While becoming a parent is relatively easy, parenting is a skill that is learned and improved over a lifetime. This reference book provides a comprehensive summary of what we know about parents and parent-child relationships. Through more than 240 alphabetically arranged entries, the volume synthesizes the present state of research on parenting. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and represents an authoritative view on a particular topic. Entries are related to child activity, child outcomes, child states, parent behaviors, parental situations, external and community concerns, systemic issues, the transition to parenthood, available resources, and various persons who have shaped our knowledge of parenting. The entries draw on information from a wide range of disciplines, including psychology, education, and sociology. Each entry includes a brief bibliography, and the volume closes with a selected list of works for further reading. The word parent is most often used to refer to a biological relationship with a child. But the word parent, like mother and father, can also invoke acts of caring, nurturing, and protecting. When we say, That child needs a father, we imply that the child needs a relationship with a man capable of fathering. This emphasizes a social and emotional relationship, not merely a biological one. Parenting means assuming responsibility for the long-term care of a child. Becoming a parent is relatively easy. But parenting is a skill that is learned and improved over a lifetime. Moreover, parenting is a skill that becomes more complex in response to the demands of a changing society. Some elements of successful parenting are relatively abstract and seem to remain fairly constant across different generations. But with the rise of new social problems and the proliferation of various threats to the integrity of the nuclear family, the parenting strategies of a generation ago are not necessarily effective today. Parenting has also received growing amounts of attention from researchers, and what was once considered chiefly an art is now also recognized for being a science. Our knowledge of parenting has increased significantly in the last few decades, and new developments continue to be made daily. This reference book provides a comprehensive summary of what we know about parents and the parent-child relationship. Through more than 240 alphabetically arranged entries, the volume synthesizes the present state of research on parenting. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and provides an authoritative overview of a particular topic. Entries are related to child activity, child outcomes, child states, parent behaviors, parental situations, external and community factors, systemic concerns, the transition to parenthood, available resources, and a number of persons who have added to our knowledge of the field. The entries draw on a wide range of disciplines, including psychology, education, and sociology. Each entry closes with a brief bibliography, and the volume concludes with a selected list of works for further reading.

What was lost when Kids Company imploded last summer? More than reputations. The charitys founding vision, that there is a gap called love in how the state responds to abused and abandoned children, also vanished. In this book, the founder of Kids Company lays out the thinking behind a model of care that broke the cycle of neglect for thousands of vulnerable children. She reveals the true scale of Britain's failure in children's services, making public two decades of candid exchanges with prime ministers and senior politicians to explain why the sector has not improved since Victorian times. She also reveals the deceits used by local authorities to stop the magnitude of the problem becoming known. This is a book of hope, however. Calling on a plethora of moving case histories, it presents the science that gives cause for optimism; proof that even the most troubled young lives can be turned around. Looking forward rather than back, the book shows how a new model of support could be cheaper and far more effective than existing provision. Kids Company has gone. And yet something like it must be the future.It is imperative that the breakthroughs in understanding that came from its work are now shared with the widest audience. This book is an unusual collaboration between two outstanding individuals. One author is Camila Batmanghelidjh, who spent thirty years working with troubled families. The other is an award-winning journalist, Tim Rayment, who was sent to investigate Camila but decided instead that the real public interest lay in hearing her vital, life-changing message.

This book focuses on the crucial role that relationships play in the lives of teenagers. The authors particularly examine the ways that healthy relationships can help teenagers avoid such common risk behaviours as substance abuse, dating violence, sexual assault and unsafe sexual practices. Addressing the current lack of effective prevention programmes for teenagers, they present new strategies for encouraging healthy choices. The book first traces differences between the 'rules of relating' for boys and girls and discusses typical and atypical patterns of experimentation in teenagers. The authors identify the common link among risk behaviours: the relationship connection. In the second part of the book, they examine the principles of successful programmes used by schools and communities to cultivate healthy adolescent development. An illuminating conclusion describes the key ingredients for engaging adolescents, their parents, teachers and communities, in the effort to promote healthy, non-violent relationships among teenagers.

The dramatically increasing aging population of Hong Kong has elicited new risks and opportunities to facilitate a positive life for older adults. This book offers a holistic review of gerontological theories and literature, and constructs a conceptual framework of social support networks, coping and positive aging. In light of the implications of the convoy model of social support to depict an indigenous landscape of positive aging in Hong Kong, this is one of the very few empirical studies that adopts both quantitative research and qualitative research. The research consisted of a pilot study of in-depth interviews with 16 older Hong Kong Chinese and a main study surveying 393 older members of District Elderly Community Center. The results of the study indicate that family and peer support constitute the mainstay of support networks of the elderly, and that family and peer support are associated with positive aging. Moreover, the study shows that it is the depth of emotional closeness, namely, close interaction and intimacy with social partners that makes the greatest contribution to positive aging. Additionally, problem coping and emotion coping are found to mediate the relationship between social support networks and positive aging. There is potential in bringing more domestic helpers into elderly care and improving the service quality such that the goal of Aging in Place can be promoted in Hong Kong. Intended for researchers in social work, gerontology and positive psychology, it is also essential reading for graduates and social work professionals interested in this area. This book makes a valuable contribution to social gerontological research among Hong Kong older adults and the promotion of wellbeing in the elderly via the construct of positive aging in the culture of Chinese society.

This handbook offers a practical guide to all aspects of planning, evaluating, and implementing student activities. This work is both a functional handbook and an instructional reference tool. After establishing a basic foundation, they describe activities in specific areas: performance activities, student leadership, and class-related clubs and trips. Sybouts and Krepel present methods for planning and evaluating, financing, using available resources, and identifying legal considerations. They confront frequently raised and often controversial questions about school activities. This comprehensive volume also provides a list of supplementary readings and a bibliography for further study.

This book examines how the shifts in the early 19th century in New York City affected children in particular. Indeed, one could argue that within this context, that "children" and "childhood" came into being. In order to explore this, the skeletal remains of the children buried at the small, local, yet politically radical Spring Street Presbyterian Church are detailed. Population level analyses are combined with individual biological profiles from sorted burials and individual stories combed from burial records and archival data. What emerges are life histories of children-of infants, toddlers, younger children, older children, and adolescents-during this time of transition in New York City. When combined with historical data, these life histories, for instance, tell us about what it was like to grow up in this changing time in New York City

Solution-oriented therapy focuses on eliciting, evoking, and highlighting the strengths of clients, as opposed to their pathology and deficits. Here, Robert Bertolino explains his great success in applying this model to the treatment of adolescents. He describes how to work with these young clients to help empower them to change their life scripts.

Rising life expectancy has led to the growth of the 'Sandwich Generation' - men and women who are caregivers to their children of varying ages as well as for one or both parents whilst still managing their own household and work responsibilities. This book considers both the strains and benefits of this position. Tackling a myriad of issues such as gender, parents and parents-in-law, ethnic differences, residential status, and developing changes in the caregiving relationship such as Alzheimer's or dementia, this book highlights the complexities of the caregiving relationship. Key chapters also address potential benefits including improved relationships, skill set development and generously giving to another. Expert contributors use examples to illustrate the need for organizations to address increases in caregiving among their employees and develop supportive policies and initiatives. They further show that there is a need at the country level to integrate employees, communities, employers, businesses and levels of government to deal with this increasing trend. This timely book will prove an indispensible reference for academics and students interested in the sandwich generation, caregiving and health. Its practical approach will also benefit human resource management professionals, managers dealing with sandwiched employees and health administrators at various levels of government. Contributors include: R. Attieh, S. Austen, R. Burke, L. Calvano, C.E. Greaves, T. Jefferson, N.L. Jimmieson, A.H. Kim, S. LoboPrabhu, N. Mandell, A. Mitra, V. Molinari, A. Ollier-Malterre, R. Ong, S.L. Parker, A.H. Prokos, J. Reid Keene, C. Reinicke, C.W. Rudolph, R. Sharp, P. Ulmanen, S.I. White Means, T. Yamashita, H. Zacher

This book presents new insights into the consequences of the impending growth in and impact of the older segment of Latino aging adults across distinctive regions of the Americas. It uses a comparative research framework to further understanding of current issues in health and aging in the transnational context of the health and migratory experiences of the U.S.- Mexican population. It provides an important contribution to the interdisciplinary investigation of chronic diseases and functional impairments, social care and medical services, care-giving and intervention development, and neighborhood factors supporting optimal aging, using new conceptual and methodological approaches (inter-group comparisons). Specifically, the chapters employ different methodologies that investigate trends in aging health and services related to immigration processes, family and household structure, macroeconomic changes in the quality of community life, and focus on the new realities of aging in Latino families in local communities. The book focuses on measurement, data-quality issues, new conceptual modeling techniques, and longitudinal survey capabilities, and suggests needed areas of new research. As such it is of interest to researchers and policy makers in a wide range of disciplines from social and behavioral sciences to economics, gerontology, geriatrics, and public health.

Most studies of geriatric patients have focused on nursing homes. In fact, most people are placed in these institutions only after being evaluated by medical and social service staff. This ethnography details the day-to-day experiences of a geriatric and assessment unit by examining the staff, families, and patients themselves. It looks at the activities that take place in the unit as well as the less obvious cultural patterns of the process. Using the Ethnography of Speaking method, it explores the human side of this most difficult of life's decisions.

Aging, Health and Technology takes a problem-centered approach to examine how older adults use technology for health. It examines the many ways in which technology is being used by older adults, focusing on challenges, solutions and perspectives of the older user. Using aging-health technology as a lens, the book examines issues of technology adoption, basic human factors, cognitive aging, mental health, aging and usability, privacy, trust and automation. Each chapter takes a case study approach to summarize lessons learned from unique examples that can be applied to similar projects, while also providing general information about older adults and technology.

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Read the Introduction.

"Way and Judy Chu have put together an excellent book on explorations into the lives of adolescent boys. The essays are rich in diversity, not only in the populations of boys studied, but also in research methodology and theoretical perspective."--"Choice"

"Empirical research on the lives and behavior of adolescent boys from a variety of ethnic and class backgrounds."
--"The Chronicle"

"The volume explores the experiences of boys who have been excluded from previous developmental research and also challenges the existing stereotypes about boys."
--"NYU Today"

"Brings together a coherent and consistent body of literature on a topic that is often relegated to a single chapter or afterthought in similar books and edited volumes...."Adolescent Boys" challenges the limited and often skewed male images perpetuated by the media, superordinant male groupings, and Western men by giving voice to adolexcent boys growing up in diverse cultures of boyhood."
--"Harvard Educational Review"

A flurry of best-selling works has recently urged us to rescue and protect boys. They have described how boys are failing at school, acting out, or shutting down emotionally. Lost in much of the ensuing public conversation are the boys themselves--the texture of their lives and the ways in which they resist stereotypical representations of them.

Most of this work on boys is based primarily on middle class, white boys. Yet boys from poor and working class families as well as those from African American, Latino, and Asian American backgrounds need to be understood in their own terms and not just as a contrast to white or middle classboys. Adolescent Boys brings together the most up-to-date empirical research focused on understanding the development of boys from diverse racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds.

The authors show how the contexts of boys' lives, such as the schools they attend shape their identities and relationships. The research in this book will help professionals and parents understand the diversity and richness of boys' experiences.

Evaluation is an essential element of professional practice. However, there is little in the literature that is designed to help students involve and support young people in evaluating the impact of youth work activities. This comprehensive book explores current thinking about evaluation in the context of youth work and community work and offers both theoretical understanding and practical guidance for students, practitioners, organisational leaders and commissioners. Part 1 provides underpinning knowledge of the origins, purpose and functions of evaluation. It charts the developments in evaluation thinking over the past 50 years, and includes an exploration of 'theory of change'. Concepts such as impact, impact measurement and shared measurement are critically examined to illustrate the political nature of evaluation. Findings from empirical research are used to illuminate the challenges of applying a quasi-experimental paradigm of evaluation of youth and community work. Part 2 introduces the reader to participatory evaluation and presents an overview of the histories, rationale and underpinning principles. Empowerment evaluation, collaborative evaluation and democratic evaluation are examined in detail, including practice examples. Transformative Evaluation, an approach specifically designed for youth and community work, is presented. Part 3 focuses on the 'doing' of participatory evaluation and offers guidance to those new to participatory evaluation in youth and community work and a helpful check for those already engaging. It provides valuable information on planning, methods, data and data analysis and processes for sharing knowledge. This essential text will enable the reader to reconstruct evaluation as a tool for learning as well as a tool for judging value. It provides a comprehensive reference, drawing on a wide range of literature and practice examples to support those involved in youth and community work to develop and implement participatory approaches to evaluating and communicating the meaning and value of youth and community work to a wider audience.

When did the kid who strolled the wooded path, trolled the stream, played pick-up ball in the back forty turn into the child confined to the mall and the computer screen? How did "Go out and play " go from parental shooing to prescription? When did parents become afraid to send their children outdoors? Surveying the landscape of childhood from the Civil War to our own day, this environmental history of growing up in America asks why and how the nation's children have moved indoors, often losing touch with nature in the process.

In the time the book covers, the nation that once lived in the country has migrated to the city, a move whose implications and ramifications for youth Pamela Riney-Kehrberg explores in chapters concerning children's adaptation to an increasingly urban and sometimes perilous environment. Her focus is largely on the Midwest and Great Plains, where the response of families to profound economic and social changes can be traced through its urban, suburban, and rural permutations--as summer camps, scouting, and nature education take the place of children's unmediated experience of the natural world. As the story moves into the mid-twentieth century, and technology in the form of radio and television begins to exert its allure, Riney-Kehrberg brings her own experience to bear as she documents the emerging tug-of-war between indoors and outdoors--and between the preferences of children and parents. It is a battle that children, at home with their electronic amenities, seem to have won--an outcome whose meaning and likely consequences this timely book helps us to understand.

Examines and clarifies the role of adult children as service providers to elderly parents. Drawing upon extensive interviews with elderly parents and adult children, the author describes how each group perceives the relative importance of helping services and suggests means by which children can increase helping behavior.

How do we understand children and young people's lives in ways that do not rely on nostalgic romantic ideals or demonising prejudices? Can the geographical concepts of space, place and spatiality enhance our understanding of childhood and how children experience their lives as social actors? This book draws on a rich and growing academic literature concerned with the spatiality of childhood and the spaces and places in which children live, learn, work, and play. It examines changing ways of seeing space, place and environment and how these can promote rethinking about children's lives across local and global scales. In common with other texts in the "New Childhoods" series, it asks for a reappraisal of modernity's assumptions about childhood and for a move towards full participation of children and young people in matters that concern us all. Combining critical discussion of theory with examples drawn from research, Rethinking Children's Spaces and Places offers readers a language to facilitate rethinking and catalyse active responses to the challenges of 21st-century childhoods.

Our children mean the world to us. They are so central to our hopes and dreams that we will do almost anything to keep them healthy, happy, and safe. What happens, then, when a child has serious problems? In Family Trouble, a compelling portrait of upheaval in family life, sociologist Ara Francis tells the stories of middle-class men and women whose children face significant medical, psychological, and social challenges. Francis interviewed the mothers and fathers of children with such problems as depression, bi-polar disorder, autism, learning disabilities, drug addiction, alcoholism, fetal alcohol syndrome, and cerebral palsy. Children's problems, she finds, profoundly upset the foundations of parents' everyday lives, overturning taken-for-granted expectations, daily routines, and personal relationships. Indeed, these problems initiated a chain of disruption that moved through parents' lives in domino-like fashion, culminating in a crisis characterized by uncertainty, loneliness, guilt, grief, and anxiety. Francis looks at how mothers and fathers often differ in their interpretation of a child's condition, discusses the gendered nature of child rearing, and describes how parents struggle to find effective treatments and to successfully navigate medical and educational bureaucracies. But above all, Family Trouble examines how children's problems disrupt middle-class dreams of the ""normal"" family. It captures how children's problems ""radiate"" and spill over into other areas of parents' lives, wreaking havoc even on their identities, leading them to reevaluate deeply held assumptions about their own sense of self and what it means to achieve the good life. Engagingly written, Family Trouble offers insight to professionals and solace to parents. The book offers a clear message to anyone in the throes of family trouble: you are in good company, and you are not as different as you might feel.

The volume was inspired by the Children and Anthropology conference at the 14th International Congress of Anthropology and Ethnological Sciences, which was held at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, in July of 1998. It was there that the contributing researchers/authors presented an argument aimed at changing the face of both anthropology and the study of children. They contend that anthropologists could and should contribute to a revitalized framework for the study of children and that childhood and youth culture are important sites for developing a more innovative and integrated anthropology.

As anthropologists struggle with competing research paradigms and agendas in this post-industrial, post-structural, late-modern world, it is argued here that research on children is an important arena for demonstrating the value of an anthropology that is both integrative (across sub-fields) and comparative. It seems clear that children in the 21st century will confront a range of both new and continuing problems that anthropologists are well-situated to address, such as the exploitation of Third World child labor, AIDS and other epidemics affecting children world-wide, and the impact of immigration as well as forced relocations due to war, natural disasters, and other social and environmental ills.

From the 1950s to the digital age, Americans have pushed their childrento live science-minded lives, cementing scientific discovery and youthfulcuriosity as inseparable ideals. In this multifaceted work, historian RebeccaOnion examines the rise of informal children's science education in thetwentieth century, from the proliferation of home chemistry sets after WorldWar I to the century-long boom in child-centred science museums. Onionlooks at how the United States has increasingly focused its energies over thelast century into producing young scientists outside of the classroom. Sheshows that although Americans profess to believe that success in the sciencesis synonymous with good citizenship, this idea is deeply complicated inan era when scientific data is hotly contested and many Americans have aconflicted view of science itself. These contradictions, Onion explains, can be understood by examiningconnections between the histories of popular science and the developmentof ideas about American childhood. She shows how the idealised concept of"science" has moved through the public consciousness and how the drive tomake child scientists has deeply influenced American culture.

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"A groundbreaking volume of social science research that provides us with the missing presence of adolescent Latina girls in research on the family, institutional barriers, and support. A must read in Latina/o Studies!"
--Mary Romero, author of "Maid in the USA"

"Denner and Guzman bring together research that counters with data revealing that young Latinas are successfully negotiating challenges they encounter."
--"Hispanic Link Weekly Report"

Latinas are now the largest minority group of girls in the country. Yet the research about this group is sparse, and there is a lack of information to guide studies, services or education for the rapidly growing Latino population across the U.S. The existing research has focused on stereotypical perceptions of Latinas as frequently dropping out of school, becoming teen mothers, or being involved with boyfriends in gangs.

Latina Girls brings together cutting edge research that challenges these stereotypes. At the same time, the volume offers solid data and suggestions for practical intervention for those who study and work to support this population. It highlights the challenges these young women face, as well as the ways in which they successfully negotiate those challenges. The volume includes research on Latinas and their relationships with family, friends, and romantic partners; academics; career goals; identity; lifelong satisfaction; and the ways in which they navigate across cultures and gender roles.

Latina Girls is the first book to pull together research on the overall strengths and strategies that characterize Latina adolescents' lives in the U.S. It will be of keyinterest and practical use to those who study and work with Latina youth.

Most studies of ageing have been done by the non-aged. To correct this imbalance, Hazan enlisted the resources of an unusual and innovative group of elderly persons in Cambridge, England. Gathering together in a structured curriculum of seminars and discussion groups and calling themselves the University of the Third Age, the elders intellectually reexamine the spectrum of sociocultural and epistemological principles starting with basics. Hazan's careful observation, description and transcription of the words of the Third Agers demonstrates that cognition and discourse go through transformations and permutations as individuals attain the so-called wisdom years. Alone in the literature on ageing, Hazan's contribution lights the way for much new thinking and research on and among our older population.

A study of verbal interaction and development in families with adolescents. Topics covered include: the transformation of mother-daughter relationships in late childhood; the development of adolescent autonomy; and experiments with the role-playing method in the study of interactive behaviour.