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

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

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

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

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

What factors influence the relationship of a newly married couple? Do these factors change as the marriage matures? The authors of this book examine the determinants of marital instability in the early years of marriage. Conclusions are based on the results of a survey of 199 black couples and 174 white couples throughout the first four years of marriage. Findings focus on attitudes, perceptions, and feelings spouses have for each other and the manner in which they interact. Some of the topics discussed in the survey include: length of courtship, educational differences, religion, and family involvement. The findings show what effect these and other factors have on a marriage.

As increasing numbers of women enter the workforce, it has become more and more common to find husbands and wives who are both committed to careers in the public sector. This book offers the first detailed analysis of this important new segment of the workforce. Based on extensive surveys, it presents a comprehensive profile of public sector career couples and explores solutions to common problems faced by human resource managers in this field.

The authors first examine dual-career couples as a segment of the workforce, the lifestyles of these couples, and the challenges they face in work and family life. Current management practices in the public sector are carefully considered, with special attention to the recruitment and retention of dual-career couples in the face of prevailing anti-nepotism policies. In addition to providing guidance on legislative issues and judicial policies that affect the employment of dual-career couples, the authors develop a model of interpersonal and management skills for integrating dual-career couples into the workplace. Finally, strategies for resolving policy obstacles are suggested. A valuable tool for human resources professionals, this book will also be of interest in the areas of labor relations, public administration, and policy studies.

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

This work serves as an introductory reference guide to the growing body of literature on the history of the American family. Recognizing the family unit as the institution most central to any society, the volume covers a broad range of theoretical approaches which concentrate on relationships within the family and between the family and the wider community. Essays by specialists in the field of family studies profile the family both as a unit and as a group of individuals. Methods used to examine family dynamics are described, and trends, such as the increased individuation and changing economic priorities within the family, emerge from the data presented.

The contributors approach the subject from both historical and comparative perspectives. The family is first studied chronologically from colonial times to the present. Attention then turns to sociological and ethnic groups such as the immigrant working class and African American families. Introductory pieces synthesize the findings found in the essays and describe the resulting patterns. The reference work, presented in this format, makes a large body of scholarly literature on the family easily accessible to both specialists and nonspecialists in the field.

Far from being the preserve of middle-class women from Northern Europe, au pairing is now booming worldwide. This collection, the first dedicated entirely to examining the lives of au pairs, traces their experiences across five continents showing how this form of domestic labour and childcare is thriving in the twenty-first century.

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

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

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

This important text offers data-rich guidelines for conducting culturally relevant and clinically effective intervention with Asian American families. Delving beneath longstanding generalizations and assumptions that have often hampered intervention with this diverse and growing population, expert contributors analyze the intricate dynamics of generational conflict and child development in Chinese, Korean, Filipino, and other Asian American households. Wide-angle coverage identifies critical factors shaping Asian American family process, from parenting styles, behaviors, and values to adjustment and autonomy issues across childhood and adolescence, including problems specific to girls and young women. Contributors also make extensive use of quantitative and qualitative findings in addressing the myriad paradoxes surrounding Asian identity, acculturation, and socialization in contemporary America. Among the featured topics: Rising challenges and opportunities of uncertain times for Asian American families. A critical race perspective on an empirical review of Asian American parental racial-ethnic socialization. Socioeconomic status and child/youth outcomes in Asian American families. Daily associations between adolescents' race-related experiences and family processes. Understanding and addressing parent-adolescent conflict in Asian American families. Behind the disempowering parenting: expanding the framework to understand Asian-American women's self-harm and suicidality. Asian American Parenting is vital reading for social workers, mental health professionals, and practitioners working family therapy cases who seek specific, practice-oriented case examples and resources for empowering interventions with Asian American parents and families.

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

Stories of women who mother are central to this book. The women come to mothering through birth and adoption, as birth mothers, placing mothers, adopting mothers and teen mothers. Woven between the women's narratives, the author offers reflective commentary intended to show the mothering experience in its complexity--bodily, culturally, and as the rootbed of relationship. Using phenomenological research, Bergum brings the mothering experience to light--as it is lived--exploring themes of love and pain, responsibility, belonging, choice, transformation, and quickening of the moral impulse to attend to the child. BerguM's intent is to encourage thoughtful reflection about what is learned through mothering--by women and by society--in order to create and sustain a society that is good for children and the women who mother them.

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

The popular referendum of 1974 which affirmed Italy's recently-won divorce law is widely regarded as a turning point in modern Italian history, but the long story behind that struggle has remained largely unfamiliar. Using the debates over divorce as a lens, this book is a study of the quest to modernize Italy, Italians, and Italian marriage. Although the 1974 referendum settled Italy's 'divorce question, ' the issues at the heart of that question - particularly the relationship between individual rights, the state, and religion - remain central to modern politics.

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

This book offers a synthesis of social science and evolutionary approaches to the study of intergenerational relations, using biological, psychological and sociological factors to develop a single framework for understanding why kin help one another across generations. With attention to both biological family relations as well as in-law and step-relations, it provides an overview of existing studies centred on intergenerational relations - particularly grandparenting - that incorporate social science and evolutionary family theories. This evolutionary social science approach to intergenerational family relations goes well beyond the traditional nature versus nurture distinction. As such, it will appeal to scholars across a range of disciplines with interests in relations of kinship, the lifecourse and the sociology of the family.

The Right to be Parents is the first book to provide a detailed history of how LGBT parents have turned to the courts to protect and defend their relationships with their children. Carlos A. Ball chronicles the stories of LGBT parents who, in seeking to gain legal recognition of and protection for their relationships with their children, have fundamentally changed how American law defines and regulates parenthood. To this day, some courts are still not able to look beyond sexual orientation and gender identity in cases involving LGBT parents and their children. Yet on the whole, Ball's stories are of progress and transformation: as a result of these pioneering LGBT parent litigants, the law is increasingly recognizing the wide diversity in American familial structures.

This book explores the significance of sister relationships in women's lives. It documents sistering experiences through narratives of growing up, caring for the family, leaving home, and becoming a mother. Girls and women describe their emotions, shifting power dynamics, and moments of transition in their relationships. Drawing parallels between sistering and caring, the book presents new material on a widespread yet invisible aspect of the social construction of femininity. It also contributes to sociological debates about transformations in intimate ties.

There can be little doubt that ours is a society riding the crest of vast and profound social and economic change. The material conditions and social landscapes through which we experience our lives are increasingly an unchartered sea of unanticipated shift and hidden consequence and many of us have the unsettling feeling that we are out of our depth. It is natural to respond to this rapid and fundamental change with concern, particularly when many of the enduring keystones of our lives have been problematized. Family is one such keystone. Family-and its apparent decline-is a topic of great interest. The breakdown of marriage and other relationships, family roles and responsibilities, the alienation of children, the rights of grandparents, juvenile crime and drug usage, and the emotional fallout of divorce are all current and emotive issues. Few individuals remain untouched by this debate. The changes we are witnessing in relation to family are made all the more worrisome because we have a limited vocabulary for discussing and understanding profound change-a vocabulary characterized by normative framings and assumptions of deficit. It is very easy to look at the changes in 'traditional' family structure and read 'breakdown', 'decline' and 'loss'. A politics of blame and rhetoric of 'reconstitution' very quickly follows. However, given the fundamental nature of contemporary social and economic change, this is not an adequate response.

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

In this innovative historical survey, Annegret S. Ogden addresses the need for the modern housewife to adapt to the additional role of wage earner. By examining a variety of diaries, letters, domestic fiction, and household books of the past two centuries, as well as solid statistical and historical data, she seeks not only to uncover the motivations and origins of the typical American housewife, but also to discover an alternative life pattern that has characterized a virtually unrecognized minority of American women. These are the immigrant, black, and frontier women, as well as any other part-time homemakers, who long ago forged the survival tools that are needed by today's majority of working housewives. It is Ogden's contention that an understanding of the historical housewife, as well as her working counterpart, will light the way for those modern American housewives who must adapt their role as both homemaker and wage earner to the shifting complexities of contemporary American life.

Everyday foodways are a powerful means of drawing boundaries between social groups and defining who we are and where we belong. This book draws upon auto/biographical food narratives and emphasises the power of everyday foodways in maintaining and reinforcing social divisions along the lines of gender and class.