The movement from young adulthood through coupling and the transition to parenthood may be among the most universal adult developmental transitions. These passages hold interest for all of us, but especially for those who study the psychological, familial, and sociocultural components of development, all of which interact and influence each other. This book enhances understanding of family-life development by shedding light on the meanings that family members ascribe to the developmental process of becoming a family. This is achieved through qualitative analysis of narratives through which individuals and families explain themselves, their thinking, and their behavior. These family narratives are windows into individual and family identity, as well as descriptions of connections to others. The book addresses issues including identity, child characteristics, social support, and work. Each chapter includes a review of seminal literature, parents' comments and ideas about the topic, and a discussion of practice, policy, and research implications.

In this practical and innovative study, Richard Conville proposes a way to think about the process of communication in personal relationships. He moves beyond rigid stage models of relational development and advocates a new, helical model with a four-phase structure of transition between relational phases. The model is based on Difference--developed as a theoretical concept--and on structural analysis of relational partners' narratives of their transition experiences. This perspective offers both a conceptual and a methodological alternative to current work in relationship development. Though its focus is only one part of the wide-ranging communication field, its principles can easily be applied to other communication contexts.

Conville opens with a description of Difference, a necessary component of current theory in interpersonal relationships, and its role in the structure of relationships. He examines narratives by partners in three personal relationships to locate dialectical differences of time, intimacy, and affect. Later chapters examine the four transition phases of relationships: security, disintegration, alienation, and resynthesis. These four phases are seen as meta-dialectics that mark the social domain in which personal relationships are played out. "Relational TransitionS" will prove to be of particular interest to scholars and students of communication, psychology, sociology, family studies, and anthropology.

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Routledge Modular Psychology

A number of societal risks pose serious challenges to families' well-being, many of which cut across divisions of class and race. These challenges include: changes in the labor market and economy; the increasing participation of mothers in the labor force; the changing nature of family structure and the composition of households; and the increase in the number of immigrant families. Key institutions in the lives of families, including places of employment and schools, can play a significant role in fostering families' capacity to adapt to the potential challenges they face. "Resilience Across Contexts: Family, Work, Culture, and Community" presents papers--written by leading scholars in varied disciplines including economics, developmental and educational psychology, education, and sociology--discussing factors that influence resilience development. The authors' research focuses on emerging issues that have significant implications for policy and practice in such areas as employment and new technologies; maternal employment and family development; family structure and family life; immigration, migration, acculturation, and education of children and youth; and social and human services delivery. The book's overall goal is to take stock of what is known from research and practice on some of the challenges facing children and families for policy development and improvement of practices.

This book considers the responses of states to migrant girls who are separated from family and enter state care systems as unaccompanied or trafficked young people. The book draws on research with girls and social work practitioners in the UK to explore what can happen when separated girls encounter professionals at borders and within care systems. It considers how separated girls adapt to different ideas of what it means to be a girl in destination countries, and how this is affected by their other intersecting identities. The book identifies how girls can feel welcomed, but also how young migrants can be seen in excluding ways. It argues that narratives of the fragile 'refugee child' are unhelpful ways to understand individual girls. Using theories and clear language relevant to both academics and practitioners, the author fills a gap in the research on migrant and trafficked young women who frequently represent the minority in care systems globally.

Explore the breakdown of the universal family form into new living arrangements and the political and social implications of how they influence the definition of family today Concepts and Definitions of Family for the 21st Century views families from a US perspective and from many different cultures and societies. You will examine the family as it has evolved from the 1950s traditional family to today's family structures. The controversial question, "What is family?" is thoroughly examined as it has become an increasingly important social policy concern because of the recent change in the traditional family. Scholars and researchers in family studies and sociology will be intrigued by these thought-provoking articles that analyze the definition of the family from a multitude of perspectives.Concepts and Definitions of Family for the 21st Century looks at family in terms of its social construction, variations and the diversity in families, among others. You will examine the negative implications of using the term "The Family" as it implies "The Nuclear Family," which many powerful lobbies (politics, morality, religion) claim to support and revere. You will also explore family ideology and identity from many different social and cultural contexts. Some of the family issues you will explore in Concepts and Definitions of Family for the 21st Century include: marrying, procreating, and divorcing in a traditional Jewish family redefining western families by taking into consideration the legal factors, history, tradition and the continued expansion of the definition of family in the US addressing family issues in Lithuania, a country amidst many political changes challenging and complicating the definition of family with stepfamilies exploring the question "What are families after divorce?" examining multicultural motives for marriage and how these motives effect courting behavior in Lithuania defining families through caregiving patternsConcepts and Definitions of Family for the 21st Century goes in-depth to broaden and interpret the meaning of family in today's society. Through the exploration of legal implications, professional and personal needs this text takes into account the large variety of groups that have close living relationships. Concepts and Definitions of Family for the 21st Century will assist you in answering the difficult and complex question "What is family?"

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Routledge is now re-issuing this prestigious series of 204 volumes originally published between 1910 and 1965. The titles include works by key figures such asC.G. Jung, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Otto Rank, James Hillman, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney and Susan Isaacs. Each volume is available on its own, as part of a themed mini-set, or as part of a specially-priced 204-volume set. A brochure listing each title in the "International Library of Psychology" series is available upon request.

Routledge is now re-issuing this prestigious series of 204 volumes originally published between 1910 and 1965. The titles include works by key figures such asC.G. Jung, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Otto Rank, James Hillman, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney and Susan Isaacs. Each volume is available on its own, as part of a themed mini-set, or as part of a specially-priced 204-volume set. A brochure listing each title in the "International Library of Psychology" series is available upon request.

Sexual risk behaviors have inspired profound ideas and effective teamwork. But as the early history of AIDS demonstrates, when sexual practice is part of the equation, the same bold thinkers may be stymied, or just silent. Safe sex and monogamy have been proposed as answers to a gamut of social problems, but there is frequently little consensus on what these terms mean.

Sexual Partnering, Sexual Practices, and Health replaces myth and stereotype with meticulously documented findings on real people and their behaviors in their social, environmental, and individual contexts. Author Sana Loue examines the range of partnerships not only in the U.S. but also Europe and the developing world, focusing on both consenting relationships and exploitative sexual interactions:

- Varieties of monogamy between consenting adults

- Relationships involving multiple adult partners

- Incest, pedophilia, and child marriage

- Sex work, trafficking, and pornography

- Fetishes and related behaviors

All chapters cogently address the health issues that arise from these arrangements, concluding with implications for research, prevention, and intervention.

Throughout, Loue argues for a common language across disciplines and challenges her readersa "therapists, health care providers, and policymakers alikea "to rethink their assumptions about clients, their health needs, and the communities they represent.

"Dr. Loue's work is a truly significant scholarly contribution to a topic too often characterized by pseudo-science and ideological distortions. "Sexual Partnering, Sexual Practices, and Health" should prove an invaluable resource for researchers and community practitioners alike inhelping understand dimensions of sexual practice, and designing more effective approaches to sexual health and violence prevention."

-Earl Pike, Executive Director, AIDS Taskforce of Greater Cleveland

All over the world, families and communities are key providers of care and support. This is particularly true in relation to serious illnesses such as HIV and AIDS. Yet families and communities can also stigmatise their members, leaving people to die in the most appalling conditions. This book examines the diversity of family and community responses to HIV and AIDS. By examining contexts such as nuclear, extended and refugee family households, and gay community networks and structures, it offers insight into the factors which lead to positive responses and those which trigger negative ones.

SHARE is an international survey designed to answer the societal challenges that face us due to rapid population ageing. How do we Europeans age? How will we do economically, socially and healthwise? How are these domains interrelated? The authors of this multidisciplinary book have taken a further big step towards answering these questions based on the recent SHARE data in order to support policies for an inclusive society.

In one of the first psychological studies of women in heterosexual relationships, Caroline Dryden examines the social context of their experiences and emotional struggles. Unlike the developmental literature in which women are studied only as mothers, or the clinical literature which has little theoretical basis, Gender Relations, Power and Identity places case study material in the context of the power balance between women and men. Caroline Dryden finds that there are contradications between stereotypical gender roles and the maintenance of an equal partnership that can cause problems for both women and men.

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In "Families" Jane Howard informally visits many dozens of families and tries to discover what makes the best ones work so well. Families are not dying, she finds, although they are evolving in various ways. From the tightest-knit nuclear family or extended clan to the most fragile new commune, the family in one guise or another remains everybody's most basic hold on reality. We may run away from our families as many do, but no sooner do we escape than we find another one, often very much like it. Sympathetically, with immense thrust, she crosses the continent to discover families' myths, jokes, and rituals. She leafs through their scrapbooks, sits on their porches, and takes part, when she can, in their feasts and celebrations. She talks to a father of eighteen, several double first cousins, stepchildren, multiple godmothers, an honorary relative of an Indian tribe, and a nine-year-old boy who has no family but his mother. She sits with a matriarch on the front stoop of a ghetto house, goes camping with a family in Mexico, has Thanksgiving with another in Iowa, and orders pizza with a Greek clan in Massachusetts. Howard reports on visits to conventional Southern and Jewish households and to innovative ones whose members, lacking a common history, plan on building common futures as if water were after all as thick as blood. She examines the notion that "there are ways and ways of achieving kinship, of which birth and marriage are only the most obvious." Millions of clans and families all over the United States continue to celebrate, quarrel, disband, reunite, and endure. Jane Howard makes us realize how our lives are interwoven both with the families we are born into and with those we invent as we go through life. "Families" is compassionate, provocative, and profound. The paperback edition of this important work will be essential reading for all those with an interest in the study of familial bonds, particularly sociologists, anthropologists, and psychologists.

Originally published in 1969, based on the talks R. D. Laing gave in 1967 and 68, this book was intended by the author to evoke questions rather than provide answers. Using concepts of schizophrenia, R.D. Laing demonstrates that we tend to invalidate the subjective and experiential and accept the proper societal view of what should occur within the family.

Lesbian Step Families: An Ethnography of Love explores five lesbian step families'definitions of the step parent role and how they accomplish parenting tasks, cope with homophobia, and define and interpret their experiences. An intensive feminist qualitative study, the book offers guidelines for counselors and lesbian step families for creating healthy, functioning family structures and environments. It is the first book to concentrate exclusively on lesbian step families rather than on lesbian mothering in general.In Lesbian Step Families: An Ethnography of Love, you'll explore in detail the different kinds of step relationships that are developed and what factors may lead to the different types of step mothering in lesbian step families. The book helps you understand these relationships and parent roles through in-depth discussions of: how a step mother and legal mother who live together negotiate and organize parenting and homemaking tasks how members of lesbian step families define and create the step mother role strategies family members use to define and cope with oppression how sexism is transmitted within the family and how mothering may limit and/or contribute to female liberation the opinions and viewpoints of the children of these families The findings in Lesbian Step Families: An Ethnography of Love challenge traditional views of mothering and fathering as gender and biologically based activities; they indicate that lesbian step families model gender flexibility and that the mothers and step mothers share parenting--both traditional mothering and fathering--tasks. This allows the biological mother some freedom from motherhood as well as support in it. With insight such as this, you will be prepared to help a client, a loved one, or yourself develop and maintain healthy family relationships.

The problems of studying families arise from the difficulty in studying systems where there are multiple elements interacting with each other and with the child. How should this system be described? Still other problems relate to indirect effects; namely the influence of a particular dyad's interaction on the child when the child is not a member of the dyad. While all agree that the mother-father relationship has important bearing on the child's development, exactly how to study this--especially using observational techniques--remains a problem. While progress in studying the family has been slow, there is no question that an increase in interest in the family systems, as opposed to the mother-child relationship, is taking place. This has resulted in an increase in research on families and their effects.
This volume, by leading figures in child development on families, attests to the growing sophistication of the conceptualization and measurement techniques for getting at family processes. The third in a series that aims to address topics relevant to the developmental problems and developmental disabilities of retardation, this volume is divided into two parts. Section 1 presents basic family processes and approaches for describing family dynamics. It deals with these issues from a broad perspective, including studying families at dinner, families in different cultural contexts, and the understanding of family in nonhuman primates. Section 2 looks at family processes in the service of studying families at-risk. The risk factors include poverty, malnutrition, and developmental delay and retardation. The study of family processes in these contexts provides data on family dynamics as well as how these dynamics impact on the children's developing competence. This volume will be informative for researchers, clinicians, and educators from a variety of disciplines and settings. The editors' aim is to bring a greater clarity to issues concerning the family life of children and highlight new research and possibilities for intervention.

The meaning and significance of the institution of marriage has engendered angry and boisterous battles across the United States. While the efforts of lesbians and gay men to make marriage accessible to same-sex couples have seen increasing success, these initiatives have sparked a backlash as campaigns are waged to "protect" heterosexual marriage in America. Less in the public eye is government legislation that embraces the idea of marriage promotion as a necessary societal good. In this timely and extensive study of marriage politics, Melanie Heath uncovers broad cultural anxieties that fuel on-the-ground practices to reinforce a boundary of heterosexual marriage, questioning why marriage has become an issue of pervasive national preoccupation and anxiety, and explores the impact of policies that seek to reinstitutionalize heterosexual marriage in American society. From marriage workshops for the general public to relationship classes for welfare recipients to marriage education in high school classrooms, One Marriage Under God documents in meticulous detail the inner workings of ideologies of gender and heterosexuality in the practice of marriage promotion to fortify a concept of "one marriage," an Anglo-American ideal of Christian, heterosexual monogamy.

It is a truism among therapists in most mental health disciplines that the most important aspects of clinical practice are learned only after one has left graduate school and entered "the real world." While many of the basics could be covered in graduate school, supervisors of new therapists often feel that the fundamentals are only addressed in detail after a therapist has been employed. In response to this predicament, Odell and Campbell offer The Practical Practice of Marriage and Family Therapy: Things My Training Supervisor Never Told Me as a useful daily guide for graduate students and beginning marriage and family therapists that will ease the transition from learner to practicing professional in the clinical domain.Written in a refreshing and unpretentious style, much the way a caring seasoned professional would mentor a novice practitioner, The Practical Practice of Marriage and Family Therapy covers the major areas that typical graduate programs don t have time to address, including how to: integrate theoretical training with pragmatic clinical practice to maximize therapeutic effectiveness face the practical problems involving the financial elements of clinical work become a thoroughly credentialed professional develop an approach to becoming specialized uncover the motivation for being a professional marriage and family therapist increase one 's ability to maintain high-level practice over a lifetime of work by developing coping strategies and methods of safeguarding one 's own mental healthAddressing the unique approach of their book, Odell and Campbell explain, "Whereas most texts are handbooks on the actual theories and techniques used with couples and families, this book is designed to be a guide to the beginning professional as s/he leaves the graduate training environment and enters the mental health field as it exists in contemporary America. Our hope is that this book would be one of those chosen by the novice practicing professional if s/he could only take two or three with them into the field, as it contains material that is most useful for everyday work in clinical settings."

The family is a fundamental and complex component of all human societies. Primarily concerned with the organization and regulation of sexual relations and procreation, it is also an organizer of economic production, social division of labour, and the distribution of property, as well as the socialization of children and the care of the elderly or disadvantaged. The family as an institution lies at the intersection of nature and culture, because it is fundamentally concerned with certain elementary biological functions (birth and death), and is a major vehicle for the transfer of culture. It is also part of the apparatus of social control in human societies. Scholarly definitions and theories of the family are correspondingly complex and controversial. The works selected here form a cross-section of the landmarks in this developing field in the 19th and early-20th centuries. This collection traces the sociology of the family from its origins in the anthropological study of kinship in the late-19th century; includes examples of early-20th-century studies on family relations, which propose practical solutions to the problems of domestic breakdown and violence and the emergence of the

The Victorian debate on marriage, motherhood and women's rights to an independent life reflects the impact the women's movement had on the formation and transformation of public opinion. The marriage debate was also about the New Woman, the "fin-de-siecle" representation of the feminist. This anthology contextualizes key feminist texts and ideas by connecting them to the public response they received. The first volume focuses on Mona Caird's "The Morality of Marriage" and the widespread controversy it provoked. The second volume widens the debate between feminists, traditionalists and anti-feminists by linking the public discourse on marriage and divorce to the controversy of the New Woman, a debate initiated and sustained by Sarah Grand's writings. The third and fourth volumes are concerned with New Woman fiction, providing selected reading from feminist and anti-feminist works, and reproducing the media debate on morality in literature. The fiction is taken from the writings of: Emma Brooke, Mona Caird, Gertrude Dix, Lady Florence Dixie, Emma Hepworth Dixon and George Egerton.

Friendships are crucial to children's well-being and happiness and lay important foundations upon which later relationships in adolescence and adulthood are built. This overview of the nature and significance of children's peer relationships examines issues such as social-cognitive development; the context of children's relationships; relationship problems such as loneliness; shyness and social isolation; and methods of promoting positive relationships.

It is a truism among therapists in most mental health disciplines that the most important aspects of clinical practice are learned only after one has left graduate school and entered "the real world." While many of the basics could be covered in graduate school, supervisors of new therapists often feel that the fundamentals are only addressed in detail after a therapist has been employed. In response to this predicament, Odell and Campbell offer The Practical Practice of Marriage and Family Therapy: Things My Training Supervisor Never Told Me as a useful daily guide for graduate students and beginning marriage and family therapists that will ease the transition from learner to practicing professional in the clinical domain.Written in a refreshing and unpretentious style, much the way a caring seasoned professional would mentor a novice practitioner, The Practical Practice of Marriage and Family Therapy covers the major areas that typical graduate programs don't have time to address, including how to: integrate theoretical training with pragmatic clinical practice to maximize therapeutic effectiveness face the practical problems involving the financial elements of clinical work become a thoroughly credentialed professional develop an approach to becoming specialized uncover the motivation for being a professional marriage and family therapist increase one's ability to maintain high-level practice over a lifetime of work by developing coping strategies and methods of safeguarding one's own mental healthAddressing the unique approach of their book, Odell and Campbell explain, "Whereas most texts are handbooks on the actual theories and techniques used with couples and families, this book is designed to be a guide to the beginning professional as s/he leaves the graduate training environment and enters the mental health field as it exists in contemporary America. Our hope is that this book would be one of those chosen by the novice practicing professional if s/he could only take two or three with them into the field, as it contains material that is most useful for everyday work in clinical settings."

First published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.