While much of the world worries about increasing population, this book looks the other way. It highlights the dramatic fall in fertility rates in all regions of the world. Demographers suggest that by 2050 this will lead to population decline. While environmentally this may be welcomed, there may also be negative impacts on our economies: less workers, an increasing number of elderly, and more unwanted childlessness. In this book, key experts untangle the reasons for not having children; international case studies demonstrate that there are similar but also different reasons operating in different areas and psychologists and sociologists explore the possible impact on children, parents and the elderly. Given that fertility trends are not easy to reverse, the book concludes that more needs to be done to maximize the potential of all children; particularly those who have been at the margins of society.

From a comparative perspective, human life histories are unique and raising offspring is unusually costly: humans have relatively short birth intervals compared to other apes, childhood is long, mothers care simultaneously for many dependent children (other apes raise one offspring at a time), infant mortality is high in natural fertility/mortality populations, and human females have a long post-reproductive lifespan. These features conspire to make child raising very burdensome. Mothers frequently defray these costs with paternal help (not usual in other ape species), although this contribution is not always enough. Grandmothers, elder siblings, paid allocarers, or society as a whole, help to defray the costs of childcare, both in our evolutionary past and now. Studying offspring care in a various human societies, and other mammalian species, a wide range of specialists such as anthropologists, psychologists, animal behaviorists, evolutionary ecologists, economists and sociologists, have contributed to this volume, offering new insights into and a better understanding of one of the key areas of human society.

For almost nine decades, since their mass-resettlement to the Levant in the wake of the Genocide and First World War, the Armenian communities of Lebanon and Syria appear to have successfully maintained a distinct identity as an ethno-culturally diverse group, in spite of representing a small non-Arab and Christian minority within a very different, mostly Arab and Muslim environment. The author shows that, while in Lebanon the state has facilitated the development of an extensive and effective system of Armenian ethno-cultural preservation, in Syria the emergence of centralizing, authoritarian regimes in the 1950s and 1960s has severely damaged the autonomy and cultural diversity of the Armenian community. Since 1970, the coming to power of the Asad family has contributed to a partial recovery of Armenian ethno-cultural diversity, as the community seems to have developed some form of tacit arrangement with the regime. In Lebanon, on the other hand, the Armenian community suffered the consequences of the recurrent breakdown of the consociational arrangement that regulates public life. In both cases the survival of Armenian cultural distinctiveness seems to be connected, rather incidentally, with the continuing 'search for legitimacy' of the state.

In the first three decades of this century Germany was concerned to protect its Volkskorper, the body politic, from the ravages of a social "disease" which affected all western Europe. This "disease" was a decline in the birth rate. The "solution" to this "disease" involved interfering with the Frauenkorper, the female body. German women's sexuality was to be controlled so that the number of healthy children required for a powerful state would be produced. However the politics of reproduction carried a potential conflict between Volkskorper and Frauenkorper, between collective and individual interests. This conflict is central to this study which analyses the tactics which the German state and its agencies used to regulate the size and balance of population to accord with their social, economic and political beliefs rather than with the views and wishes of individuals. During the Weimar Republic individual women and families were the target of intervention in four different areas of policy those of maternity, sexuality, contraception and abortion. In this study birth control is understood to encompass all the popular practices of avoiding unwanted children as well as the two differ

Written by a pediatrician/adolescent medicine specialist and a developmental psychologist, this book is a collection of informative, nonredundant yet comprehensive studies on adolescent pregnancy and parenting. More than 200 adolescent women in an ethnically diverse sample were studied prenatally and at regular 6-month intervals for 31/2 years postpartum. Most of the teens were poor, unmarried, first-time mothers who resided within Southeast San Diego, a poor urban area approximately 10 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The purpose of this book was to offer researchers, practitioners, program directors, teachers, and graduate and medical students a better understanding of teenage pregnancy and parenthood within the following domains: * adolescent prenatal care and postpartum maternal and infant health outcomes, * immediate repeat pregnancy, * adolescent mothers' parenting, * the role of the adolescent's mother in teenage mothers' parenting, and * the baby's father.

Epidemics, migration and territorial losses led to population decline in early nineteenth-century Turkey. In response, Ottoman elites began a programme of population growth. Balsoy uses previously untapped archival sources to examine these developments, arguing that these changes caused reproduction to become a political experience.

Drawing extensively from agency records, newspaper accounts, sociological studies and court documents, Hough explores the experiences of rural white unwed mothers in Maine and Tennessee.

Everyday conversations including gossip, boasting, flirting, teasing, and informative discussions are highly creative, improvised interactions. Children's play is also an important, often improvisational activity. One of the most improvisational games among 3- to 5-year-old children is social pretend play--also called fantasy play, sociodramatic play, or role play. Children's imaginations have free reign during pretend play. Conversations in these play episodes are far more improvisational than the average adult conversation. Because pretend play occurs in a dramatized, fantasy world, it is less constrained by social and physical reality. This book adds to our understanding of preschoolers' pretend play by examining it in the context of a theory of improvisational performance genres. This theory, derived from in-depth analyses of the implicit and explicit rules of theatrical improvisation, proves to generalize to pretend play as well. The two genres share several characteristics: * There is no script; they are created in the moment. * There are loose outlines of structure which guide the performance. * They are collective; no one person decides what will happen. Because group improvisational genres are collective and unscripted, improvisational creativity is a collective social process. The pretend play literature states that this improvisational behavior is most prevalent during the same years that many other social and cognitive skills are developing. Children between the ages of 3 and 5 begin to develop representations of their own and others' mental states as well as learn to represent and construct narratives. Freudian psychologists and other personality theorists have identified these years as critical in the development of the personality. The author believes that if we can demonstrate that children's improvisational abilities develop during these years--and that their fantasy improvisations become more complex and creative--it might suggest that these social skills are linked to the child's developing ability to improvise with other creative performers.

Epidemics, migration and territorial losses led to population decline in early nineteenth-century Turkey. In response, Ottoman elites began a programme of population growth. Balsoy uses previously untapped archival sources to examine these developments, arguing that these changes caused reproduction to become a political experience.

Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong SAR are among the very lowest-fertility countries in the whole world, and even China has reached fertility levels lower than those in many European countries. If these levels continue over long periods East Asia will soon face accelerating population decline in addition the changes in age distributions in such populations raise major new questions for planning of economic and social welfare. This book brings together work by noted experts on the low fertility countries of East Asia with an up-to-date analysis of trends in fertility, what we know about their determinants and consequences, the policy issues and how these are being addressed in the various countries. Its role in bringing together information on policy trends and initiatives of a pro-natalist kind adopted over recent years in these countries is extremely important, as is the fact that the discussion of these pro-natalist policies is set in the context of a thorough analysis of what has driven fertility so low in these countries. Ultra-Low Fertility in Pacific Asia is invaluable to students and scholars of East Asian public and social policy, as well as fertility studies more generally.

This book offers a timely analysis of work and labor processes and how they are rapidly changing under globalization. The contributors explore traditional sectors of the U.S. and world economies - from auto to steel to agriculture - as well as work under new production arrangements, such as third world export processing zones. Many chapters analyze changing dynamics of gender, nationality, and class. The contributors explain why more intensified forms of control by the state and by capital interests are emerging under globalization. Yet they also emphasize new possibilities for labor, including new forms of organizing and power sharing in a rapidly changing economy.

Drawing extensively from agency records, newspaper accounts, sociological studies and court documents, Hough explores the experiences of rural white unwed mothers in Maine and Tennessee.

Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong SAR are among the very lowest-fertility countries in the whole world, and even China has reached fertility levels lower than those in many European countries. If these levels continue over long periods East Asia will soon face accelerating population decline in addition the changes in age distributions in such populations raise major new questions for planning of economic and social welfare.

This book brings together work by noted experts on the low fertility countries of East Asia with an up-to-date analysis of trends in fertility, what we know about their determinants and consequences, the policy issues and how these are being addressed in the various countries. Its role in bringing together information on policy trends and initiatives of a pro-natalist kind adopted over recent years in these countries is extremely important, as is the fact that the discussion of these pro-natalist policies is set in the context of a thorough analysis of what has driven fertility so low in these countries.

Ultra-Low Fertility in Pacific Asia is invaluable to students and scholars of East Asian public and social policy, as well as fertility studies more generally.

APPRAISAL AND REVALIDATION SERIES The new Appraisal and Revalidation Series helps doctors demonstrate their competence to the standard expected by the General Medical Council and to the standard expected if they are recognised as having 'special clinical interests'. It helps doctors gather evidence of their performance for appraisal and revalidation portfolios. This fifth book in the series examines the practical ways to identify learning and service needs within the areas of substance abuse palliative care musculoskeletal conditions and prescribing practice. It also provides guidance on how to collect data to demonstrate learning competence performance and service delivery standards. All general practitioners and those with special clinical interests and primary care organisation leads will find this book essential reading. For more information on other titles in this series please click here

This collection brings together the leading research in maternity care from the United States, Canada and Europe to discuss systems of care for pregnancy and childbirth. The essays focus on the practical side of "good" social science and "feminist-friendly" research. The text not only looks at maternity, but also the act of childbirth, with the goal of providing not just comparative perspectives of care, but also to integrate the differences in care within each essay for a truly international understanding of maternity care.

This book is a collection of original essays on the meaning of providing care. These essays address not only the work of caring for the elderly, but also the work of caring for children, the infirm and those with disabilities.
The essays approach the topic from an ethical standpoint and also from a more practical, feminist and sociological point of view. The main goal of this book is to re-conceive the notion of care work, beginning with steps as simple as replacing the phrase 'caregiver' with the phrase 'care worker'.

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This volume is an investigation into the silence of the feminine voice in Western thought, considering the important relationship between maternity and philosophy. The author shows how maternity has often been appropriated by some male theorists and explores ways of approaching motherhood and pregnancy from a feminist perspective. Drawing on examples such as Plato's allegory of the cave, the "productive man" of Marx philosophy, Sigmund Freud's and Melanie Klein's writings on the mother and the mother-daughter relationship, and the psychoanalytic and feminist insights of Irigaray and Kristeva, she shows how terms such as denial, repression and foreclosure offer insight into the philosophical construction of the maternal body. The book also draws upon the work of Althusser and Lyotard, showing how their work bears importantly on the silence of the feminine. Throughout the text Michelle Boulous Walker questions the assumptions that silence is simply the absence of language and presents new strategies for understanding how silence operates.

Women who are dominant are more likely to have sons. Demographic studies show that more male children are born after wars, yet most people believe that their baby's sex is a matter of chance - determined by the father's sperm. Valerie Grant presents evidence that the mother's personality - which is related to female testosterone levels - can actually influence which type of sperm fertilises the egg.
Using data from human and animal studies Valerie Grant discusses the implications for human evolution, developmental psychology and reproductive biology. Her claims are controversial and the implications of her findings far reaching. Whether mothers have sons or daughters may not be a matter of chance. It may depend on which sex infant the mother is more suited to raise.

Related link: www.sexratio.com
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eBook available with sample pages: HB:0415158796

Written by a pediatrician/adolescent medicine specialist and a developmental psychologist, this book is a collection of informative, nonredundant yet comprehensive studies on adolescent pregnancy and parenting. More than 200 adolescent women in an ethnically diverse sample were studied prenatally and at regular 6-month intervals for 31/2 years postpartum. Most of the teens were poor, unmarried, first-time mothers who resided within Southeast San Diego, a poor urban area approximately 10 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border.
The purpose of this book was to offer researchers, practitioners, program directors, teachers, and graduate and medical students a better understanding of teenage pregnancy and parenthood within the following domains:
* adolescent prenatal care and postpartum maternal and infant health outcomes,
* immediate repeat pregnancy,
* adolescent mothers' parenting,
* the role of the adolescent's mother in teenage mothers' parenting, and
* the baby's father.

Everywhere in the world, populations of largely European origin are currently exeriencing not only their lowest-ever fertility levels, but what seem likely to be their longest-ever period of fertility at below-replacement levels. Although it is widely assumed that the fertiliy of these countries will return to replacement levels within 30 to 35 years, there is at present no empirical evidence that this will happen. The inevitable demographic results of this fertility pattern are an older age structure and a decline in numbers. Many see this as leading to labour shortages and wage inflation; even to weakened national defence and the disappearance of European peoples and culture. But while they are inevitable in today's low birth-rate populations, numerical declines and older age structures are unlikely to be either as great or as disruptive as commonly anticipated. Moreover, the policies proposed to avoid such demographic developments are clearly unsuitable. The inevitability of these changes - new in human history - must be accepted before societies can adjust to them and realize the benefits that are inherent in them.

In the first book-length examination of the impact of pregnancy on the therapeutic process, Fenster, Phillips, and Rapoport explore the variety of clinical, technical, and practical issues that arise out of the therapist's impending motherhood.

Transnational Reproduction traces the relationships among Western aspiring parents, Indian surrogates, and egg donors from around the world. In the early 2010s India was one of the top providers of surrogacy services in the world. Drawing on interviews with commissioning parents, surrogates, and egg donors as well as doctors and family members, Daisy Deomampo argues that while the surrogacy industry in India offers a clear example of "stratified reproduction"-the ways in which political, economic, and social forces structure the conditions under which women carry out physical and social reproductive labor-it also complicates that concept as the various actors in this reproductive work struggle to understand their relationships to one another. The book shows how these actors make sense of their connections, illuminating the ways in which kinship ties are challenged, transformed, or reinforced in the context of transnational gestational surrogacy. The volume revisits the concept of stratified reproduction in ways that offer a more robust and nuanced understanding of race and power as ideas about kinship intersect with structures of inequality. It demonstrates that while reproductive actors share a common quest for conception, they make sense of family in the context of globalized assisted reproductive technologies in very different ways. In doing so, Deomampo uncovers the specific racial reproductive imaginaries that underpin the unequal relations at the heart of transnational surrogacy.

Designed to challenge the ethical basis for much of the legal regulation of matters surrounding birth, this series of essays explores such controversial topics as whether surrogacy should be allowed, and what guidelines are needed to control in vitro fertilization programmes.

Birth rates are falling and fertility rates are well below replacement levels. At the same time, the economic crisis has forced governments to scale back public spending, reduce child support, and raise the retirement age, causing immense social conflict. Taking a step outside the disciplinary comfort zone, "Whither the Child?" asks how demography affects individuals and society. What does it feel like to live in a low fertility world? What are the consequences? Is there even a problem - economically, culturally and morally? No other book confronts so many dimensions of the low fertility issue and none engage with the thorny issues of child psychology, parenting, family, and social policy that are tackled head-on here.