K Cook
Biographic Data
| ID | 39218 |
|---|---|
| NAME | K Cook |
| GIVEN NAMES | K |
| FAMILY NAME | Cook |
| SIGNATURE | COOK K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Swinburne University of Technology |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0894-2815 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 62 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 197 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 62 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1963 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Quantifying the Sites of Government, Commercial, and Personal Systems‐Perpetrated Financial Abuse
This study explores the institutional systems through which post‐separation financial abuse is perpetrated. While existing measures seek to quantify the harms experienced by women post‐separation, this study draws on financial, welfare and legal service casefiles to identify where such harms occur. Drawing on 76 de‐identified Victorian service casefiles, the findings show that government, commercial and private financial systems are implicated in…
Mapping Intimate Partner Financial Abuse Across Public and Private Systems
This article maps the ways that intimate partner financial abuse presents, and the range of public and private entities involved in its perpetration. It reports on an analysis of submissions by individuals to the Australian parliamentary inquiry into the Financial Services Regulatory Framework in Relation to Financial Abuse. Our analysis documents the web of systems through which financial abuse can be perpetrated in ways that are largely uncheck…
Understanding Housing Justice in Shared Housing
Mapping Gendered Economic Abuse Across the Relationship Lifecourse: A Qualitative Meta-Ethnography
Purpose In this paper, we provide a review of extant qualitative research that reports on women’s experience of economic abuse during intimate relationships and following separation. To advance understanding of the processes of economic abuse that play out over the course of an intimate relationship, we draw on Zelizer’s social meaning of money and Risman’s causal mechanisms of gender to provide a conceptual basis and typology to begin to untangl…
Problematising the educational leader policy in Australian early childhood education and care
Housing policy and non-commercial shared housing in the private rental sector: A scoping review
Shared housing in the private rental sector (PRS) is becoming a globally significant household arrangement. However, research indicates that shared housing is associated with problems including financial and housing insecurity. Given the growth of shared housing in the PRS, it is necessary for policy solutions to appropriately address the needs of shared housing renters. This paper aims to investigate the relationship between housing policy and n…
Postseparation Financial Abuse Perpetrated Through Government Systems: A Survey of Australian Mothers’ Experiences of Child Support
Financial abuse is a form of violence that can extend well beyond intimate partner relationship breakdown. A survey of 540 Australian separated parents examined how financial abuse was perpetrated, with a focus on child support and other government systems. Women reported that their ex-partners minimized and withheld child support payments to inflict direct financial harm, while interactions between the family court, taxation, and benefit payment…
The Re-Emergence of Childcare as a Women’s Issue? Analyzing Gender in Australian and Canadian Covid-19 Childcare Policymaking
Canada and Australia, two liberal welfare states whose market-based ECEC systems consistently rank poorly on international measures, embraced similar short-term childcare policy responses to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic: widespread closures, reduced capacity of centers, establishment of publicly funded emergency childcare programs for essential workers, and short-term wage subsidies for essential workers (sometimes including educators). She…
Antifeminist, manosphere and right-wing extremist sentiment among men who use domestic and family violence: Masculinism, Misinformation, and the Justificatory Logics of Violence
Child Support
This chapter sets out the evolution of child support systems in Australia and New Zealand from the 1980s to the present. It highlights the roles played by changing family structures and labor market participation in driving the evolving design and administration of child support programs in both countries. It also describes ongoing issues concerning the interactions between child support and other social welfare policies and identifies the part p…
Addressing Economic Abuse in Intimate-partner Violence Interventions: A Bacchian Analysis of Responsibility
Purpose Burgeoning research on intimate partner perpetrated economic abuse highlights the devastating and lasting impacts of economic exploitation, economic control, and employment sabotage, most often endured by women. Despite recognition of the potential outcomes that can result from intimate partner perpetrated economic abuse, such as lifelong poverty, and housing and employment insecurity, there is a dearth of evidence on prevention intervent…
Understanding Covid-19 emergency social security measures as a from of basic income: Lessons from Australia
This article examines the changes in social security measures introduced by the Australian government during the first wave of Covid-19 lockdowns in 2020. These measures were basic income-like in that they became both more unconditional and adequate for a reasonable standard of living. This was achieved through a significant supplementary payment, suspension of mutual obligation requirements, and the relaxation of eligibility criteria on a range …
Child support systems and government budgets: Thorny policy choices to recover costs
Australia, New Zealand, the UK, and the USA instituted child support agencies in the late 1900s and had some policies that resulted in having lowered governmental expenditures when child support was paid. Building on previous research comparing these four countries, this article examines the extent to which these countries currently use explicit cost recovery policies, implicit policies revealed in programme interactions, and fees. Using data fro…
State tactics of welfare benefit minimisation: The power of governing documents
This article draws on interviews with 41 Australian separated mothers, and the government forms, information and instructions used to administer their child support and benefit entitlements, to reveal four tactics through which women’s decision-making was coordinated to produce financial benefits to the state. The state pursued its preferred outcome by foregrounding women’s obligation to seek and collect child support, while at the same time, inf…
An exploratory study examining the changes to Australia’s social security system during Covid‐19 lockdown measures
During the 2020 COVID‐19 wave, the Australian Government made an additional $550 Coronavirus Supplement available for people receiving social security payments, and temporarily suspended mutual obligation requirements. By doing so, the government effectively gave people who had been long stigmatised and subject to punitive conditionality to compel them into the labour market, financial security and their time back. Drawing on survey responses fro…
Supplemental Material for Relative Power and Interpersonal Trust
Negotiating 'ideal worker' and intensive mothering ideologies: Australian mothers' emotional geographies during their commutes
Individualized, maternalist and marketized discourses of childcare are pervasive in Australia as they are in other liberal welfare states. Responsibility is overwhelmingly placed on mothers to carry out most childcare work themselves or to arrange informal or paid childcare. One of the key tasks for most employed mothers is transporting children alongside their commuting journeys. In this context we used mapping/graphic elicitation interviews wit…
Anti-feminism, gender and the far-right gap in C/PVE measures
Due to an overwhelming focus on Islamist extremism, western strategies to Counter or Prevent Violent Extremism (C/PVE) have largely neglected the growing far-right threat. In this article, we draw attention to the gender blind spot in C/PVE strategies by arguing that misogyny and masculinism go beyond ‘anti-women’ sentiment and align with the far-right’s valorisation of order, hierarchy and traditional values. This blind spot in C/PVE measures ha…
Paid, domestic, and emotional work in the precariat: Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You
Sorry We Missed You, directed by Ken Loach and written by Paul Laverty, focuses on precarious work in modern Britain and its effects on a working-class nuclear family. Both Ricky (Kris Hitchen), the father, and Abby (Debbie Honeywood), the mother, work gruelling jobs that arguably situate them within the precariat. However, Loach and Laverty also draw attention to the gendered differences between Ricky’s and Abby’s situations. Drawing on the work…
Gender, malice, obligation and the state: Separated mothers’ experiences of administrative burdens with Australia's child support program
This article provides an empirical account of Herd and Moynihan's theory of administrative burdens as they apply to Australian child support recipients. Interviews with 41 separated mothers revealed how they were compelled to engage in the child support system and then required to expend significant time and effort undertaking administrative work on behalf of the state, often for little financial benefit. Unlike the examples provided by Herd and …
Administrative Burden Symposium: Introduction – Are we ‘administering inequality’ through our welfare systems
Over the past three decades social inequality has risen in almost all OECD countries, reaching historical highs. Social inequality is created and maintained not just by the specific focus or goals of particular policies, but by the norms, values and processes of our government institutions. This special issue looks at how administrative burden is constructed in a range of Australian social policy areas
We Ask for More Than We Give Back: Negotiating the Boundaries of Informal Childcare Arrangements
There is an assumption that childcare services and workplace flexibility policies enable a seamless shift between childcare and work. Similarly, there is an assumption that informal care arrangements will be relatively seamless as the norm of reciprocity is assumed to bind families together through the bonds of love and affection. Monetary exchange for this work is seen to demean the caring relationship, but this does not mean 'costs' are absent.…
Technological opportunities for procedural justice in welfare administration: A review of available apps
Welfare agencies are increasingly turning to technology to facilitate information-sharing and communication with users. However, while the administrative, governmental and material effects of technological advances have been examined, research has yet to explore how welfare users could make use of technology for their benefit. In this article, we examine the extent to which available technologies allow Australian separated mothers to assemble and…
The Forms and Functions of Child Support Stigma
The stigmatization of single mothers who receive child support proliferates in news media, policy, and popular culture. Drawing on critical stigma literature, we examined data from interviews conducted with child support recipients in Australia and the United Kingdom. Our analysis examined how women receiving child support experienced stigma, how stigma was applied to other women in similar situations, and the political implications of these fram…
Child, Parent and Worker Vulnerabilities in Unregulated Childcare
In this article, we seek to develop a framework of childcare vulnerabilities experienced by children, parents and providers engaged in the formal, unregulated childcare market. Informed by vulnerability theorists who examine care work within the context of dependency and power relations, we explore the extent to which notions of vulnerability have been considered in childcare research. Five types of vulnerability from the literature – physical, e…
Using Critical Ethnography to Explore Issues in Health Promotion
In this article, the author outlines the need for a critical research method in the field of health promotion to explore the determinants of health. These determinants, including healthy child development, employment and working conditions, and education, for example, underlie many of the health issues that individuals experience. They are, in turn, influenced by nebulous factors such as patterns of inequality, and cultural norms, which are diffi…
Role of expendable income and price in food choice by low income families
Negotiating 'ideal worker' and intensive mothering ideologies: Australian mothers' emotional geographies during their commutes
Individualized, maternalist and marketized discourses of childcare are pervasive in Australia as they are in other liberal welfare states. Responsibility is overwhelmingly placed on mothers to carry out most childcare work themselves or to arrange informal or paid childcare. One of the key tasks for most employed mothers is transporting children alongside their commuting journeys. In this context we used mapping/graphic elicitation interviews wit…
Anti-feminism, gender and the far-right gap in C/PVE measures
Due to an overwhelming focus on Islamist extremism, western strategies to Counter or Prevent Violent Extremism (C/PVE) have largely neglected the growing far-right threat. In this article, we draw attention to the gender blind spot in C/PVE strategies by arguing that misogyny and masculinism go beyond ‘anti-women’ sentiment and align with the far-right’s valorisation of order, hierarchy and traditional values. This blind spot in C/PVE measures ha…
Child Maintenance and Social Security Interactions: The Poverty Reduction Effects in Model Lone Parent Families across Four Countries
In most developed countries, children in lone parent families face a high risk of poverty. A partial solution commonly sought in English-speaking nations is to increase the amounts of private child maintenance paid by the other parent. However, where lone parent families are in receipt of social assistance benefits, some countries hold back a portion of the child maintenance to reduce public expenditures. This partial 'pass-through' treats child …
The gendered framing of Australia's child support reforms
In Australia, as in other jurisdictions, child support has become a political hottopic, and one with the potential to deepen and challenge socio-legal understandingsof masculinity, autonomy, and the legal construction of the fatherfigure. However, to date sociological work on child support reform inAustralia has focused on describing manifest outcomes, with far less emphasison analysing the latent framing of child support as a policy issue. In th…
Social support in single parents' transition from welfare to work: Analysis of qualitative findings 1
Cook KE. Social support in single parents' transition from welfare to work: Analysis of qualitative findings Since 1995, single parents have been required to participate in welfare‐to‐work activities. While quantitative meta‐analyses have consolidated the social and economic impacts of such transitions, no attempt has yet been made to synthesise the qualitative evidence. In this article, I offer an analysis of 16 qualitative articles that explore…
The potential of child support to reduce lone mother poverty: Comparing population survey data in Australia and the UK
This paper assesses the contribution that child support makes to Australian lone mothers’ income packages and the proportion lifted out of poverty as a result. Using the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) dataset, we compare the results to a study conducted in the UK. Child support payments were more likely to be received in Australia and, when received, payments reduced lone mothers’ poverty rate by 21 per cent, a greater …
An exploratory study examining the changes to Australia’s social security system during Covid‐19 lockdown measures
During the 2020 COVID‐19 wave, the Australian Government made an additional $550 Coronavirus Supplement available for people receiving social security payments, and temporarily suspended mutual obligation requirements. By doing so, the government effectively gave people who had been long stigmatised and subject to punitive conditionality to compel them into the labour market, financial security and their time back. Drawing on survey responses fro…
Gender, malice, obligation and the state: Separated mothers’ experiences of administrative burdens with Australia's child support program
This article provides an empirical account of Herd and Moynihan's theory of administrative burdens as they apply to Australian child support recipients. Interviews with 41 separated mothers revealed how they were compelled to engage in the child support system and then required to expend significant time and effort undertaking administrative work on behalf of the state, often for little financial benefit. Unlike the examples provided by Herd and …
Gender and Evidence in Family Law Reform: A Case Study of Quantification and Anecdote in Framing and Legitimising the ‘Problems’ with Child Support in Australia
Mothers' experiences of child support: Qualitative research and opportunities for policy insight
Child support is one of the defining and under-studied elements of single mothering in contemporary Australia. However, the Australian Child Support Scheme is marked by high levels of debt and unreliable, partial and non-payment, which exacerbate mothers' financial insecurity. Most Australian child support research has focused on the amounts and outcomes of payments. Little is known about how and why mothers and fathers make the child support dec…
Job satisfaction and ‘welfare‐to‐work‘: Is any job a good job for Australian single mothers
This exploratory study sought to assess the job satisfaction of employed Australian single mothers who had mandatory employment participation requirements. In particular, we sought to identify the characteristics of the job and the individual that were closely associated with participant's job satisfaction. Self‐report data on job satisfaction, employment characteristics and parenting stress were collected from 155 employed single mothers. Partic…
State tactics of welfare benefit minimisation: The power of governing documents
This article draws on interviews with 41 Australian separated mothers, and the government forms, information and instructions used to administer their child support and benefit entitlements, to reveal four tactics through which women’s decision-making was coordinated to produce financial benefits to the state. The state pursued its preferred outcome by foregrounding women’s obligation to seek and collect child support, while at the same time, inf…
Administrative Burden Symposium: Introduction – Are we ‘administering inequality’ through our welfare systems
Over the past three decades social inequality has risen in almost all OECD countries, reaching historical highs. Social inequality is created and maintained not just by the specific focus or goals of particular policies, but by the norms, values and processes of our government institutions. This special issue looks at how administrative burden is constructed in a range of Australian social policy areas
Institutional processes and the production of gender inequalities: The case of Australian child support research and administration
This article analyses the administrative and research capture of child support data as a case study of how institutional data collection processes are performative in perpetuating gendered inequalities. We compare interviews with 19 low-income single mothers and their longitudinal survey responses from the same research to reveal how low-income women strategically or inadvertently ‘smoothed’ their experiences when responding to data collection pr…
Domestic Violence and the Exemption from Seeking Child Support: Providing Safety or Legitimizing Ongoing Poverty and Fear
This article examines the experience of low‐income women on welfare in Australia and the process of seeking child support from a violent ex‐partner, contrasting this with research from the United States and the United Kingdom. Women in Australia who fear ongoing or renewed abuse as a result of seeking child support are eligible for an exemption. However, the exemption policy does not necessarily provide the intended protection of women and childr…
Maintaining Dignity and Managing Stigma in the Interview Encounter: The Challenge of Paid-For Participation
The interview is both popular and problematic in social research. In this article, we describe and make problematic interviews from a study conducted with impoverished elders in Melbourne, Australia. Participants were paid $20 for each of two interviews. The result of the paid-for participation was double-edged in that it provided funds for impoverished participants, but the payment modified the exchange of free and open discussion. We describe k…
Gender Equality in Child Support Policy: Fathers’ Rhetoric of “Fairness” in a Parliamentary Inquiry
Child support payments extend separated fathers’ male breadwinning role across households, likely fuelling fathers’ perceptions of “unfairness”. By examining fathers’ written submissions to an Australian inquiry, we examine fathers’ claims of unfairness, which were expressed in terms of gender inequality. Here, we show how fathers adopted a gender equality discourse that left intact the existing gender order. Through expectations for equal treatm…
Neoliberalism, welfare policy and health: A qualitative meta-synthesis of single parents' experience of the transition from welfare to work
Following the United States' lead, the emergence of neoliberal welfare policy across the western world has resulted in employment programmes for single parents, who are predominantly single mothers. While some governments claim that employment will improve single parents' incomes and well-being, researchers dispute that single parents can unproblematically move into the workforce, with net positive effects. While researchers have quantified the s…
Understanding Covid-19 emergency social security measures as a from of basic income: Lessons from Australia
This article examines the changes in social security measures introduced by the Australian government during the first wave of Covid-19 lockdowns in 2020. These measures were basic income-like in that they became both more unconditional and adequate for a reasonable standard of living. This was achieved through a significant supplementary payment, suspension of mutual obligation requirements, and the relaxation of eligibility criteria on a range …
The Forms and Functions of Child Support Stigma
The stigmatization of single mothers who receive child support proliferates in news media, policy, and popular culture. Drawing on critical stigma literature, we examined data from interviews conducted with child support recipients in Australia and the United Kingdom. Our analysis examined how women receiving child support experienced stigma, how stigma was applied to other women in similar situations, and the political implications of these fram…
Single Parents' Subjective Wellbeing over the Welfare to Work Transition
The Australian government purports that employment will improve welfare recipients' wellbeing. However, longitudinal analysis of the subjective wellbeing (SWB) of 135 single parents who were compelled to make the transition from welfare to work revealed that as work hours increased, subjective wellbeing did not improve, and in some cases worsened. Participants who were employed at baseline increased their work hours by an average of 4.75 hours pe…
Fractured multiculturalism: Conflicting representations of Arab and Muslim Australians in Australian print media
Arab and Muslim migration is not new to Australia, where Muslims have lived for over 140 years, and are one of the fastest-growing minority groups (Ho, 2007). Despite stereotypes of a singular Arab or Muslim identity, Australia's Arab and Muslim populations comprise several ethnically diverse communities. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC, 2004) states that the largest groups are those who identify as being of Lebanese (30%…
Postseparation Financial Abuse Perpetrated Through Government Systems: A Survey of Australian Mothers’ Experiences of Child Support
Financial abuse is a form of violence that can extend well beyond intimate partner relationship breakdown. A survey of 540 Australian separated parents examined how financial abuse was perpetrated, with a focus on child support and other government systems. Women reported that their ex-partners minimized and withheld child support payments to inflict direct financial harm, while interactions between the family court, taxation, and benefit payment…
Some archaeomagnetic results from Greece
Many clays and stones contain particles of magnetic oxides of iron. These particles, if heated above their Curie points, which range up to 670° C., lose whatever magnetism they have; and when they cool back through their Curie points, they acquire a new ‘thermoremanent’ magnetization under the influence of the surrounding magnetic field, which generally is the magnetic field of the earth. That field is changing continuously, both in direction and…
Two Approaches to Social Structure: Exchange Theory and Network Analysis
Much convergence exists between exchange theory and network approaches to social structure. Starting with the work of Emerson, exchange theory increasingly has considered social structure explicitly, as both product and constraint. Exchange theory and network analysis both conceptualize social structure as a configuration of social relations and positions, i. e. as a set of actors diversely linked into networks. Exchange theory and most work in n…
The Abduction of Credibility: A Reply to John Paley
This response takes issue with John Paley's paper ‘Satanist Abuse and Alien Abduction’ (this issue) in a number of areas: his definition of Satanic ritual abuse (SRA); the parallels he draws between SRA and alien abduction; his assertions that there is no evidence of SRA and that accounts of SRA can be viewed as urban legends; and his ‘temporal lobe connection’ conclusion
Using Critical Ethnography to Explore Issues in Health Promotion
In this article, the author outlines the need for a critical research method in the field of health promotion to explore the determinants of health. These determinants, including healthy child development, employment and working conditions, and education, for example, underlie many of the health issues that individuals experience. They are, in turn, influenced by nebulous factors such as patterns of inequality, and cultural norms, which are diffi…
The Practices of Economic Competition on Markets of Consumer Goods of Contemporary Russia
Parent-proxy and child self-reported health-related quality of life: Using qualitative methods to explain the discordance
Domestic Violence and the Exemption from Seeking Child Support: Providing Safety or Legitimizing Ongoing Poverty and Fear
This article examines the experience of low‐income women on welfare in Australia and the process of seeking child support from a violent ex‐partner, contrasting this with research from the United States and the United Kingdom. Women in Australia who fear ongoing or renewed abuse as a result of seeking child support are eligible for an exemption. However, the exemption policy does not necessarily provide the intended protection of women and childr…
Maintaining Dignity and Managing Stigma in the Interview Encounter: The Challenge of Paid-For Participation
The interview is both popular and problematic in social research. In this article, we describe and make problematic interviews from a study conducted with impoverished elders in Melbourne, Australia. Participants were paid $20 for each of two interviews. The result of the paid-for participation was double-edged in that it provided funds for impoverished participants, but the payment modified the exchange of free and open discussion. We describe k…
The politics of developing reference standards for nutrient intakes: The case of Australia and New Zealand
Objective Nutrient Reference Values (NRV) are evidence-based benchmarks for assessing the dietary adequacy of individuals and population groups as well as informing public health nutrition policies and programmes. The present paper presents the findings of an analysis of the views of submitters to a draft document associated with the development of the 2006 NRV for Australia and New Zealand. The aim of the study was to explore how these views wer…
Building the capacity of family day care educators to promote children's social and emotional wellbeing: An exploratory cluster randomised controlled trial
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Child support research in Australia: A critical review
The Australian Child Support Scheme impacts on the lives of many Australian families. Yet the Australian evidence base informing child support policy development is relatively sparse and lacks coherence. In this article, we employ an equity framework to consolidate the published Australian empirical child support research in order to identify gaps in current knowledge and assess the various layers of competing interest inherent therein. While res…
Social support in single parents' transition from welfare to work: Analysis of qualitative findings 1
Cook KE. Social support in single parents' transition from welfare to work: Analysis of qualitative findings Since 1995, single parents have been required to participate in welfare‐to‐work activities. While quantitative meta‐analyses have consolidated the social and economic impacts of such transitions, no attempt has yet been made to synthesise the qualitative evidence. In this article, I offer an analysis of 16 qualitative articles that explore…
Fractured multiculturalism: Conflicting representations of Arab and Muslim Australians in Australian print media
Arab and Muslim migration is not new to Australia, where Muslims have lived for over 140 years, and are one of the fastest-growing minority groups (Ho, 2007). Despite stereotypes of a singular Arab or Muslim identity, Australia's Arab and Muslim populations comprise several ethnically diverse communities. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC, 2004) states that the largest groups are those who identify as being of Lebanese (30%…
Reliability assessments in qualitative health promotion research
This article contributes to the debate about the use of reliability assessments in qualitative research in general, and health promotion research in particular. In this article, I examine the use of reliability assessments in qualitative health promotion research in response to health promotion researchers' commonly held misconception that reliability assessments improve the rigor of qualitative research. All qualitative articles published in the…
Single Parents' Subjective Wellbeing over the Welfare to Work Transition
The Australian government purports that employment will improve welfare recipients' wellbeing. However, longitudinal analysis of the subjective wellbeing (SWB) of 135 single parents who were compelled to make the transition from welfare to work revealed that as work hours increased, subjective wellbeing did not improve, and in some cases worsened. Participants who were employed at baseline increased their work hours by an average of 4.75 hours pe…
Job satisfaction and ‘welfare‐to‐work‘: Is any job a good job for Australian single mothers
This exploratory study sought to assess the job satisfaction of employed Australian single mothers who had mandatory employment participation requirements. In particular, we sought to identify the characteristics of the job and the individual that were closely associated with participant's job satisfaction. Self‐report data on job satisfaction, employment characteristics and parenting stress were collected from 155 employed single mothers. Partic…
Neoliberalism, welfare policy and health: A qualitative meta-synthesis of single parents' experience of the transition from welfare to work
Following the United States' lead, the emergence of neoliberal welfare policy across the western world has resulted in employment programmes for single parents, who are predominantly single mothers. While some governments claim that employment will improve single parents' incomes and well-being, researchers dispute that single parents can unproblematically move into the workforce, with net positive effects. While researchers have quantified the s…
The gendered framing of Australia's child support reforms
In Australia, as in other jurisdictions, child support has become a political hottopic, and one with the potential to deepen and challenge socio-legal understandingsof masculinity, autonomy, and the legal construction of the fatherfigure. However, to date sociological work on child support reform inAustralia has focused on describing manifest outcomes, with far less emphasison analysing the latent framing of child support as a policy issue. In th…
Role of expendable income and price in food choice by low income families
Fair relationships and policies to support family day care educators’ mental health: A qualitative study
Making policies and relationships between educators, government and family day care schemes fairer would contribute strongly to the protection and promotion of educator mental health and wellbeing, and in turn contribute to workforce stability and care quality
The family: What is it, how do we study it and why
Defining what constitutes a family, and thus what constitutes family studies, has been hotly contested over recent decades. As Engelhardt (2007, p. 27) notes, 'if there is anything that characterizes the contemporary understanding of the family, it is the lack of a common understanding. We share no consensus.' Such debates occur not only in academics spheres, but also in political, social and economic domains of life, as defining who is in and wh…
Selective hearing: The gendered construction and reception of Inquiry evidence
In this paper we present a case study of the gendering of evidence in family policy reform. We examine the characterisation of data as legitimate or illegitimate in a recent Australian Inquiry into child support and custody issues. Using critical discourse analysis, we examine how Inquiry committee members interpreted personal anecdotes and social scientific data presented by witnesses. Data were characterised as legitimate when confirming an exi…
Mothers' experiences of child support: Qualitative research and opportunities for policy insight
Child support is one of the defining and under-studied elements of single mothering in contemporary Australia. However, the Australian Child Support Scheme is marked by high levels of debt and unreliable, partial and non-payment, which exacerbate mothers' financial insecurity. Most Australian child support research has focused on the amounts and outcomes of payments. Little is known about how and why mothers and fathers make the child support dec…
Institutional processes and the production of gender inequalities: The case of Australian child support research and administration
This article analyses the administrative and research capture of child support data as a case study of how institutional data collection processes are performative in perpetuating gendered inequalities. We compare interviews with 19 low-income single mothers and their longitudinal survey responses from the same research to reveal how low-income women strategically or inadvertently ‘smoothed’ their experiences when responding to data collection pr…
Gender and Evidence in Family Law Reform: A Case Study of Quantification and Anecdote in Framing and Legitimising the ‘Problems’ with Child Support in Australia
Political science (43 works) · Sociology (36 works) · Psychology (30 works) · Economics (28 works) · Law (23 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (20 works) · Law (19 works) · Medicine (19 works) · Economic growth (18 works) · Business (17 works)