Audio

This episode of Radio 4's Woman's Hour series looks at living with an abusive mother. In 2001, Dave Pelzer wrote about the horrific abuse he suffered at the hands of his mother during his childhood, and how she encouraged his brothers to treat him as 'the family slave'. One brother in particular stood out. Now, that brother has written his own version of events.

Jenni Murray talks to Richard Pelzer about his role as his mother's main collaborator and how, when Dave was taken away, he fell from favour and found himself on the receiving end of the abuse.

This episode of Radio 4's Thinking Allowed series includes a segment on gay, lesbian and bisexual muslims in view of the fact that non-heterosexuality is strictly censored in Islamic religious texts. This year the Sociological Review published an article by Andrew Yip called 'Negotiating Space with Family and Kin in Identity Construction: the Narratives of Non-heterosexual Muslims'.

This episode of Radio 4's Woman's Hour series looks at building a network for young people and NSPCC youth centres. When a young person has problems, often the last thing they want to do is to confide in a social worker. Many regard such people as frightening figures of authority with a quite terrifying degree of power over their lives, including the right to take them away from their families, or to force them to move foster homes against their will.

This episode of Radio 4's Thinking Allowed series consists of a segment on the management of risk in everyday life. As almost every decision a person makes involves weighing up of the odds of success or failure and risk, risk management has become a popular area of sociological debate.

Host Laurie Taylor speaks with delegates at the British Sociology Association's conference in York to find out what aspects of risk they've been discussing. Dr. Iain Wilkinson, Professor Jane Lewis and David Denney join the discussion.

This episode of Radio 4's Woman's Hour series looks at whether domestic violence is a gender issue. The most recent British Crime Survey shows that one in four women and one in six men have suffered domestic violence at some point in their lives. As part of Domestic Violence Awareness Week, Woman's Hour looks at the statistics and asks how helpful it is to think about domestic violence as either a male or female problem.

This episode of Radio 4's Woman's Hour series asks if single parents should have to seek work to get benefits. As the Government launches further pilot projects to encourage lone parents to return to work, Woman's Hour asks whether incentives or sanctions are more effective in getting parents back into the labour market.

David Willets, Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary and Kate Stanley, Head of Social Policy at the Institute for Public Policy Research discuss whether lone parents with secondary school aged children should have to seek work in order to claim benefits.

In this episode of Radio 4's Thinking Allowed series, following the interview with Sociologist James Stockinger in September 2004, Professor Peter Nolan talks to Laurie Taylor on the uniqueness of the British the public sector ethos and finds out why its employees, despite being the most motivated, are the most demoralised sector of the workforce. This segment is second of three discussions in the audio clip.

This episode of Radio 4's Woman's Hour series looks at the 100,000 children under 16 living in the UK who run away from home. We hear from a woman whose twelve year old daughter persistently ran away and was frequently returned to the family home by the police. Jill Colbert from the Safe in the City project in Salford - who works with young runaways - and John Wheeler from Childline will be joining Jenni Murray to discuss the difficulties that parents of runaways can face in accessing help.

Policy makers are becoming increasingly concerned with the long term consequences of childhood experiences. This concern is fuelled by the belief that the early years of life are crucial in shaping later life. Catch them young and save society trouble later on, runs the argument. Kenan Malik asks whether policies towards young children are based on reliable scientific evidence or on political claims.

The second programme in the series looks at the work of child psychologist Jean Piaget who believed children learned through play. Subsequent experiments allowing children to imagine different social, rather than spatial, situations have had very different results. Claudia Hammond asks how far we should rely on Piaget's findings today.