Professor Susan Branje

Susan Branje is a Professor and Head of Department within the themes ‘Education & Pedagogy’ and ‘Youth & Family’ at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. Her expertise is young people’s development as well as their relationships with friends and parents. Branje on the interdisciplinary theme ‘Where do I belong? Children with more than one home environment’: “It is essential for people to feel that they belong. Close relationships with friends and parents contribute to psychological and physical health. In this way, relationships can offer support and reduce stress.”

Identity crisis

Branje contributes to the theme by gathering, processing and analysing quantitative data. “I monitor families longitudinally using questionnaires and intensive measurements. Next, I analyse correlations between variables. For example, I will look at the connection between family life and young people’s identity formation.” In Branje’s view, a person’s identity is closely related to the place where they belong and their place in the family. People form this identity by mirroring themselves in others. “If children’s choices don’t match their families’ expectations, this can trigger an identity crisis.”

Connecting different disciplines ensures the challenging nature of this research.

Outsider

According to the research theme, when parents get a divorce, this affects the issue of where children belong and what their place within the family is. It also changes their identity formation. “My parents were divorced themselves and I sometimes felt like an outsider as a child when my parents talked about each other in a negative light”, she explains. Other children experience the same feelings. This can be very difficult for children when they want to maintain good relations with both parents. “If a child feels too much loyalty towards both parents, this can be at the child’s expense,”, says Branje.

Two homes

As the interdisciplinary theme highlights, parents getting a divorce often has other consequences as well. For example, children have an easier time organising their lives when they live in one home than when they live in two homes. As a child, Branje herself had to shuttle between two homes and two extended families. “Living in two separate homes makes it harder to get involved in the neighbourhood or join in activities. As a result, you may not feel that you belong. This feeling is essential for participating actively in society.” Branje says this is not the outcome for all children from divorced families. ‘However, they do have a harder time discovering where they belong.”
 

Challenging edge

“Linking up different disciplines is what gives this study a challenging edge”, she says. “It makes us add more context, including information that would normally be skipped.” The study makes use of quantitative as well as qualitative methods. According to Branje, using different methods is ‘highly productive’. “It results in a plethora of new ideas.”
 

Opportunities for science

Branje does not know yet where the study will eventually be published. Many scientific journals are still unidisciplinary and not open to multidisciplinary research. “There are still opportunities for science here”, Branje argues. Apart from science, where does she feel at home? “I feel at home with my own family: my husband and my two sons.”