ABSTRACT
THIS CHAPTER AIMS to make us aware of what it is like to grow up in a family in the UK today and to face some of the assumptions we make when we work with children who do not come from families ‘just like ours’. Other chapters in this book will refer to families and parents but this one will focus on some of the issues we will need to consider in working successfully, and often intimately, with families. As early years professionals, we need to think about the children we meet in our daily lives and to take into consideration the families they come from, which, hopefully, support them but sometimes do not. My reflections on the family do not derive specifically from the studies I have undertaken nor the qualifications I have. I am not a trained psychologist nor have I studied sociology in depth, but I come from a family, have created a family of my own and have worked, over many years, with parents and families, often in their own homes. Not all of these families have been like mine; many have made me reflect on my own and made me wish that we could absorb some of their qualities. Others have made me despair, but that has been in comparison with the picture I carry in my head of what a family should be, because of my individual experience. As long as children thrive, ‘families’ have a right to live their lives in the way they choose, in most circumstances. Families also change and this can happen very quickly.
