Thinking About Children
Thinking About Children
Michael Paddon
£30.99
GBPThe dynamics of population change in general and changes in family size and spacing in particular are long-standing issues of intense controversy and concern. So too, are the methods of explanation employed by social scientists in studying these and other social phenomena. Originally published in 1977, this book offered an account of a research programme designed to explain the changes in fertility in post-war England, and it offered a contribution to both debates. First, the authors provide an account of the factors that influenced family size and spacing in the post-war period, rejecting both classical population theory on the Malthusian model and more recent economic theories of fertility. Second, the authors discuss the weaknesses of the survey techniques and the associated methods of inference that formed the basis of their research design, as methods for producing explanations of social phenomena.
Product details
April 2010Paperback
9780521134477
328 pages
229 × 152 × 19 mm
0.48kg
Available
Table of Contents
- Preface
- 1. Introduction
- Part I. The Theoretical Debate:
- 2. Malthusian theories of population
- 3. Utilitarian theories of fertility
- 4. The foundations for a theory
- Part II. Research Design:
- 5. A natural history of the research
- 6. A chapter of errors
- 7. Survey research
- Part III. Marriage and childbearing in post-war England
- 8. Marriage
- 9. Thinking about children
- 10. Images of family life
- 11. Uncertainty, negotiation and change
- 12. Controlling births
- 13. Trends in family size and spacing
- Appendix A. The samples
- Appendix B. Interview schedule for the pilot study
- References
- Index.
