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The term ‘helicopter parent’ has become highly visible in public and professional commentary about parenting and in culture more generally, notably in North America and the UK. A small body of sociological work has highlighted the paradox of this phenomenon, given by often dramatized expressions of concern with ‘excessive’ parental involvement with children associated with the term, within a culture of intensive parenting. This article builds on this work in two ways. We situate the now ubiquitous description of parental mistakes as ‘helicoptering’ by discussing discursive antecedents of the present label found in 20th century terminology such as ‘overparenting’, ‘smothering’ and ‘coddling’, noting their co-existence with accounts of ‘bad mothers’ as distant and uninvolved. Second, through analysis of the term ‘helicopter parent’ in the British news media in the late 20th and 21st centuries, we assess how present concerns with parental proximity to children are constructed. We found the most prominent themes in media coverage to be parental love ‘gone wrong’, parental ‘pushiness’, and the class position of the helicopter parent. We suggest our analysis shows the ‘helicopter parent’ can be best understood as an aspect of 21st century vernacular, expressing recoil at the perceived outcomes of intensive parenting, but leaving its basic premises regarding parental culpability for individual and social pathologies intact. We conclude that, for sociologists, an important feature of the helicopter parent term is the characterisation of problem parents as middle class and suggest this construction of the cause of parental deficiencies is an important concern for the study of parenting cultures going forwards.

Over the last twenty years research about siblings has emerged across a number of disciplines. The starting point for much of this work has been the identification of a paradox: that sibling relationships both have a significant impact on people and play a key role in foundational biblical and classical stories, but that very little scholarly attention has been paid to them. The aim of our recently published research about siblings, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, had two broad aims. First to map where siblings are referred to in law and secondly, to examine the role that law plays in the specific context of public law proceedings, which often result in siblings being separated with little and sometimes no provision for direct contact. The key findings and recommendations from the research were published in the December issue of Fam Law and a more detailed summary and the full report are available from the Nuffield Foundation website (http://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/siblings-contact-and-law-overlooked-relationship). Here we discuss two aspects of our findings. First the place of siblings in law generally and, secondly, the reluctance to use contact orders for sustaining siblings separated in public law proceedings.

The primary aim of the project is to fill a knowledge gap and enhance engagement with key stakeholders working in family justice about contact between siblings in public law proceedings, an issue that affects an increasing number of vulnerable children. By identifying the impact of the shifting legal framework and practitioner and expert assumptions about siblings underpinning current legal decision-making, it aims to provide a firm foundation for developing new materials to guide policy, and promote reflexive practice. And in establishing a new research agenda in law about an overlooked issue, it will provide a firm foundation for identifying further questions for research and policy reform.\ud \ud The research will involve a mapping review of the law, cases and socio-legal research about child siblings and contact and interviews with members of the judiciary, legal practitioners and guardians. Guided by a Young People’s Participation Group the study will at all stages involve and be informed by the views and perspectives of young people.

This article discusses the findings of a study tracing the incorporation of claims about infant brain development into English family policy as part of the longer term development of a ‘parent training’, early intervention agenda. The main focus is on the ways in which the deployment of neuroscientific discourse in family policy creates the basis for a new governmental oversight of parents. We argue that advocacy of ‘early intervention’, in particular that which deploys the authority of ‘the neuroscience’, places parents at the centre of the policy stage but simultaneously\ud demotes and marginalises them. So we ask, what becomes of the parent when politically and culturally, the child is spoken of as infinitely and permanently neurologically vulnerable to parental influence? In particular, the policy focus on parental emotions and their impact on infant brain development indicates that this represents a biologisation of ‘therapeutic’ governance.

In recent years, claims about children's developing brains have become central to the formation of child health and welfare policies in England. While these policies assert that they are based on neuro-scientific discoveries, their relationship to neuroscience itself has been debated. However, what is clear is that they portray a particular understanding of children and childhood, one that is marked by a lack of acknowledgment of child personhood. Using an analysis of key government-commissioned reports and additional advocacy documents, this article illustrates the ways that the mind of the child is reduced to the brain, and this brain comes to represent the child. It is argued that a highly reductionist and limiting construction of the child is produced, alongside the idea that parenting is the main factor in child development. It is concluded that this focus on children's brains, with its accompanying deterministic perspective on parenting, overlooks children's embodied lives and this has implications for the design of children's health and welfare services.

This article reviews a particular aspect of the critique of the increasing focus on the brain and neuroscience; what has been termed by some, ‘neuromania’. It engages with the growing literature produced in response to the ‘first three years’ movement: an alliance of child welfare advocates and politicians that draws on the authority of neuroscience to argue that social problems such as inequality, poverty, educational underachievement, violence and mental illness are best addressed through ‘early intervention’ programmes to protect or enhance emotional and cognitive aspects of children's brain development. The movement began in the United States in the early 1990s and has become increasingly vocal and influential since then, achieving international legitimacy in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the UK and elsewhere. The movement, and the brain-based culture of expert-led parent training that has grown with it, has been criticised for claiming scientific authority whilst taking a cavalier approach to scientific method and evidence; for being overly deterministic about the early years of life; for focusing attention on individual parental failings rather than societal or structural problems, for adding to the expanding anxieties of parents and strengthening the intensification of parenting and, ultimately, for redefining the parent–child relationship in biologised, instrumental and dehumanised terms.

In 1990 the Human Fertilisation and Embryology (HFE) Act introduced an extensive legal framework for all research and treatment using human embryos in the UK. One short section of this Act placed on assisted conception services an obligation to assess ‘the welfare of the child’ (WOC) who may be born as a result of treatment pre-conception. This part of the HFE Act became the subject of research and debate in the subsequent years.

The present report summarizes the work of the cross-frontier group which was established, within the\ud framework of Interreg IV, to consider the concept of self-efficacy. A first full-scale study entitled "Let's\ud Talk/Parlez-moi d'amour" had already been undertaken, under the aegis of the Interreg III programme, by\ud several of the partners involved, to examine perceptions in Kent and the Somme of teenage pregnancy as a\ud social phenomenon. This initial project was concluded in 2007 by a conference in Amiens, Somme, during\ud which the French and English research groups were able to present and discuss their findings.

The "Am I Bovvered?" project is a two-year study aiming to develop, implement and evaluate sustainable exercise-based interventions with girls aged 11-15 years in order to improve their engagement in regular physical activity. The study took place in three phases that corresponded with the project?s main aims:\ud \ud The aims of the first phase of the study were to:\ud Explore factors that motivate and create barriers to 11-12 and 14-15 year old girls engaging in regular physical activity (Phase One).\ud \ud The aims of the second and third phases were to:\ud Develop and implement activities chosen by inactive 11-12 and 14-15 year old girls with the support of a multi-agency team (Phase Two).\ud Evaluate the impact of the project, examining factors associated with young girls? engagement in physical exercise (Phase Three).\ud Make recommendations for policy and practice.

The ‘Am I Bovvered?’ project was a two-year study aiming to develop, implement and evaluate sustainable exercise-based interventions with girls aged 11-15 years in order to improve their engagement in regular physical activity. The study took place in three phases that corresponded with the project’s main aims. This summary provides an account of Phases Two and Three.\ud The aims of the first phase of the study were to:\ud Explore factors that motivate and create barriers to 11-12 and 14-15 year old girls engaging in regular physical activity (Phase One has been completed -http://www.kent.ac.uk/CHSS/docs/Am_I_Bovvered_Phase_One.pdf).\ud The aims of the second and third phases were to:\ud Develop and implement activities chosen by inactive 11-12 and 14-15 year old girls with the support of a multi-agency team (Phase Two).\ud Evaluate the impact of the project, examining factors associated with young girls’ engagement in physical exercise (Phase Three).\ud Make recommendations for policy and practice.

The "Am I Bovvered?" project is a two-year study aiming to develop, implement and evaluate sustainable exercise-based interventions with girls aged 11-15 years in order to improve their engagement in regular physical activity. The study took place in three phases that corresponded with the project?s main aims:\ud \ud The aims of the first phase of the study were to: Explore factors that motivate and create barriers to 11-12 and 14-15 year old girls engaging in regular physical activity (Phase One).

The ‘Am I Bovvered?’ project is a two-year study aiming to develop, implement and evaluate sustainable exercise-based interventions with girls aged 11-15 years in order to improve their engagement in regular physical activity. This report summarises the findings from the first phase of this three-part project. This was an exploratory phase of the study, using focus groups with girls aged 11-12 and 14-15, recruited from two schools in Thanet, East Kent. These same schools will collaborate in the further phases of the project.\ud The focus groups were designed to gain insights into the girls’ understandings of the relationship between health and physical activity and their attitudes towards sport both in and out of school. Findings from the focus groups will be used to inform the next phase of the study, when interventions will be planned and implemented

The Kent Teenage Pregnancy Partnership and the Conseil General de la Somme developed an Interreg action research project in partnership, entitled ‘Let’s Talk’ to explore young people’s attitudes, values and beliefs regarding sex and relationships to go some way towards understanding elevated teenage pregnancy rates in Kent. Parts of Kent and the partner area of the Somme in France share similar problems such as a higher than national average level of teenage birth rates, though there are marked variations within the Primary Care Trusts.\ud \ud This project consisted of two phases. Phase One was the data collection phase, and was used to inform Phase Two of the project. In Phase One, young people and professionals were invited to explore their attitudes and values towards sex, relationships, sexual health and teenage pregnancy in a number of focus groups. Phase Two involved the development of two interventions that were designed based on the knowledge gained from Phase One.\ud \ud Two interventions were developed and evaluated following Phase One: the first, a six week course on sex and relationships education (SRE) in a secondary school in West Kent which forms the basis of this report; and the second, an evaluation of two sex and relationships education road-shows in East Kent.\ud This section of the document reports on the findings from Phase Two of the project and discusses the results of the evaluation of one of the two interventions that were developed with health professionals, school nurses and school teachers.

Funded by the Kent Teenage Pregnancy Partnership, this survey was carried out as part of a broader programme of study into teenagers’ views and experiences of sex and relationship education, sexual health services and family support services in Kent. The project was composed of three parts:\ud Project One (the focus of this report) constituted the quantitative part of our research, which included two school-based surveys conducted between September 2004 and January 2006 with a total of 4000 15 to 16 year old\ud school pupils;\ud Project Two gauged the attitudes and experiences of looked-after children regarding sexual health education and relationships advice by conducting focus groups with 20 15 to 20 year olds (Billings, Hashem & Macvarish 2007);\ud Project Three was a longitudinal qualitative study exploring the views of teenage parents during the antenatal (n = 38) and postnatal periods (n = 17).\ud It was concerned with finding out their experiences of family support services, as well as obtaining their views on sex and relationships education and sexual health services.

This document reports on the findings from a project exploring teenage looked-after children's views of sex and relationships education and sexual health services. Commissioned and funded by the Kent Teenage Pregnancy Partnership, this project formed part of a larger programme of study on teenage pregnancy that took place across Kent between 2004 and 2007.

This document reports on the findings from a project exploring teenage looked-after children’s views of sex and relationships education and sexual health services. Commissioned and funded by the Kent Teenage Pregnancy Partnership, the project formed part of a larger programme of study on teenage pregnancy that took place across Kent between 2004 and 2007. The project was composed of three parts:\ud . Project One constituted the quantitative part of our research, which included a survey carried out with 4000 15 to 16 year old school pupils.\ud . Project Two (which this document reports upon) gauged the attitudes and experiences of looked-after children regarding sexual health education and relationships advice by conducting focus groups with 15 to 20 year olds.\ud . Project Three was a longitudinal qualitative study exploring the views of teenage parents during the antenatal and postnatal periods. It was concerned with finding out their experiences of family support services, as well as obtaining their views on sex and relationships education and sexual health services.\ud The rationale behind Project Two was to ensure the incorporation of the views of more ‘vulnerable’ teenagers, who were considered less likely to be included in the survey sample of school-children.

This document reports on the findings from a project exploring teenage looked-after children’s views of sex and relationships education and sexual health services. Commissioned and funded by the Kent Teenage Pregnancy Partnership, this project formed part of a larger programme of study on teenage pregnancy that took place across Kent between 2004 and 2007.

This document reports on the second part of a study exploring the views and experiences of teenage parents across Kent. The young people had been interviewed during the third trimester of the pregnancy and were interviewed again approximately one year after the birth of their child. The research was conducted as part of a larger study into teenagers’ views and experiences of sex and relationships education, sexual health services and family support services in the county. The research was commissioned and funded by the Kent Teenage Pregnancy Partnership.\ud The contribution made by this study is to offer insights into the lived experience of Kent teenagers, both female and male, as they deal with becoming parents. By asking them to reflect upon their early experiences of parenthood it is possible to capture both the diversity in circumstances and experiences and to identify areas of commonality that may be of use in the improvement of service provision. Services and professionals can also benefit from the specific insights gained into the way they are experienced by users.