What is character education? Why has it risen up the political agenda in the UK in recent years? And what does it mean in pedagogical practice? This book addresses these questions, challenging the individualistic and moralistic ideas underlying the clamour amongst politicians, educators and authors to promote 'grit', 'resilience' and 'character' in schools. Closely examining a range of teaching resources, the book shows that the development of character is wrongly presented as the solution to a wide variety of social problems, with individual citizens expected to accommodate themselves to the realities of the contemporary economic context, rather than enhancing their capacities to engage in civic and political activities to bring about changes they wish to see. The book argues that there is a tried and tested alternative to character education, which is far more likely to strengthen British democracy, namely, citizenship education.

Largely as a result of social policies and cultural factors, the Nordic countries continually score high in lifestyle measures, quality of life and children's outcomes. This book brings together authors from the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) to share knowledge and understanding regarding families, children, primary education and children's leisure time activities. The empirical research and theoretical contributions provide important insights into the 'Nordic model' and explore the issues facing Nordic countries. The book reveals that while there are many similarities across the countries, differences also arise. The content of the book is more relevant now than ever, as countries look at better ways to support their populations. Nordic Families, Children and Early Childhood Education will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including Education, Sociology and Social Policy.

With a focus on nine different national contexts, this book explores contemporary family diversity. With attention to the different welfare states and cultures of care in each setting, it problematises the pre-eminence of research and policy centred on heteronormative families, showing the extent to which family diversity exists cross-nationally in relation to different gendered and "family-friendly" policies. Considering variations in family forms, including differences in the number and marital status of parents, their gender, sexual orientation and biological relationship to the children (adoption), multi-cultural families, and families created by technological assistance or surrogacy, it presents demographic information, alongside quantitative and qualitative research, across a number of advanced countries. A contribution to our understanding of the diversity of family forms, how diversity is lived in families, and what family diversity means in various international policy contexts The Changing Faces of Families will appeal to scholars with interests in the sociology of the family.

This book investigates marriage and divorce in the nineteenth-century European territories of the Russian Empire. It uncovers the way a peasant community employed unsanctioned marital behaviour, such as cohabitation and bigamy, among others, in order to respond to the external factors that had an impact on the family life, including transmission of inheritance and household structure. Lithuania was part of the Tsarist Empire until 1914. This case study reveals how under often restrictive laws and policies - serfdom up to 1861, and the pervasive role of the Church, in addition to deep-rooted customary practices - women and men manage to normalize their family life. The volume is based on a wide range of archival sources and uncovers familial behaviour both from an individual and community perspectives.

This book is about how Chinese men make sense of and practise fatherhood within the context of changing gender conventions and socio-cultural conditions. Liong analyses data from participant observations at a men's centre, focus groups, and in-depth interviews, to assess the subjective experience and identities of Chinese fathers in Hong Kong, from a gender perspective. His findings show that economic provision, education, and marriage are the three "natural" and "normal" domains of paternity. Not being able to fulfil these requirements is a threat to fathers' masculinity, yet is also an opportunity for fathers to reflect upon these accepted conventions. In order to compensate, these men typically develop a closer and more caring relationship with their children, however these fathers still struggle with feelings of inferiority.

This book offers a rich ethnographic account of blue-collar workers' everyday life in a central Russian industrial town coping with simultaneous decline and the arrival of transnational corporations. Everyday Post-Socialism demonstrates how people manage to remain satisfied, despite the crisis and relative poverty they faced after the fall of socialist projects and the social trends associated with neoliberal transformation. Morris shows the 'other life' in today's Russia which is not present in mainstream academic discourse or even in the media in Russia itself. This book offers co-presence and a direct understanding of how the local community lives a life which is not only bearable, but also preferable and attractive when framed in the categories of 'habitability', commitment and engagement, and seen in the light of alternative ideas of worth and specific values. Topics covered include working-class identity, informal economy, gender relations and transnational corporations.

This open access book examines how childhood social disadvantage influences young-adult demographic decision-making and later-life economic and well-being outcomes. This book in particular focuses on testing whether the consequences of childhood social disadvantage for adult outcomes differ across societies, and whether these differences are shaped by the "context of opportunities" that societies offer to diminish the adverse impact of economic and social deprivation. The book integrates a longitudinal approach and provides new insights in how the experience of childhood disadvantage (e.g. low parental socio-economic status, family disruption) influences demographic decisions in adulthood (e.g. the timing of family-events such as cohabitation, marriage or parenthood; the risk of divorce or having a child outside a partner relationship; the exposure to later-life loneliness, poor health, and economic adversity). Moreover, using a cross-national comparative perspective it investigates whether the relationships of interest differ across nations, and tests the "context of opportunities" hypothesis arguing that the links between childhood disadvantage and adult outcomes are weakened in societal contexts offering good opportunities for people to escape situations of deprivation. To do so, the book analyzes national contexts based on economic prosperity, family values and norms, and welfare-state arrangements.

Following networks of mothers in London and Paris, the author profiles the narratives of women who breastfeed their children to full term, typically a period of several years, as part of an 'attachment parenting' philosophy. These mothers talk about their decision to continue breastfeeding as 'the natural thing to do': 'evolutionarily appropriate', 'scientifically best' and 'what feels right in their hearts'. Through a theoretical focus on knowledge claims and accountability, the author frames these accounts within a wider context of 'intensive parenting', arguing that parenting practices - infant feeding in particular - have become a highly moralized affair for mothers, practices which they feel are a critical aspect of their 'identity work'. The book investigates why, how and with what implications some of these mothers describe themselves as 'militant lactivists' and reflects on wider parenting culture in the UK and France. Discussing gender, feminism and activism, this study contributes to kinship and family studies by exploring how relatedness is enacted in conjunction to constructions of the self.

This book reviews and critiques the growing literature on youth development under conditions of political violence and armed conflict. It presents a robust framework, based in developmental psychopathology, for evaluating current research on this topic for strength of design, methodology, and documentation. Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies from diverse regions and conflicts as well as across disciplines examine risks and challenges as well as resilience and coping as youth develop in unstable and threatening environments. In addition, this book provides strategies for designing and implementing prevention and intervention programs as well as further opportunities for expanding applied research for youth exposed to political violence and armed conflict. Topics featured in this book include: Analysis of major research on youths' normative and pathological development during political violence and war. Guidelines for assessing research studies on the impact of political violence and armed conflict on youth. The effects of social ecology factors (e.g., family, school, and community) on youth functioning. Post-traumatic stress disorder. Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. Political Violence, Armed Conflict, and Youth Adjustment is a must-have resource for researchers, professors, clinicians/professionals, and graduate students in the fields of child and school psychology, family studies, and public health as well as developmental psychology, child and adolescent psychiatry, political science, anthropology, social and peace psychology, sociology, and ethnic studies.

With a focus on nine different national contexts, this book explores contemporary family diversity. With attention to the different welfare states and cultures of care in each setting, it problematises the pre-eminence of research and policy centred on heteronormative families, showing the extent to which family diversity exists cross-nationally in relation to different gendered and "family-friendly" policies. Considering variations in family forms, including differences in the number and marital status of parents, their gender, sexual orientation and biological relationship to the children (adoption), multi-cultural families, and families created by technological assistance or surrogacy, it presents demographic information, alongside quantitative and qualitative research, across a number of advanced countries. A contribution to our understanding of the diversity of family forms, how diversity is lived in families, and what family diversity means in various international policy contexts The Changing Faces of Families will appeal to scholars with interests in the sociology of the family.

Mapping Intimacies: Relations, Exchanges, Affects explores the shifting terrain of intimate life through diverse contemporary studies, asking what is 'exchanged' in relating, what and who is made 'intimate' and how can intimacy be re-mapped, personally and politically? The book engages with a range of issues such as polyamory, sex work, trans partnerships, domestic violence, older LGB caring practices, class distinctions and inequalities, donor conception, STI transmission, women-only spaces, same-sex recognition and migrant families from across the globe including Cambodia, Italy, Portugal, the UK and the Caribbean. It queries, celebrates and critiques the boundaries of current theorizing and offers insights into the nuances of everyday affect, emotion and exchange.

Bringing together a range of perspectives, this book establishes a criminology of the domestic, paying particular attention to emerging spatial and relational reconfigurations. We move beyond criminologies of public and urban domains to consider over-looked non-public locales, and crimes and harms that occur in the home and other private spaces. Developed in the context of the COVID-19 lockdowns, where distinctions between public and private became increasingly untenable, the book considers how the pandemic has accelerated new patterns of behaviour, enabled by technology and shifting social relations. Drawing on a range of criminological topics, including victimisation, offending, property and violent crime, consumption, deviance and leisure, and zemiology, the book argues that the domestic sphere, and its relation to the public realm, needs to be more carefully conceptualised if criminology is to respond to new spatial and relational dimensions of changing lifestyles. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, politics, geography, history, gender, surveillance and security and all those interested in a criminology of the domestic sphere.

Another Mother gives voice to women who become mothers through the routes of adoption, surrogacy and egg donation, and their silent partners - the birth mothers, surrogate mothers and egg donors - who make motherhood possible for them. Exploring experiences of motherhood beyond the biological mother raising her child, Everington draws on interviews and a range of interdisciplinary approaches to produce illuminating personal testimonies which expand our understanding of what it means to be a mother. The life writing narratives also examine the unique and hidden relationships that exist between adopters and birth mothers, egg donors and women who become mothers through egg donation, and surrogates and women who become mothers through surrogacy. Offering a fresh approach in life writing, using hybrid form encompassing edited interview, re-imagined scenes, poetry, personal essay and quotation collage, this topical book is recommended for anyone interested in motherhood studies, gender and women's studies, life writing studies, the sociology of reproduction, creative non-fiction writing approaches, oral history, and ethnography studies.

This book explores how contemporary men understand love in the realm of family life and how they integrate it into their identity. Drawing from Ian Burkitt's aesthetic theory of emotions, Macht presents rich data from qualitative interviews and observations with Scottish and Romanian involved fathers, to reveal how they maintain closeness to their children, their partners and their own family of origin. Reflecting on distances, separations, power, worry and intergenerational experiences of love Fatherhood and Love hypothesizes that fathers' identities and emotionality rely on a variety of social relationships in their intimate environment. A new concept, 'emotional bordering', is introduced, to portray the tensions inherent in fathers' identities and illuminate why gender progress happens slowly. Engaging with literature on love, masculinity, culture and father's involvement from a unique perspective, this book will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of social science disciplines.

This edited collection outlines the issues central to youth engagement in research and social innovation. Youth-driven innovation for social change is increasingly recognized as holding potential for the development of sustainable strategies to tackle some of the most pressing global challenges of our time. The contributors provide additional knowledge concerning what actually constitutes an enabling environment, as well as the most effective approaches for engaging youth as architects of change. While sensitive to the need for contextual appropriateness, the volume contributes to the development of shared understandings and frameworks for engaging and spurring youth-driven innovation for social change worldwide. Youth-Driven Social Innovation showcases examples of youth engagement in frugal and reverse innovation worldwide, alongside examples which demonstrate the tremendous potential of South-South learning, but also learning and youth innovation in the Global North. It will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines including education, sociology, anthropology, public health, and politics.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book explores how feelings about gender have changed over three interrelated generations of women and men of different social classes during the twentieth century. The author explores the ways in which generational experiences are connected, what is continued, what triggers gradual or abrupt changes between generations - and between women and men within these generations. The book explores how new feelings of gender gradually change gender norms from within, and how they contribute to the incremental creation of new social practices. Nielsen suggests a new way of conducting psychosocial research that focuses on generational psychological patterns of gender identities and gendered subjectivities in times of change from a psychoanalytic perspective. Combining generational and longitudinal research, the book works with temporality as a theoretical as well as a methodological dimension. Theoretically it combines Raymond Williams' idea of "a structure of feeling" with the work of Eric Fromm, Hans Loewald, Nancy Chodorow and Jessica Benjamin.

This edited volume develops critical discussions of prominent methodological approaches in participatory youth research. Chapters give special attention to power issues and dilemmas concerning young people's and researchers' involvement in research processes. The collection brings together perspectives of authors from throughout Nordic countries, all with comprehensive experience of qualitative research methods involving young people.

This book provides understandings of how intercultural, -racial, -ethnic, -national, and -faith couples and parents in Australia bring up their children and manage their relationships. Which challenges and benefits do they encounter, and which strategies do they use to negotiate their differences and belongingness? In portraying the lived experiences of intercultural couples and parents, Bhugun considers contextual and external factors such as individual and personality traits, the environment, gender and power, religion, socio-economic status, extended family, friends, and diasporic communities. Moving the reader from beyond negative stereotypes to a more nuanced representation of both the challenges and benefits of the phenomenon, Intercultural Parenting and Relationships provides intimate testimonies and offers innovations in theory and practice. Scholars, practitioners, students, intercultural couples, parents, families and the wider community will benefit from the rich insights into the challenges and successes of intercultural relationships and parenting presented in this book.

Is Trump responsible for the January 6 insurrection? Are "white people" responsible for slavery? In Collective Responsibility, Leadership, and Attributionism: Responsibility beyond our Control, Eugene Schlossberger expands, updates, and argues for the attributionist account of moral responsibility and agency and applies it to several pressing contemporary concerns: leaders' responsibility for the acts of their followers (and ordinary persons' responsibility for their influence on others), collective responsibility, addiction, and responsibility for what we would have done. Moral agents are continuing worldviews in operation who are ultimately responsible for their worldviews and occasion-responsible for acts, events, and circumstances that occasion a judgment of responsibility. Agents can be responsible for many things beyond their fingertips-such as the behavior of others that they enabled-that reveal something about their worldviews. The wide-ranging discussion addresses the responsibility of psychopaths; the nature of beliefs and desires; social convergence theory; twelve forms of subjectability, such as blame and owing an apology; queerness and moral internalism; the beneficiary pays principle; and much more. The result is a comprehensive picture of agency and responsibility.

This book addresses the nature of intimacy and relationships in a time of what Eva Illouz characterizes as 'cold intimacies'. The contributors to this collection highlight the ambivalence and tensions contained in 'intimacy' by uncovering a nuanced and complex dynamic, in which interpersonal relations and the public sphere are mutually constituted. A range of topics areexplored, including the new conditions of 'choice', the abundance of partners, class and emotional competence, rational decision-making and the specific forms of 'love pain' which can emerge from cooled intimacy. The chapters also shed light on the limits of this theoretical contribution, highlighting the importance of parenting, violence, poverty, and other material constraints that continue to limit and frame individuals' romantic choices. Overall this volume presents an interpretation of intimacy that is not just 'cold' but includes practices, desires and feelings that are safe and dangerous, that bring solace or erupt in violence, that lead to salvation or condemnation, and where virtual encounters and increased internal and crossborder mobility have altered the relationship between intimacy and (physical/emotional) distance. Romantic Relationships in a Time of 'Cold Intimacies' will be of interest to scholars and students across a range of disciplines, including sociology, social work, social policy and demography, as well as practitioners and policy-makers with an interest in couple relationships.

No federal law in the United States requires that egg or sperm donors or recipients exchange any information with the offspring that result from the donation. Donors typically enter into contracts with fertility clinics or sperm banks which promise them anonymity. The parents may know the donor's hair color, height, IQ, college, and profession; they may even have heard the donor's voice. But they don't know the donor's name, medical history, or other information that might play a key role in a child's development. And, until recently, donor-conceived offspring typically didn't know that one of their biological parents was a donor. But the secrecy surrounding the use of donor eggs and sperm is changing. And as it does, increasing numbers of parents and donor-conceived offspring are searching for others who share the same biological heritage. When donors, recipients, and "donor kids" find each other, they create new forms of families that exist outside of the law. The New Kinship details how families are made and how bonds are created between families in the brave new world of reproductive technology. Naomi Cahn, a nationally-recognized expert on reproductive technology and the law, shows how these new kinship bonds dramatically exemplify the ongoing cultural change in how we think about family. The issues Cahn explores in this book will resonate with anyone-and everyone-who has struggled with questions of how to define themselves in connection with their own biological, legal, or social families.

In the 1950s heated views were sometimes expressed about the alleged social results of married women going out to work. Originally published in 1962 Married Women Working attempts to examine the question objectively. It is based on two studies undertaken over a period of nearly five years in a solidly working-class London district – one, a detailed study in the factory of a well-known firm of biscuit makers (Peek Freans) relying mainly on married women workers; the other, a more general one, in the surrounding borough as a whole. How effective was the married woman as an employee? How did the firm cope with their new type of labour and with what results? What was the effect on the woman herself, and on her family, of her attempt to fill the dual role of home-maker and paid worker? These are some of the questions examined in this book, which also gives a very fascinating picture of how people lived at the time, against the background of earlier generations.

Originally published in 1971, Homes in High Flats was written at a time when multi-storey flats were a popular solution to the world-wide need for mass housing because they could be produced with speed. However, the social implications of domestic housing in high flats were causing local authorities in Western Europe to reconsider their efficiency. Original research into this question forms the basis of this book which concentrates on Glasgow but gives attention to other examples both in Britain and abroad. The text attempts to encompass all the social and practical aspects of life in high flats by studying tenants’ views on the physical character of the flats and estates, and by examining the success of tenants’ associations and extra-mural classes designed to develop community life. Practical problems are dealt with in chapters on facilities and services, families, children, the elderly and the case for investment in staff. The authors also compare multi-storey flats with other types of household and discuss the reasons for tenants’ movement out of the estate. Perhaps the most eloquent social comment on the shortcomings of high flat life is expressed in the lyrics of the Jeely Piece Song which is included in the Appendix.

First published in 1972, Motherless Families shows how, with the slow disappearance of the extended family and the support that it could offer in such situations, society has found itself responsible for lone-parent families. The authors cover the situation of about six hundred families in the East Midlands where the father was caring for his children on his own. They examine the father's feelings about his new circumstances, the problems he faces and how he copes with them. They look at the ways in which the social services, the modified extended family and the immediate community react to the father's position. They also consider the children's adaptation to the motherless situation and their new relationships with the father or a mother substitute. In the final chapter the authors examine the ways in which social class and social values affect the definitions of social problems and the formulation of social policy. Both administrators and practitioners in the social services, as well as students of related subjects, will welcome the research contained in this book, and will find the authors' conclusions of particular help in their approach to the problems of all types of one-parent families.

Biller, well known for his extensive research into the impacts of involved fathering or the absence thereof, provides a comprehensive, straightforward analysis of just how important paternal involvement really is. He describes the great advantages accruing to a child when the father, as well as the mother, actively participates in the parenting process. Fathers who sustain high interest and a true presence in a child's nurturing significantly influence body image, self-esteem, moral standards, intellectual achievement, and social competency. The benefits, Biller shows, extend beyond the father-child relationship and include heightened spousal satisfaction and a sense of overall family well-being. The reciprocal influences of father, mother, and child development, are considered within a lifespan biopsychosocial perspective.

This is an important and compelling treatment of a topic of immense concern not only to individual families but to society as a whole. Biller, by relating specific issues to fathers' roles and influences, offers the first integrated analysis of just how important a father's caring presence and active involvement is to his child's--and spouse's--psychosocial well-being. This balanced study of paternal factors addresses not only such issues as nurturance, discipline, and the cultivation of self-esteem, intelligence, and creativity but also family problems so evident in current society. There is a thorough analysis concerning complex connections among gender roles, parenting, and personality development. The work is highly substantive, realistic, and encouraging in its potential for guidance and offers insightful, useful conclusions on paternal behavior and influences.