Understanding what ‘family’ means – and how best to support families – depends on challenging politicized assumptions that frame ‘ordinary’ families in comparison to an imagined problematic ‘other’.

Learning from the perspectives of people who were in care in childhood, this innovative book helps redefine the concept of family. Linking two longitudinal studies involving young adults in England, it reveals important new insights into the diverse and dynamic complexity of family lives, identities and practices in time – through childhood and beyond.

Paving the way for future policy and practice, this book makes an important contribution to the theorization of family in the 21st century.

Janet Boddy is Professor of Child, Youth and Family Studies at the University of Sussex and Adjunct Professor in the Childhood, Family and Welfare Division of NOVA at Oslo Metropolitan University.

Fidelma Hanrahan is Senior Research Officer at Research in Practice.

Bella Wheeler is Researcher in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford.