This volume fills a major gap in the evidence base on adolescents and youth in India by bringing together research, policy critiques and programme analyses in an intersectoral and multidisciplinary way. With about 373 million persons between the ages of 10 and 24 years, India has the largest number of young people of any country in the world. While this large cohort presents an excellent opportunity to reap a rich demographic dividend, their potential can be realised only with intelligent investments, which create well nourished, healthy, appropriately educated and skilled youth. This volume is based on desk reviews and is complemented by discussions with experts in 4 key thematic areas: nutrition, sexual and reproductive health, mental health and livelihoods, overall focusing on the health and wellbeing of the young in India. Each chapter provides a comprehensive picture of the current situation in a focal theme and identifies significant gaps in information/data and programmes. In addition, it explores the scenario of building capacity for undertaking research on, and with adolescents, through a qualitative needs assessment. This timely volume provides a thorough overview of related research, policy and programmes for a wide group of social and behavioural scientists and public health experts interested in India's young people.

This book explores the place of sexuality in a Hungarian vocational school. Building upon ethnographic research using a post-structuralist and intersectional theoretical framework, the author highlights the voices of teachers and students in their everyday environment and gives them the opportunity to speak about themselves and their experiences: in doing so, addressing a significant gap in the market. The author critically discusses key issues concerning schooling and sexuality, addressing such themes as LGBTQ+ youth and teachers, institutional hierarchy, and the role of sexuality in the re/production of social inequalities through education. Through these topics, she sensitively questions what should be expected of schools in preparing their students for the wider world. The intersectional approach employed by the author will appeal to scholars in a wide variety of disciplines, from gender and sexuality studies to the sociology of education and race and ethnicity studies.

This book investigates how constructed representations of the child have and continue to restrict children's opportunities to engage in moral discourses, and the implications this has on children's everyday experiences. By considering a moral dimension to both structure and agency, the author focuses on the nature of the images that are used to represent the child and how these sit in contrast to the active and meaning-driven way in which children negotiate their everyday lives. The book therefore argues that 'morality' provides a filter to understand the backdrop for interaction, as well as offering a focus for engaging with the individual as a social agent, acting and reacting in the world around them. Negotiating Childhoods will be of interest to students and scholars of sociology, childhood studies, criminology, social work, culture and media studies and philosophy.

Introduces an understanding of parenting by asking, what is a child, what is a parent, and why does a child need a parent. This book leaves dogma behind and brings the reader to the reality of daily living. Combining her experience as a mother and grandmother with her studies in psychology and social work, the author presents a warm and human way of understanding the nature and needs of children. Parents and professionals working with children will find this a helpful book for understanding children, developing an awareness of their individual differences and observing how behaviour is learned.

This book challenges and revises existing ways of thinking about leaving care policy, practice and research at regional, national and international levels. Bringing together contributors from fifteen countries, it covers a range of topical policy and practice issues within national, international or comparative contexts. These include youth justice, disability, access to higher education, the role of advocacy groups, ethical challenges and cultural factors. In doing so it demonstrates that, whilst young people are universally a vulnerable group, there are vast differences in their experiences of out-of-home care and transitions from care, and their shorter and longer-term outcomes. Equally, there are significant variations between jurisdictions in terms of the legislative, policy and practice supports and opportunities made available to them. This significant edited collection is essential reading for all those who work with young people from care, including social workers, counsellors, and youth and community practitioners, as well as for students and scholars of child welfare.

This book examines the factors affecting the health and wellbeing of young people as they transition to adulthood under the shadow of migration control. Drawing on unique longitudinal data, it illuminates how they conceptualize wellbeing for themselves and others in contexts of prolonged and politically induced uncertainty. The authors offer an in-depth analysis of the experiences of over one hundred unaccompanied young migrants, primarily from Afghanistan, Albania and Eritrea. They show the lengths these young people will go to in pursuit of safety, security and the futures they aspire to. Interdisciplinary in nature, the book champions a new political economy analysis of wellbeing in the context of migration and demonstrates the urgent need for policy reform.

The fundamental aim of youth work is to build trusting and mutually respectful relationships with young people, creating transformative experiences for young people in formal and informal spaces outside of homes and schools. These complex and multidimensional situations mean that the day-to-day work of youth workers is full of dilemmas, pitting moral, developmental, motivational, organizational, and other concerns against each other.

By showing how different youth workers respond to a variety of such dilemmas, this authentic text makes visible youth workers’ unique knowledge and skills, and explores how to work with challenging situations – from the everyday to the extraordinary. Beginning by setting out a framework for dilemma resolution, it includes a number of narrative-based chapters, in which youth workers describe and reflect on dilemmas they have faced, the knowledge and experiences they brought to bear on them and alternative paths they could have taken. Each chapter closes with a discussion from the literature about themes raised in the chapter, an analysis of dilemma and a set of overarching discussion questions designed to have readers compare and contrast the cases, consider what they would do in the situation, and reflect on their own practice.

Teaching us a great deal about the norms, conventions, continuities, and discontinuities of youth work, this practical book reveals essential dimensions of the profession and contributes to a practice-based theoretical foundation of youth work.

Table of Contents

1. Becoming a Youth Worker 2. Learning to 'Read': Cultivating Ecological Intelligence 3. Navigating Inexperience: How Reflection Guides Practice for a Novice Youth Worker 4. Balancing High Expectations, Program Structure, and Youth Realities: Making Kids Fit the Program or the Program Fit the Kids 5. Balancing Conflicting Values from Home, a Youth Organization, and the Community: Keeping Youth Wellbeing at the Center of Youth Work 6. Youth Worker and Organizational Responses to Risky Behavior and Dangerous Situations 7. Balancing Youth Privacy with the Youth Worker's Need for Information: The Importance of Organizational Support in Dilemma Resolution 8. Activating Personal Knowledge to Balance the Needs of High-risk Youth with the Safety of Others in the Program 9. 'When I Heard Who it Was, I Knew it Wasn't a Real Gun': 'Reading' the Context to Maintain Safety 10. 'Do They Think We're Not in Charge?': Addressing Dilemmas that Arise in a Social Justice Youth Development Approach 11. Cross-cutting Themes and Implications for Youth Worker Professional Development

This brief explores the current theories, trends, risk factors, and intervention efforts related to juvenile crime. Although arrest rates for juveniles in the US have declined over the last two decades, the amount of severe crimes warrants increased examination as the US reports higher rates than most other developed countries. The authors examine individual, family, and environmental risk and protective factors for juvenile crime, while considering the need for better integration of treatment into critically at-risk areas of the community. Covering notable topics of interest for researchers and public policy makers alike, this brief provides an overview of factors and trends related to juvenile crime, aiming to support more effective, evidence-based treatment and prevention.

This book provides a nuanced, complex, comparative analysis of adolescent girls' migration and mobility in the Global South. The stories and the narratives of migrant girls collected in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Sudan guide the readers in drawing the contours of their lives on the move, a complex, fluid scenario of choices, constraints, setbacks, risks, aspirations and experiences in which internal or international migration plays a pivotal role. The main argument of the book is that migration of adolescent girls intersects with other important transitions in their lives, such as those related to education, work, marriage and childbearing, and that this affects their transition into adulthood in various ways. While migration is sometimes negative, it can also offer girls new and better opportunities with positive implications for their future lives. The book explores also how concepts of adolescence and adulthood for girls are being transformed in the context of migration.

Every child knows what it means to play, but the rest of us can merely speculate. Is it a kind of adaptation, teaching us skills, inducting us into certain communities? Is it power, pursued in games of prowess? Fate, deployed in games of chance? Daydreaming, enacted in art? Or is it just frivolity? Brian Sutton-Smith, a leading proponent of play theory, considers each possibility as it has been proposed, elaborated, and debated in disciplines from biology, psychology, and education to metaphysics, mathematics, and sociology.

Sutton-Smith focuses on play theories rooted in seven distinct "rhetorics"--the ancient discourses of Fate, Power, Communal Identity, and Frivolity and the modern discourses of Progress, the Imaginary, and the Self. In a sweeping analysis that moves from the question of play in child development to the implications of play for the Western work ethic, he explores the values, historical sources, and interests that have dictated the terms and forms of play put forth in each discourse's "objective" theory.

This work reveals more distinctions and disjunctions than affinities, with one striking exception: however different their descriptions and interpretations of play, each rhetoric reveals a quirkiness, redundancy, and flexibility. In light of this, Sutton-Smith suggests that play might provide a model of the variability that allows for "natural" selection. As a form of mental feedback, play might nullify the rigidity that sets in after successful adaption, thus reinforcing animal and human variability. Further, he shows how these discourses, despite their differences, might offer the components for a new social science of play.

Parents need help to teach their teens how to make decisions responsibly--and do so without going crazy or damaging the relationship.Parenting Teens with Love and Logic, from the duo who wrote Parenting with Love and Logic, empowers parents with the skills necessary to set limits, teach important skills, and encourage decision-making in their teenagers.Covering a wide range of real-life issues teens face--including divorce, ADD, addiction, and sex--this book gives you the tools to help your teens find their identity and grow in maturity.Indexed for easy reference.

This book examines the reasons why young people vote. Viewing political behavior through a psychological lens, this book uses psychological developmental models to test the theory of political identity development and explain how and why young people vote. Rather than studying why young people do not vote, as the majority of the literature does, the book discusses the mechanisms and purpose behind youth voting. Themes of the text include identifying how political identities develop in young people, how leaders can contribute to identity development, and how we can explain differences between young Independents who will vote and those who will not. The first chapter engages the reader with the background for each theoretical element of the book and develops the argument for the book as a whole. Three major substantive chapters discuss and test the theories of political identity development, political leadership as identity role models, and how we misunderstand political independence by not taking into account why young people might choose to identify as an Independent. The final chapter discusses implications for upcoming elections and how this research might better inform people and institutions interested in increasing youth turnout to reformulate their approach. An overarching discussion of identity and the political components of identity development, this book will be of interest to political scientists studying public opinion and voting behavior, campaigns and elections, and political psychology, as well as practitioners such as civic engagement and youth voting groups who wish to engage young people in the political process.

This book, uncovers the lived experiences of street-frequenting young people in Fiji. Typically viewed as 'out of place', these young people disturb what it means to be young and Fijian. Despite their marginal existence, they through their activities demonstrate the need to belong. The book adopts a critical postmodern perspective to explore this reality and propose ways of engaging with street-frequenting young people. Candidly written, Street-Frequenting Young People in Fiji identifies issues that provoke the conscience of Fijian hierarchy and its leaders. It will appeal to students and scholars across a range of disciplines- including sociology, childhood and youth studies, and social work- as well as practitioners and policy analysts.

Going through puberty and adolescence presents unwelcome changes for many transgender youth, and this book provides advice to parents of transgender teens to help them understand what their child is experiencing and feeling during this challenging time. Addressing common fears and concerns that parents of transgender teens share, the book guides them through steps they can take with their child, including advice on hormones and surgery and how to transition socially. It addresses the recent increase in teens presenting with non-binary identities, and reflects major legal, social and medical developments regarding transgender issues. The author's insights are gained from his professional experience of providing psychotherapy regarding gender identity. He provides resources and further reading to help parents expand their knowledge. Although aimed predominantly at parents, this book is useful for anyone working with teenagers and young adults as it provides many answers to common questions about adolescent gender identity.

Help children overcome the increasing dangers they face because of their parents' addictions Impact of Substance Abuse on Children and Families addresses the growing concern over children at risk of developing physical and mental health problems because of their parents' addictions to alcohol and other drugs (AOD), including a chapter on the troubling increase of methamphetamine abuse by parents. The book's contributors examine current research findings from the United States, Australia, Ireland, and Israel to provide much-needed insight into the effects of addiction on family dynamics, parental attachment styles, and family characteristics. The book also looks at the impact of addiction on school-aged children and on mothers in residential treatment with their children, survey assessment instruments and treatment outcomes, and the value of Student Assistance Services for older children. Almost 25 percent of children in the United States live in a household where a parent or other adult is a heavy or binge drinker. More than 10 percent live in family where illicit drugs are used. Children of alcoholics are nearly 10 times more likely to develop an alcohol use disorder as other children, and often develop behavior problems such as depression, anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, conduct disorder, and oppositional defiant disorder. Children of illicit drug abusers are more likely than other children to demonstrate immature, impulsive, or irresponsible behavior, to have lower IQ scores, and poorer school attendance. Impact of Substance Abuse on Children and Families focuses on these critical and often ignored aspects of addiction, providing the latest evidence-based qualitative and quantitative research findings, as well as a summary of available literature. Impact of Substance Abuse on Children and Families examines: the impact on children at various developmental stages the role of the family as a treatment resource alcohol problems and marriage parental attachment styles of drug-using fathers family cohesion and adaptability self-in-relations theory family-centered service models the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) adolescent substance abuse treatment online treatment options Impact of Substance Abuse on Children and Families is an essential resource for both academics and practitioners working in social work, addictions counseling, sociology, psychology, public health, and family and children's studies.

This book explores the concept of school belonging in adolescents from a socio-ecological perspective, acknowledging that young people are uniquely connected to a broad network of groups and systems within a school system. Using a socio-ecological framework, it positions belonging as an essential aspect of psychological functioning for which schools offer unique opportunities to improve. It also offers insights into the factors that influence school belonging at the student level during adolescence in educational settings. Taking a socio-ecological perspective and drawing from innovative research methods, the book encourages researchers interested in school leadership to foster students' sense of belonging by developing their qualities and by changing school systems and processes

The Culture of Mean is the first book-length feminist critical exploration of representations of youth bullying in media. Bringing into conversation scholarship on feminism, media, new communication technologies, surveillance, gender, race, sexuality, and class, Emily D. Ryalls critically examines the explosion of discourse about youth bullying that has occurred in the United States during the last two decades. Countering the monolithic and extreme cultural reaction to narratives about bullying, Ryalls argues that, while it seems common sense to view bullying as always wrong and dangerous, not all aggression is bullying and it is problematic to assume so, because it becomes very difficult to differentiate between healthy conflict and unhealthy (potentially violent) torment. Moreover, since the label "bullying" often does not differentiate between teasing, conflict, sexual harassment, and violence, increasingly the most common way to deal with young people accused of bullying is to criminalize their actions. Through an analysis of books, film, television, and journalistic accounts of bullying, The Culture of Mean shows how constructions of bullying in popular culture create an overly simplistic binary of good and bad people. This process individualizes the problem of bullying and disallows a more complex understanding of the structural issues at work by suggesting that putting an end to bullying simply requires incarcerating those evil teens who are prone to bullying behaviors. This critical perspective of bullying will be of interest to scholars and students interested in the fields of girls' studies, cultural studies, communication, education, sociology, and media studies, as well as parents of school-aged children.

Do you wish your son or daughter would tell you more about what is happening in their life, and that they would open up to you more often? Are you worried about them as they seem to be spending more and more time in their bedroom and on their smart phone? The teenage years can be a time of concern and worry for parents and carers from all backgrounds. However, Why Won't My Teenager Talk to Me? offers the parent and care-giver insightful and practical advice, as to how to encourage positive and respectful two-way communication between you and your teenager. The new edition of this essential book offers a positive way of thinking about the teenage years. So much has changed in the last five years since the book first appeared. Our knowledge of the human brain has increased, and this new edition includes a whole chapter devoted to the changing teenage brain.

How can we ensure that adolescent research is really assisting the optimal developmental transitions of young people, now and in the near future? Reframing Adolescent Research suggests that what is needed is a 'paradigm-shift', a movement towards implementing more systemic, innovative and inter-disciplinary approaches to youth research, which are more suited to resolving the real issues that young people face in the twenty-first century. Contributions from world-class academics examine theoretical concerns and methodological challenges to substantive areas in the field, considering possible limitations and weaknesses in current approaches. They argue for the need for 'unorthodox,' systemic inter-disciplinary research which looks beyond the social sciences to consider innovations and novel approaches to the study of adolescence and development across the lifespan. New theories, methods and interventions are presented that are essential to advancing the project of understanding adolescents and how they develop on a global stage. This ground-breaking volume will encourage debate and dialogue on the future of youth research. It is valuable reading for advanced students and researchers in adolescent development and developmental psychology.

This Brief fills a gap in criminological literature, as there are few empirically-based studies on delinquency of adolescent girls. It provides results of a longitudinal study, The Pittsburgh Girls Study (PGS), which includes 2,451 girls, followed annually from age 10-19, the ages when criminal behavior tends to emerge. This study provides the most extensive and comprehensive investigation into the criminal offending and self-reported trajectories of offending of PGS participants, along with an in-depth examination of other criminal career dimensions. In five chapters, this short volume reviews the limited extent of girls' delinquency literature, presents data on girls' offending patterns (onset, persistence, specialization, and desistence), provides insights on gender differences by comparison with the Pittsburgh Youth Study, which focused on male offenders, and explores the theoretical and practical implications of the results. By understanding the origins and onset of criminal behavior in girls, researchers can begin to understand effective interventions and crime prevention. This Brief will be of interest to researchers in criminology and criminal justice, as well as related fields such as sociology, public policy, and psychology.

Using innovative, participatory research methods, this book offers new insights into the issues surrounding parental separation or divorce from the unique perspective, and retrospectives, of young adults. As they look back on their childhood, their views provide valuable insights into how children experience and accommodate their parents' separation. Drawing on the qualitative research findings, Kay-Flowers develops a new framework to provide a useful analytical tool for academics and practitioners working with children and families to make sense of young people's experiences and puts forward suggestions for improving support for children in the future.

The Impossible Imperative brings to life the daily efforts of child welfare professionals working on behalf of vulnerable children and families. Stories that highlight the work, written by child welfare staff on the front lines, speak to the competing principles that shape everyday decisions. The book shows that, rather than being simple task of protecting children, the field of child welfare is shaped by a series of competing ideas. The text features eight principles that undergird child protection practice, all of which are typically in conflict with others. These principles guide practice and direct the course of policymaking, but when liberated from their aspirational context and placed in the real world, they are fraught with contradiction. The Impossible Imperative is designed to inspire a lively debate about the fundamental nature of child welfare and about the principles that serve as the foundation for the work. It can be used as a teaching tool for aspiring professionals and as motivation to those looking to social work to make a difference in the world.

This book draws on the findings of a two-year European research project to offer answers to the 'problem' of how to respond to violence involving young people that continues to challenge youth workers and policy makers. 'Responding to violence through youth work' combines elements of critical theory, psychosocial criminology and applied existential philosophy to present a new model for responding meaningfully and effectively to these issues, demonstrated through a series of case studies and insider accounts generated through peer research.

For American parents, teenage sex is something to be feared and forbidden: most would never consider allowing their children to have sex at home, and sex is a frequent source of family conflict. In the Netherlands, where teenage pregnancies are far less frequent than in the United States, parents aim above all for family cohesiveness, often permitting young couples to sleep together and providing them with contraceptives. Drawing on extensive interviews with parents and teens, "Not Under My Roof" offers an unprecedented, intimate account of the different ways that girls and boys in both countries negotiate love, lust, and growing up.
Tracing the roots of the parents' divergent attitudes, Amy T. Schalet reveals how they grow out of their respective conceptions of the self, relationships, gender, autonomy, and authority. She provides a probing analysis of the way family culture shapes not just sex but also alcohol consumption and parent-teen relationships. Avoiding caricatures of permissive Europeans and puritanical Americans, Schalet shows that the Dutch require self-control from teens and parents, while Americans guide their children toward autonomous adulthood at the expense of the family bond.