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Dr Jan Macvarish
Research Associate
Centre for Health Services Studies
- j.macvarish@kent.ac.uk
- 01227 823666
Her interests lie in the sociology of interpersonal relationships, parenting, family life, sex and intimacy
Dr Jan Macvarish is a research associate in CHSS and an occasional lecturer within SSPSSR. She is also an associate of the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies at Kent http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/parentingculturestudies/ Her interests lie in the sociology of interpersonal relationships, parenting, family life, sex and intimacy. Her doctoral thesis (2007), entitled The New Single Woman: Contextualising Individual Choice, explored the construction of contemporary singleness through qualitative interviewing of single, childless women and cultural analysis of the new ‘culture of singleness’. She is particularly interested in questions of risk culture, de-moralisation and individualisation but is also concerned with policy developments. Through her involvement in a study of teenage parents, she was able critically to explore the relationship between the lived experience of young parenthood and the way in which parents and their children are constructed and related to through policy and cultural frameworks.
She is currently working on the ESRC-funded study, ‘Assessing Child Welfare under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act: the new law’. Infertility is estimated to affect around one in six or seven UK couples. Since 1990, infertility services have been subject to a highly complex system of statutory regulation: the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (1990) and accompanying Code of Practice issued by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA). Controversially, in 2008, the legal requirement in place since 1990 that clinicians providing treatment take account of “the welfare of any child who may be born as a result of the treatment” including “the need of [a] child for a father” was replaced with a new mandate: they must henceforth consider the child’s need for “supportive parenting”. In the light of this reform, the current project aims to investigate the ongoing role played by the child welfare assessment in practice and the impact of this change to it. Our exploration will rely on a detailed analysis of the published documentation which accompanied this reform process, and a series of semi-structured interviews at around one quarter of licensed clinics, which will explore the views of clinicians, clinic counsellors and nursing staff. This project aims to provide a unique assessment of the operation in practice of the revised welfare assessment, and to disseminate findings to research users: academics; treatment providers; patients seeking or receiving treatment; policy makers; and NGOs. The team conducting the research is Dr Ellie Lee, Professor Sally Sheldon and Dr Jan Macvarish from the University of Kent.
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Also view these in the Kent Academic Repository
Articles
Macvarish, J. (2010)
The effect of 'risk-thinking' on the contemporary construction of teenage motherhood.
Health, Risk & Society, 12 (4). pp. 313-322. ISSN 1369-8575.
Abstract
In Britain over the past 12 years, despite the normalising of sex and reproduction outside marriage and contrary to the evidence that there are fewer teenage parents than in the past, teenage parenthood has become amplified as a social problem. The existence of such a paradox suggests that this problematisation has captured a number of significant political and social dynamics and anxieties, in particular, the co-existence of widespread concern with social disorder and moral decline with the recognition that past forms of social and moral ordering have an alienating rather than a cohering effect. This paper explores: how the problem of teenage pregnancy has been both amplified and redefined; the role of public health discourse in de-moralising the problem; expanding notions of harm to the child; the construction of the teenage mother as lacking in rational and moral agency; and the construction of her and her child as a social threat. Through an engagement with critiques of teenage pregnancy policy, risk theory and recent developments within the study of 'parenting culture', this paper seeks to explain why the 'teenage mother' has such symbolic power despite an apparent de-moralisation of sex.
Research Reports
Billings, J.R. and Hashem, F. and Macvarish, J. (2010)
Am I Bovvered? A participative action research study to develop, implement and evaluate physical activity interventions with girls. Phases Two and Three.
Centre for Health Services Studies, 118 pp.
Abstract
The "Am I Bovvered?" project is a two-year study aiming to develop, implement and evaluate sustainable exercise-based interventions with girls aged 11-15 years in order to improve their engagement in regular physical activity. The study took place in three phases that corresponded with the project?s main aims:
The aims of the first phase of the study were to:
Explore factors that motivate and create barriers to 11-12 and 14-15 year old girls engaging in regular physical activity (Phase One).
The aims of the second and third phases were to:
Develop and implement activities chosen by inactive 11-12 and 14-15 year old girls with the support of a multi-agency team (Phase Two).
Evaluate the impact of the project, examining factors associated with young girls? engagement in physical exercise (Phase Three).
Make recommendations for policy and practice.
Billings, J.R. and Macvarish, J. (2010)
Self-Efficacy: Addressing Behavioural Attitudes Towards Risky Behaviour - An International Literature Review.
Funded/commissioned by: European Regional Development Fund.
Abstract
The present report summarizes the work of the cross-frontier group which was established, within the
framework of Interreg IV, to consider the concept of self-efficacy. A first full-scale study entitled "Let's
Talk/Parlez-moi d'amour" had already been undertaken, under the aegis of the Interreg III programme, by
several of the partners involved, to examine perceptions in Kent and the Somme of teenage pregnancy as a
social phenomenon. This initial project was concluded in 2007 by a conference in Amiens, Somme, during
which the French and English research groups were able to present and discuss their findings.
Billings, J.R. and Hashem, F. and Macvarish, J. (2009)
Am I Bovvered: A participative action research study to develop, implement & evaluate physical activity interventions in young girls, Phase Two Report.
Centre for Health Services Studies
Billings, J.R. and Hashem, F. and Macvarish, J. (2008)
Am I Bovvered? A participative action research study to develop, implement and evaluate physical activity interventions with girls. Phase One.
Funded/commissioned by: Lottery Funded. Centre for Health Services Studies
Abstract
The "Am I Bovvered?" project is a two-year study aiming to develop, implement and evaluate sustainable exercise-based interventions with girls aged 11-15 years in order to improve their engagement in regular physical activity. The study took place in three phases that corresponded with the project?s main aims:
The aims of the first phase of the study were to: Explore factors that motivate and create barriers to 11-12 and 14-15 year old girls engaging in regular physical activity (Phase One).
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