ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on the findings of a study exploring gender identities and practices in work with young men using social care services to present an account of young men's family relationships that resists the reductive generalisations that, we would argue, characterise much current debate. It discusses the broader implications for an understanding of the lives of vulnerable boys and young men. Moreover, for some young men, the continuity of family ties, and in some cases starting new families of their own, formed an important part of how they envisaged their futures. Troubled or disrupted family relationships have often been a key factor in the problems that young men have faced growing up. The relationships that vulnerable or 'at risk' young men have with their fathers are often deeply ambivalent, while in many cases mothers and grandmothers play a vital stabilising role in young men's lives.
