About the data
The 100 Families study sought to combine two normally separate fields of study - family life and social mobility. It examined connections between them through in-depth life story interviews based on a national sample of 'middle generation' men and women aged 30 to 55 and married with children. Where possible an older or younger (over 16) member of the family was additionally interviewed. The collection consists of interviews with 170 participants. The study explored geographical and social mobility and the role of the family in inter-generational terms from the perspective of gender and migration, covering the period from 1900 to 1988. Participants were asked extensive questions relating to their own, and their family's, education, politics, family tree, marriage and relationships, housing, parents' work, and leisure.
How the data were used
In the project, Masculine preserves? Cooking, gender and family, c.1945-1985, rather than approaching gender in terms of a set of standard roles and looking for exceptions to these roles, the work emphasises the active construction of gender as a relational category within families. Jackson's research focused on men's relationships to the preparation of family meals to explore the making of masculinities as a contested process and parenting as a series of dynamic social practices. The recorded recollections covering these 40 years include descriptions of men learning to cook, cooking as a hobby, cooking to cope when women are absent, and 'dabbling' in cooking to show off professional skills. The work is published as an edited book, Peter Jackson (2009) Changing Families, Changing Food, Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life.
About the author
Peter Jackson is a professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Sheffield.
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