Ruth’s Sociology Resources Blog

The following are two articles on the same book published in two different newspapers:

How adopting an angelic five year old blew our family apart

Adopted Children: Sometimes you can’t mend them

Reading the two articles side-by-side gives two very different pictures of the situation experienced by this family, originally the headline for the Daily Mail article used the word “evil” to describe the child - this was removed after complaints - but gives a very different image to that painted by The Times article of a child damaged by conditions beyond their control.

So why have I pointed these out? - For several reasons:

• it is an interesting example of the way the media can mould our understanding and interpretations of situations and events. It raises the postmodernist question of whether the media moulds or reflects society - does it print what society want to see or does it create society’s tastes?
• even with the seemingly more balanced Times article there is the fact that it is the 30% of adoptive placements that fail that is pointed out - double that number ’succeed’. Obviously the use of the 30% links in with the topic of the article and 1 in 3 is a large proportion but it is still worth turning numbers round in your head when you see them in articles - often you find it gives a very different impression.
• Adoptive families are a family form that are often left out when we talk about family diversity. These articles also challenge the idea that families are always happy places - they remind us of the ‘dark side’ of the family.
• The articles also raise the questions of individuals’ power in society - the first article, published in the Daily Mail, was published 3 weeks ago - it was ‘adapted’ from the mother’s book and has clearly been written to pull out the most ‘juicy’ bits and to summarise the story in a dramatic way - something which the Daily Mail has a reputation for doing and which will probably have boosted sales of the book (I have also heard that authors may have very little control over what is published). The second article was published today in the Times - a paper which has a reputation as a ‘broadsheet’ for being more balanced in its evaluation of stories.  I do wonder whether the Times article is an attempt by the author of the book or their publisher/agent to ‘redress the balance’ of the original article (particularly given the fairly derogatory comments that were posted on the Daily Mail website by readers). If so, it suggests that agency does have a role to play in the machinations of society.
• the issue of different accounts also arises in research - talking to different people or looking at different sources about the same event can give you very different stories - this process of checking data for differing interpretations and meanings and inconsistencies can lead to more valid and reliable research.

So, I would advise you to read with care when you read accounts of events - sometimes it is worth reading more than one account in order to get a fuller picture.

I am currently working on the methodology section of my PhD - it needs to be about 10,000 words long and while I have plenty to write it is always a struggle to keep a large chunk of text coherent.  This applies as much to an essay or piece of coursework that is 2,000 words in length as it does to a thesis.

I was thinking about the tips and tricks I have picked up over the years and thought I would pass them on:

1. Plan what you are going to write - even if it is just a set of basic bullet points.  I often draw a mind map of the points I want to make so that I can see how they interrelate and then put them in order.  You can then write to ‘fill in’ the bullet points - it helps to make sure that you have not missed anything out.
2. If possible type straight into a word processor programme - Word, Open Office Writer, Pages rather than writing on paper - this makes editing much easier - you can move things around easily and you don’t have to worry about spelling or missing things out as you can sort that out as you go along.
3. Once you have got all the main points in there have a read over it - if you are like me you will find that you have missed things out or they are not quite in the right order.  If you can see how to fix that then get on and do it, but if you are struggling with how to re-structure something so it makes more sense and reads more fluently then I recommend the paper and scissors solution:
1. print out your writing so far
2. take a pair of scissors and cut it into separate paragraphs (or groups of paragraphs) you can then move things around physically and re-think the structure of the piece
3. once you have laid the piece out in it’s new structure and are happy with it then you can move things around on screen to match what you have on paper and finesse it so it all fits together neatly.

Happy writing.

A fabulous article in the Guardian - “Bringing in Baby” takes a light but serious look at the practicalities of bringing a young baby into your workplace - apparently a promoted alternative to expensive childcare in the US where maternity leave is only 12 weeks.

After making some general points, three parents recount their experiences of an ‘experiment’ in the Guardian office. While the experiment is hardly reliable or representative it raises some interesting points. There is also a link to an audio slideshow which brings home some of the points.
As the article points out, such policies essentially negate the fact that childcare is a form of work - the assumption is that ‘real’ work is what is done outside the home and in exchange for payment. The message is that baby-care is easy and not time-consuming and that a young baby can essentially be wheeled into an office and left while the parent works at their ‘proper’ job.

This of course brings up the debate about maternity leave, maternity pay, working mothers, discrimination and whether modern women are trying too hard to ‘have it all’.

I am re-reading C. Wright-Mills’ book “The Sociological Imagination” although it was first published in 1959 and is therefore not exactly new, it is still a key foundational text in Sociology.

Perhaps the key point that C. Wright-Mills (does anyone know his first name?!) makes is that the essence of Sociology, and its key purpose, is to make the links between “private troubles” and “public issues”. Private troubles are those things that each of us perceive in everyday life - how to earn a living, how to get our children (or ourselves) a good education, how to protect ourselves from crime, pollution, ill-health.

To some extent we can solve those troubles as individuals - we apply for jobs, if we can afford it we may decide to pay for private education or move into the catchment area of a good school, we lock our doors at night and we may live outside of cities to avoid both pollution and crime.

Our individual actions may solve private troubles to an extent, especially if we are powerful - socially or economically, but as C. Wright Mills argues ‘public issues’ are those things that go beyond the immediate surroundings of the individual and the ways in which our individual situations come together within social structures and organisations to create society as a whole.

At that point, while an individual may have a trouble - Wright-Mills gives an example of unemployment - many others may also share that trouble and it may be due to societal structures, interactions and changes - at which point we have a ‘public issue’
It is this jump from private problems to public issues that is part of the development of a “sociological imagination” - something which any sociologist needs to have. “The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society.” (1959, p.6) - once we have grasped both we can become socially analytical, which after all is what Sociology is about.

A little while ago I visited the current exhibition at The Women’s Library in London looking at Lone Motherhood. It is a brilliant exhibition with lots of information and the education workshops being run alongside it are also stimulating. While I was there I managed to interview Joanna Ingham who runs the education programme at The Women’s Library, she talked about some of the key themes that come out of the exhibition and about some of the surprising things about lone motherhood that go against our common assumptions.

Use the links below to listen to the intervew:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Private Schools’ gain over State? - This is one of Mike Baker’s BBC articles summing up an issue.  It addresses in a fairly succinct way some of the arguments about the impact of independent schools upon the state sector.  In particular it is picking up on the question of whether private schools should be expected to ‘give something back’ to the state in the light of recent announcements about stricter implementation of rules around schools’ charitable status.

This is done in the light of some research from the LSE which suggests that teachers which the state has paid to train are being ‘lost’ into the private sector.

Well worth reading for some up-to-date insights into the ongoing debate over private schools.

Many apologies for the lack of posts over the last few weeks - I am deep in the middle of data collection for my PhD research and it is definitely keeping me busy.  Although all the methods textbooks tell you that qualitative research using informal interviews is time-consuming because of a long interviews and travelling time, what most of them don’t point out is that as well, as the lengthy analysis of huge amounts of data, it also takes HOURS and HOURS to transcribe all the tape recordings before you embark on in-depth analysis!  For every hour of interview I tape it takes me about 9 hours to transcribe - that’s a lot of time.
I am however enjoying the research process hugely - listening to people talking about their lives and then trying to puzzle out the links and patterns of things which people’s experiences do and don’t have in common is fascinating and my brain  is constantly whirring trying to work things out.

Hopefully I will be back to posting regularly in a few weeks time as data collection comes to an end.

I thought we’d got beyond heavily gendered assumptions but I’ve just discovered that Sixt Car Rental (a fairly large, mainstream care hire company) offer a “Sixt Ladies Card” which allows ladies to

“Profit from your partner’s corporate rate.”

There doesn’t seem to be an equivalent ‘Gentlemen’s Card’ which speaks volumes about who is expected to be the one with the corporate job and is just another one of those little things that add to the reinforcement of assumptions of women’s lack of economic independence.

This article looks at changing patterns in parental custody of children and the social attitudes associated with it.

Hidden heartache of the weekend mothers - Times Online

More fathers are now gaining custody of their children after divorce, however this article suggests that social attitudes and assumptions are not changing at the same rate.  “Part-time” mothers talk of their shame at being separated from their children, shame which seems to come from the fact that being a “weekend mother” is not yet socially acceptable.  This raises the question of whether what happens in the courts reflects social change or creates it.

Another link is to the issue of women’s ‘Triple Shift’ of work - paid, emotional and childcare/housework.  This article claims that it is often women who work full-time outside the home who lose custody of their children, adding another layer to the burden of the Triple Shift.  There is however, at the same time a suggestion that it is becoming more acceptable for fathers to become the main carers and that men may themselves be taking on a new form of triple shift.

I spent last week staying in a Youth Hostel in Ghent attending the European Conference for Educational Research and it has been interesting noticing little cultural differences.

For example, the 2 Uzbek girls in my dorm use honey-flavoured toothpaste - my initial reaction was Ooooooh YUK! - after all we all know that toothpaste should be mint-flavoured. And then I started thinking about it … why should toothpaste be mint-flavoured? Honey actually has far better anti-bacterial properties than mint (as does Garlic) so in lots of ways it is far more logical, but it is an interesting illustration of some of the small cultural differences that we are often ignorant of.

Another interesting cultural aspect has been the lunches.  A sandwich buffet lunch sounds pretty innocent until you start thinking about the fillings.  The sandwiches were largely unlabelled which has meant that we had to guess at the fillings, some of which were difficult to identify.  It was only on the last day that they labelled one filling which all the Brits had been assuming was tuna in a tomato sauce - it turned out to be raw minced steak in a tomato sauce - a very Belgian speciality, but one which many delegates swiftly decided that they didn’t like (even though they had been happily eating it all week!).  There was also uncooked smoked haddock which I initially thought “YUK” to until I rationalised to myself that if it were raw smoked salmon I’d be very happy - even then my cultural conditioning meant that it still tasted ‘raw’ and not quite ‘right’.

These have been little reminders of the ways in which norms and assumptions can vary just subtly between cultures.