Blogs about religion/culture and parenting with regards to risk and resilience.

[MrsSham]

I am looking to research religion and culture as part of my dissertation, with regards to when is it a support network and offers resilience and when it becomes a risk factor, particularly with regard to parenting.

I need to find secondary sources such as blogs, auto biographies etc. have a some primary data but struggling with secondary, does anyone have any specific experience or links to blogs or parenting support, advice resources through religious or cultural institutes or charitable or communities they could point me to. My question is still a little wooly just now, so any input would be appreciated.

The reason I want to consider this is steamed from personal experience so I need to articulate this perfectly for my dissertation, but also professional in terms of dilemmas in identifying risk and resilience, avoiding oppression and discrimination in support and welfare services, mostly child protection.

Any help and advice would be appreciated.

There is this website for supporting people who work in Christian children's ministry:

www.childrenmatter.net/

Oh thank you, very helpful.

You ought to read this it's an absolute shocker. I found it when considering some issues which had affected me personally. Available on Kindle but I've also a hard copy I could lend. Got one from US on Amazon in about 2 weeks.

Also - why not copy and paste relevant MN threads to Word, then analyse? Not particularly rigorous/academic, but quite revealing. Might need MN copyright permish to quote in dissertation though.

Thanks for that, I was going to try and get my hands on the good shepherd ( think thats what its called) to draw upon as well. I'm sure second hand on amazon either will be cheap enough. Happy to invest for dissertation. I have also come across spare the rod in my searches which may be worth getting a copy of too. Thanks very much.

Sorry "breaking their will" not spear the rod, don't know where that came from, maybe something else I have come across.

Are you American because I'm confused as to why you would use a book on American culture to work with UK culture? If you are American I'll just get back in my box?

Thanks crescentmoon.

The greenheart, I don't see the problem of drawing on other cultures to understand a subject, after all the is not just one u.k culture and this part of the issue I will be tackling, the limits of many professionals understanding of cultures that may differ from their own. There for drawing on and reading around any useful literature is important.

The reason I raised the question MrsSham is that your parameters are drawn very, very wide and as the subject matter has ressonances with your upbringing it will be hard to keep the dissertation objective.

What I think you are likley to find is that on the net (which has its own culture of course) you will find much more extreeme views expressed than if you looked in peer reviewed literature. But that is the nature of the net.

When looking at religion and culture one of the most important books is 'Christ and Culture' by Neibhuhr which really helped me understand why some churches are ambivilent or even hostile to the surrounding culture.

The Church of England has a good website and their material on children is here: www.churchofengland.org/education/children-young-people.aspx

The Mother's Union doesn't have such a good website but www.themothersunion.org/ there are some good resources if you dig and one of their core aims to to support mothers and parenting in the UK and worldwide.

Good luck

Not sure if this is the sort of thing which might help

Mother's union campaign to help families challenge the commercialisation/sexualisation of childhood

Care for the family - Christian organisation

These aren't anything like the 'spare the rod' type toxic stuff though...

Yes you are quite right my parameters are drawn quite wide just now. And the motivation for the subject is personal however I will take it away from my own experience and I feel I will end up going down a very different line to my own personal story, which is less related to child reading issues more the relationship between my parents and the church. I did a mini literature review last year and ended up focusing on accusations of spirit possession which is not really the rout I wanted to go down, but I stuck with it, though don't really want to develop that to any great extend. I wanted to focus more on the the influences of religion and or culture and the difficulties in assessing families in terms of assessing families and recognising cultural risks or resilience.

I discussed with my tutor about using peer reviews and he didn't seem overly keen. I am aware my subject is broad however I have decided to read around the subject before seeking further advice from my tutor about my question. I'm holding fire until I have read some more.

The main themes from the literature review was professionals limited understanding of others cultures religions and fear of challenging or questioning or challenging harmful parenting associated with cultural differences.

It sounds as if you are doing a really interesting subject. One of the hardest things to assess in the field of religion is the influence of culture. My impression from when I worked in social services is that some social workers got culture and religion confused. We operated in an enviroment at the office that said that all cultures were affirmed, yet out in the field there were clearly unhelpful/dangerous/toxic practices going on. This seems to chime with the literature review that you have already done. Someone of faith who understood the culture could potentially see to the heart of the situation which an outsider might stuggle with, but as far as I could see we weren't allowed to do that.

If this is an academic piece rather than a reflective one, then unless the marking scheme says otherwise, you are going to have to reference peer reviewed research at some point. Starting as you have with a literature review sounds like you have a good foundation on which to work.

This may sound like a daft idea but can you look at a cultural and religious enviroment very different from the one you were brought up in? This avoids the personal stuff sneaking in but allows you to use your history, experience and insight in a postive way as you look at similarities and differences?

I think I may have been misread (as per usual?) ['Freudian slip' ?]

The book I linked to is called Spare the Child and while it may be hard-hitting, I'd like to know why it might be considered toxic?

Aplogies if I have misunderstood the comments.

That is very interesting to know Thegreenheart, that is basically what the lit review revealed to some extent. I have struggled so far with finding secondary sources considering the service users voice for obvious reasons. There are not many blogs about current trends in parenting from children. I have decided to now look at domestic violence and religion, I have found lots of interesting blogs on this subject can already find two or three emerging themes to focus on. Your responses have been extremely helpful so thank you very much for sharing your perspectives with me.

Oh I should have mentioned what I'm doing just now is research proposal for dissertation next year. So will be looking at other sources at some point.

Update, thanks for ideas everyone, but I went for a very easy option on researching the dilemmas faced by child protection social workers carrying out assessment, to IDE tidy when religion is either a risk or resilience for families, not my exact question but around those lines. A little disappointed in my self for leaving it all to the last minute, however I will attempt to get it right for my dissertation so any pointers will be helpful still.