Recent societal changes have challenged long-established concepts in psychoanalysis, including the Oedipus complex, parental functions, and male and female psychosexuality. 'Postmodern families', based on sexual and emotional exchanges independent of gender, now include homoerotic couples who adopt children, or who create them through assisted fertilisation, as well as single parent families and blended families. A number of highly-renowned Latin American psychoanalysts have drawn attention to the urgency of revising theoretical and clinical concepts in the light of these new scenarios. In this book, they open up ideas which cover familiar territory of current concerns in psychoanalytic work, as well as other little-explored areas, with the emphasis on evolving sexualities and new experiences of parenthood. The first section revisits psychoanalytic theories, particularly parental functions in the area of sexuality and gender. The following section discusses new family configurations, and vicissitudes of the desire to have a child in men and women, with the authors presenting some psychic consequences for parents in therapy who have turned to assisted fertilisation.

This first major study of a curiously neglected term in the history of sexuality will intrigue students, scholars and enthusiasts alike. The authors take us through a journey across four centuries, showing how notions of sexual coldness and frigidity have been thought about by legal, medical, psychiatric, psychoanalytic and literary writers.

Work-life integration is an increasingly hot topic in the media, social research, governments and in people's everyday lives. This volume offers a new type of lens for understanding work-family reconciliation by studying how work-family dynamics are shaped, squeezed and developed between consistent or competing logics in different societies in Europe and the US. The three institutions of "state", "family" and "working life", and their under-explored primary logics of "regulation", "morality" and "economic competitiveness" are examined theoretically as well as empirically throughout the chapters, thus contributing to an understanding of the contemporary challenges within the field of work-family research that combines structure and culture. Particular attention is given to the ways in which the institutions are confronted with various moral norms of good parenthood or motherhood and ideals for family life. Likewise, the logic of policy regulation and gendered family moralities are challenged by the economic logic of working life, based on competition in favour of the most productive workers and organizations. Demonstrating different aspects of what is behind and between the logics of state regulation, morals and market, this innovative volume will appeal to students, teachers and researchers interested in areas such as family studies, welfare state studies, social policy studies, work life studies as well as and gender studies.

With the prominence of one-name couples (Brangelina, Kimye) and famous families (the Smiths, the Beckhams), it is becoming increasingly clear that celebrity is no longer an individual pursuit-if it ever was. Accordingly, First Comes Love explores celebrity kinship and the phenomenon of the power couple: those relationships where two stars come together and where their individual identities as celebrities become inseparable from their status as a famous twosome. Taken together, the chapters in this volume interrogate the ways these alliances are bound up in wider cultural debates about marriage, love, intimacy, family, parenthood, sexuality, and gender, in their particular historical contexts, from the 1920s to the present day. Interdisciplinary in scope, First Comes Love seeks to establish how celebrity relationships play particular roles in dramatizing, disrupting, and reconciling often-contradictory ideas about coupledom and kinship formations.

Pleasures and Perils follows a group of young girls living on Nevis, an island society in the Eastern Caribbean. In this provocative ethnography, Debra Curtis examines their sexuality in gripping detail: why do Nevisian girls engage in sexual activity at such young ages? Where is the line between coercion and consent? How does a desire for wealth affect a girl's sexual practices?

Curtis shows that girls are often caught between conflicting discourses of Christian teachings about chastity, public health cautions about safe sex, and media enticements about consumer delights. Sexuality's contradictions are exposed: power and powerlessness, self-determination and cultural control, violence and pleasure. Pleasures and Perils illuminates the methodological and ethical issues anthropologists face when they conduct research on sex, especially among girls. The sexually explicit narratives conveyed in this book challenge not only the reader's own thoughts on sexuality but also the broader limits and possibilities of ethnography.

The intersection of race, ethnicity and genomics has recently been a focus of debate and concern. The key areas of debate are pharmacogenomics and, to a lesser extent, racial profiling in the criminal justice system. The former poses the question as to whether certain "races" are genetically predisposed towards given diseases and whether they metabolize drugs differently; with the latter debating whether DNA analyses accurately identify the "race" of an individual. This book takes a different approach, while acknowledging the importance of these debates and their role in shaping what the issues are perceived to be in thinking about the intersection of race, ethnicity and genomics. We are interested in exploring the interconnections between race, ethnicity and nation and kinship, always bearing in mind that kinship, as a domain of human experience and a field of social study, has been reshaped by the genomic and biotechnological revolution. Peter Wade is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester. His publications include Blackness and Race Mixture (1993), Race and Ethnicity in Latin America (1997), Music, Race and Nation: Musica Tropical in Colombia (2000), Race, Nature and Culture: An Anthropological Perspective (2002). His current research focuses on issues of racial identity, embodiment and new genetic and information technologies.

In recent years the factors influencing young people's transition to adulthood have become much more problematic. This edited collection of papers from Pennsylvania State University's fifth annual Family Symposium explores the main issues involved in this transition, such as the widening gap between rich and poor, downsizing, global competition, and technological change. These factors have made jobs scarce in many areas, especially inner cities, and have profoundly affected family formation, making cohabitation, delays in marriage and parenthood, and prolonged residence with parents, the life choices of many young adults. These and other issues are explored by scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, who focus on four main questions: alterations in the structure of opportunity, prior experiences in the family, prior experiences in the workplace, and career development and marriage formation.

This rich and perceptive book shatters the myth of the submissive Asian woman with its vivid portraits of women in the region. Drawing on her many years working in Asia, Louise Williams frames the issues facing women through the experiences of individuals. We are introduced to women as varied as politicians, call girls and mistresses, revolutionary heroines, laborers, and business magnates. Exploring the paths to power_both private and public_available to women in Asia, Williams has had remarkable access to both the famous and the faceless. She skillfully draws out the stories of extraordinary individuals ranging from Benazir Bhutto, Corazon Aquino, and Aung San Suu Kyi to the one-time Viet Cong commando, the Jakarta factory girl, the Korean publisher, and the Osecond wifeO in the Chinese mistress village that serves Hong KongOs wealthy men. Common themes emerge: the expectation that women will place their OdutiesO to their husbands at the forefront of their daily lives, whether or not they have their own vocations to pursue; the continuing importance placed on the need to bear male children; and the pervasive attitude among Asian men that extramarital relationships are their prerogative. We discover how a region that elects the worldOs first female prime minister at the same time tolerates child prostitution in Bangkok and Manila. We see how women can rise to the top of industrial conglomerates or be sold into servitude. Set in a vast region of enormous social disparity and rapid change, these unique stories dispel Western stereotypes and show just how often the concerns of women in Asia differ from those of women in the West.

This vivid recreation of family life as experienced in Nazi Germany during and after the Second World War tells the stories of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, parents and children, in their own words. From desperate last letters sent to their loved ones by doomed soldiers at Stalingrad, to diaries kept by women trying to keep their families alive as the cities they lived in were devastated by constant bombing raids, this book presents a new and often unfamiliar account of family life under the most extreme conditions. Far from disintegrating under the strain, as many historians have argued, this book shows that the German family maintained and even strengthened the emotional bonds that tied its members together. Entering the war shaped, moulded and directed by the massive pressures brought to bear on it by Nazism's attempt to recast German society in its own image, the German family resisted these pressures and emerged at the end of the war in a new and stronger form, surviving the manifold problems of reunion and readjustment to the postwar, post-Nazi world with a surprising degree of resilience.

This study is based upon original research carried out with lesbian, gay and queer parents and explores how genealogy, kinship, family, everyday life, gender, race, state welfare and intimacy are theorized and lived out, drawing upon interactionist, feminist, discursive and queer sociologies.

"This book traces the movement from mutualism to individualism in the context of American family life. Throughout American history, families survived or even flourished during colonization, the Revolution, slavery, the industrial revolution, immigration, and economic upheaval because reliance on others was patently necessary. But in the past century, unprecedented prosperity both freed Americans from mutual dependence and created a culture devoted to the pursuit of pleasure and individual fulfilment. This shift from obligation to freedom has turned the maintenance of durable, rewarding families into a countercultural act, one that requires a conscious decision to qualify the American commitment to freedom"--

Ethel Robinson has written an amazing book. As she wisely argues, despite a rapidly growing middle and upper class, popular media and public debates continue to view African-American families from a deficit perspective. Portrayals of African-American families in newspapers, television, and contemporary scholarship tend to focus on single-parent households, low parental expectations, and lack of family involvement in schooling. The families you will meet in this book contradict these stereotypes. In carefully crafted vignettes, Dr. Robinson and paints an alternative portrait of life in African-American households. In this marvelous book, you will see eight intact families intimately involved in the academic and social lives of their children. Some volunteer in their children's classrooms; others serve as devoted tutors and mentors; still others are active advocates, arguing passionately for school services; all hold fast to the hope that their children will achieve their piece of the American dream. This book is a powerful antidote to the negative portrayals of African-American families that abound in mainstream media.It is a ""must-read"" for researchers, educators, and all who wish to look beyond and beneath the stereotypes of African-American family life.

This work approaches the modern phenomenon of online dating, examining the ways people make use of its technical and social potential. In particular, the users' mate preferences, choices, strategies, and interactions are analyzed using the innovative method of click-stream observations and web-questionnaire data. For the purpose of these analyses, two major theories are used - an explicit theory of individual mate choice, and the more general relational theory developed by Pierre Bourdieu, which helps to highlight the social structures both underlying and resulting from mating online. Results show that online dating is not a partner marker free from social structure, but that the traditional social conditions found offline are also reproduced in this virtual setting. In contrast to the picture drawn by media discourse and advertising, online dating represents a partner market which fulfills the promise of happiness in a socially differential way.

For every female suicide in Ireland, there are five male suicides. This book is based on fieldwork done in and around Cork, Ireland between 2008 and 2012 among some forty young lads, aged 18-34. This anthropological approach aims to help explain why some groups in a specific society or community are more prone to commit suicide than others. In addition to suicide, this book focuses extensively on related issues such as alcohol, drug abuse, and other self-destructive behaviors prominent within Irish lad culture. This includes peer pressures and loyalties, chauvinistic jargon, homophobic bullying, humor, and the culture of mocking so as to grasp the cultural expectations of this particular form of masculinity. The everyday workings of gender segregation and gender-appropriateness is examined in detail by informants while addressing the underlying question whether increased gender equality-which includes men-could lessen young men's vulnerability to self-destructive behaviors and suicide in Ireland.

Describes trends that signal societal changes in household composition, family structure, and women's working patterns. Interprets their implications for future policy planning and institutional accommodation.

The debate on the origins of modern gender norms continues unabated across the academic disciplines. This book adds an important and hitherto neglected dimension. Focusing on rural life and its values, the author argues that the modern ideal of separate spheres originated in the era of the Enlightenment. Prior to the eighteenth century, cultural norms prescribed active, interdependent economic roles for both women and men. Enlightenment economists transformed these gender paradigms as they postulated a market exchange system directed exclusively by men. By the early nineteenth century, the emerging bourgeois value system affirmed the new civil society and the market place as exclusively male realms. These standards defined women's options largely as marriage and motherhood.

Managing social relationships for childless couples in pro-natalist societies can be a difficult art to master, and may even become an issue of belonging for both men and women. With ethnographic research gathered from two IVF clinics and in two villages in northwestern Turkey, this book explores infertility and assisted reproductive technologies within a secular Muslim population. Goeknar investigates the experience of infertility through various perspectives, such as the importance of having a child for women, the mediating role of religion, the power dynamics in same-gender relationships, and the impact of manhood ideologies on the decision for - or against - having IVF.

The true story of 2 year-old Anna, abandoned by her natural parents, left alone in a neglected orphanage. Elaine and Ian had travelled half way round the world to adopt little Anna. She couldn't have been more wanted, loved and cherished. So why was she now in foster care and living with me? It didn't make sense. Until I learned what had happened. ... Dressed only in nappies and ragged T-shirts the children were incarcerated in their cots. Their large eyes stared out blankly from emaciated faces. Some were obviously disabled, others not, but all were badly undernourished. Flies circled around the broken ceiling fans and buzzed against the grids covering the windows. The only toys were a few balls and a handful of building bricks, but no child played with them. The silence was deafening and unnatural. Not one of the thirty or so infants cried, let alone spoke.

In this volume, noted scholars Elaine Hatfield and Richard Rapson focus on the cross-cultural research concerning the passionate beginnings of relationships: how people meet, fall in love, make love, and fall out of love, usually only to risk it all over again. Through in-depth analysis and astute assessment, they compare the way cultures try to set rules for these incendiary matters. Two main questions addressed are: 'What seems to be biological and universal?' and 'What seems to be socially constructed and transient?' Taking a historical perspective, the authors ask where different societies, and the world itself, are headed?

Fertility rates vary considerably across and within societies, and over time. Over the last three decades, social demographers have made remarkable progress in documenting these axes of variation, but theoretical models to explain family change and variation have lagged behind. At the same time, our sister disciplines-from cultural anthropology to social psychology to cognitive science and beyond-have made dramatic strides in understanding how social action works, and how bodies, brains, cultural contexts, and structural conditions are coordinated in that process. "Understanding Family Change and Variation: Toward a Theory of Conjunctural Action" argues that social demography must be reintegrated into the core of theory and research about the processes and mechanisms of social action, and proposes a framework through which that reintegration can occur. This framework posits that material and schematic structures profoundly shape the occurrence, frequency, and context of the vital events that constitute the object of social demography. Fertility and family behaviors are best understood as a function not just of individual traits, but of the structured contexts in which behavior occurs. This approach upends many assumptions in social demography, encouraging demographers to embrace the endogeneity of social life and to move beyond fruitless debates of structure versus culture, of agency versus structure, or of biology versus society.

In this collection, over 40 researchers across the social sciences offer a series of engaging accounts reflecting on dilemmas and issues that they experienced while researching and communicating research on personal life. Their insights are food for thought for students, researchers, professionals and anyone using, planning or conducting research on families and relationships, encouraging critical reflection on the readers' own processes. Researchers' accounts are organised under and commented on by insightful overviews. David Morgan leads with consideration of framing research. Kay Tisdall prefaces the next set by reflections on ethical considerations in research engagements. Angus Bancroft and Stuart Aitken each comment on researchers' accounts from 'in the field' focusing on the research relationship and the complexities of time and place. The final accounts are prefaced by Lynn Jamieson's discussion of dealing with dilemmas in interpreting and representing families and relationships and by Sarah Morton's and Sandra Nutley's reflections on getting research into policy and practice.

Despite calls for a renewal of family values and the proliferation of corporate work-family programs, the goal of achieving a healthy balance between the demands of work and a satisfying family life remains elusive. Dr. Parasuraman, Dr. Greenhaus, and the contributors to this well-balanced and thoughtful volume examine this increasingly prevalent social dilemma from a stakeholder perspective. They see work-family tensions as a multifaceted social issue, and they examine the nature and consequences of these tensions from the viewpoints of individuals, employers, consultants, counseling professionals, and other service providers. Their inclusion of legal, cultural, international, and research perspectives and recognition of the unique concerns of vulnerable groups, such as nonexempt employees and ethnic minorities, add to the breadth of coverage. Academics in the social and behavioral sciences, executive decision-makers in government and business, human resource professionals, and employed men and women interested in achieving work-life balance will find this volume insightful, stimulating, and useful.

The editors have arranged their book into five parts and 21 chapters. Part I provides a broad overview of the environmental factors impacting work and family. It then identifies the critical issues and challenges facing individuals, families, and employees in managing the complex interdependencies between work and family roles. In Part II they provide a view of the issues from the vantage point of specific stakeholders. Part III concentrates on the role of culture in shaping ideology, policies, and practices concerning work and family and the relationships among them. Part IV examines the impact of career development programs on employees and their families. It also discusses the effectiveness of alternative career tracks, various usages of work-family benefits by women and men, and the roles employers and employees can play in legitimizing alternative career paths. Part V concludes the book by examining the cultural barriers to achieving more effective integration of work and family, and by analyzing the appropriate role of key stakeholders in addressing work-family problems.

The text analyses identities within virtual on-screen environments. Investigating regions in Second Life, it explores topical issues of the body in virtual space, nature and mythology in virtual environments, and the key arguments surrounding normative and subversive representations of gender, sexuality and subversion in screen-based environments.

Love is a recurring element at the movies. While many different types of love are depicted in popular Hollywood cinema, there appears to be two types of texts that focus primarily on 'romance', or the intimate relations between two people. While the romantic comedy foregrounds companionate love, the romantic drama promotes passionate love. Given the wealth of research into the romantic comedy, Erica Todd focuses on the romantic drama and the ways that passionate love informs popular texts. Due to the short-term nature of passionate love and its association with irrationality, films that endorse this type of love often depict intense, idealistic courtships that usually end in suffering. Although the lovers in these films tend to separate, the significance of their time together remains through themes like memory and nostalgia.

Combining the poignancy of Tuesdays with Morrie with the candid humor of David Sedaris, Colin McEnroe delivers a universally appealing story of male identity and mortality.

Starting with the death of his father and chronicling backwards, Colin McEnroe examines their relationship in order to understand his dad, not just as a father, but as a man. Now a father himself, McEnroe articulates, in a voice both sensitive and startling, the experiences of "the sandwich generation," Baby Boomers facing the dual task of caring for their own children and their aging parents. Moving without being maudlin, MY FATHER'S FOOTPRINTS reveals the profound lessons behind one of today's most challenging issues: losing a parent while being a parent.