A timely, original study of the emergence of a new type of thinking about children and their rights in contemporary urban China, which draws on diverse evidence from Chinese government, academic, media, and pedagogic publications, as well as on participant observation and interviews in two primary schools and among elite and middle class families in Shanghai, China. Drawing on rich, ethnographic data, this book debunks many popular and scholarly stereotypes about the predominance of Confucian ideas of parental authority in China or about the indifference to individual human rights in the political and public culture of the PRC. This book also recognizes the complexities and conflicts that exist in Chinese discourses about and practices toward children, as older ideas of filiality, neoliberal ideologies, and the new awareness of children's right to privacy, to expressing their views, and to protection against violence compete and collude in complicated, often contradictory ways.

This book's most important goal is to explore styles of teaching and learning that can promote resiliency among women from disadvantaged backgrounds. These findings can be useful in affecting policy decisions as professionals begin the process of restructuring our educational system to meet the needs of a diverse student population. Higher education is now attempting to attract and encourage varied students and this book will provide educators with information not only about how to educate women from difficult backgrounds, but how women in this population have felt about their past, their success, and their schooling. The author provides insights into what disadvantaged women need and want from schools.

The author conducted in-depth interviews with 21 academically high achieving women who were also disadvantaged as children, having faced multiple risk factors. Qualitative measures were used to explore how our education system has either assisted these women in their achievement or set up barriers to their success. The interpretations, however, go beyond simply listing what was good and bad in these women's education experiences. The results suggest patterns in their psychology and in the traditional social structures that discourage learning among certain populations. The author discusses the sociological and psychological barriers to education (especially higher education) for women who have experienced disadvantages.

Heumann and Boldy define and analyze emerging programs to help the frail and low-income elderly stay out of institutions and age in place in their communities with proper support systems. The case studies presented describe the latest thinking and innovative public program solutions to aging in place in highly developed industrialized countries, including Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Israel, Japan, Sweden, and the United States. Heumann and Boldy link these studies and describe the conditions and constraints under which existing programs function.

Chapter 1 examines the benefits and limitations to aging in place policies and programs on the broadest level, including the economic trends that have created the urgency for new government policies. Chapter 2 presents the classification system of aging in place solutions so that the case examples can be viewed in a comparative context of approach and government commitment. Chapters 3-7 discuss subsidized housing solutions in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and other developed countries. Chapters 8-12 review community support programs in Australia, Israel, Sweden, and Japan. Chapter 13 summarizes the case findings, adds data to the editors' overall classification model, and discusses how government assistance could and should evolve in the future. Aging in Place with Dignity is designed to help government and voluntary-service planners and providers at the federal and local levels deal with the complex and urgent problem of enabling the frail elderly to age in place.

This book includes a series of reports that mainly discuss the Middle Income Trap against the backdrop of population ageing in China. It also offers practical suggestions on how to avoid it properly. Concretely, it argues that the government should accelerate the transition of economic development modes, resolve concentrated social conflicts, promote a balanced rural and urban development during the process of urbanization, and mitigate the effects of population ageing by fostering strengths and avoiding weaknesses. As for the challenges posed by population ageing in China, it puts forward five core suggestions tailored to China's unique situation. Assessing a number of real-world challenges, the general report and the special reports combine theory and empirical findings, using primary data for their analyses. Given the wealth of essential information it provides, the book offers a valuable reference resource for decision-makers.

The testimonies of individuals who survived the Holocaust as children pose distinct emotional and intellectual challenges for researchers: as now-adult interviewees recall profound childhood experiences of suffering and persecution, they also invoke their own historical awareness and memories of their postwar lives, requiring readers to follow simultaneous, disparate narratives. This interdisciplinary volume brings together historians, psychologists, and other scholars to explore child survivors' accounts. With a central focus on the Kestenberg Holocaust Child Survivor Archive's over 1,500 testimonies, it not only enlarges our understanding of the Holocaust empirically but illuminates the methodological, theoretical, and institutional dimensions of this unique form of historical record.

Post-war America was an exciting time. It was an age characterized by backyard barbecues and beach parties, mai-tai cocktails and Ford Mustangs, high school hops, Hawaiian shirts and Hugh Hefner's Playboy empire. This book charts middle-class America's move towards an ethos of conspicuous consumption and sexual license during the fifties and sixties. Focusing on two of the period'smost visible icons -- the swinging bachelor and the vibrant teenager -- this book looks at the interconnected changes that took place for American youth culture and masculinity as consumption and leisure established themselves as the dominant features of middle-class life. The author draws on a wide variety of popular examples--men's magazines, fashion and style, books, film and music--to argue that the bachelor and the teenager were complementary and interrelated stereotypes that shaped America's youth. Magazines such as Esquire and Playboy, and bands like the Beach Boys, framed and shaped a new meaning of the young American male that contrasted sharply with previous values of sobriety and moderation. This book discusses the images and icons that shaped masculinity in particular. By focusing on the changes both in masculine identity and in the form and representation of youth culture, American life is looked at from a fresh and innovative perspective.

Children play a crucial role in today's economy. According to some estimates, children spend or influence the spending of up to $500 billion annually. Journalists, sociologists, and media reformers often present mass marketing toward children as a recent fall from grace, but the roots of children's consumerism -- and the anxieties over it -- date back more than a century. Throughout the twentieth century, a wide variety of groups -- including advertisers, retailers, parents, social reformers, child experts, public schools, and children themselves -- helped to socialize children as consumers and struggled to define the proper boundaries of the market. The essays and documents in this volume illuminate the historical circumstances and cultural conflicts that helped to produce, shape, and legitimize children's consumerism. Focusing primarily on the period from the Gilded Age through the twentieth century, this book examines how and why children and adolescents acquired new economic roles as consumers, and how these new roles both reflected and produced dynamic changes in family life and the culture of capitalism. This volume also reveals how children and adolescents have used consumer goods to define personal identities and peer relationships -- sometimes in opposition to marketers' expectations and parental intentions.

With the intensity of the California gold rush, corporations are racing to stake their claim on the consumer group formerly known as children. What was once the purview of a handful of companies has escalated into a gargantuan enterprise estimated at over $15 billion annually. While parents struggle to set limits at home, marketing executives work day and night to undermine their efforts with irresistible messages.
In "Consuming Kids," psychologist Susan Linn takes a comprehensive and unsparing look at the demographic advertisers call "the kid market," taking readers on a compelling and disconcerting journey through modern childhood as envisioned by commercial interests. Children are now the focus of a marketing maelstrom, targets for everything from minivans to M&M counting books. All aspects of children's lives - their health, education, creativity, and values - are at risk of being compromised by their status in the marketplace.
Interweaving real-life stories of marketing to children, child development theory, the latest research, and what marketing experts themselves say about their work, Linn reveals the magnitude of this problem and shows what can be done about it. With a foreword written by research psychologist and author Penelope Leach, "Consuming Kids" is a call to action for parents, educators, legislators and anyone who cares about the health and well-being of children.

In the last decades of the 20th century, successive British Governments have regarded adolescent pregnancy and childbearing as a significant public health and social problem. Youthful pregnancy was once tackled by attacking young, single mothers but New Labour, through its Teenage Pregnancy Strategy, linked early pregnancy to social exclusion rather than personal morality and aimed, instead, to reduce teenage pregnancy and increase young mothers' participation in education and employment. However, the problematisation of early pregnancy has been contested, and it has been suggested that teenage mothers have been made scapegoats for wider, often unsettling, social and demographic changes.The re-evaluation of early pregnancy as problematic means that, in some respects, teenage pregnancy has been 'made' and 'unmade' as a problem. Focusing on the period from the late-1990's to the present, "Teenage Pregnancy" examines who is likely to have a baby as a teenager, the consequences of early motherhood and how teenage pregnancy is dealt with in the media. The author argues that society's negative attitude to young mothers is likely to marginalise an already excluded group and that efforts should be focused primarily on supporting young mothers and their children. This comprehensive examination of teenage pregnancy focuses on the situation in the UK, but will be useful for readers in other developed world countries. It will be of interest to students in sociology, social policy, health studies and public health, and also to policymakers and young people's interest groups.

What are the ties that bind the 'good youth citizen' and the youth activist in the twenty-first century? Contemporary young people are encouraged -- through education and other cultural sites -- to 'save the world' via community projects that resemble activism, yet increasingly risk arrest for public acts of dissent. "Citizen Youth: culture, activism, and agency in a neoliberal era "goes to the heart of these contradictions, exploring the dilemmas and cultural dynamics of being young and politically engaged. Through an ethnographic study of young people working on activist causes across the three largest urban centres in one of the wealthiest nations in the world (Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, Canada), this book draws on Bourdieusian cultural sociology, feminist theories of agency, phenomenology, and political theories of the state and neoliberalism to understand what it means to be a certain kind of youth citizen in the twenty-first century. Accessibly written yet theoretically engaged, the book will be of interest to individuals both within academia and in the wider world of social movements and youth engagement.

How do young people get by in hard times and hard places? Have they become a "lost generation" disconnected from society's mainstream? Do popular ideas about social exclusion or a welfare-dependent underclass really connect with the lived experiences of the so-called "disaffected," "disengaged" and "difficult-to-reach"? Based on close-up research with young men and women from localities suffering social exclusion in extreme form," Disconnected Youth?" will appeal to all those who are interested in understanding and tackling the problems of growing up in Britain's poor neighborhoods.

This collection of essays represents some of the most important recent research into changing patterns of family, household and community life. It brings together some of the leading sociologists in the field to explore how these informal social relationships change over time and the life course. It will be essential reading on courses concerned with the family and youth sociology.

Political struggle situated within and between cleavages based on sexuality, gender, and age is examined in this volume. The collection offers cutting edge work that challenges traditional notions of what is political sociology and what constitutes political behavior. Political activism organized around identities of transgender, intersex, lesbian, gay, and old age demonstrates the increasing importance of identity politics for political sociologists and social movements scholars alike.

The authors combined in this volume teach students and scholars of political sociology the continued significance of questions related to the culture wars and art as an agent of change, the role of political opportunity and threat in social movements, transgender and intersex political activism, the advantages and disadvantages of late-life liberal political activism, and how everyday life or just living constitutes social movement activity. The readings raise important questions regarding the intersection of sexual minority, race, and gender. Additionally, the readings explore ???identity politics??? from the vantage of several different contexts using a variety of methodological approaches and theoretical views. The authors hope this volume will stimulate other political sociologists and social movement scholars to further explore political behavior that is based upon and motivated by some of the most intimate aspects of our lives.

Thatcher's Grandchildren explores sociological and political issues about childhood that have that have become increasingly significant in the twenty first century within a political landscape framed by neo-liberalism. Issues addressed include child protection and abuse, the media, education and schooling, and poverty.

Based on an intensive qualitative study of a diverse group of 51 older widowers, this unique book sets widowhood within the context of life experience and identifies characteristics and patterns of behaviour that contribute to widowers' success, or lack of it, in adjusting satisfactorily to their circumstances. The authors shed light on widowers' specific needs and on the services needed to help widowers develop greater self-reliance. Among the topics discussed are models of resilience, marriage and illness of the spouse, caregiving and communication, death of the wife, grief and adjustment, living alone and remarriage, life values carried forward, adult children and other social support, and cohorts and the future. The authors conclude with a consideration of trends that may influence the next generation's experience of widowhood. This excellent volume offers expert guidance on the needs and care of the nearly invisible population of older widowers.

How has popular film, television and fiction responded to the realities of an ageing Western population? This volume analyses this field of representation to argue that, while celebrations of ageing as an inspirational journey are increasing, most depictions still focus on decline and deterioration.

Attention to social class is a major issue confronting the study of ageing in the 21st century, yet it has been significantly overlooked to date. Social class in later life provides the most up-to-date collection of new and emerging research relevant to contemporary debates on the relationship between class, culture, and later life It explores the interface between class dynamics and later life, whilst acting as a critical guide to the ways in which age and class relations 'interlock' and 'intersect' with each other, whilst examining the emergence of new forms of inequalities alongside the interrogation of more traditional divisions. Social class in later life brings together a range of international high profile scholars to develop a more sophisticated, analytical and empirical understanding of class dynamics in later life. It will be of major interest to students and researchers examining the implications of global ageing, and will appeal to scholars concerned with the development of a more critical and engaged gerontology.

What is a 'we' a collective and how can we use such communal self-knowledge to help people? This book is about collectivity, participation, and subjectivity and about the social theories that may help us understand these matters. It also seeks to learn from the innovative practices and ideas of a community of social/youth workers in Copenhagen between 1987 and 2003, who developed a pedagogy through creating collectives and mobilizing young people as participants. The theoretical and practical traditions are combined in a unique methodology viewing research as a contentious modeling of prototypical practices. Through this dialogue, it develops an original trans-disciplinary critical theory and practice of collective subjectivity for which the ongoing construction and overcoming of common sense, or ideology, is central. It also points to ways of relating discourse with agency, and fertilizing insights from interactionism and ideology theories in a cultural-historical framework.

This book examines the processes by which older people make housing decisions and the impact such decisions have on the construction of their lives. Evidence is included from a major three-year research study, where older people told stories of their lives. The authors argue that housing decisions are not necessarily the result of rational, analytical and objective thinking. The contribution of other ways of decision-making is often hidden, as when people think intuitively, act impulsively, or for essentially emotional reasons.

The #1 New York Times Bestseller From the bestselling author and columnist behind The Atlantic's popular "How to Build a Life" series, a guide to transforming the life changes we fear into a source of strength. In the first half of life, ambitious strivers embrace a simple formula for success in work and life: focus single-mindedly, work tirelessly, sacrifice personally, and climb the ladder relentlessly. It works. Until it doesn't. It turns out the second half of life is governed by different rules. In middle age, many strivers begin to find success coming harder and harder, rewards less satisfying, and family relationships withering. In response, they do what strivers always do: they double down on work in an attempt to outrun decline and weakness, and deny the changes that are becoming more and more obvious. The result is often anger, fear, and disappointment at a time in life that they imagined would be full of joy, fulfillment, and pride. It doesn't have to be that way. In From Strength to Strength, happiness expert and bestselling author Arthur C. Brooks reveals a path to beating the "striver's curse." Drawing on science, classical philosophy, theology, and history, he shares counterintuitive strategies for releasing old habits and forming new life practices, showing you how to: - Kick the habits of workaholism, success addiction, and self-objectification - Meditate on death-in order to beat fear and live well - Start a spiritual adventure - Embrace weakness in a way that turns it into strength. Change in your life is inevitable, but suffering is not. From Strength to Strength shows you how to accept the gifts of the second half of life with grace, joy, and ever deepening purpose.

Children born during the post-WWII era of peace and prosperity entered history at a time dominated by I-Like-Ike politics and domestic security. As they approached adolescence, however, their world was shaken by major cultural, economic, social, and political upheaval. And although it was time of great innovation and progress, a sense of chaos and bitterness began to envelop the country. It was the a ~60s. For many Americans, a mere mention of this decade evokes an extraordinary time and place in the countrya (TM)s - and their own - history.

Adolescents who had been enjoying the technological and medical advances of the era - television, drive-in movies, rock-and-roll, vaccinations that prevented once-incurable diseases - now were also experiencing the fallout from the Civil Rights Movement, domestic terrorism, stagflation, and (perhaps most significant) the Vietnam War.

From Adolescence to Adulthood in the Vietnam Era provides a unique, detailed, long-term study of the psychological and social worlds of male adolescents who were on the cusp of adulthood as the 1960s were ending. This longitudinal analysis follows adolescent boys who graduated with the class of 1969 and transitioned into adulthood either through military service, full-time employment, or college life. The results examine the different pathways these boys chose and the affect these choices had on their transition from adolescents to young adult men.

Many western nations have experienced a rise in the number of marginalised and deprived inner-city neighbourhoods. Despite a plethora of research focused on these areas, there remain few studies that have sought to capture the 'optimality' of ageing in place in such places. In particular, little is known about why some older people desire to age in place despite multiple risks in their neighbourhood and why others reject ageing in place. Given the growth in both the ageing of the population and policy interest in the cohesion and sustainability of neighbourhoods there is an urgent need to better understand the experience of ageing in marginalised locations.This book aims to address the shortfall in knowledge regarding older people's attachment to deprived neighbourhood and in so doing progress what critics have referred to as the languishing state of environmental gerontology. The author examines new cross-national research with older people in deprived urban neighbourhoods and suggests a rethinking and refocusing of the older person's relationship with place. Impact on policy and future research are also discussed. This book will be relevant to academics, students, architects, city planners and policy makers with an interest in environmental gerontology, social exclusion, urban sustainability and design of the built environment.

The problem of children 'in trouble' is the subject of repeated media panics and of heated political rhetoric. Drawing on wide-ranging original research, Carol Hayden reviews evidence about children in trouble across a range of circumstances, demonstrating the tensions between welfare and justice, care and control in the treatment of these vulnerable young people and evaluating the methodological as well as practical implications of the current 'what works' debate within social policy. All students and professionals working with children, whether in social work, teaching or the criminal justice system, will find this book invaluable.

This edited collection provides the first in-depth analysis of social policies and the risks faced by young people. The book explores the effects of both the economic crisis and austerity policies on the lives of young Europeans, examining both the precarity of youth transitions, and the function of welfare state policies.