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.

"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"--

Using actual case studies, as well as examples from music, literature, and film, Dr. Pittman identifies four basic patterns of infidelity the accidental encounter, habitual philandering, marital arrangements, and romance discussed how to limit the damage that affairs do, and offers practical suggestions on how to make a marriage work."

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."

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.

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.

Euro-commuters' have emerged as a new group of migrants since the onset of the economic crisis in the EU. These people work in one country but live in another. This book analyses the characteristics of these migrants, their motivations and how commuting influences their personal, family and social lives.

The collection of chapters in the "Handbook of Population and Family Economics" and their organization reflect the most recent developments in economics pertaining to population issues and the family. The rationale, contents, and organization of the "Handbook" evolve from three premises. First, the family is the main arena in which population outcomes are forged. Second, there are important interactions and significant causal links across all demographic phenomena. Third, the study of the size, composition, and growth of a population can benefit from the application of economic methodology and tools. The diversity and depth of the work reviewed and presented in the "Handbook" conveys both the progress that has been made by economists in understanding the forces shaping population processes, including the behavior of families, and the many questions, empirical and theoretical, that still remain. For more information on the Handbooks in Economics series, please see our home page on http: //www.elsevier.nl/locate/hes

This book critically explores the world of older prisoners to provide a more nuanced understanding of imprisonment at old age. Through an ethnographical study of male and female older prisoners in two Belgian prison settings, one in which older prisoners are integrated and one in which they are segregated, it informs debates and seeks to recognise ageist discourse, attitudes, practices in prison. The Older Prisoner seeks to situate the older prisoner from both a penological and gerontological perspective, organised around the following broad themes: the construction of the older prisoner, the physical prison world, the social prison world, surviving prison and giving meaning. The book allows readers to navigate between contrasting perspectives and voices rather than reinforcing traditional narratives and prevailing discourses on the older prisoner. In doing so, it hopes to open up a broader dialogue on ageing and punishment. It also offers insights into the concept of meaning in life as an analytical tool to study prisoners.

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.

This book challenges and revises existing ways of thinking about leaving care policy, practice and research at regional, national and international levels. Bringing together contributors from fifteen countries, it covers a range of topical policy and practice issues within national, international or comparative contexts. These include youth justice, disability, access to higher education, the role of advocacy groups, ethical challenges and cultural factors. In doing so it demonstrates that, whilst young people are universally a vulnerable group, there are vast differences in their experiences of out-of-home care and transitions from care, and their shorter and longer-term outcomes. Equally, there are significant variations between jurisdictions in terms of the legislative, policy and practice supports and opportunities made available to them. This significant edited collection is essential reading for all those who work with young people from care, including social workers, counsellors, and youth and community practitioners, as well as for students and scholars of child welfare.

Once only a topic among women in the private sphere, motherhood and mothering have become important intellectual topics across academic disciplines. Even so, no book has yet devoted a sustained look at how exploring mothering rhetorics - the rhetorics of reproduction (rhetorics about the reproductive function of women/mothers) and reproducing rhetorics (the rhetorical reproduction of ideological systems and logics of contemporary culture) expand our understanding of mothering, motherhood, communication, and gender. Mothering Rhetorics begins to fill this gap for scholars and teachers interested in the study of mothering rhetorics in their historical and contemporary permutations. The contributions explore the racialized rhetorical contexts of maternity; how fixing food is thought to fix families, while also regulating maternal activities and identity; how Black female breastfeeding activists resisted the exploitation of African-American mothers in Detroit; how women in pink-collar occupations both adhere to and challenge maternity leave discourses by rhetorically positioning their leaves as time off and (dis)ability; identifying verbal and nonverbal shaming practices related to unwed motherhood during the mid-twentieth century; and redefining alternative postpartum placenta practices. This book was originally published as a special issue of Women's Studies in Communication.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

This is the first book to bring together international scholars from around the world and from a wide variety of disciplines, to discover what is known about grandfathers and analyse the impact of close involvement with their grandchildren. Within the context of increased divorce rates, single parent families and healthier, more active elders, grandfathers have come out of the shadows and re-invented themselves in a new caring, nurturing role. These original studies demonstrate that grandfather involvement is independently and positively associated with higher levels of child well-being in the UK and South Africa, as well as in Arab and Israeli teenagers, and pre-school children in England. The chapters conclude that societies could benefit from encouraging more grandfathers to become actively involved in their grandchildren's lives and argues the case for grandparent visitation rights in those countries that currently do not have them.

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.

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.

Drawing on interviews and focus groups with young mothers and fathers, their parents and other relatives, this book provides a rich exploration of the experience of being a teenage parent now, and for earlier generations, closely examining teenage pregnancy and parenting in families where two or more generations have been teenage mothers. Brown also explores the cultural and social contexts of teenage parenting by including the views of people who have many years' experience of working with young parents in health, social and welfare settings. The book challenges policy contexts which focus on negative aspects of teenage parenting, and shows that for many young people, parenting can be a positive experience. It will appeal to academics, policymakers and professionals with an interest in teenage pregnancy and parenting.