This unique volume advances the literature on sleep and health by illuminating the impacts of family dynamics on individuals' quality and quantity of sleep. Its lifespan perspective extends across childhood, adolescence, adulthood and older age considering both phenomena of individual development and family system dynamics, particularly parent-child and marital relationships. It extends, as well, to the broader contexts of social disparities in sleep as a significant health behavior. Emerging concepts and practical innovations include ancestral roots of sleep in family contexts, sleep studies as a lens for understanding family health, and methodologies, particularly the use of actigraphy technology, for studying sleep patterns in individuals and families. This rich area of inquiry holds significant keys to understanding a vital human behavior and its critical role in physical, psychological, and relational health and wellbeing. Among the topics covered: * Sleep and development: familial and sociocultural considerations. * Relationship quality: implications for sleep quality and sleep disorders. * Couple dynamics and sleep quality in an international perspective. * Family influences on sleep: comparative and historical-evolutionary perspectives. * Sociodemographic, psychosocial, and contextual factors in children's sleep. * Dynamic interplay between sleep and family life: review and directions for future research. Family Contexts of Sleep and Health Across the Life Course will advance the work of researchers and students in the fields of population health, family demography and sociology, sleep research and medicine, human development, neuroscience, biobehavioral health, and social welfare, as well as that of policymakers and health and human services practitioners.

The problems of a family are often conditioned by the cultural issues its members face, regardless of their socioeconomic background. However, most therapeutic models ignore this important factor. Ariel's book offers a model for diagnosis and therapy that incorporates cultural issues. It provides clinicians and trainees with readily applicable concepts, methods, and techniques for helping families and their members overcome difficulties related to intermarriage, immigration, acculturation, socioeconomic inequality, prejudice, and ecological or demographic change. This approach enables therapists to analyze and describe a family as a cultural system, explain its culture-related difficulties, and design and carry out culturally sensitive strategies for solving these difficulties. The model introduced in this book integrates theories in family therapy in general and culturally oriented family therapy in particular with ideas drawn from many other fields, such as cross-cultural psychology, psychiatry, anthropology and linguistics. The form of therapy presented in this book is integrative, drawing from traditional curing and healing techniques employed in folk psychotherapy and medicine, in addition to more conventional therapeutic models. Every technique is modified to be adapted to the cultural character of the family in question. This book is designed to be a handbook for clinicians and a textbook for students, trainees and researchers. It can be used as a guide for a complete independent method of family therapy and also as a source of ideas and techniques that can be incorporated selectively into other forms of therapy.

Praise for Serious Mental Illness and the Family "Serious Mental Illness and the Family is unique in building assessment, intervention, and collaborative strategies around specific types of clinical cases and life scenarios. The book will be an invaluable aid to mental health professionals working with severely ill clients and their families." —Harriet P. Lefley, PhD Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences University of Miami School of Medicine "Dr. Marsh is very knowledgeable about families, yet is also very compassionate in her approach to the experience of families who are frequently traumatized by a mental illness in a family member. Professionals who work with families of people with mental illness will find [this] book extremely helpful in their work.…a rich source of information." —LeRoy Spaniol, PhD Executive Publisher, The Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal "Dr. Diane Marsh has given the mental health field yet another brilliant resource.…any psychiatric service provider can pick up this book and immediately find useful strategies for commonly occurring communication difficulties in both the initial interview and ongoing therapeutic interactions." —Mary D. Moller, MSN, ARNP, CS CEO, Psychiatric Rehabilitation Nurses, Inc. "[A] timely and important work…enriched with dozens of case vignettes, useful strategies, and profound insight. The writing is crystal clear, approachable, and engaging with satisfying depth and detail. Dr. Marsh is able to translate contemporary family theory content and new ideas into meaningful principles of practice for helping the spouses and partners, children, siblings, and other family members of people with severe mental illness." —Kia J. Bentley, PhD, LCSW Associate Professor, School of Social Work Virginia Commonwealth University

In this history of childbirth and contraception in Mexico, Nora E. Jaffarychronicles colonial and nineteenth-century beliefs and practices surroundingconception, pregnancy and its prevention, and birth. Tracking Mexico'stransition from colony to nation, Jaffary demonstrates the central role ofreproduction in ideas about female sexuality and virtue, the development ofmodern Mexico, and the growth of modern medicine in the Latin Americancontext. The story encompasses networks of people in all parts of society, fromstate and medical authorities to mothers and midwives, husbands and lovers,employers and neighbours. Jaffary focuses on key topics including virginity,conception, contraception and abortion, infanticide, "monstrous" births, andobstetrical medicine. Her approach yields surprising insights into the emergenceof modernity in Mexico. Over the course of the nineteenth century,for example, expectations of idealised womanhood and female sexual virtuegained rather than lost importance. In addition, rather than being obliteratedby European medical practice, features of pre-Columbian obstetricalknowledge, especially of abortifacients, circulated among the Mexican publicthroughout the period under study. Jaffary details how, across time, localisedcontexts shaped the changing history of reproduction, contraception, andmaternity.

This long-awaited book is the first to offer a complete and clear presentation of the therapy of the Milan Associates, Luigi Boscolo and Gianfranco Cecchin. Based on cybernetic theory, their work has had dramatic success in helping families change behaviour. This practical and enlightening book uses clinical cases and the fascinating conversations among the four authors to examine the relationship between Milan theory and practice.Transcripts of sessions conducted by Boscolo and Cecchin,which include a family that is hiding a history of incest and one dominated by an anorectic girl,provide vivid examples of family interaction and therapeutic imagination. In the accompanying conversations with Boscolo and Cecchin about these sessions, Hoffman and Penn take us behind the scenes to show how the therapists think through and conduct their therapy. These highly readable conversations clarify the essentials of the therapy, including hypothesizing, circular questioning, positive connotation, and crafting interventions. Like Milan therapy itself, the interviews are recursive new ideas about the therapy feed back into the conversations and stimulate further revelations. A lengthy introduction sets the Milan approach in historical context, and introductions to the individual cases highlight the main ideas.

New York Times Bestseller Bestselling author and peak performance expert Steven Kotler decodes the secrets of those elite performers-athletes, artists, scientists, CEOs and more-who have changed our definition of the possible, teaching us how we too can stretch far beyond our capabilities, making impossible dreams much more attainable for all of us. What does it take to accomplish the impossible? What does it take to shatter our limitations, exceed our expectations, and turn our biggest dreams into our most recent achievements? We are capable of so much more than we know-that's the message at the core of The Art of Impossible. Building upon cutting-edge neuroscience and over twenty years of research, bestselling author, peak performance expert and Executive Director of the Flow Research Collective, Steven Kotler lays out a blueprint for extreme performance improvement. If you want to aim high, here is the playbook to make it happen! Inspirational and aspirational, pragmatic and accessible, The Art of Impossible is a life-changing experience disguised as a how-to manual for peak performance that anyone can use to shoot for the stars . . . space-suit, not included.

For most Christians, marriage is considered a sacrament, created and uniquely blessed by God. Yet, the theology of marriage rarely matches the actual experience. Marriage is too often a violent, loveless institution-and it is increasingly delayed, avoided, or terminated.

Marriage After Modernity offers new hope for Christian marriage at a time of unprecedented social and theological change. It provides an unreserved commendation of Christian marriage, reaffirming its status as a sacrament and institution of mutual self-giving. At the same time, it breaks new ground. It draws on earlier traditions of betrothal and informal marriage to accept some forms of pre-marital cohabitation and provides a new defense of the link between marriage and procreation by sketching a theology of liberation for children. Chapters shed new light on divorce and legitimate theological grounds for 'the parting of the ways, ' contraception, and the question of whether marriage is a heterosexual institution. Particular attention is paid throughout the book to overcoming the androcentric bias of much Christian thought and the distorting effect it has had on marriage.

Marriage After Modernity argues for a vision of marriage which does not abandon its history, and which draws upon its premodern roots to grapple with our current social, cultural, and intellectual upheavals.

Drawing on her own research as a psychologist and psychotherapist conducted over two years with interviews in real life situations the author provides an insight into the wedding experience from the mother's point of view and explores the complexities of family relationships that this rite of passage can expose. The book offers the reader the chance to follow several women from different cultural backgrounds through the time leading up to and beyond their child's wedding. It is structured around three pivotal stages of the wedding: the announcement of the engagement, the wedding preparations, and the big day itself. The analysis of these interviews forms the main part of the book. It follows the themes emerging from these interviews and explores them placing them in the context of thinking in analytic psychotherapy and family therapy. The book will not so much help readers to avoid wedding "stress", but rather help them to make sense of it.

Many parents fear the time when their beautiful happy children will become unmanageable adolescents continually engaging in risky or destructive behaviour. Unfortunately, this view of adolescents is the focus of the media, even though it relates to just a small proportion of young people. As the large amount of research we report shows, most adolescents are responsible young people who care about their families and crave the support of their parents. It is also true, however, as much research indicates, that the quality of the relationship parents have with their adolescents is crucial to the wellbeing of those young people. We discuss the need for parents to set reasonable limits on their adolescents and to expect appropriate behavior. We also show, on the basis of research, that children who have experienced positive, caring relationships with their parents are more likely than other adolescents to behave responsibly. In other words, behavior in adolescence does not 'come out of nowhere' but builds on earlier experiences in the family. Because of the large amount of research reported in this volume, we expect that it will be useful to practitioners from a range of professions that are likely to focus on adolescents: social workers, youth leaders, welfare workers, religious leaders, psychologists and psychiatrists and contribute to a better understanding of young people and their development, and the importance of families to that development.

Many fathers are now providing hands-on, engaged care to babies and young children. This book draws on observations of, and interviews with, caregiving fathers, as well as analyses of fathers' memoirs and online blogs, to examine fathers' caregiving work as embodied practice and as lived experience.

On Friday nights many parents want to have a little fun together--without the kids. But "getting a sitter"--especially a dependable one--rarely seems trouble-free. Will the kids be safe with "that girl"? It's a question that discomfited parents have been asking ever since the emergence of the modern American teenage girl nearly a century ago. In Babysitter, Miriam Forman-Brunell brings critical attention to the ubiquitous, yet long-overlooked babysitter in the popular imagination and American history.

Informed by her research on the history of teenage girls' culture, Forman-Brunell analyzes the babysitter, who has embodied adults' fundamental apprehensions about girls' pursuit of autonomy and empowerment. In fact, the grievances go both ways, as girls have been distressed by unsatisfactory working conditions. In her quest to gain a fuller picture of this largely unexamined cultural phenomenon, Forman-Brunell analyzes a wealth of diverse sources, such as The Baby-sitter's Club book series, horror movies like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, urban legends, magazines, newspapers, television shows, pornography, and more.

Forman-Brunell shows that beyond the mundane, understandable apprehensions stirred by hiring a caretaker to "mind the children" in one's own home, babysitters became lightning rods for society's larger fears about gender and generational change. In the end, experts' efforts to tame teenage girls with training courses, handbooks, and other texts failed to prevent generations from turning their backs on babysitting.

Work and Family - Allies or Enemies? offers a new lens for viewing the real struggles that business professionals - particularly women - face in their daily battle to find ways of 'getting a life' and 'having it all'. Based on a pioneering study that surveyed more than 800 business professionals, this volume will help readers understand and deal with the effects of gender, professional culture, and social expectations, on the evolving roles of men and women in crafting an integrated life.

Five decades ago, I was challenged to read the Moynihan Report (1965). Then and now, I take issue with much of the content, which smacks of deficit thinking, blaming the victim, and a blindness or almost total disregard for how systemic racism and social injustices contribute to family structures. I recall being professionally and personally offended by interpretations of single?parent families, which were often negative and hopeless. Moral development, criminal activity, poor educational outcomes, poverty, and apathy of many kinds were placed squarely on the shoulders of these families, especially if the families were/are headed by Black mothers. Eurocentric and middle class notions of `real' families like those depicted on TV shows and movies dominate, then and now, what is deemed healthy in terms of family structures - with the polemic conclusion that nuclear families are the best and sometimes only structure in which children must be raised. These colorblind, economic blind, and racist blind studies, reports, theories, and folktales have failed to do justice to the families in which there is one caregiver. Their stories of woe and mayhem make the news and guide policies and procedures. The stories of children who have been resilient have been unheard and silenced, they have been under?reported and relegated to the status of `exception to the rule'. Perhaps they are exceptions, but there are more exceptions than we may know. This book is designed with those stories of resilience and success in mind. The book is not an attempt to glorify single?parent families, but such families are prevalent and increasing. High divorce rates are impactful. And some parents have chosen to not marry, which is their right. While not glorifying single?parent families, we are also not demonizing them or telling their stories void of context. Yes, income will often be low(er), time will be compromised when divided between offspring, work, and other obligations. Likewise, we are not glorifying two?parent families as being ideal; their context matters too. How healthy are married couples who don't really love or even like each other? How healthy are those parents who have separate sleeping arrangements/bedrooms? How healthy are those families who have oppositional parenting styles and goals for their children? This is the 50th anniversary of the Moynihan Report, and I am concerned that another 50 years will pass that fails to balance out the stories of single?parent families, mainly those whose children succeed and defy the odds so often unexpected of them. I agree with Cohen, co?author of the updated report: ""The preoccupation with strengthening marriage as the best route to reducing poverty and inequality has been a policymaking folly". Further, 50 years after Moynihan released the controversial report, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, a new brief by the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR) and the Council on Contemporary Families (CCF) titled, ""Moynihan's Half Century: Have We Gone to Hell in a Hand Basket?,"" finds that the changes in family structure that concerned him have indeed continued, becoming widespread among Whites as well, but that they do not explain recent trends in poverty and inequality. In fact, a number of the social ills Moynihan assumed would accompany these changes in family structure-such as rising rates of poverty, school failure, crime, and violence-have instead decreased.

This book provides insight into the emotion of anger from a theoretical and empirical standpoint and from the viewpoint of fifty ordinary women and men who share their experiences, beliefs, and perceptions of anger in their own and others' lives. The author's main goal is to explore the extent and sources of anger that women and men feel toward members of the other sex and their perceptions of what angers other men and women. Respondents' general experiences with the emotion of anger are also investigated. Experiences and beliefs about various aspects of gender-based anger are put in the context of respondents' beliefs about recent gender role changes as well as their perceptions of ways to improve relationships between women and men.

Analysis of interviews reveals complicated patterns of convergence and divergence based on gender. Women and men share perceptions in reference to some aspects of anger and some anger-related experiences. However, a significant gender gap exists in other areas. This book makes clear the need for better understanding and management of anger in our lives as well as the need to structure relations between men and women so that new ideals of equality and understanding can be realized in a context of shared responsibilities, respect, and lack of anxiety about what it means to be a man or a woman.

Even in our world of redefined life partnerships and living arrangements, most marriages begin through sacred ritual connected to a religious tradition. But if marriage rituals affirm deeply held religious and secular values in the presence of clergy, family, and community, where does divorce, which severs so many of these sacred bonds, fit in? Sociologist Kathleen Jenkins takes up this question in a work that offers both a broad, analytical perspective and a uniquely intimate view of the role of religion in ending marriages. For more than five years, Jenkins observed religious support groups and workshops for the divorced and interviewed religious practitioners in the midst of divorces, along with clergy members who advised them. Her findings appear here in the form of eloquent and revealing stories about individuals managing emotions in ways that make divorce a meaningful, even sacred process. Clergy from mainline Protestant denominations to Baptist churches, Jewish congregations, Unitarian fellowships, and Catholic parishes talk about the concealed nature of divorce in their congregations. Sacred Divorce describes their cautious attempts to overcome such barriers, and to assemble meaningful symbols and practices for members by becoming compassionate listeners, delivering careful sermons, refitting existing practices like Catholic annulments and Jewish divorce documents (gets), and constructing new rituals. With attention to religious, ethnic, and class variations, covering age groups from early thirties to mid-sixties and separations of only a few months to up to twenty years, Sacred Divorce offers remarkable insight into individual and cultural responses to divorce and the social emotions and spiritual strategies that the clergy and the faithful employ to find meaning in the breach. At once a sociological document, an ethnographic analysis, and testament of personal experience, Sacred Divorce provides guidance, strategies and answers to readers looking for answers and those looking to heal.

This volume honors the lifetime achievements of the distinguished activist and scholar Elise Boulding (1920-2010) on the occasion of her 95th 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, and 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 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 issues-related committees and working groups of the American Sociological Association and International Sociological Association.

As divorce rates in the United States reach alarming levels, the institution of marriage receives more and more criticism as an unrealistic endeavor. However, the contributors to this volume view marriage as a vital social institution, not merely one kind of intimate relationship. They argue for stronger support through legal and policy reform in order to strengthen for the benefit of individuals, communities, and the nation. The contributors address hot-button issues such as same-sex marriage, effects of divorce on children, and the role of fathers in addition to issues such as the permanence of marriage, covenant marriage, and the role of religion in marriage. This work brings together the work of respected legal scholars and social scientists, who articulate why we should care about strengthening the institution of marriage, what we can do, and what challenges we face. Despite dramatic social change, marriage remains a critical social institution that promotes individual, family and community well being. The contributors to this book believe that marriage deserves our best efforts to revitalize it instead of a conscious agenda of benign neglect. Here, assembled in one place, is a clear "pro-marriage" research and policy agenda aimed at revitalizing this insitution based on principles of the best interests of children, husbands and wives, and society at large. Contributors from both the social sciences and legal studies illuminate critical issues from a variety of important perspectives, providing a comprehensive and respectful treatment of a timely and often divisive subject.

David and Mady Segal analyze the adaptation of American soldiers assigned to the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) in the Sinai Desert in support of the Camp David Accords, in the context of the evolution of multinational peacekeeping forces as mechanisms for achieving international security. The reactions of soldiers and their wives to the peacekeeping assignment are considered from the perspective of the social construction of reality, in which the role of the military has been defined as war-fighting. The press has ignored peacekeeping until very recently, and it falls to military organizations, to soldiers and their families, to make sense of the mission. Lessons learned from the Sinai MFO experience should be used to help U.S. troops better prepare for their increasing role in multinational peacekeeping.

"I am grateful to William Marsiglio for having done this book. . . The bibliography alone, wonderfully interdisciplinary, including some classics but brought right up to date, makes the book indispensible. Want to know what is known about men and birth control, men and childbirth, men and abortion? This is the place to begin your research."
--"American Journal of Sociology"

In what ways do men think about and express themselves as procreative beings? Under what circumstances do they develop paternal identities? What is their involvement with partners during the pregnancy and delivery process, and how do they feel about it?

In Procreative Man, William Marsiglio addresses these and other timely questions with an eye toward the past, present, and future. Drawing upon writings ranging from sociology to biomedicine, Marsiglio develops a novel framework for exploring men's multifaceted and gendered experiences as procreative beings. Addressing such issues as how men feel about their limited role in the abortion decision and process, how important genetic ties are for men who want to be fathers, and men's reactions to infertility, Marsiglio shows how men's roles in creating and fathering human life is embedded within a rapidly changing cultural and sociopolitical environment.

The most comprehensive analysis of men and procreation, this theoretically informed work challenges us to expand our vision of fatherhood.

This book is a comprehensive look at the results of a study, done under the auspices of Kent State University, that explored the attitudes, beliefs, and life orientation of 253 women between the ages of 25 and 45. Depending upon the amount of employment that the subjects' mothers had outside the home while the subjects were growing up, the adult subjects responded to questions of adjustment to life, overall sense of well-being, emotional stability, and sense of self-fulfillment. The overwhelming response was that women whose mothers had worked while they were growing up were more likely to suffer from depression, to feel less effective as parents, and to report less satisfaction with their parenting skills, careers, and life in general. Contrary to perceived notions of family adjustment to working mothers, day care, and women's liberation, this study forces us to respond to the warning signals issued by a generation of the daughters of working mothers. While Sugar's findings are clear and unambiguous, she provides ample information for the reader to explore other interpretations of the data and the cause and possible solutions.

This sociopolitical study shows why patriarchy has been the dominant pattern in Algeria, in spite of colonialism, revolutionary war, and the implementation of state socialism after independence. Knauss carefully analyzes Algerian class formation, ideology, and gender relations, and then demonstrates how these factors decisively influenced the persistence of patriarchy as well as the status of women. To further enhance this model historical drama, there are interviews with former President Ahmed Ben Bella, Berber activist Hocine Ait Ahmed, and exiled socialist Mohammed Boudiaf.

Biologists have known for decades that many traits involved in competition for mates or other resources and that influence mate choice are exaggerated, and their expression is influenced by the individuals' ability to tolerate a variety of environmental and social stressors. Evolution of Vulnerability applies this concept of heightened sensitivity to humans for a host of physical, social, psychological, cognitive, and brain traits. By reframing the issue entirely, renowned evolutionary psychologist David C. Geary demonstrates this principle can be used to identify children, adolescents, or populations at risk for poor long-term outcomes and identify specific traits in each sex and at different points in development that are most easily disrupted by exposure to stressors. Evolution of Vulnerability begins by reviewing the expansive literature on traits predicted to show sex-specific sensitivity to environmental and social stressors, and details the implications for better assessing and understanding the consequences of exposure to these stressors. Next, the book reviews sexual selection-mate competition and choice-and the mechanisms involved in the evolution of condition dependent traits and the stressors that can undermine their development and expression, such as poor early nutrition and health, parasites, social stress, and exposure to man-made toxins. Then it reviews condition dependent traits (physical, behavioral, cognitive, and brain) in birds, fish, insects, and mammals to demonstrate the ubiquity of these traits in nature. The focus then turns to humans and covers sex-specific vulnerabilities in children and adults for physical traits, social behavior, psychological wellbeing, and brain and cognitive traits. The sensitivity of these traits is related to exposure to parasites, poor nutrition, social maltreatment, environmental toxins, chemotherapy, and Alzheimer's disease, among others. The book concludes with an implications chapter that outlines how to better assess vulnerabilities in children and adults and how to more fully understand how, why, and when in development some types of environmental and social stressors are particularly harmful to humans.

This 18-volume set has titles originally published between 1932 and 1997 and covers many facets of adolescent life. Approached from a number of perspectives including sociological, psychological and educational, individual volumes examine key adolescent issues: from behaviour, family life and relationships, to school and (un)employment. This collection will be a great resource for those interested in the adolescent and their place in society throughout the twentieth century.