The privileging of marriage and long-term partnerships contributes to the marginalization of single women. This article explores the ways in which women defined as single work with the typical constructions of their identity available in the public arena. We view singleness as a discursively constructed social category. Using data from interviews with 30 women we examine the identity that women construct for themselves through their talk. We present the four main interpretative repertoires that women draw on, and look at two patterns of identity work commonly used to deal with the highly polarized repertoires. Singleness is a troubled category, and yet the positive and idealized repertoires available seem to make other aspects of women's lives and expectations pathological. We argue for a feminist psychology of singleness based on critical discursive psychology: the focus needs to be on the patterning of ideology rather than the supposed dysfunction of single women.

This article presents a discursive analysis of interview material in which single women reflect on their relationships and reasons for being single. Despite changing meanings of singleness, it remains a 'deficit identity' (Reynolds and Taylor, 2005) and the problem for a woman alone is to account positively for her single state. Our analysis challenges theorisations which would suggest autonomy and agency in how identity and self are constructed. It employs the methodological approaches developed in critical discursive psychology (for instance Wetherell, 1998) to look at the detailed identity work of speakers as part of the identity project proposed by Giddens (1992Giddens ( , 2005, Bauman (1998) and other writers associated with the 'reflexive modernisation' thesis (Adkins, 2002). By approaching 'choice' as one of the cultural resources available to speakers, we present a more complex view of the dilemmas around a speaker's identity work in her accounting for her relationships and the course her life has taken.

Objective To determine the effect of early discharge from hospital after surgery for breast cancer on physical and psychological illness. Design Randomised controlled trial comparing discharge two days after surgery (before removal of drain) with standard management (discharge after removal of drain). Setting Regional breast unit. Subjects 100 women with early breast cancer undergoing mastectomy and axillary node clearance (20) or breast conservation surgery (80). Main outcome measures Physical illness (infection, seroma formation, shoulder movement) and psychological illness (checklist of concerns, Rotterdam symptom questionnaire, hospital anxiety and depression scale) preoperatively and at one month and three months postoperatively. Results Women discharged early had greater shoulder movement (odds ratio 0.28 (95% confidence interval 0.08 to 0.95); P = 0.042) and less wound pain (odds ratio 0.28 (0.10 to 0.79); P = 0.016) three months after surgery compared with women given standard management. One month after surgery scores were significantly lower on the Rotterdam symptom questionnaire in patients who were discharged early (ratio of geometric mean scores 0.73 (0.55 to 0.98); P = 0.035), but rates of psychological illness generally did not differ between groups. Conclusions Increased rates of physical or psychological illness did not result from early discharge after surgery for breast cancer. This policy can be recommended for patients with support at home.

This paper discusses a speaker's narrative and discursive work to counter the negative associations of an identity as a single woman. An analysis of extracts from one interview exemplifies patterns found in a larger body of data. The speaker's story does rhetorical work (Billig, 1987) against the dominant ‘coupledom’ narrative of a life which progresses through stages associated with the heterosexual family, including love, marriage and parenthood. Her own life narrative is structured differently. The three structures we discuss are resources which can accommodate the unique details of a particular speaker's life as a single woman while also doing work against commonly held assumptions that singleness is a deficit identity. (Deficit identity, Single women, Narrative, Discursive, Coupledom)

Many looked after children spend lengthy periods in impermanent care, and their frequent moves probably contribute to subsequent disturbed behaviour. Concurrent planning aims to reduce the number of moves and the length of time before placement in a permanent family. In this study 24 young children in three concurrent planning (CP) projects and 44 from two ‘traditional’ adoption teams were followed for 12–15 months. Records were obtained of the number of moves between households and the dates of key events before the child's permanent family placement was confirmed by the courts. The CP children moved into permanent families significantly faster and with significantly fewer previous moves than the two comparison groups. Unexpectedly, the CP children were significantly younger than the children following ‘traditional’ adoption programmes, making direct comparison impossible. Among those birth parents who were interviewed, the majority saw advantages in the CP approach. Concurrent planning carers reported high levels of personal anxiety but positive views of the advantages for the children. We conclude that CP can be used to achieve earlier permanence and fewer moves between carers for young children from selected birth families. The success of a CP team is dependent on the support of other professionals involved in determining permanent placements, based on a shared acknowledgement of the damaging effects of delay for the looked after child.