Over the past decades Europe has witnessed fundamental changes of its population dynamics and population structure. Fertility has fallen below replacement level in almost all European countries, while childbearing behavior and family formation have become more diverse. Life expectancy has increased in Western Europe for both females and males, but has been declining for men in some Eastern European countries. Immigration from non-European countries has increased substantially, as has mobility within Europe. These changes pose major challenges to population studies, as conventional theoretical assumptions regarding demographic behavior and demographic development seem unfit to provide convincing explanations of the recent demographic changes. This book, derived from the symposium on "The Demography of Europe" held at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany in November 2007 in honor of Professor Jan M. Hoem, brings together leading population researchers in the area of fertility, family, migration, life-expectancy, and mortality. The contributions present key issues of the new demography of Europe and discuss key research advances to understand the continent's demographic development at the turn of the 21st century.

As a history of family life in the squatter settlements of Rio de Janeiro from the 1940s to the 1960s, this study shatters the myth of household disorganization said to be the norm among the urban poor. Using quantitative evidence, field reports by social workers, newspaper accounts, and the recollections of the squatters themselves, the study dissects household structure, economic activity, living standards, and political participation among the one million "favelados" (squatters) living in Rio by 1960, singling out three favelas for comparative analysis. "Favelados" prized family life, and most succeeded in holding their households together against daunting odds. Shantytowns provided residence close to the workplace, and some were erected literally in the shadow of the construction projects where the squatters worked. Indeed, the location and economic activity of the surrounding neighborhood largely determined the ability of the favela to survive. As squatters became an important part of the city work force, they mobilized to put pressure on the authorities to provide collective services like water and electricity.

Stroll through any public park in Brooklyn on a weekday afternoon and you will see black women with white children at every turn. Many of these women are of Caribbean descent, and they have long been a crucial component of New York's economy, providing childcare for white middle- and upper-middleclass families. Raising Brooklyn offers an in-depth look at the daily lives of these childcare providers, examining the important roles they play in the families whose children they help to raise. Tamara Mose Brown spent three years immersed in these Brooklyn communities: in public parks, public libraries, and living as a fellow resident among their employers, and her intimate tour of the public spaces of gentrified Brooklyn deepens our understanding of how these women use their collective lives to combat the isolation felt during the workday as a domestic worker. Though at first glance these childcare providers appear isolated and exploited-and this is the case for many-Mose Brown shows that their daily interactions in the social spaces they create allow their collective lives and cultural identities to flourish. Raising Brooklyn demonstrates how these daily interactions form a continuous expression of cultural preservation as a weapon against difficult working conditions, examining how this process unfolds through the use of cell phones, food sharing, and informal economic systems. Ultimately, Raising Brooklyn places the organization of domestic workers within the framework of a social justice movement, creating a dialogue between workers who don't believe their exploitative work conditions will change and an organization whose members believe change can come about through public displays of solidarity.

This invaluable reference introduces successful strengths-based programs for aiding families of young children in critical social contexts: family, school, community, and policy. The wide range of systems/contextual approaches described here are based in current understanding of children's development, stress and resilience in families, cultural competence, and the two-generational approach to intervention. Research-based examples across early care and early learning platforms illustrate the links between parental protective factors and children's academic and social outcomes, and between family stability and larger social goals. By supporting parents and children equally, the contributors assert, these interventions more fully address developmental and family issues than programs that mainly serve one generation or the other. Included in the coverage:* Parent and community focused approaches to supporting parents of young children: the Family Networks Project.* Honoring parenting values, expectations, and approaches across cultures.* Building young children's executive functions at home and in early care and education settings.* Promoting early childhood development in the pediatric medical home.* Neighborhood approaches to supporting families of young children.* Public policy strategies to promote the well-being of families with young children. Innovative Approaches for Supporting Parents of Young Children benefits professionals and practitioners working to support families of young children, particularly those interested in social work, psychology, public policy, and public health.

While the current discussion of ethnic, trade, and commercial diasporas, global networks, and transnational communities constantly makes reference to the importance of families and kinship groups for understanding the dynamics of dispersion, few studies examine the nature of these families in any detail. This book, centered largely on the European experience of families scattered geographically, challenges the dominant narratives of modernization by offering a long-term perspective from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century. Paradoxically, "transnational families" are to be found long before the nation-state was in place.

This book presents a sociological account on marital dissolution that engages and extends theorisations on individualisation and the contemporary organisation of personal relationships to discuss how the experience of divorce might not be all debilitating but on the contrary, could provide opportunities for productivity, self-responsibility and relationship formation. Using Singaporean divorcees' narrative accounts, the book explores how divorcees shape and construct what the author refers to as, a divorce biography, to end their unsatisfying marriages, cope with the crisis, negotiate the associated risks, organise post-divorce personal communities and make future plans. It uncovers how divorcees navigate their divorce biographies within the economic, policy and social context they are located in and examines the conditions that facilitate or hinder the pursuit of productivity in different facets of their post-divorce lives. Far from a standard story of divorce, this book presents the diversity and complexity of Singaporean divorce biographies. The research challenges negative discourses associated with divorce and offers a more nuanced perspective by discussing both the precarious and productive aspects of the experience. More importantly, it provides a critical discussion on the limited definition of family prevalent in Singaporean society, and shows how post-divorce family life and practices continue to thrive despite the rupture of marriage.

My mother was a prostitute. My grandmother and great-grandmother were prostitutes. Maybe I should have given the family business a chance... BBC RADIO 4 PICK OF THE WEEK, Katie Puckrik 'Eliska's story is an extraordinary and powerful read. It's the ultimate book about survival and an against-all-odds fight to make it in life. Highly recommend.' Clover Stroud 'A scintillating, devastating memoir, and a fiercely witty and unabashed tribute to the toughness of the human spirit.' Damian Le Bas __________________________________________________ To westerners, being Gypsy means being wild, romantic and free. To Eliska Tanzer, it means being rented out to dance for older men. It means living without running water. It means not being allowed a job or an education. It means being stuffed into a bare room with all your aunts and cousins, fighting over the thin, stained blanket the way you fight over the last piece of half-mouldy bread. It means joining the family prostitution ring when you're still a child. But Eliska was given a way out. Slung out of Hoe School and shipped to England in a washing machine box, she thought she had made it. But her dream soon turned into a nightmare. A moving and timely memoir from a powerful new voice in literature.

In the US and UK there has been a transformation in child care, family leave, social assistance and tax credits over the last twenty years. This book explores the factors behind these changes. With detailed case studies, it shows that ideas and the power to wield them are crucial factors in the transformation of family policy.

In 2012, over 200 academics who are active in international childhood and youth research gathered together alongside young people for a unique ICYRNet conference where they debated and discussed participatory approaches. Participation, Citizenship and Intergenerational Relations in Children and Young People's Lives continues the dialogue between young people and adults that started then. This edited collection draws together work from six countries about participatory research and intergenerational relations. Adopting participatory techniques, the editors worked with children and young people to co-author three chapters that each reflect young people's interpretations of three chapters written by adults. This provides a unique insight into how children and young people view research which is about them as well as highlighting their perspectives on research which resonates with their own life experiences. The book includes reference to a wealth of supplementary visual and audio materials which are available on the conference website at www.dvigc.com.

Bonds between brothers and sisters are among the longest lasting and most emotionally significant of human relationships. But while 45 percent of adults struggle with serious sibling strife, few discuss it openly. Even fewer resolve it to their satisfaction. In Cain's Legacy , psychotherapist Jeanne Safer, a recognized authority on sibling psychology (and an estranged sister herself) illuminates this pervasive but hidden phenomenon. She explores the roots of inter-sibling woes, from siblicide in the book of Genesis to tensions in Freud's family history. Drawing on sixty in-depth interviews with adult siblings struggling with conflicts over money, family businesses, aging parents, contentious wills, unhealed childhood wounds, and blocked communication, Safer provides compassionate guidance to brothers and sisters whose relationship is broken. She helps siblings overcome their paralysis and pain, revealing how they can come to terms with the one peer relationship they can never sever- even if they never see each other again. A heartfelt look at a too-often avoided topic, Cain's Legacy is a sympathetic and clear-eyed guide to navigating the darkness separating us from our brothers and sisters.

This collection provides a comprehensive insight into disabled children and youth in Nordic countries. It seeks to understand the experiences of children from their own perspectives and takes a multidisciplinary approach grounded in the new social studies of childhood and the Nordic relational approach to disability.

Reproductive disruptions, such as infertility, pregnancy loss, adoption, and childhood disability, are among the most distressing experiences in people s lives. Based on research by leading medical anthropologists from around the world, this book examines such issues as local practices detrimental to safe pregnancy and birth; conflicting reproductive goals between women and men; miscommunications between pregnant women and their genetic counselors; cultural anxieties over gamete donation and adoption; the contested meanings of abortion; cultural critiques of hormone replacement therapy; and the globalization of new pharmaceutical and assisted reproductive technologies. This breadth - with its explicit move from the local to the global, from the realm of everyday reproductive practice to international programs and policies - illuminates most effectively the workings of power, the tensions between women s and men s reproductive agency, and various cultural and structural inequalities in reproductive health. Marcia C. Inhorn is Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of Michigan, where she directs the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies. A specialist on infertility and assisted reproductive technologies in the Muslim Middle East, she is the author or editor of four books on the subject. Her publications include Quest for Conception: Gender, Infertility, and Egyptian Medical Traditions (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994, winner of Eileen Basker Prize for outstanding research in gender and health), Infertility and Patriarchy: The Cultural Politics of Gender and Family Life in Egypt (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996) and Local Babies, Global Science: Gender, Religion, and In Vitro Fertilization in Egypt (Routledge Press, 2003)."

This collection of essays is the product of a series of seminars held at the University of Cambridge in 1998 under the auspices of the newly formed Cambridge Socio-Legal Group. The book presents an interdisciplinary exploration of the nature of parenthood and its various manifestations in contemporary society. It is divided into three sections dealing respectively with defining parenthood,new issues in contemporary parenting and parenting post-divorce. Each contributor addresses the central question 'What is a Parent?' from the perspective of his or her own discipline, thus bringing together ideas about parents derived from law, sociology, psychology, biology and criminology. Despite the familiar and apparently obvious answer to this question the notion of 'parent' emerges from the analysis as a contested concept. Definitions are various and fluid, parenting practices are by no means fixed, and ideologies which frame who parents are and what they do are subject to disruptions from several quarters. In short, the essays in this book show the ways in which 'parent' like 'child' is a term with a shifting meaning and 'parenthood' refers to a fluid set of social practices which are historically and culturally situated. Contributors: Andrew Bainham, Carol Brayne, Stuart Bridge, Rachel Cook, Shelley Day Sclater, Margaret Ely, Loraine Gelsthorpe, Susan Golombok, Jack Goody, Jonathan Herring, Felicia Huppert, Allison James, Martin Johnson, Bridget Lindley, Mavis Maclean, Juliet Mitchell, Ros Pickford, Martin Richards, Wendy Solomou, Candida Yates.

Rural Families and Work focuses on the findings of the Rural Families Speak research study and the theoretical frameworks that are utilized to examine the context of rural low-income families' employment. This volume provides a solid foundation for understanding rural employment problems and issues. Family ecological theory is the central framework with a discussion of theories that contribute to the opportunities for the contextual research, including family economic stress theory, human capital, human capability, and some selected policy frameworks. Employment is addressed through review of policy issues, community contexts, family and social support, and available resources. Throughout the volume future research directions and applications are highlighted.

Drawing on articles appearing in popular women's magazines from 1950 to 1989, this study documents changes in justifications of gender-based divisions of labor in the home and workplace. The study details the types of rationalizations that have been used to reconcile one new familial arrangement--two-parent workers with traditional gender values that promote men as breadwinners/fathers and women as housewives/mothers. The study reveals that changes have taken place only within the context of being a "good mother." A serious analysis of women's burden of being both breadwinner and homemaker, therefore, has not occurred. Women's magazines serve as moral guides for their readers, providing justifications for both working and nonworking readers. They rely heavily on "experts" to provide personal direction to their readers. This work is in the same vein as Susan Faludi's Backlash, which examines the use of the media in the control of gender ideologies.

This reference examines the wide-ranging impact of military life on families, parenting, and child development. It examines the complex family needs of this diverse population, especially as familiar issues such as trauma, domestic violence, and child abuse manifest differently than in civilian life. Expert contributors review findings on deployed mothers, active-duty fathers, and other military parents while offering evidence for interventions and prevention programs to enhance children's healthy adjustment in this highly structured yet uncertain context. Its emphasis on resource and policy improvements keeps the book focused on the evolution of military families in the face of future change and challenges. Included in the coverage: Impacts of military life on young children and their parents. Parenting school-age children and adolescents through military deployments. Parenting in military families faced with combat-related injury, illness, or death. The special case of civilian service members: supporting parents in the National Guard and Reserves. Interventions to support and strengthen parenting in military families: state of the evidence. Military parenting in the digital age: existing practices, new possibilities. Addressing a major need in family and parenting studies, Parenting and Children's Resilience in Military Families is necessary reading for scholars and practitioners interested in parenting and military family research.

The Gift of the Other brings together a philosophical analysis of time, embodiment, and ethical responsibility with a feminist critique of the way women's reproductive capacity has been theorized and represented in Western culture. Author Lisa Guenther develops the ethical and temporal implications of understanding birth as the gift of the Other, a gift which makes existence possible, and already orients this existence toward a radical responsibility for Others. Through an engagement with the work of Levinas, Beauvoir, Arendt, Irigaray, and Kristeva, the author outlines an ethics of maternity based on the givenness of existence and a feminist politics of motherhood which critiques the exploitation of maternal generosity.

Joining two usually distinct areas of psychoanalytic treatment, this volume explores the psychoanalytic theory of object relations and its application to the study of marital and family interaction. Freud's object relations model lends itself well to the study of internalized object relations and external personal relations. Integrating various psychoanalytic approaches as well as contributions of Piagetian scholars, this essay also incorporates general systems theory. The study covers the breakdown of marital relationships, narcissism of partners, separation and individuation of adolescent offspring, role typing, family communication, defense mechanisms, entrapping, and emotional processes. It concludes with a synthesis of marital and family object relations models.

"Object Relations and the Family ProcesS" introduces the reader to the object relations model. It describes the process of acquiring object concepts of both permanence and libidinal strivings. The concept of libidinal object is then defined. An overview of the psychoanalytic theory of object relations is given and the intrapersonal and interpersonal spheres of object relations are described. The remainder of the book is devoted to the author's presentation of his hypothetical model. Both psychoanalysts and therapists will find this model a useful one.

This insightful new work deals with all of the contemporary issues concerning parenting by gay men and lesbians. It is designed to broaden readers' thinking on homosexuality and homosexuals in general; to include the dimension of children and parenting within the context of the homosexual family; and to provide specific information about it. The book also includes data on the children of gay and lesbian parents, as well as a discussion of alternative forms of parenthood such as adoptive and foster parenthood, stepparent families, and gay men and lesbians in heterosexual family unions. Because of their special significance, there are separate chapters on legal issues, counseling needs, and social psychological concerns for gays and lesbians considering parenthood.

While both the nature of families and the composition of the workforce have gone through radical changes, few adjustments have been made so that work and family are aligned in ways that promote strong families and a strong economy. Changing Realities of Work and Family takes a multidisciplinary look at the topic of work and family, ultimately addressing four primary questions: How do families and employers accommodate the demands of employment and children?; How does society deal with diversity and discrimination in areas such as age, community, and sexual orientation?; How does working and caring for families affect health?; and What is the effect of work-family integration in politics, business, and the legal system?These questions are addressed from a variety of perspectives and a diverse assortment of contributors, including a former Governor who gave birth to twins while in office; a distinguished legal professor and leading authority on workplace discrimination against mothers and pregnant women; a researcher whose work on parental stress includes videotaped interactions between parents and children as parents return home from work; and a consultant to corporations developing workplace flexibility with a particular focus on low-wage workers. Comprised of original empirical articles written expressly for this work and real world examples and strategies for balancing the two, this book presents the most current research on the field of work and family..

This text collates and examines the jurisprudence that currently exists in respect of blood-tied genetic connection, arguing that the right to identity often rests upon the ability to "identify" biological ancestors, which in turn requires an absence of adult-centric veto norms. It looks firstly to the nature and purpose of the blood-tie as a unique item of birthright heritage, whose socio-cultural value perhaps lies mainly in preventing, or perhaps engendering, a feared or revered sense of otherness. It then traces the evolution of the various policies on telling and accessing truth, tying these to the diverse body of psychological theories on the need for unbroken attachments and the harms of being origin deprived. The law of the blood-tie comprises of several overlapping and sometimes conflicting strands: the international law provisions and UNCRC Country Reports on the child s right to identity, recent Strasbourg case law, and domestic case law from a number of jurisdictions on issues such as legal parentage, vetoes on post-adoption contact, court-delegated decision-making, overturned placements and the best interests of the relinquished child. The text also suggests a means of preventing the discriminatory effects of denied ancestry, calling upon domestic jurists, legislators, policy-makers and parents to be mindful of the long-term effects of genetic kinlessness upon origin deprived persons, especially where they have been tasked with protecting this vulnerable section of the population."

The Latino population in the United States continues to grow and now represents 12% of the population. Yet, remarkably little attention has been paid to understanding parenting and child development processes among Latino families. Although research on Latino parenting is beginning to emerge, the field is in need of further structure and direction. This volume addresses this need and advances the field both by presenting state-of-the-art research on Latino parenting and also by proposing conceptual and methodological frameworks that can provide the field with further integration and direction.

In addition to presenting innovative research examining parental beliefs and practices of Latino families from different socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, authors provide frameworks for identifying the origins of these beliefs and practices, and provide a rich picture of both the values that can be considered Latino and the social and demographic normative and at-risk Latino samples. Finally, methodological and conceptual recommendations for future research on each cited area, as well as the field, are presented.

Who are the new families that are appearing on city streets, in suburban malls, and at Fourth of July celebrations? The parents, in their 40s and 50s, are obviously Caucasian, and their very young daughters are obviously Chinese. This book is about these new "American & Chinese" families that are being formed through the mechanism of international adoption. The first survey of bicultural Chinese-American children, based on personal experience and rigorous research, both documents these adoptions and examines their implications for American society. This book will be of great use to couples considering or living with adopted Chinese children, professionals in social welfare and education, and scholars and other researchers involved with American multiculturalism.

This interdisciplinary book explores the affective dimensions of becoming a parent, traversing the life-cycle journey of pregnancy, childbirth, and early parenting. Bringing together researchers from sociology, history, feminist studies, cultural studies, general medicine, and psychiatry, Paths to Parenthood analyses rich narratives that represent a diverse cross-section of parents, including migrants, same-sex couples, and single parents.