As her little boy plays at a day care center across the street, Michelle, an unmarried teenager, is in algebra class, hoping to be the first member of her family to graduate from high school. Will motherhood make this young woman poorer? Will it make the United States poorer as a nation? That's what the voices raised against "babies having babies" would have us think, and what many Americans seem inclined to believe. This powerful book takes us behind the stereotypes, the inflamed rhetoric, and the flip media sound bites to show us the complex reality and troubling truths of teenage mothers in America today. Would it surprise you to learn that Michelle is more likely to be white than African American? That she is most likely eighteen or nineteen--a legal adult? That teenage mothers are no more common today than in 1900? That two-thirds of them have been impregnated by men older than twenty? Kristin Luker, author of the acclaimed Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, puts to rest once and for all some very popular misconceptions about unwed mothers from colonial times to the present. She traces the way popular attitudes came to demonize young mothers and examines the profound social and economic changes that have influenced debate on the issue, especially since the 1970s. In the early twentieth century, reformers focused people's attention on the social ills that led unmarried teenagers to become pregnant; today, society has come almost full circle, pinning social ills on sexually irresponsible teens. Dubious Conceptions introduces us to the young women who are the object of so much opprobrium. In these pages we hear teenage mothers from across the country talk about their lives, their trials, and their attempts to find meaning in motherhood. The book also gives a human face to those who criticize them, and shows us why public anger has settled on one of society's most vulnerable groups. Sensitive to the fears and confusion that fuel this anger, and to the troubled future that teenage mothers and their children face, Luker makes very clear what we as a nation risk by not recognizing teenage pregnancy for what it is: a symptom, not a cause, of poverty.

Growing attention has focused on the education of children in the child welfare system, particularly those in foster care, but ninety-two percent of children in the child welfare system stay with their parents and their educational needs receive little attention. Succeeding Together? is an institutional ethnography that analyses front-line accounts from mothers, teachers, and child welfare workers to explore the educational issues facing abused and neglected children outside of foster care. Kelly Gallagher-Mackay examines the complex policy framework and underlying assumptions that shape the practice of collective responsibility for this vulnerable group, shining a light on the implications of their status in-between private and public responsibility. Gallagher-Mackay breaks down collective responsibility into three areas: surveillance and the duty to report, child welfare's poorly defined responsibility to provide educational supports, and the privatized nature of teachers' professional responsibility for caring. The involvement of child welfare represents a public judgment that there should be strong, proactive, and coordinated intervention to ensure protection and well-being. Succeeding Together? reveals significant shortfalls in coordination and commitment to the well-being of society's most vulnerable.

Having a baby is surely one of the pinnacle events of a woman's life, full of joy, serenity, and contentment--or so society tells a new mother, who thus finds herself ill-prepared for the exhaustion, boredom, and isolation that can follow childbirth. The resulting depression--how it is experienced, and how it might be relieved--is the subject of Natasha Mauthner's insightful and compassionate book, which recounts the stories of new mothers caught between a cultural ideal and a far more complex reality.

In Mauthner's interviews with thirty-five new mothers in Britain and America, we see how women contend with images of motherhood as a state of bliss for everyone but themselves. The British women tend to view their depression as a personal failure of strength; American women, as a result of hormonal fluctuation. But all vividly describe a similar state of paralysis and loneliness, with alternating love, resentment, and guilt toward their babies.

Most usefully, these women reveal the positive impact that other new mothers had on their depression. Far more important than their own family's support or understanding, the sense of not being alone in their trials emerges as a key source of strength and healing for women struggling with postpartum depression.

In this surprising landmark book, family historian Stephanie Coontz explodes every cherished assumption about marriage, starting with the notion of the traditional marriage. Forget Ozzie and Harriet. Coontz reveals that through most of history, marriage was not a relationship based on mutual love between a breadwinner husband and an at-home wife but an institution devoted to acquiring in-laws and improving the family labor force. How did marriage evolve from the loveless, arranged unions that have endured from the dawn of civilization into the sexualized, volatile relationships of today? Coontz argues that the Victorians, with their radical emphasis on marital intimacy and celebration of the individual, simultaneously made marriage more satisfying and paved the way for alternative lifestyles to thrive: divorce, gay marriage, living together, single parenting. The diminished role of heterosexual marriage in our society is not an aberration, insists Coontz, but the consequence of centuries of irrevocable social change. "Marriage, A History is an engaging narrative of astonishing scope and depth that will stand as a milestone of social history and provoke debate for years to come.

The nine papers in this volume examine the historical experience of particular populations in Western Europe and North America in a search for the processes that change fertility patterns. The contributors' findings enable them to reevaluate some of the conflicting hypotheses that have been advanced for these changes. The authors stress the effects on fertility of changing mortality. Several theoretical discussions emphasize the importance both of the turnover in adult positions due to mortality and of the highly variable life expectancy of children. The empirical analyses consistently reveal strong associations between levels of fertility and mortality. On the other hand, some essays question whether variations in opportunities to marry acted as quite the regulator that Malthus and many after him have thought. In both preindustrial and industrial populations, fertility regulation within marriage emerges as the primary mechanism by which adjustment occurred. Originally published in 1978. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The nine papers in this volume examine the historical experience of particular populations in Western Europe and North America in a search for the processes that change fertility patterns. The contributors' findings enable them to reevaluate some of the conflicting hypotheses that have been advanced for these changes. The authors stress the effects on fertility of changing mortality. Several theoretical discussions emphasize the importance both of the turnover in adult positions due to mortality and of the highly variable life expectancy of children. The empirical analyses consistently reveal strong associations between levels of fertility and mortality. On the other hand, some essays question whether variations in opportunities to marry acted as quite the regulator that Malthus and many after him have thought. In both preindustrial and industrial populations, fertility regulation within marriage emerges as the primary mechanism by which adjustment occurred. Originally published in 1978. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Fertility in Belgium declined early and remained low compared with that in other European countries. For this reason, and because of the nation's heterogeneity, study of its demographic transition illuminates the relationship between fertility behavior and socioeconomic development. Professor Lesthaeghe first describes the Belgian experience in a way that permits direct comparison with that of other European nations. He then tests the several explanatory hypotheses for the European fertility decline against his data. Belgium's heterogeneity in the nineteenth-century and in the first half of the twentieth was economic, social, and cultural. Some areas of the country underwent industrialization as early as 1800-1830, while others shifted away from agriculture and artisanal modes of production only between 1880 and 1910. Between 1890 and 1900, regional fertility levels differed drastically, as did regional infant mortality rates and life expectancies at birth. In addition, wide variation occurred in the process of secularization, linguistic characteristics, demographic trends, and other cultural indicators. By describing and analyzing these data in relation to Belgium's fertility decline, Professor Lesthaeghe makes a major contribution to the theory of the demographic transition that occurred throughout Europe. Originally published in 1978. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Has the college experience of women been an influence on the number of children desired and the number and spacing of their children? Do women come to college with their attitudes and values in this regard already formed? This study of 15,000 women, freshmen and seniors in 45 American colleges and universities, both secular and nonsecular, attempts to answer this question and to determine how such characteristics as religious preference, career intentions, and the number of children in her own family influence a woman's fertility values. Attention is paid to an earlier finding that Catholic college graduates have higher fertility than Catholic high school graduates, although higher education is usually associated with lower fertility. Originally published in 1967. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The second phase of a long-term study in American fertility. Tables, interview forms. Originally published in 1963. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This is the second in a series of monographs on the historic decline of European fertility to be issued by the Office of Population Research at Princeton University. It is a detailed statistical description and analysis of the transition from high to low birth rates which took place in Germany between Unification and the beginning of World War II. It assembles an exceptionally comprehensive amount of evidence that will be of great importance to social historians as well as sociologists and demographers. John E. Knodel relies on modern yet simple methods of measuring the main demographic trends in Germany and uses straightforward methods to test the plausibility of the many hypotheses that have been advanced to explain the great falls in fertility that occurred throughout the western world in the late nineteenth century. Originally published in 1974. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Profound changes have occurred in the demography and sociology of Italian fertility since Napoleonic times. Using the statistical system instituted in 1861 with national unification, Massimo Livi-Bacci provides a systematic and detailed analysis of fertility trends in Italy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He brings to light the main features of the secular decline: its rapid occurrence in the northern and central areas; the widening urban-rural gap; the shaping of social and economic differences; and the late, slow downward trend in the South. Multivariate statistical analysis enables the author to measure the changing relationship between fertility and social or economic phenomena. Historical evidence illustrates the effect on fertility of mass emigration and Fascist policy as well as of social changes such as those in agrarian structure, mobility, and communications. An altered attitude toward procreation is evident in some parts of Italy in the early nineteenth century. The decline becomes apparent in certain northern and central regions in the 1870s and 1880s and it appears at the aggregate national level in the 1890s. Originally published in 1977. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Relates data on age at marriage, occupation, etc. to socio-economic status and fertility. Originally published in 1963. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

"Blessed Events" explores how women who give birth at home use religion to make sense of their births and in turn draw on their birthing experiences to bring meaning to their lives and families. Pamela Klassen introduces a surprisingly diverse group of women, in their own words, while also setting their birth stories within wider social, political, and economic contexts. In doing so, she emerges with a study that disrupts conventional views of both childbirth and religion by blurring assumed divisions between conservative and feminist women and by taking childbirth seriously as a religious act.

Most American women who have a choice give birth in a hospital and request pain medication. Yet enough women choose and advocate unmedicated home birth--and do so for carefully articulated reasons, social resistance among them--to constitute a movement. Klassen investigates why women whose religious affiliations range from Old Order Amish to Reform Judaism to goddess-centered spirituality defy majority opinion, the medical establishment, and sometimes the law to have their babies at home. In considering their interpretations--including their critiques of the dominant medical model of childbirth and their views on labor pain--she examines the kinds of agency afforded to or denied women as they derive religious meanings from childbirth. Throughout, she identifies tensions and affinities between feminist and traditionalist appraisals of the symbolic meaning of birth and the power of women.

What does home birth--a woman-centered movement working to return birth to women's control--mean in practice for women's gender and religious identities? Is this supreme valuing of procreation and motherhood constraining, or does it open up new realms of cultural and social power for women? By asking these questions while remaining cognizant of religion's significance, "Blessed Events" challenges both feminist and traditionalist accounts of childbearing while broadening our understanding of how religion is ''lived'' in contemporary America.

This volume summarizes the major findings of the Princeton European Fertility Project. The Project, begun in 1963, was a response to the realization that one of the great social revolutions of the last century, the remarkable decline in marital fertility in Europe, was still poorly understood. Originally published in 1986. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This volume summarizes the major findings of the Princeton European Fertility Project. The Project, begun in 1963, was a response to the realization that one of the great social revolutions of the last century, the remarkable decline in marital fertility in Europe, was still poorly understood. Originally published in 1986. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Deftly bridging literary conventions, this compelling work exposes the cultural origins of a quiet revolution that occurred over the course of the twentieth century. Elizabeth Krause combines novelistic and ethnographic techniques to illuminate population dynamics that have raised alarm across Europe and the United States, and manifested, for example, in Italy's extremely low birthrate. But what actually motivates people to have fewer children? Krause turns to the evocative story of one woman, Emilia Raugei, who was born in a Tuscan hill town in 1920 and worked as a straw weaver in a rapidly globalizing economy, to better understand this question. Based on extensive fieldwork, including indepth conversations with Emilia herself, Krause draws on her rich and unconventional memories to create an engaging portrait of life in a rural village during Mussolini's rise to power - it is a tale of migration, love and loss, political turmoil, and the struggle to make a living during hard times. Giving voice to a largely silent history that is at once local and global, "Unraveled: A Weaver's Tale of Life Gone Modern" will challenge us to find innovative approaches to understanding the transformative shift to a modern way of life.

The second phase of a long-term study in American fertility. Tables, interview forms. Originally published in 1963. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Fertility in Belgium declined early and remained low compared with that in other European countries. For this reason, and because of the nation's heterogeneity, study of its demographic transition illuminates the relationship between fertility behavior and socioeconomic development. Professor Lesthaeghe first describes the Belgian experience in a way that permits direct comparison with that of other European nations. He then tests the several explanatory hypotheses for the European fertility decline against his data. Belgium's heterogeneity in the nineteenth-century and in the first half of the twentieth was economic, social, and cultural. Some areas of the country underwent industrialization as early as 1800-1830, while others shifted away from agriculture and artisanal modes of production only between 1880 and 1910. Between 1890 and 1900, regional fertility levels differed drastically, as did regional infant mortality rates and life expectancies at birth. In addition, wide variation occurred in the process of secularization, linguistic characteristics, demographic trends, and other cultural indicators. By describing and analyzing these data in relation to Belgium's fertility decline, Professor Lesthaeghe makes a major contribution to the theory of the demographic transition that occurred throughout Europe. Originally published in 1978. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

In 1997, when the author began research in Peru, she observed a profound disconnect between the birth care desires of health personnel and those of indigenous women. Midwives and doctors would plead with her as the anthropologist to ""educate women about the dangerous inadequacy of their traditions."" They failed to see how their aim of achieving low rates of maternal mortality clashed with the experiences of local women, who often feared public health centers, where they could experience discrimination and verbal or physical abuse. Mainly, the women and their families sought a ""good"" birth, which was normally a home birth that corresponded with Andean perceptions of health as a balance of bodily humors. Peru's Intercultural Birthing Policy of 2005 was intended to solve these longstanding issues by recognizing indigenous cultural values and making biomedical care more accessible and desirable for indigenous women. Yet many difficulties remain. Guerra-Reyes also gives ethnographic attention to health care workers. She explains the class and educational backgrounds of traditional birth attendants and midwives, interviews doctors and health care administrators, and describes their interactions with local families. Interviews with national policy makers put the program in context.

Research skills are as critical to social work practitioners as skills in individual and group counselling, policy analysis, and community development. Adopting strategies similar to those used in direct practice courses, this book integrates research with social work practice, and in so doing promotes an understanding and appreciation of the research process. This second edition of Practising Social Work Research comprises twenty-three case studies that illustrate different research approaches, including quantitative, qualitative, single-subject, and mixed methods. Six are new to this edition, and examine research with First Nations, organizing qualitative data, and statistics. Through these real-life examples, the authors demonstrate the processes of conceptualization, operationalization, sampling, data collection and processing, and implementation. Designed to help the student and practitioner become more comfortable with research procedures, Practising Social Work Research capitalizes on the strengths that social work students bring to assessment and problem solving.

Despite the fact that, statistically, women of low socioeconomic status (SES) experience greater difficulty conceiving children, infertility is generally understood to be a wealthy, white woman's issue. In" Misconception," Ann V. Bell overturns such historically ingrained notions of infertility by examining the experiences of poor women and women of color. These women, so the stereotype would have it, are simply too fertile. The fertility of affluent and of poor women is perceived differently, and these perceptions have political and social consequences, as social policies have entrenched these ideas throughout U.S. history. Through fifty-eight in-depth interviews with women of both high and low SES, Bell begins to break down the stereotypes of infertility and show how such depictions consequently shape women's infertility experiences. Prior studies have relied solely on participants recruited from medical clinics--a sampling process that inherently skews the participant base toward wealthier white women with health insurance. In comparing class experiences, "Misconception "goes beyond examining medical experiences of infertility to expose the often overlooked economic and classist underpinnings of reproduction, family, motherhood, and health in contemporary America.

A "Washington Post" Best of 2012 pick
"Delightful . . . a book that brings a corner of modern China alive."--"The Wall Street Journal"
When Wenguang Huang was nine years old, his grandmother became obsessed with her own death. Fearing cremation, she extracted from her family the promise to bury her after she died. This was in Xian, a city in central China, in the 1970s, when a national ban on all traditional Chinese practices, including burials, was strictly enforced. But Huang's grandmother was persistent, and two years later, his father built her a coffin. He also appointed his older son, Wenguang, as coffin keeper, a distinction that meant, among other things, sleeping next to the coffin at night.
Over the next fifteen years, the whole family was consumed with planning Grandma's burial, a regular source of friction and contention, with the constant risk of being caught by the authorities. Many years after her death, the family's memories of her coffin still loom large. Huang, now living and working in America, has come to realize how much the concern over the coffin has affected his upbringing and shaped the lives of everyone in the family. Lyrical and poignant, funny and heartrending, "The Little Red Guard" is the powerful tale of an ordinary family finding their way through turbulence and transition.

Assisted reproduction, with its test tubes, injections, and gamete donors, raises concerns about the nature of life and kinship. Yet these concerns do not take the same shape around the world. In this innovative ethnography of in vitro fertilization in Ecuador, Elizabeth F.S. Roberts explores how reproduction by way of biotechnological assistance is not only accepted but embraced despite widespread poverty and condemnation from the Catholic Church. RobertsOCO intimate portrait of IVF practitioners and their patients reveals how technological intervention is folded into an Andean understanding of reproduction as always assisted, whether through kin or God. She argues that the Ecuadorian incarnation of reproductive technology is less about a national desire for modernity than it is a product of colonial racial history, Catholic practice, and kinship configurations. GodOCOs Laboratory offers a grounded introduction to critical debates in medical anthropology and science studies, as well as a nuanced ethnography of the interplay between science, religion, race and history in the formation of Andean families."

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, thirty years have been added to the normal human life expectancy. In "September Songs," the follow-up to her bestselling "Intimate Partners," Maggie Scarf investigates the surprising and profound evolution marriage has undergone in these "bonus years." In a series of intimate and provocative interviews, she delves into the lives of couples married for more than two decades and uncovers the welcome news that most couples are more satisfied in their marriages today than in their early years together. By giving voice to both their struggles and their triumphs, these husbands and wives reveal how they've balanced their emotional and physical needs with those of their partner's, and how the lessons they've learned over time have helped them find new opportunities to love, cherish, and live alongside each other in the extra years they have together.

Margaret Sanger (1883-1966) was a leading figure in the American birth control movement. Trained as a nurse, she moved to New York City to work among the poor. Having witnessed firsthand the travails of mothers in the city's poorest neighborhoods, she felt the need to provide them with information on reproduction and contraception. She abandoned her nursing career and devoted the rest of her life to disseminating information on women's reproduction and contraception, publishing books and articles and founding birth control clinics.

In Motherhood in Bondage, first published in 1928, Sanger reproduced letters written to her from women and sometimes men from all over the country, in both urban and rural areas, who were seeking advice on reproductive matters and marital relations, but mostly imploring her to help them find ways to avoid more pregnancies. The letters are grouped by theme into sixteen chapters, and Sanger wrote an introduction to each chapter.