The systems approach to the family is based on the assumptions that there is equality between men and women in the family, and that women and men are treated equally in clinical practice. The contributors to this book challenge these hidden assumptions, discussing the issues from both a conceptual and clinical viewpoint. They argue strongly that questions of gender and power should be central to family therapy training and practice.

This controversial book proposes that therapists work with parents in therapy rather than with the child. The authors argue that parent therapy is not only a useful alternative to individual child treatment, but is also more effective in helping the child. Parent therapy rests on a relational understanding of development. The point of entry for the treatment process is the parent-child relationship and is developed through maternal and paternal histories and projections. Parent therapy focuses on the parents' understanding of themselves, their relationship with each other and with their child. Therapeutic work with parents allows them to develop new insights into themselves and their child, preserve their autonomy and self-esteem, and effect permanent change. The therapist functions as a consultant to the parents similar to the way a supervisor functions as a consultant to a therapist. Just as therapists learn about their patients in working with a supervisor, parents learn to become more introspective, thoughtful, and knowledgeable about their own child. It would injure the patient-therapist relationship for the supervisor to work directly with the patient. In the same way, the child is better served when the parents learn how to handle conflict and development themselves rather than having a therapist intervene with the parent-child relationship. Parent therapy addresses the parents' unconscious conflicts in an atmosphere of collaboration with the therapist and has a life-long effect.

Parenting in England is the first study of the world of parenting in late Georgian England. The author, Joanne Bailey, traces ideas about parenthood in a Christian society that was responding to new cultural trends of sensibility, romanticism and domesticity, along with Enlightenment ideas about childhood and self. All these shaped how people, from the poor to the genteel, thought about themselves as parents, and remembered their own parents. With meticulous attention to detail, Bailey illuminates the range of intense emotions provoked by parenthood by investigating a rich array of sources from memoirs and correspondence, to advice literature, fiction, and court records, to prints, engravings, and ballads. Parenting was also a profoundly embodied experience, and the book captures the effort, labour, and hard work it entailed. Such parental investment meant that the experience was fundamental to the forging of national, familial, and personal identities. It also needed more than two parents and this book uncovers the hitherto hidden world of shared parenting. At all levels of society, household and kinship ties were drawn upon to lighten the labours of parenting. By revealing these emotional and material parental worlds, what emerges is the centrality of parenthood to mental and physical well-being, reputation, public and personal identities, and to transmitting prized values across generations. Yet being a parent was a contingent experience adapting from hour to hour, year to year, and child to child. It was at once precarious, as children and parents succumbed to fatal diseases and accidents, yet it was also enduring because parent-child relationships were not ended by death: lost children and parents lived on in memory.

The Family in Late Antiquity offers a challenging, well-argued and coherent study of the family in the late Roman world and the influence of the emerging Christian religion on its structure and value. Before the Roman Empire's political disintegration in the west, enormous political, religious and cultural changes took place in the period of late antiquity. This book is the first comprehensive study of the family in the later Roman Empire, from approximately 300 AD to 550 AD. Geoffrey Nathan analyses the classical Roman family as well as early Christian notions of this most basic unit of social organisation. Using these models as a contextual backdrop, he then explores marriage, children, domestic servitude, and other familial institutions in late antiquity. He brings together a diverse collection of sources, transcending traditional studies that have centred on the legal record.

ATTRIBUTIONS, ACCOUNTS AND CLOSE RELATIONSHPIS documents attributional and accounts approaches to the study of close relationships. Issues of focus include communication pro- blems in marriage and their relationship with causal attri- butions; marital violence and its relationship with early learning experience; ego-defensive attribution and excuse- making in couples and with respect to medical problems; and attributions about transitions in relationships.

The theme of this volume is an outgrowth of one of the Section sponsored sessions at the 2006 ASA meetings in Montreal; 'Children and Youth Speak for Themselves'. The volume is a collection of articles from scholars who pay particular attention to children and/or adolescents' voices, interpretations, perspectives, and experiences within specific social and cultural contexts. Contributions include research stemming from a broad spectrum of methodological and theoretical orientations. This is a cutting-edge compilation of the most current child-centred scholarship on the sociology of children and childhood.

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."

One undeniable fact about families is that they keep changing, both in terms of structure and behavior. Many factors have served to bring about such changes, including social, cultural, political, and institutional change, resulting in family forms which perhaps may represent the new 'traditional' in the not-so-distant future. Through research studies from around the world, this volume examines these changing structures and behaviors, and attempts to better illustrate the ever-changing nature of families. Topics covered include: transracial adoption, lesbian parenting, intergenerational relationships, procreative identities, ex-spouse relationships, military couples, the meaning of remarriage, and gender roles within contemporary families, among other topics. This volume, along with future volumes of CPFR, utilizes a wide variety of methodological and theoretical approaches, and attempts to provide a comprehensive examination of change in family structures and behaviors.

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.

Stories and storytelling are one of the primary ways that families and family members make sense of both everyday and difficult events, create a sense of individual and group identity, remember, connect generations, and establish guidelines for family behavior. With so many important functions, storytelling is a significant but still understudied communicative process for the family.

Family Storytelling focuses on the ways in which stories are told in and about family in order to provide insight into the processes, functions, and consequences of family storytelling. This collection of empirical articles illuminates various ways in which family storytelling affects and reflects the negotiation of individual and relational identity in the family, teaches important family lessons, and helps members make sense of and cope with difficulty. Each of these functions is explored through both scientific and interpretive investigations, thus showcasing the contributions that research on family storytelling from different paradigms make to our understanding of the family.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Family Communication.

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.

"Europe and Love in Cinema" explores the relationship between love and Europeanness in a wide range of films from the 1920s to the present. A critical look at the manner in which love--in its broadest sense--is portrayed in cinema from across Europe and the United States, this volume exposes constructed notions of "Europeanness" that both set Europe apart and define some parts of it as more "European" than others. Through the international distribution process, these films in turn engage with ideas of Europe from both outside and within, while some, treated extensively in this volume, even offer alternative models of love. A bracing collection of essays from top film scholars, "Europe and Love in Cinema" demonstrates the centrality of desire to film narrative and explores multiple models of love within Europe's frontiers.

Since the publication of the Coleman report in the US many decades ago, it has been widely accepted that the evidence that schools are marginal in the grand scheme of academic achievement is conclusive. Despite this, educational policy across the world remains focused almost exclusively on schools. With contributions from such figures as Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Doris Entwistle and Richard Arum this book is an important contribution to a debate that has implications across the board in social sciences and policy-making. It will be required reading for students and academics within sociology, economics and education and should also find a place on the bookshelves of education policy-makers.

While marriages were supposed to be celebrated publicly by priests, in churches where the parties were known, many couples had reasons -- among them parental disapproval, religious nonconformity, property considerations and previous entanglements -- to marry in other ways. Nor was this difficult where there was no unified marriage code, where a simple exchange of vows might constitute a valid marriage, and where unbeneficed priests were prepared to perform the ceremony in return for a drink.
Clandestine marriage had represented a problem to the church and state, and to the rights of property, since the middle ages, eluding a variety of attempts to control it. By the eighteenth century it had become a scandal, with Fleet parsons marrying thousands of couples a year. In 1753 Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act nullified such irregular marriages, only to drive them to adopt other guises until the introduction of civil marriage in 1836.
In this intriguing book Brian Outhwaite explores the nature and scale of clandestine marriage. He describes why it attracted so many customers and why it was so hard to suppress. "Clandestine Marriage in England, 1500-1850" provides a new perspective on a central social and religious institution.

Why do people rebel? This is one of the most important questions historians and social scientists have been grappling with over the years. It is a question to which no satisfactory answer has been found, despite more than a century of research. However, in most cases the research has focused on what people do if they rebel but hardly ever, why they rebel. The essays in this volume offer an alternative perspective, based on the question at what point families decided to add collective action to their repertoires of survival strategies, In this way this volume opens up a promising new field of historical research: the intersection of labour and family history. The authors offer fascinating case studies in several countries spanning over four continents during the last two centuries. In an extensive introduction the relevant literature on households and collective action is discussed, and the volume is rounded off by a conclusion that provides methodological and theoretical suggestions for the further exploration of this new field in social history.

This book brings together recent UK studies into children's experiences and practices around food in a range of contexts, linking these to current policy and practice perspectives. It reveals that food works not only on a material level as sustenance but also on a symbolic level as something that can stand for thoughts, feelings, and relationships. The three broad contexts of schools, families and care (residential homes and foster care) are explored to show the ways in which both children and adults use food. Food is used as a means by which adults care for children and is also something through which adults manage their own feelings and relationships to each other which in turn impact on children's experiences. The book examines the power of food in our daily lives and the way in which it can be used as a medium by individuals to exert power and resistance, establish collective identities and notions of the self and to express moralities about notions of 'proper' family routines and 'good' and 'healthy' lifestyle choices. It identifies inter-generational and intra-generational differences and commonalities in regard to the uses of and experiences around food across a range of studies conducted with children and young people. This book was published as a special issue of Children's Geographies.

Today, cohabiting relationships account for most births outside marriage. But what was the situation in earlier centuries? Bringing together leading historians, demographers and lawyers, this interdisciplinary collection draws on a wide range of sources to examine the changing context of non-marital child-bearing in England and Wales since 1600.

Motherhood is the focus of much public scrutiny, situated as it seems to be at the frontier of processes of social order and change. Much has been written about the difficulties of mothering in a context of ever-expanding expert advice, as well as apparently increasing expectations that the mother-child bond be cultivated through intensive care-giving. This study returns to neglected sociological questions concerning the connections between agency and normative complexity, through the pragmatist interpretation it offers of the recognition dynamics shaping this deeply contested and emotionally fraught role. Drawing on qualitative interviews with forty mostly middle-class mothers across the UK and US, this book offers a three-party typology of the coping strategies women adopt. The various combinations of expressivism, instrumentalism and pragmatism taken up by respondents as they go about asserting normative authority and seeking esteem for the competence and quality of their mothering, provides the focus of attention.

Significant recent changes in the structure and composition of households make the study of the economic relationships within the household of particular interest for academics and policy-makers. In this context, Household Economic Behaviors, through its focus on theoretical and empirical chapters on a range of economic behaviors within the household, provides a new and timely viewpoint. Following the Introduction and one or two surveys which give a general background, the volume includes theoretical and empirical perspectives on allocation of available time within the household, monetary and non-monetary transfers between household members, and intra-household bargaining.

Adoption has long been a controversial subject in the United States as well as in other western countries, but never more so than in the past three decades. Why that is and how public attention affects the decisions made by those who arrange, legalize, and experience adoptive kinship constitutes the subject of this book. Adoption, the author argues, touches on major preoccupations we all have: who we are; why we are what we are; the balance of "nature" and "culture" in self-definition; the conflict between individual rights and social order.

The problematic nature of adoption in western societies is effectively contrasted by the author with cultures in many other parts of the world in which children are exchanged frequently, openly, and happily. There is no stigma, often even a high value, placed on being the adopted child in a family. This comparative perspective brings into sharp relief American, and by implication other western, policies that reflect a very different notion of kinship and family. Adoption thus reveals itself as one of the keys to western ideas about human nature, the person, rights, privacy, and family relationships.

This is the first book to examine the same-sex weddings and same-sex couple suicides reported in India over the last two decades. Ruth Vanita examines these cases in the context of a wide variety of same-sex unions, from Fourteenth-century narratives about co-wives who miraculously produce a child together, to Nineteenth-century depictions of ritualized unions between women, to marriages between gay men and lesbians arranged over the internet. Examining the changing legal, literary, religious and social Indian and Euro-American traditions within which same-sex unions are embedded, she brings a fresh perspective to the gay marriage debate, suggesting that same-sex marriage dwells not at the margins but at the heart of culture. Love's Rites by Ruth Vanita is a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award.

The first study of early modern English courtship as a subject in its own right. New historical and anthropological insights into the making of marriage, and an arresting and exciting contribution to the history of the family. Takes the interpretation of the English church court material to a new level of sophistication. Explores new or neglected subjects such as the use of gifts or tokens and the role of go-betweens in English courtship. The fresh and wholly original perspectives on English courtship offered here should redirect and revitalise the history of marriage in early modern England. -- .

Christmas or Hanukkah? Bris or baptism? Church or synagogue? As the number of Jewish-Christian marriages in America continues to rise, couples find themselves searching for ways to navigate the choppy waters of interfaith families. Children, extended family, and communities can all contribute to the strain a marriage might feel when religion is an issue. Should the children be raised in one faith and not the other? Who should decide which holidays to celebrate and how? How can couples deal with extended family members who may not understand or accept the interfaith marriage? Here, couples in Jewish-Christian marriages describe their experiences and reveal intimate details of their lives as members of these unique families. Without being prescriptive, this book offers examples of the successes and failures, struggles and triumphs of such religiously mixed families, shedding light on new ways to approach everyday situations and major life decisions. The couples whose stories are found in these pages describe how they tackled these topics. Many decided to maintain a Jewish household, while others decided on a Christian family life. Still others found ways to incorporate both religions, and in some cases one partner converted to the other's faith. In all situations, the couples describe their sacrifices, feelings, frustrations, and religious behaviors and practices. Readers will find an array of reactions and approaches in these pages, and will come away with fresh insight into interfaith families in general and Jewish-Christian marriage in particular.

Intriguing new findings on how genes and environments work together through different stages of life take the spotlight in this significant collection. Studies from infancy to late adulthood show both forces as shaping individuals' relationships within family and non-family contexts, and examine how these relationships, in turn, continue to shape the individual. Transitional periods, in which individuals become more autonomous and relationships and personal identities become more complicated, receive special emphasis. In addition, chapters shed light on the extent to which the quantity and quality of genetic and environmental influence may shift across and even within life stages. Included in the coverage: Gene-environment interplay in parenting young children. The sibling relationship as a source of shared environment. Gene-environment transactions in childhood and adolescent problematic peer relationships. Toward a developmentally sensitive and genetically informed perspective on popularity. Spouse, parent, and co-worker: roles and relationships in adulthood. The family system as a unit of clinical care: the role of genetic systems. Behavioral geneticists, clinical psychologists, and family therapists will find in Gene-Environment Interplay in Interpersonal Relationships across the Lifespan a window into current thinking on the subject, new perspectives for understanding clients and cases, and ideas for further study.

In this ground-breaking book, acclaimed sociologist Ann Oakley undertook one of the first serious sociological studies to examine women's work in the home. She interviewed 40 urban housewives and analysed their perceptions of housework, their feelings of monotony and fragmentation, the length of their working week, the importance of standards and routines, and their attitudes to different household tasks. Most women, irrespective of social class, were dissatisfied with housework - an important finding which contrasted with prevailing views. Importantly, too, she showed how the neglect of research on domestic work was linked to the inbuilt sexism of sociology. This classic book challenged the hitherto neglect of housework as a topic worthy of study and paved the way for the sociological study of many more aspects of women's lives.