This book is an account of the authora s experiences as a Foster carer, and in particular as a Foster carer of teenage children, over a period of more than twenty years. It is intended to dispel the notion set out over the years in the many recruitment advertisements that Fostering is a life of enduring happiness and contentment for both carers and children. It is never that glamorous. It can, however, over time, be a rewarding and fulfilling experience for both. The author and his wife have been Foster carers since 1997 and are still Foster carers to this day.

Fujimura takes us across history and into Russian society, its orphanages and shelters, and along the streets of the nation to see how abandoned children are stigmatized and shunned. Readers come to understand how and why these children, left orphans by death or by choice, form their own culture to find power and to survive. This pioneering work on child abandonment looks at Russian society from a new angle: from the perspectives of abandoned youngsters and their caretakers. Based on direct observation of and interviews with abandoned children, this work shows why any effort to rescue these children calls for a deep understanding of Russian culture, and why any effort to address abandonment in Russia calls for a joint effort between psychologists, social workers, and the children themselves. Researcher Fujimura takes us across history, into Russian society, its orphanages and shelters, and along the streets of the nation to see how abandoned children are stigmatized and shunned. We also come to understand how and why these children, left orphans by death or by choice, form their own culture to find power and to survive. This pioneering work on child abandonment looks at Russian society from a new angle: from the perspectives of abandoned youngsters and their caretakers. Based on direct observation of and interviews with abandoned children, this work shows why any effort to rescue these children calls for a deep understanding of Russian culture, and why any effort to affect abandonment in Russia calls for a joint effort between psychologists, social workers, and the children themselves.

Foreword by Timothy M. (Tim) Smeeding, Founding Director of the Luxembourg Income Study and Lee Rainwater Distinguished Professor of Public Affairs and Economics, University of Wisconsin, US This insightful book addresses the urgent need for robust evidence on recent trends and factors contributing to poverty and inequality in East Asia. Using data from international projects, including the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), as well as national data, expert contributors monitor trends in poverty and inequality within and between countries, while also identifying the factors that are driving them, both nationally and regionally. Chapters explore labour market and demographic developments, changes in family and household structures and roles, and changes in policy settings. Investigating how these factors act both independently and interactively to generate nationally and regionally unique features of poverty and inequality, the book highlights how inequality has been rising on a global scale and suggests how welfare states should respond. Poverty and Inequality in East Asia will be a valuable resource for researchers and students studying Asian development and social policy, comparative social policy, labour policy and family policy. Drawing on state of the art data to compare experiences in selected Western economies against those in East Asia, the book will also be a useful resource for policy makers.

Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences, business and law, expertly written by the world's leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas. Written by eminent scholar Chiara Saraceno, this Advanced Introduction offers a synthetic overview of the core theoretical and policy issues involved in family policy, currently the most dynamic sector of social policies in both developed and developing countries. It discusses the three primary areas of family policy in contemporary society: financial support for the cost of children, short and long term care for children and dependent people, and work-family conciliation. Key features include: An engaging and accessible style exploration of the roles of civil law and feminist studies a comparative, global perspective including analysis of the Global South presentation of the core conceptual and methodological debates in the field. Providing a compact and concise introduction to the rich scholarship of the field, the Advanced Introduction to Family Policy will be a key resource for students and scholars of family policy, social policy and sociological theory.

Families and Children Living in Poverty explores the factors that contribute to the existence of poverty, as well as the social, developmental, and environmental ramifications of poverty. Through scholarly studies, case studies, historical events, and contemporary happenings, readers examine the connections between poverty and family-related challenges, including adverse childhood experiences, lack of a living wage, health disparities, social exclusion, and homelessness. Part I of the text explores poverty and social class inequality. The chapters discuss how poverty is measured in the United States, the role of capitalism in poverty, global health challenges, and the economic effects of conflict. In Part II, students learn about health disparities caused by chronic stress, food insecurity, lack of dental health, exposure to pollutants, and human trafficking, as well as the wide-spread implications of adverse childhood experiences. Part III focuses on housing instability, homelessness, and social exclusion. The final part illuminates various programs and resources available for impoverished families and children, and demonstrates how individuals, researchers, and institutions can create lasting positive change within affected communities. Presenting valuable research and various theoretical frameworks through which to examine poverty, Families and Children Living in Poverty is an ideal text for courses in human development, family studies, and other social sciences. It is also an exemplary resource for helping professionals who support the care and well-being of children and families.

This comprehensive and innovative book demonstrates the dynamics of welfare policies in different socioeconomic settings by providing comparative analyses of the Baltic and Nordic welfare state systems. The book contributes to finding and reflecting upon innovative solutions to common challenges in European welfare states. Challenging conventional welfare state research, the authors compare the Nordic countries with the welfare states of the market-oriented democracies of the Baltic area, discussing welfare state theories, family policy regimes and welfare state models. Top international contributors provide a better understanding of the complex inequalities that families and individuals are facing in the 21st century, and cover important topics such as poverty, social insurance and family policy in the Nordic and Baltic areas. Challenges to the Welfare State will be of great interest to social policy scholars and policy makers, particularly those with an interest in the Baltic and Nordic countries. It will also be a welcome addition to the literature for students interested in family policy and pension protection reforms, and those with a general interest in the contemporary welfare state studies in Europe.

As a field of study, sexology emerged in the nineteenth century bringing together academics, non-medical professionals, and reformers in Europe and North America who sought to systematically study human sexuality and sexual behavior. The field reached its peak in the postwar United States in projects like the Kinsey Reports before gradually being discredited and fading from public consciousness. The contributors to this special issue engage with the contemporary material and aesthetic detritus of the sexological project and ask how the remnants of its history persist to the present. Using a variety of interdisciplinary approaches, they critique the way sexology embedded bodily difference in public policy and infrastructure. The contributors show how Blackness disrupts visual representations of female pleasure, articulate an aesthetics of trans-madness, and reflect on the broader implications of sex segregation in public toilets. Contributors. Lucas Crawford, Jina B. Kim, Joan Lubin, Amber Musser, Susan Stryker, Jeanne Vaccaro

Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences, business and law, expertly written by the world's leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas. Written by eminent scholar Chiara Saraceno, this Advanced Introduction offers a synthetic overview of the core theoretical and policy issues involved in family policy, currently the most dynamic sector of social policies in both developed and developing countries. It discusses the three primary areas of family policy in contemporary society: financial support for the cost of children, short and long term care for children and dependent people, and work-family conciliation. Key features include: An engaging and accessible style exploration of the roles of civil law and feminist studies a comparative, global perspective including analysis of the Global South presentation of the core conceptual and methodological debates in the field. Providing a compact and concise introduction to the rich scholarship of the field, the Advanced Introduction to Family Policy will be a key resource for students and scholars of family policy, social policy and sociological theory.

Exploring how family life has radically changed in recent decades, this comprehensive Research Handbook tracks the latest developments and trends in scholarly work on the family. With a particular focus on the European context, it addresses current debates and offers insights into key topics including: the division of housework, family forms and living arrangements, intergenerational relationships, partner choice, divorce and fertility behaviour. Bringing together contributions from leading family sociologists, the Research Handbook examines important questions: have family patterns across different countries become more similar, or have differences between countries and social groups increased over time? How diverse are family forms across different countries? How do conventional theories explain these patterns? And what are the major innovations in theorising and describing family behaviour? In order to resolve these key points, the chapters provide an overview of past and present developments in scholarly work on European families. They also present concise overviews of theories, methods, critical debates, empirical findings and pathways for future research. Its analysis of important areas of research in the field will make this Research Handbook a valuable resource for scholars and students of sociology, demography, and family and gender policy. It will also be beneficial for policy experts in these fields.

What is the best way to work with fathers who have a history of abusive behavior? This question is among the thorniest that social service and criminal justice professionals must deal with in their careers, and in this essential new work Jeffrey L. Edleson, Oliver J. Williams, and a group of international colleagues examine the host of equally difficult issues that surround it.
Beginning with the voices of mothers and fathers who speak about men's contact with and parenting of their children, the authors then examine court and mental health services perspectives on how much involvement violent men should have in their children's lives. The second half of the book showcases programs such as the Boston-based Fathering After Violence initiative and the Caring Dads program in Canada, which introduce non-abusive parenting concepts and skills to batterers and have developed useful guidelines for intervention with these fathers.
Visionary but also practical, Parenting by Men Who Batter distills the most relevant policy issues, research findings, and practice considerations for those who coordinate batterer programs or work with families, the courts, and the child welfare system. It guides professionals in understanding men who batter, assessing their parenting skills, making decisions about custody and visitation, and modeling treatment programs that engage fathers in their children's lives while maximizing safety.

In this highly original work, historian Chelsea Schields illuminates how the contested management of sex and race transformed the Caribbean into a crucial site in the global oil economy. By the mid-twentieth century, the Dutch islands of Curacao and Aruba housed the world's largest oil refineries. To bolster this massive industrial experiment, oil corporations and political authorities offshored intimacy, circumventing laws regulating sex, reproduction, and the family in a bid to maximize profits and turn Caribbean subjects into citizens. Offshore Attachments reveals that, from boom to bust, Caribbean people challenged and embraced efforts to alter intimate behaviors in service of the energy economy, molding the industry from the ground up. Moving from Caribbean oil towns to European metropolises and examining such issues as sex work, contraception, kinship, and the constitution of desire, Schields narrates a surprising story of how racialized concern with sex shaped hydrocarbon industries as the age of oil met the end of empire.

Sexy Like Us: Disability, Humor, and Sexuality takes a humorous, intimate approach to disability through the stories, jokes, performances, and other creative expressions of people with disabilities. Author Teresa Milbrodt explores why individuals can laugh at their leglessness, find stoma bags sexual, discover intimacy in scars, and flaunt their fragility in ways both hilarious and serious. Their creative and comic acts crash, collide, and collaborate with perceptions of disability in literature and dominant culture, allowing people with disabilities to shape political disability identity and disability pride, call attention to social inequalities, and poke back at ableist cultural norms. This book also discusses how the ambivalent nature of comedy has led to debates within disability communities about when it is acceptable to joke, who has permission to joke, and which jokes should be used inside and outside a community's inner circle. Joking may be difficult when considering aspects of disability that involve physical or emotional pain and struggles to adapt to new forms of embodiment. At the same time, people with disabilities can use humor to expand the definitions of disability and sexuality. They can help others with disabilities assert themselves as sexy and sexual. And they can question social norms and stigmas around bodies in ways that open up journeys of being, not just for individuals who consider themselves disabled, but for all people.

J.R. Moehringer grew up captivated by a voice. It was the voice of his father, a New York City disc jockey who vanished before J.R. spoke his first word. Sitting on the stoop, pressing an ear to the radio, J.R. would strain to hear in that plummy baritone the secrets of masculinity and identity. Though J.R.'s mother was his world, his rock, he craved something more, something faintly and hauntingly audible only in The Voice. At eight years old, suddenly unable to find The Voice on the radio, J.R. turned in desperation to the bar on the corner, where he found a rousing chorus of new voices. The alphas along the bar--including J.R.'s Uncle Charlie, a Humphrey Bogart look-alike; Colt, a Yogi Bear sound-alike; and Joey D, a softhearted brawler--took J.R. to the beach, to ballgames, and ultimately into their circle. They taught J.R., tended him, and provided a kind of fathering-by-committee. Torn between the stirring example of his mother and the lurid romance of the bar, J.R. tried to forge a self somewhere in the center. But when it was time for J.R. to leave home, the bar became an increasingly seductive sanctuary, a place to return and regroup during his picaresque journeys. Time and again the bar offered shelter from failure, rejection, heartbreak--and eventually from reality. In the grand tradition of landmark memoirs, The Tender Bar is suspenseful, wrenching, and achingly funny. A classic American story of self-invention and escape, of the fierce love between a single mother and an only son, it's also a moving portrait of one boy's struggle to become a man, and an unforgettable depiction of how men remain, at heart, lost boys.

Policing Sex in the Sunflower State: The Story of the Kansas State Industrial Farm for Women is the history of how, over a span of two decades, the state of Kansas detained over 5,000 women for no other crime than having a venereal disease. In 1917, the Kansas legislature passed Chapter 205, a law that gave the state Board of Health broad powers to quarantine people for disease. State authorities quickly began enforcing Chapter 205 to control the spread of venereal disease among soldiers preparing to fight in World War I. Though Chapter 205 was officially gender-neutral, it was primarily enforced against women; this gendered enforcement became even more dramatic as Chapter 205 transitioned from a wartime emergency measure to a peacetime public health strategy. Women were quarantined alongside regular female prisoners at the Kansas State Industrial Farm for Women (the Farm). Women detained under Chapter 205 constituted 71 percent of the total inmate population between 1918 and 1942. Their confinement at the Farm was indefinite, with doctors and superintendents deciding when they were physically and morally cured enough to reenter society; in practice, women detained under Chapter 205 spent an average of four months at the Farm. While at the Farm, inmates received treatment for their diseases and were subjected to a plan of moral reform that focused on the value of hard work and the inculcation of middle-class norms for proper feminine behavior. Nicole Perry's research reveals fresh insights into histories of women, sexuality, and programs of public health and social control. Underlying each of these are the prevailing ideas and practices of respectability, in some cases culturally encoded, in others legislated, enforced, and institutionalized. Perry recovers the voices of the different groups of women involved with the Farm: the activist women who lobbied to create the Farm, the professional women who worked there, and the incarcerated women whose bodies came under the control of the state. Policing Sex in the Sunflower State offers an incisive and timely critique of a failed public health policy that was based on perceptions of gender, race, class, and respectability rather than a reasoned response to the social problem at hand.

Marriage has been a contested term in African American studies. Contributors to this special issue address the subject of "black marriage," broadly conceived and imaginatively considered from different vantage points. Historically, some scholars have maintained that the systematic enslavement of Africans completely undermined and effectively destroyed the institutions of heteropatriarchal marriage and family, while others have insisted that slaves found creative ways to be together, love each other, and build enduring conjugal relationships and family networks in spite of forced separations, legal prohibitions against marriage, and other hardships of the plantation system. Still others have pointed out that not all African Americans were slaves and that free black men and women formed stable marriages, fashioned strong nuclear and extended families, and established thriving black communities in antebellum cities in both the North and the South. Against the backdrop of such scholarship, contributors look back to scholarly, legal, and literary treatments of the marriage question and address current concerns, from Beyonce's music and marriage to the issues of interracial coupling, marriage equality, and the much-discussed decline in African American marriage rates. Contributors: Ann duCille, Oneka LaBennett, Mignon Moore, Kevin Quashie, Renee Romano, Hortense Spillers, Kendall Thomas, Rebecca Wanzo, Patricia Williams