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This paper is based on a qualitative study of recent Polish migrants in London (). The paper reveals the roles that different family members played in the migration narratives of these Polish migrants. In order to gain a broader understanding of migration patterns, it is necessary to explore what is meant by 'the family' and how this may operate transnationally. By examining spatially dispersed relationships, the paper aims to contribute to an understanding of transnational families. In addition, by highlighting the various ways in which families may be split, reunited, and reshaped through the process of migration, the paper argues for a need to explore the shifting ties between relatives 'here' and 'there'. The paper explores the dynamism of these relationships over time in the context of specific immigration regimes and the interplay with local attachments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Botanic gardens, as well as being widely acknowledged as beautiful places, are often scientific organisations that aim to engage visitors, including families, in science learning. Yet, the extent to which families view them as settings for science learning is largely unexplored. Drawing upon social constructivist perspectives, this paper investigates families’ views of science learning at Kew Gardens. Kew is one of the largest botanic gardens worldwide and an internationally renowned scientific organisation located in London, UK. Twenty-four families took part in the study, which involved interviews and accompanied visits. Findings indicate that all families referred primarily to the aesthetic beauty of Kew, while its function as a site for science learning was less well acknowledged. However, interpretation helped families establish what constitutes science at Kew, and linked science to the beautiful plants, which offered avenues for families to appreciate science learning. The findings provide implications for developing interpretive provision in botanic gardens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: There is now a significant body of work analysing the multifaceted connections between tourism and poverty in less developed economies. Far fewer studies discuss the relationships between tourism and poverty in the world’s affluent societies and most of these concentrate on social tourism and on the benefits of these holidays for deprived and marginalised groups. This paper provides an insight into the experiences of families unable to afford any form of paid holiday away from home. Based on participant-driven interviews with 20 low-income parents living in a deprived area of Inner London, the paper reveals that for these individuals exclusion from tourism makes a clear contribution to their children’s exclusion from everyday norms as holidays are regarded as part of contemporary British family life. The study discusses policy and business implications and suggests further investigation of trans-generational ‘tourism poverty’. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

If women in London in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries sought the perfect crime in which to participate, selecting receiving stolen goods provided excellent opportunities for profit and little chance of punishment. Low conviction rates, combined with the fact that no behaviour outside of gendered expectations was required in its commission, made dealing in stolen goods relatively easy for women in the metropolis. Although this particular offence has not been deeply analysed by historians of crime, its commission did alarm contemporaries, including members of the legal community and social commentators. This paper explores accusations against females in London for receiving, as well as the important roles that familial relationships and work played in their indictments for the crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The promise to raise literacy standards significantly at age 11 in economically disadvantaged areas has been an important part of the present British Government's educational policy. Integral to this promise has been the introduction of official home/school ‘contracts’ or ‘agreements’, which oblige parents to engage in specific literacy activities with their children. However, evidence from a longitudinal study of family literacy practices in East London suggests that family and community members other than parents might play a crucial role in initiating young children into literacy. Siblings particularly have been found to be efficient ‘teachers’ of school literacy practices. In this paper, I investigate particularly ways in which an unspoken collusion takes place between teacher and older sibling revealed during ‘play school’ sessions in Bangladeshi British households in East London. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the views and feelings of semen donors at two London donor insemination (Dl) programmes regarding the recipients of Dl and the families created by this method. In particular it reports on: the types of recipients that donors wish to assist; their understanding of the legal position of donors and DI fathers; their views on the ‘matching’ of donors and DI fathers; their perception of Dl offspring's need or desire for information about the donor; their views on whether parents should tell their offspring about their DI conception and regarding the secrecy surrounding Dl in general; and what they believe the community thinks about Dl. Overall, the donors perceive DI families as being normal, and are very supportive of the autonomy and privacy of these families, but they also have concerns about the needs of the offspring. The authors draw attention to the need to take into account the views of donors in forming assisted reproduction policies, and also the need for the interests of the child to be paramount, as they are in the case of adoption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on family life in London, England suburb. The material presented in this paper was collected in the course of a study of an urban general practice made by the Social Medicine Research Unit of the Medical Research Council during 1950-52. It relates to the way of life, and the family and social relationships, of a group of families within that practice, and it is the kind of material that often lies unused in research flies. It also provided a basis for assessing the characteristics of the group; characteristics which cannot be left out of account if any attempt is to be made to understand the factors which influence the behavior of patients in health and illness. The young wife of a man who had recently set up in business on his own volunteered the information that she and her husband could talk about everything and anything together, she thought that modern girls were not afraid of their husbands, as the older generation hat been, and so they could be companions for each other and do things together.

The Family Day Unit at the Marlborough Hospital, London, carries out an intensive treatment programme for highly dysfunctional families. Up to ten families attend the Unit five days per week from nine a.m. to three p.m. They stay for a period of at least three months and not longer than fifteen months. Normally some twenty to thirty patients, adults and children, attend every day. This paper gives the reasons for setting up this Family Day Unit. The aims and structure of the Unit are described, the treatment method outlined and some preliminary results are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1695 returns for the marriage duty tax provide a unique opportunity to investigate the composition of London's domestic groups. Traditional schemes for the analysis of the early modern family and household fail to capture the complexities of metropolitan living, and a 'London-specific' methodology is outlined for use in the returns' classification. Application of this scheme to returns from two contrasting areas of London, a cluster of wealthy city-centre parishes and a poorer suburban precinct, reveals a series of structural differences in their families and households that are attributable to the wealth and social status of their respective populations. However, some aspects of the domestic experience within the two areas are more comparable than previous accounts would suggest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many observers of the nascent consumer culture of early modem London asserted that fashionable consumption encouraged the creation of ephemeral identities at the cost of the family line. Ben Jonson had a particular interest in fashion's corrosive effect upon the line, given his sense of his own patrilineal literary inheritance. His satires of fashion, notably in Epicoene (1609), The Devil is an Ass (1616), and many poems, allow us to consider the precise mode of perception by which consumption may destroy the line -- a barren, fetishistic mentality which displaces generative appetites from bodies to objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National statistics show that on 31 March 2007 about 7,000 looked after children in England (11% of the total) were placed in kinship care with relatives or friends. There has been no national prevalence study on kinship care in England, so we do not know how many children are living in kinship care arranged informally by family members or friends. However, the Family Rights Group estimates that there are over 200,000 households where kinship carers (usually grandparents) are looking after children who cannot live with their parents. In the London Borough of Greenwich, this hidden population of 'children in need' has been targeted for extra support by a Kinship Care Team, which aims to enable children to remain within their family network and to reduce the risk of their becoming 'looked after'. Hilary Saunders and Julie Selwyn report on their evaluation of this initiative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores a framework for an ethics of choice in urban education. It outlines the educational ambitions and ambivalences of a group of middle class families in one locality. The research on which we draw involved interviews with 28 middle class parents in the London Borough of Hackney and is part of a comparative study of urban middle class parents conducted in collaboration with the Foundation Nationale des Sciences Politique, Paris. Our analysis of the tensions and dilemmas faced by this group of parents deploys an approach derived from the work of American philosopher Thomas Nagel. What we see playing across and through these interviews are the interests and abstractions of a particular fraction of metropolitan middle class families. That is, a reflexive engagement with the social in terms of responsibility to the public good and the needs of ‘others’ who matter as much as they do (the impersonal standpoint) is interwoven with the needs of specific children and the family in relation to imagined futures (the personal standpoint). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses a study on relations of criminal convictions of men in London, England, to convictions of their biological fathers and mothers, full brothers and sisters, and wives. The study covered 411 men from 397 families of origin. It found convictions of 601 out of 2,203 family members and mating of the majority of convicted mothers and convicted fathers. In addition, the article discovered stronger same-sex relationships within generations and between generations and the transmission of offending from one generation to the next.

Data from a representative sample of 736 women aged 45–54 living in or near London in 1965 were analysed with respect to menopausal status and median and mean age at menopause (final menses). The median age at the natural menopause was 50·78 years. The validity of the measures used and the reliability of the data in this and previous studies are discussed. The conclusions are reached that median age of menopause is a more valid measurement than mean age and that there is no conclusive evidence of an increase in the age at menopause over the last century. The data also indicate understatement of the age at the last menstrual period (LMP) by women, with increasing lapse of time.The menopause was found to occur markedly later in currently married women than in unmarried or previously married women. When marital status was controlled by considering currently married women only, increased parity was shown to be related to a late menopause among women of higher socio-economic status, but not among those of lower socio-economic status. There was no notable association between the menopause and early or late menarche and socio-economic status. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]