Comment: Methodological Issues Relating to Families and Households

Mike Rochford

This is a response to the paper by Natalie Jackson and Ian Pool on the treatment of families and households by researchers and policy makers. That paper raises questions about definitions of families and households used in research which may influence the development of social policy.

The authors raise important issues, three of which I discuss here: parents-plus-others households, sole-parenting rates and family ethnicity. Jackson and Pool attempt to counter the “ethnocentric treatment of the extended family” by suggesting a “parents-plus-others” household type as an alternative category.

I argue that this household type is too heterogeneous a grouping to be treated as a quasi-family structure, and that if such a type became widely accepted it could have policy implications Jackson and Pool had not intended.

I accept the point that different definitions of numerators and denominators lead to different rates of sole parenting, but argue that the illustration given is exaggerated.

Finally, I discuss the categorisation of ethnicity in families, and argue for the widest possible definition of Māori family whenever a family ethnicity variable is used, to reflect the principles of whakapapa.