communication as well as…
Capturing the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the family relationships of young fathers
The COVID-19 pandemic is impacting on all our lives, albeit in markedly different ways. A frequently over-looked population, especially in family research, are young fathers. Even before the crisis, young fathers (aged 25 and under) already faced a range of disadvantages and were stigmatised…