Introduction

This chapter takes a critically informed look at the role of families, and children's position within families, in understanding child poverty and disadvantage. The chapter begins by demonstrating that family life under conditions of disadvantage tends to be pathologised and denigrated: parents who are ‘poor’ are frequently situated as ‘poor parents’. Low-income families are particularly vulnerable to categorisation as ‘troubled’ or troublesome families (Ribbens McCarthy et al, 2013). It goes on to look at the myths and realities of family life at the bottom of the income structure and considers how wealthier families, who are held up as the benchmark of the ideal family, reinforce and perpetuate the disadvantage of poor children and families by employing their superior resources to confer advantage onto their own children.

The chapter closes by asking what it all means for children: how do children understand, negotiate and mediate poverty in family life and their experiences and agency within the family. It addresses some of the challenges children face living in a low-income family, such as stigma and bullying, and explores how children succeed in masking or hiding their poverty from their peers. It shows the difficulties children and young people living in poverty face trying to make transitions from adolescence to young adulthood. The chapter concludes by asking how we could flip our thinking on families facing disadvantage.

What is family?

Everyone has their own idea of what a family is and most people, for better or worse, are a member of one. There are many books on what makes a family and there is no agreed definition of ‘the family’ (Edwards et al, 2012). This book does not seek to explore the conceptual discourses on the family; instead, here, a family is taken to mean any lone, couple or group of people, of any gender, who come together to ‘do’ family. As this is a book about children, it will consider those families who are together with the intention of bringing up children.