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Chapter three takes a critically informed look at the role of families, and children’s position within families, in understanding child poverty and disadvantage. It looks at the role of social support and gendered relationships and examines how families are not value-free environments. Family life under conditions of disadvantage tends to be pathologised and denigrated: parents who are ‘poor’ are frequently situated as ‘poor parents’. Low income families are particularly vulnerable to categorisation as ‘troubled families’ or troublesome families (Ribbens McCarthy et al 2013). This chapter looks at the myths and realities of family life at the bottom of the income structure, how children understand, negotiate and mediate poverty in family life and their experiences and agency within the family. It also considers how wealthier families, who are held up as the benchmark of the ideal family, reinforce and perpetuate the disadvantage of poor children and families by employing their superior resources to confer (further) advantage onto their own children.

This chapter examines the relationship between employment of black and white youth and their family income and poverty status. It utilizes the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to analyze the question of racial differences in youth employment in a historical context. The chapter describes the trends of youth employment and family poverty by race nationwide from 1955 to 1995 between blacks and whites.

This chapter explores family poverty in the MCS 3 when the children were aged 5 and traces changes in poverty between MCS 1 and 3, from 9 months to age 5. It notes that it is not possible to replicate exactly the measures that the government has been using to monitor the child poverty strategy using the MCS data. It further notes, however, that the MCS collects income data but records the responses in income bands, before housing costs (BHC). The MCS is a sample of families with a child of a certain age and cannot be used to compare with the results of the Households Below Average Income (HBAI) analysis of the FRS that produces data on the proportion of all dependent children in poverty.

This concluding chapter argues that, in order to do differently, people need bigger conversations that involve those from a range of endeavours and disciplines and all those concerned with, and impacted by, child protection. In social work, talking about the relationship between child abuse, neglect, and poverty is currently framed by notions of reinforcing or avoiding stigmatising or oppressive generalisations. However, accepting that poverty means it is more likely that children may be harmed means the societal and individual value of reducing child and family poverty becomes clearer. Poverty is a child protection matter and social work needs a conversation about what this means for the knowledge base and everyday practices. The chapter then explores some possibilities for democratising conversations more generally.

The discussion in this short chapter, meant as an overview of both the findings and the theoretical framework, is organised mainly in terms of the four elements of the theoretical framework that guided the study. To begin, and to set the larger context for the study, the chapter outlines the predictions around poverty in Northern Ireland in the coming period. Following this, the main findings are set out and the insights yielded for the reconceptualisation of family from this study of family life in a context of poverty and low income are discussed.

This chapter begins by describing Earnst’s physical appearance. It then tells about his family and educational background. It also explains that Earnst’s exposure to the presses like Frequent Illness, Family Poverty, and Family Discord had an effect of special significance, as shown by the reports that this study had gathered. It adds that his experiences manifested in his personality; he was outstandingly low in all affiliative variables and in the socially directed needs for Dominance and Exhibition. It discusses that Earnst, at present, is completely severed from his early life and from his family. It discusses four themas that may have affected Earnst’s manifested personality. It tells of the tests that Earnst took and his reponses to them.