The family, that most fundamentalof human groups, is currently perceived to be changing in response to social, biological, cultural and technological developments in our postmodernsociety. While the observed changes in families have been considered by some sociologists to be evidence of adaptation and, therefore, normal, the authors of this volume, consider them maladaptive. Viewing society from the point of view of clinical psychiatry, they point to greatly increased numbers of children born to single mothers, soaring rates of divorce, a statistically confirmed increase in mental disorders, increase in reported incest, high rates of depression in younger people and escalation of the amount of reported family violence as evidence that the family, as a social institution, is in crisis and can either move toward renewed vitality or continued deterioration. Perceiving a need to obtain information about family functioning that might lead to the increased stability and well-being of this critically important type of system, Dr. John Schwab and his associates designed and camed out a research program that began with a thorough review of relevant literature beginning with LePlay's study of 300 families in the 1850'sand including important recent statistical studies. They found that although these studies represent advances in understanding the family system, some serious problems with the research remain, one of which is confounding variables such as family function and mental or substance abuse disorders so that if a family member has a problem, such as drug abuse, the family is classifiedasdysfunctional.

This work explores matrophobia - the fear not of one's mother or of motherhood but of becoming one's mother - in past and present white feminist analyses of motherhood and mothering. By tracing white second wave feminism's strategic choice to organize first as sisters then as daughters, O'Brien Hallstein argues matrophobia became embedded in past and continues to linger in contemporary feminist analyses. As a result, contemporary analyses reveal crucially important but limited understandings of contemporary motherhood and mothering. This important work concludes that matrophobia can be reduced and eliminated by reorienting analyses to mutual responsiveness between sisters and daughters, second and third wave feminists.

Although the Victorian white wedding dominates western bridal dress and large portions of former colonial empires, marriage rituals vary significantly throughout the world. The Japanese, for instance, combine both traditional ceremonies with receptions utilizing western approaches to dress. In the Andes the bride will personally create a multi-layered dress to showcase her weaving skills. Berber brides in Morocco wear binding clothing that covers their faces, a notable contrast to Canadian prairie-province brides whose stylized gowns individualize and enhance body shape. This engaging book examines the evolution and ritual functions of wedding attire within the context of particular cultures. It raises questions as to the relationship between contemporary wedding attire and traditional values. It discusses the changes international migrations have had upon the wedding dress of several ethnic groups. It provides insights into numerous societal relationships to weddings, such as the ban on bridal-produced embroidery in dowries in India, the challenges individual values have to larger societal ones in themed weddings, and the relationship between the return to pre-western attire and identity politics. Exploring these issues, the authors provide unusual insights into the centrality of dress in shaping individual identity as well as its importance in reflecting cultural values and ideals.

This unique and fascinating study centers on the experiences of expatriate American women married to French men, residing in France, and struggling to maintain American language and culture in their French-American children. More than a narrow study, "The Transplanted Woman" aims at illustrating the general dynamics of family groups. Three main, overlapping fields of sociological inquiry are included: the family, bilingualism, and women's studies. This is a rare exploration into an international situation where the two languages and cultures considered are on an equal footing rather than in a dominant/dominated relation to one another. New emphasis is placed on the critical role of the father in supporting or undermining the authority of the mother in the transmission of the mother's language and culture. The bicultural family laboratory facilitates the understanding the choices which orient children's identities--in doing so revealing the distribution of power between the parental couple and demonstrating how parents compete for control of their children's allegiance and identities.

Selected Readings in Human Sexuality provides students with a carefully curated selection of readings that highlight specific topics within the spectrum of human sexual behavior. The anthology contains 10 readings that cover various topics, including interracial and interethnic relationships, sexual harassment, human trafficking, changes in sexual behavior throughout the lifespan, and more. The readings have been selected to illustrate the different ways in which human sexuality may be investigated, including systematic reviews of existing literature, case studies, and empirical research. The volume includes research on human sexuality from various countries and cultures, including the Netherlands, Canada, and China, to enrich conversations and provide readers with diverse perspectives. Each reading is accompanied by an introduction highlighting the importance of the reading and a set of discussion prompts to facilitate further examination of the topic. Selected Readings in Human Sexuality is designed to serve as a supplementary reader for courses in human sexual behavior.

For the past several years, child advocates, parents, and educators have expressed concern over the sexualization of girls. Has the cultural sexual objectification of girls and women increased? Are younger and younger girls sold a "sexed-up" version of femininity, and are adult women sold a girlish sexuality?
The Sexualization of Girls and Girlhood: Causes, Consequences, and Resistance includes the best empirical research, theory, and practice stemming from the report of the American Psychological Association's Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls. Contributors discuss evidence for this phenomenon from media and marketing, to interpersonal interaction, to girls' own efforts to fashion themselves after sexualized role models around them. A variety of consequences of the sexualization of girls and girlhood--for girls themselves, for others, and for society at large--are presented. Individual chapters cover topics such as athletics as a solution and problem for the sexualization of girls, sexual harassment by peers, gendered violence, body image, adolescent girls' sexual development, and healthy sexuality for girls and young women. Importantly, positive alternatives and suggestions are included so that those who care for girls can address this troubling cultural trend and help counter the significant risk to girls' wellbeing that it represents. This volume is a valuable resource for child advocates, parents, and educators and useful for undergraduate and graduate courses that address gender across disciplines such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, education, communication, media studies, and women's, and sexuality studies.

The Sunday Times and New York Times Bestseller. Although Jodie is only eight years old, she is violent, aggressive, and has already been through numerous foster families. Her last hope is Cathy Glass

Cathy, an experienced foster carer, is pressured into taking Jodie as a new placement. Jodie's challenging behaviour has seen off five carers in four months but Cathy decides to take her on to protect her from being placed in an institution.

Jodie arrives, and her first act is to soil herself, and then wipe it on her face, grinning wickedly. Jodie meets Cathy's teenage children, and greets them with a sharp kick to the shins. That night, Cathy finds Jodie covered in blood, having cut her own wrist, and smeared the blood over her face.

As Jodie begins to trust Cathy her behaviour improves. Over time, with childish honesty, she reveals details of her abuse at the hands of her parents and others. It becomes clear that Jodie's parents were involved in a sickening paedophile ring, with neighbours and Social Services not seeing what should have been obvious signs.

It s clear that Josie needs psychiatric therapy, but instead Social Services take Jodie away from her, and place her in a residential unit. Although the paedophile ring is investigated and brought to justice, Jodie s future is still up in the air. Cathy promises that she will stand by her no matter what her love for the abandoned Jodie is unbreakable."

Unaisi Nabobo-Baba observed that for the various peoples of the Pacific, kinship is generally understood as "knowledge that counts." It is with this observation that this volume begins, and it continues with a straightforward objective to provide case studies of Pacific kinship. In doing so, contributors share an understanding of kinship as a lived and living dimension of contemporary human lives, in an area where deep historical links provide for close and useful comparison. The ethnographic focus is on transformation and continuity over time in Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa with the addition of three instructive cases from Tokelau, Papua New Guinea, and Taiwan. The book ends with an account of how kinship is constituted in day-to-day ritual and ritualized behavior.

"Contributing to feminist approaches to masculinities, this book examines men's contextual experiences of masculine identity. Drawing on new data which compares men as they move across and between public and domestic spaces, it explores the implications of this for the nature of contemporary masculinity"--

This volume honors the lifetime achievement of distinguished activist and scholar Elise Boulding (1920-2010) on the occasion of her 96th birthday. Known as the "matriarch" of the twentieth century peace research movement, she made significant contributions in the fields of peace education, future studies, feminism, and sociology of the family, as well as serving as a prominent leader in the peace movement and the Society of Friends. She taught at the University of Colorado, Boulder from 1967 to 1978 and at Dartmouth College from 1978 to 1985, and was instrumental in the development of peace studies programs at both those institutions. She was a co-founder of the International Peace Research Association (1964), the Consortium on Peace Research Education and Development (1970), and various peace and women's issue related committees and working groups of the American Sociological Association and International Sociological Association.

Approval follows would-be parents David and Cici through a series of forays into the past as they go through the motions of applying to adopt a child. Their story builds a picture of hope, vulnerability and fear as David is put under intense and intrusive scrutiny during their battle against faceless bureaucracy. From family background and early experiences to adult relationships, he is forced to revisit uncomfortable - sometimes painful - episodes, in the hope of meeting the authority's requirements. Confronting a lonely, difficult and uncertain path to family life, Approval is a brave novel told from a perspective rarely explored in fiction: a man's response to a couple's infertility. Approval follows would-be parents David and Cici through a series of forays into the past as they go through the motions of applying to adopt a child.

This book challenges and revises existing ways of thinking about leaving care policy, practice and research at regional, national and international levels. Bringing together contributors from fifteen countries, it covers a range of topical policy and practice issues within national, international or comparative contexts. These include youth justice, disability, access to higher education, the role of advocacy groups, ethical challenges and cultural factors. In doing so it demonstrates that, whilst young people are universally a vulnerable group, there are vast differences in their experiences of out-of-home care and transitions from care, and their shorter and longer-term outcomes. Equally, there are significant variations between jurisdictions in terms of the legislative, policy and practice supports and opportunities made available to them. This significant edited collection is essential reading for all those who work with young people from care, including social workers, counsellors, and youth and community practitioners, as well as for students and scholars of child welfare.

Biosocial Research Contributions to Family Processes and Problems, based on the 17th annual National Symposium on Family Issues, examines biosocial models and processes in the context of the family. Research on both biological and social/environmental influences on behavior, health, and development is represented, including behavioral endocrinology, behavior genetics, neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, sociology, demography, anthropology, economics, and psychology. The authors consider physiological and social environmental influences on parenting and early childhood development, followed by adolescent adjustment, and family formation. Also, factors that influence how families adapt to social inequalities are examined.

This book is an ethnography of teachers and children in grades 1 and 2, and presents arguments about why we should take gender and childhood sexuality seriously in the early years of South African primary schooling. Taking issue with dominant discourses which assumes children's lack of agency, the book questions the epistemological foundations of childhood discourses that produce innocence. It examines the paradox between teachers' dominant narratives of childhood innocence and children's own conceptualisation of gender and sexuality inside the classroom, with peers, in heterosexual games, in the playground and through boyfriend-girlfriend relationships. It examines the nuances and finely situated experiences which draw attention to hegemonic masculinity and femininity where boys and girls challenge and contest relations of power. The book focuses on the early makings of gender and sexual harassment and shows how violent gender relations are manifest even amongst very young boys and girls. Attention is given to the interconnections with race, class, structural inequalities, as well as the actions of boys and girls as navigate gender and sexuality at school. The book argues that the early years of primary schooling are a key site for the production and reproduction of gender and sexuality. Gender reform strategies are vital in this sector of schooling.

Euro-commuters' have emerged as a new group of migrants since the onset of the economic crisis in the EU. These people work in one country but live in another. This book analyses the characteristics of these migrants, their motivations and how commuting influences their personal, family and social lives.

This book proivdes an account of the nature and value of the family within a liberal society. It defines "family," and assesses the right to have a family, whether the family promotes injustice, and what future there is for the family in the face of significant changes.

As a gay youth, author Holland Cedric Peyton sought role models for long-term relationships, but found that contemporary society offered only heterosexual examples. As an adult, Peyton embarked on an ambitious research project to locate and interview long-time homosexual partners. In this book, he presents their stories, ideas, and advice regarding love and maintaining a positive, long-term relationship.

Peyton interviewed ten male couples who have been together for a minimum of thirty to more than forty years. In each section, you'll get to know the couples, how they met, and how they achieved longevity in their relationships. Perhaps most importantly, each couple provides insight by answering an extensive series of questions, covering topics from self-perception, family, love, religion, and friendships, to tolerance, celebrations, and children.

These couples' extraordinarily candid interviews are a terrific way to honor their personal relationships and help young gays learn how to live a long, married life with someone they love. Together, Peyton and these couples, who opened their hearts and their lives, take on a large, important task: to provide personal, tangible, relatable relationship role models for gay youth.

Once only a topic among women in the private sphere, motherhood and mothering have become important intellectual topics across academic disciplines. Even so, no book has yet devoted a sustained look at how exploring mothering rhetorics - the rhetorics of reproduction (rhetorics about the reproductive function of women/mothers) and reproducing rhetorics (the rhetorical reproduction of ideological systems and logics of contemporary culture) expand our understanding of mothering, motherhood, communication, and gender. Mothering Rhetorics begins to fill this gap for scholars and teachers interested in the study of mothering rhetorics in their historical and contemporary permutations. The contributions explore the racialized rhetorical contexts of maternity; how fixing food is thought to fix families, while also regulating maternal activities and identity; how Black female breastfeeding activists resisted the exploitation of African-American mothers in Detroit; how women in pink-collar occupations both adhere to and challenge maternity leave discourses by rhetorically positioning their leaves as time off and (dis)ability; identifying verbal and nonverbal shaming practices related to unwed motherhood during the mid-twentieth century; and redefining alternative postpartum placenta practices. This book was originally published as a special issue of Women's Studies in Communication.

This book analyzes the impact of migration on the lives of multiple generations of 2000 Turkish families. Exploring education, marriage, fertility, friends, attitudes and religiosity, it reveals transformations and continuities in the lives of migrants and their families in Europe when compared to their non-migrant counterparts in Turkey.

The mainstreaming of pornographic imagery into fashion and popular culture at the turn of the millennium in Britain and the US signalled a dramatic cultural shift in construction of both femininity and masculinity. For men and women, raunch became the new cool. This engaging book draws from a diverse range of examples including film, popular tabloids, campus culture, mass media marketing campaigns, facebook profiles, and art exhibits to explore expressions and meanings of porn chic. Bringing a cultural and feminist lens to the material, this book challenges the reader to question the sexual agency of the 12-year-old girl dressed to seduce in fashions inspired by Katie Price, the college co-ed flashing her breasts for a film maker during Spring break, and the waitress making her customer happy with chicken wings and a nice set of Hooters. Further it explores the raunchy bad boys being paid handsomely to tell the world about their sexual exploits, online, on film, and in popular press bestsellers. The book also contains thought-provoking artwork by Nicola Bockelmann which focuses on the permeable border between pornography and mainstream culture and urges viewers to question everyday explicitness. Balancing a popular culture approach and a strong analytic lens, Porn Chic will engage a wide audience of readers interested in popular culture, fashion, and gender studies.

The voices in this book come from the stories of gay and lesbian partners who talk about their struggles over the years in building a life together. The stories reach beyond the obvious realities of sexual orientation to speak to the joys, sorrows, hopes, and fears of human beings who are committed to making their relationships work. Based on a life-span perspective, in-depth interviews of people whose relationships have lasted more than 15 years explored how partners adapted over the years. Each interview consisted of questions that focused upon dimensions of these relationships over time from the unique perspective of each partner. They were asked about conflict over the years, decision-making styles, ways of working out roles, the importance of social supports, and sexual and psychological intimacy. The research upon which the book is based has continuity with the authors' earlier work on lasting relationships among heterosexual couples, including Lasting Marriages: Men and Women Growing Together (Praeger, 1995). Compared to marriages, relatively little research has been done on the development of same sex relationships. This book will be of great interest to all researchers and students of gender differences, marriage and family therapy, human sexuality, and interpersonal relationships.

Marriage and social inequality are closely interrelated. Marriage is dependent on the structure of marriage markets, and marriage patterns have consequences for social inequality. This book demonstrates that in most modern societies the educa tional system has become an increasingly important marriage market, particularly for those who are highly qualified. Educational expansion in general and the rising educational participation of women in particular unintentionally have increased the rate of "assortative meeting" and assortative mating across birth cohorts. Rising educational homogamy means that social inequality is further enhanced through marriage because better (and worse) educated single men and women pool their economic and sociocultural advantages (and disadvantages) within couples. In this book we study the changing role of the educational system as a marriage market in modern societies from a cross-national comparative perspective. Using life-history data from a broad range of industrialized countries and longitudinal statistical models, we analyze the process of spouse selection in the life courses of single men and women, step by step. The countries included in this book vary widely in important characteristics such as demographic behavior and institutional characteristics. The life course approach explicitly recognizes the dynamic nature of partner decisions, the importance of educational roles and institutional circum stances as young men and women move through their life paths, and the cumulation of advantages and disadvantages experienced by individuals."

Exploring the relationship between class, sexuality and social exclusion, this is an original study of women who identify themselves as working-class and lesbian, highlighting the significance of class and sexuality in their biographies, everyday lives and identities. It provides insight into the experiences of self-identified working-class lesbians and offers a timely critique of queer theory and an empirical interrogation of the embodied, spatial and material intersection of class and sexuality.

This book explores how we make sense of ourselves when work is precarious and intrinsically alienating. We know little about how this experience of work impacts the lives of men and women, and less about the way individuals understand themselves in the face of institutions and organizations from which they feel marginalized. Based on the narratives of men and women who underwent extraordinary work life changes, Crisis at Work examines how we negotiate greater meaning and fulfilment when our productive lives fail to sustain and satisfy. Reflecting a growing fracture between what we value, believe in, and are committed to and the degree to which work and career have become incapable of assuaging those desires, Potter examines how individuals attempt to assemble working-lives they find rich and rewarding and how that work is negotiated within the constraints and possibilities of the contemporary moment.