IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/socres/v12y2008i6p44-57.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Parental Help-Seeking and the Moral Order. Notes for Policy-Makers and Parenting Practitioners on ‘the First Port of Call’ and ‘No One to Turn To’

Author

Listed:
  • Karen Broadhurst

Abstract

The topic ‘help-seeking’ is of international interest. However, there is only a very limited literature concerning help-seeking in child welfare and a distinct dearth of studies that have examined the social organisation of parents’ decisions to seek help. Recent developments in child welfare services in England and Wales have seen the introduction of a raft of initiatives that aim to deliver parenting support to a broader range of parents; however, these initiatives are not well grounded in an evidence base concerning parental help-seeking. Focusing on the organisation of talk-in-interaction in interviews and focus groups, this study examined parents’ normative and inter-subjective understandings about help-seeking. The study found that when considering the welfare problems of parenting (variously described as ‘domestic’, ‘normal’ or ‘on the home front’), participants routinely made relevant the binary ‘inside/outside’ the family, indicating the central (normative) relevance of the category ‘family’ for this kind of support. Outside (professional) help was very much a residual option, only to be considered on the basis of ‘no-one to turn to’. The findings are discussed in relation to national strategies that seek to normalise support for parenting and issues of international relevance to do with professional identification and diagnosis of need.

Suggested Citation

  • Karen Broadhurst, 2008. "Parental Help-Seeking and the Moral Order. Notes for Policy-Makers and Parenting Practitioners on ‘the First Port of Call’ and ‘No One to Turn To’," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 12(6), pages 44-57, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:socres:v:12:y:2008:i:6:p:44-57
    DOI: 10.5153/sro.1640
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.5153/sro.1640
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.5153/sro.1640?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. de Nooijer, Jascha & Lechner, Lilian & de Vries, Hein, 2003. "Social psychological correlates of paying attention to cancer symptoms and seeking medical help," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 56(5), pages 915-920, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. White, Lynn & McQuillan, Julia & Greil, Arthur L. & Johnson, David R., 2006. "Infertility: Testing a helpseeking model," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 62(4), pages 1031-1041, February.
    2. Yueh-Feng Yvonne Lu & May Wykle, 2007. "Relationships Between Caregiver Stress and Self-Care Behaviors in Response to Symptoms," Clinical Nursing Research, , vol. 16(1), pages 29-43, February.
    3. Andersen, Rikke Sand & Paarup, Bjarke & Vedsted, Peter & Bro, Flemming & Soendergaard, Jens, 2010. "'Containment' as an analytical framework for understanding patient delay: A qualitative study of cancer patients' symptom interpretation processes," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 378-385, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:socres:v:12:y:2008:i:6:p:44-57. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.