Jan Macvarish

Dr Jan Macvarish is a researcher and lecturer at the University of Kent. 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. She is particularly interested in questions of morality and moralization in risk culture. She has explored the manifestation of these themes in the policy context through research on teenage parenthood, the regulation and provision of fertility treatment and most recently on the ‘use and abuse’ of neuroscience in family policy. She contributed two chapters to the Centre’s book, Parenting Culture Studies; Chapter Three ‘The Politics of Parenting’ and Essay Three ‘Babies’ Brains and Parenting Policy: The Insensitive Mother’. Her new book, Neuroparenting: The Expert Invasion of Family Life, is published by Palgrave Macmillan and traces the growing influence of ‘neuroparenting’ in British policy and politics.