Fiona Williams
ESRC CAVA Research Group
2004

ISBN 978 1 903080 02 3

Free PDF of the Book (645 KB)

Rethinking Families is a forward-looking and timely contribution to current debates about changes in family lives and personal relationships from the Economic and Social Research Council’s CAVA Research Group at the University of Leeds. It provides a considered, authoritative and politically relevant perspective on these issues, indispensable for policy-makers, practitioners and students alike.

Rethinking Families sets out the main trends: the increase in the number of working mothers, in cohabitation and divorce, in single- and step-parenthood, in people living on their own or in more open same-sex relationships – within the context of ethnic and cultural diversity and an ageing society. How, it asks, do people deal with these changes and what are the implications for future social policy? In pulling together much new research, it offers a balanced understanding of what matters to people in their intimate lives and develops a practical ‘ethic of care’ which it applies to issues of current concern, including the work/life balance, parenting support, partnership agreements, services for children, divorce, social inclusion, and citizen participation.

Fiona Williams, Director of the ESRC Research Group on Care, Values and the Future of Welfare (CAVA) and Professor of Social Policy at the University of Leeds, has written widely on social policy issues. She is the author Social Policy: A Critical Introduction – Issues of ‘Race’, Gender and Class (Polity Press, 1989); and co-editor, with Ann Oakley and Jennie Popay, of Welfare Research: A Critical Review (UCL Press, 1999). She is co-editor, of the journal Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society; and on the Advisory Editorial Board of Critical Social Policy.