The problems of studying families arise from the difficulty in studying systems where there are multiple elements interacting with each other and with the child. How should this system be described? Still other problems relate to indirect effects; namely the influence of a particular dyad's interaction on the child when the child is not a member of the dyad. While all agree that the mother-father relationship has important bearing on the child's development, exactly how to study this--especially using observational techniques--remains a problem. While progress in studying the family has been slow, there is no question that an increase in interest in the family systems, as opposed to the mother-child relationship, is taking place. This has resulted in an increase in research on families and their effects.
This volume, by leading figures in child development on families, attests to the growing sophistication of the conceptualization and measurement techniques for getting at family processes. The third in a series that aims to address topics relevant to the developmental problems and developmental disabilities of retardation, this volume is divided into two parts. Section 1 presents basic family processes and approaches for describing family dynamics. It deals with these issues from a broad perspective, including studying families at dinner, families in different cultural contexts, and the understanding of family in nonhuman primates. Section 2 looks at family processes in the service of studying families at-risk. The risk factors include poverty, malnutrition, and developmental delay and retardation. The study of family processes in these contexts provides data on family dynamics as well as how these dynamics impact on the children's developing competence. This volume will be informative for researchers, clinicians, and educators from a variety of disciplines and settings. The editors' aim is to bring a greater clarity to issues concerning the family life of children and highlight new research and possibilities for intervention.

In "Families" Jane Howard informally visits many dozens of families and tries to discover what makes the best ones work so well. Families are not dying, she finds, although they are evolving in various ways. From the tightest-knit nuclear family or extended clan to the most fragile new commune, the family in one guise or another remains everybody's most basic hold on reality. We may run away from our families as many do, but no sooner do we escape than we find another one, often very much like it. Sympathetically, with immense thrust, she crosses the continent to discover families' myths, jokes, and rituals. She leafs through their scrapbooks, sits on their porches, and takes part, when she can, in their feasts and celebrations. She talks to a father of eighteen, several double first cousins, stepchildren, multiple godmothers, an honorary relative of an Indian tribe, and a nine-year-old boy who has no family but his mother. She sits with a matriarch on the front stoop of a ghetto house, goes camping with a family in Mexico, has Thanksgiving with another in Iowa, and orders pizza with a Greek clan in Massachusetts. Howard reports on visits to conventional Southern and Jewish households and to innovative ones whose members, lacking a common history, plan on building common futures as if water were after all as thick as blood. She examines the notion that "there are ways and ways of achieving kinship, of which birth and marriage are only the most obvious." Millions of clans and families all over the United States continue to celebrate, quarrel, disband, reunite, and endure. Jane Howard makes us realize how our lives are interwoven both with the families we are born into and with those we invent as we go through life. "Families" is compassionate, provocative, and profound. The paperback edition of this important work will be essential reading for all those with an interest in the study of familial bonds, particularly sociologists, anthropologists, and psychologists.

Making home explores the figure of the orphan child in a broad selection of contemporary US novels by popular and critically acclaimed authors Barbara Kingsolver, Linda Hogan, Leslie Marmon Silko, Marilynne Robinson, Michael Cunningham, Jonathan Safran Foer, John Irving, Kaye Gibbons, Octavia Butler, Jewelle Gomez and Toni Morrison. The orphan child is a continuous presence in US literature, not only in children's books and nineteenth-century texts, but also in a variety of genres of contemporary fiction for adults. Making home examines the meanings of this figure in the contexts of American literary history, social history and ideologies of family, race and nation. It argues that contemporary orphan characters function as links to literary history and national mythologies, even as they may also serve to critique the limits of literary history, as well as the limits of familial and national belonging. -- .

In one of the first psychological studies of women in heterosexual relationships, Caroline Dryden examines the social context of their experiences and emotional struggles. Unlike the developmental literature in which women are studied only as mothers, or the clinical literature which has little theoretical basis, Gender Relations, Power and Identity places case study material in the context of the power balance between women and men. Caroline Dryden finds that there are contradications between stereotypical gender roles and the maintenance of an equal partnership that can cause problems for both women and men.

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Lesbian Step Families: An Ethnography of Love explores five lesbian step families'definitions of the step parent role and how they accomplish parenting tasks, cope with homophobia, and define and interpret their experiences. An intensive feminist qualitative study, the book offers guidelines for counselors and lesbian step families for creating healthy, functioning family structures and environments. It is the first book to concentrate exclusively on lesbian step families rather than on lesbian mothering in general.In Lesbian Step Families: An Ethnography of Love, you'll explore in detail the different kinds of step relationships that are developed and what factors may lead to the different types of step mothering in lesbian step families. The book helps you understand these relationships and parent roles through in-depth discussions of: how a step mother and legal mother who live together negotiate and organize parenting and homemaking tasks how members of lesbian step families define and create the step mother role strategies family members use to define and cope with oppression how sexism is transmitted within the family and how mothering may limit and/or contribute to female liberation the opinions and viewpoints of the children of these families The findings in Lesbian Step Families: An Ethnography of Love challenge traditional views of mothering and fathering as gender and biologically based activities; they indicate that lesbian step families model gender flexibility and that the mothers and step mothers share parenting--both traditional mothering and fathering--tasks. This allows the biological mother some freedom from motherhood as well as support in it. With insight such as this, you will be prepared to help a client, a loved one, or yourself develop and maintain healthy family relationships.

Friendships are crucial to children's well-being and happiness and lay important foundations upon which later relationships in adolescence and adulthood are built. This overview of the nature and significance of children's peer relationships examines issues such as social-cognitive development; the context of children's relationships; relationship problems such as loneliness; shyness and social isolation; and methods of promoting positive relationships.

You often see books on theoretical approaches and new interventions in therapy, but you rarely, if ever, find a book where therapists discuss their personal reactions to and views of the therapy they offer. In this amazing volume, Tales from Family Therapy: Life-Changing Clinical Experiences, psychologists, psychotherapists, and marriage and family counselors come together to share their unique experiences in therapy sessions and how they?ve learned that often the clients know more than they do As you will see, and as these therapists reveal, sometimes all the top-notch and most innovative theories in the world won?t help a client in distress.Tales from Family Therapy isn?t just about therapists learning a lesson or two from their clients. It's about compassion, healing, being taken by surprise, thinking on your toes, and encouraging people to believe in their strengths--not just their weaknesses. These stories represent to the authors some of the most special, most rewarding, and most puzzling moments in all their years of therapy. They invite you to share in their recollections and discussions of: the power of speaking accepting, respecting, and working with the realities clients bring the importance of first impressions in counseling how personal narratives develop through relationship coloring outside the lines of the dominant culture helping clients determine when rocking the boat is needed listening to your clients and not just your theories developing the self-of-therapist In the therapy room anything can happen, and as Tales from Family Therapy shows, anything does. Graduate students, counselors, licensed therapists, family educators, and family sciences professionals, as well as lay readers, will find this insightful book a helpful forum where the struggles, doubts, and triumphs of psychotherapy are revealed to encourage and inspire those who participate in the therapeutic process.

First published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The International Library of Sociology (ILS) is the most important series of books on sociology ever published. Founded in the 1940s by Karl Mannheim, the series became the forum for pioneering research and theory, marked by comparative approaches and analysis of new disciplines, such as the sociology of youth and culture. Spanning volumes by Parsons, Dickinson and Ossowski, the history of the ILS is the history of modern sociology.

First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First Published in 1998. This is Volume III of eight in the Sociology of the Soviet Union series. Written in 1949, this is a collection of translated essays and documents about the family in the USSR and the changing attitudes prevailing in Soviet Russia towards specific aspects of social and political life.

It is a truism among therapists in most mental health disciplines that the most important aspects of clinical practice are learned only after one has left graduate school and entered "the real world." While many of the basics could be covered in graduate school, supervisors of new therapists often feel that the fundamentals are only addressed in detail after a therapist has been employed. In response to this predicament, Odell and Campbell offer The Practical Practice of Marriage and Family Therapy: Things My Training Supervisor Never Told Me as a useful daily guide for graduate students and beginning marriage and family therapists that will ease the transition from learner to practicing professional in the clinical domain.Written in a refreshing and unpretentious style, much the way a caring seasoned professional would mentor a novice practitioner, The Practical Practice of Marriage and Family Therapy covers the major areas that typical graduate programs don t have time to address, including how to: integrate theoretical training with pragmatic clinical practice to maximize therapeutic effectiveness face the practical problems involving the financial elements of clinical work become a thoroughly credentialed professional develop an approach to becoming specialized uncover the motivation for being a professional marriage and family therapist increase one 's ability to maintain high-level practice over a lifetime of work by developing coping strategies and methods of safeguarding one 's own mental healthAddressing the unique approach of their book, Odell and Campbell explain, "Whereas most texts are handbooks on the actual theories and techniques used with couples and families, this book is designed to be a guide to the beginning professional as s/he leaves the graduate training environment and enters the mental health field as it exists in contemporary America. Our hope is that this book would be one of those chosen by the novice practicing professional if s/he could only take two or three with them into the field, as it contains material that is most useful for everyday work in clinical settings."

Economic analysis of the family is a recent, but already well-established area in economics. Economists have developed new methods to analyze decisions such as marriage, childbearing, divorce and the use of family resources. The economic approach has become crucial for design and understanding in many policy areas of current interest in modern societies, such as family, tax, social security and gender equality policies. The text bears evidence to the lively and relevant research in the area. The first part provides a picture of the state of the art of economics of the family as it relates to economic theory and economic modelling, examining the developments from common preference family models to the more recent co-operative or non co-operative bargaining models. The second part explores theoretical and empirical applications: the effect of the intrafamily distribution of income on family decisions; the interaction between marriage markets and labour markets; and the factors behind the rise of single parent families. The final part of the book focuses on family policies and analyzes tax, public child care and parental leave policy.

The Victorian debate on marriage, motherhood and women's rights to an independent life reflects the impact the women's movement had on the formation and transformation of public opinion. The marriage debate was also about the New Woman, the "fin-de-siecle" representation of the feminist. This anthology contextualizes key feminist texts and ideas by connecting them to the public response they received. The first volume focuses on Mona Caird's "The Morality of Marriage" and the widespread controversy it provoked. The second volume widens the debate between feminists, traditionalists and anti-feminists by linking the public discourse on marriage and divorce to the controversy of the New Woman, a debate initiated and sustained by Sarah Grand's writings. The third and fourth volumes are concerned with New Woman fiction, providing selected reading from feminist and anti-feminist works, and reproducing the media debate on morality in literature. The fiction is taken from the writings of: Emma Brooke, Mona Caird, Gertrude Dix, Lady Florence Dixie, Emma Hepworth Dixon and George Egerton.

The meaning and significance of the institution of marriage has engendered angry and boisterous battles across the United States. While the efforts of lesbians and gay men to make marriage accessible to same-sex couples have seen increasing success, these initiatives have sparked a backlash as campaigns are waged to "protect" heterosexual marriage in America. Less in the public eye is government legislation that embraces the idea of marriage promotion as a necessary societal good. In this timely and extensive study of marriage politics, Melanie Heath uncovers broad cultural anxieties that fuel on-the-ground practices to reinforce a boundary of heterosexual marriage, questioning why marriage has become an issue of pervasive national preoccupation and anxiety, and explores the impact of policies that seek to reinstitutionalize heterosexual marriage in American society. From marriage workshops for the general public to relationship classes for welfare recipients to marriage education in high school classrooms, One Marriage Under God documents in meticulous detail the inner workings of ideologies of gender and heterosexuality in the practice of marriage promotion to fortify a concept of "one marriage," an Anglo-American ideal of Christian, heterosexual monogamy.

This edited volume examines how opportunities to realise children's rights and the experience of childhood itself have been changed by the pandemic. It brings together the voices of leading scholars, policy advisors, psychologists, charities engaged in empowering children, and children and young people themselves. By exposing children's own perspectives and ideas for change, the book aims to suggest ways in which children could be better supported during this crisis. Chapters connect the experiences of under-represented groups, including children with disabilities and housing-distressed children. Authors illuminate ways to see and hear children more clearly and enable children's participation during and beyond COVID-19. This book is part of a mini-series that explores the effects of COVID-19 on children's education, rights and participation. These books will expose and connect the struggles faced by particularly vulnerable children, including children with disabilities, housing-distressed children, and refugee and displaced children. They will explore how best to listen to and support children in diverse situations, in order to enable them to realise their rights more effectively.

The family is a fundamental and complex component of all human societies. Primarily concerned with the organization and regulation of sexual relations and procreation, it is also an organizer of economic production, social division of labour, and the distribution of property, as well as the socialization of children and the care of the elderly or disadvantaged. The family as an institution lies at the intersection of nature and culture, because it is fundamentally concerned with certain elementary biological functions (birth and death), and is a major vehicle for the transfer of culture. It is also part of the apparatus of social control in human societies. Scholarly definitions and theories of the family are correspondingly complex and controversial. The works selected here form a cross-section of the landmarks in this developing field in the 19th and early-20th centuries. This collection traces the sociology of the family from its origins in the anthropological study of kinship in the late-19th century; includes examples of early-20th-century studies on family relations, which propose practical solutions to the problems of domestic breakdown and violence and the emergence of the

It is a truism among therapists in most mental health disciplines that the most important aspects of clinical practice are learned only after one has left graduate school and entered "the real world." While many of the basics could be covered in graduate school, supervisors of new therapists often feel that the fundamentals are only addressed in detail after a therapist has been employed. In response to this predicament, Odell and Campbell offer The Practical Practice of Marriage and Family Therapy: Things My Training Supervisor Never Told Me as a useful daily guide for graduate students and beginning marriage and family therapists that will ease the transition from learner to practicing professional in the clinical domain.Written in a refreshing and unpretentious style, much the way a caring seasoned professional would mentor a novice practitioner, The Practical Practice of Marriage and Family Therapy covers the major areas that typical graduate programs don't have time to address, including how to: integrate theoretical training with pragmatic clinical practice to maximize therapeutic effectiveness face the practical problems involving the financial elements of clinical work become a thoroughly credentialed professional develop an approach to becoming specialized uncover the motivation for being a professional marriage and family therapist increase one's ability to maintain high-level practice over a lifetime of work by developing coping strategies and methods of safeguarding one's own mental healthAddressing the unique approach of their book, Odell and Campbell explain, "Whereas most texts are handbooks on the actual theories and techniques used with couples and families, this book is designed to be a guide to the beginning professional as s/he leaves the graduate training environment and enters the mental health field as it exists in contemporary America. Our hope is that this book would be one of those chosen by the novice practicing professional if s/he could only take two or three with them into the field, as it contains material that is most useful for everyday work in clinical settings."

In this introduction to family studies, Jon Bernardes argues that variation and diversity are increasingly the hallmarks of family structure particularly in Europe and the United States. The book provides a comprehensive account of how families work both internally and in relation to society through the labour market and also through social institutions like education and the law.
The chapters are designed to work as individual units of study in courses on family living. Each chapter:
* highlights key issues
* summarises the most relevant research in the area
* suggests activities as a basis for student projects and discussion
* recommends further reading
Above all, this very positive approach to a changing social form encourages students to find out for themselves what family life, in all its richness and complexity, looks like as we enter the twenty first century.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203132084

Based on the 1996 Family Law Act, this book looks at how the therapist can work with the different professions involved in a divorce, how children might be consulted, and ways in which vulnerable family members can be protected. 78 pages.

Mormons and non-Mormons alike have their views of how polygamy was practiced by Latter-day Saints during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Embry has examined the participants themselves in order to understand how believers adapted to polygamy. Based on records and oral histories with husbands, wives, and children of Mormon polygamous households, this study explores the diverse experiences of individual families and stereotypes about polygamy.

This book explores the complex and rewarding relationship between mothers and their sons. It begins with a survey of the literature on the mother/son relationship. The main part of Forcey's study is based on the oral histories of 120 mothers in which they reveal their feelings of responsibility toward their sons, their expectations, and how they communicate. The book closes with three "portraits" of women who describe their relationships with their sons and how they have changed over time and through such upheavals as mothers returning to work and divorce. In examining the mother/son relationship, Mothers of Sons ultimately questions whether or not mothers foster sexist masculinity and whether they can be blamed for male dominance.

In the context of the ongoing de-standardization of young people's lives, this book explores changing patterns of household formation amongst contemporary 20-somethings and the implications of these changes for the ways in which they relate to friends, parents and partners. The book points to the growing polarization between the experiences of graduates and non-graduates, and highlights changing expectations and attitudes towards intimacy and "settling down" amongst these groups.

Winner of the 2010 Distinguished Book Award from the American Psychological Association's 44th Division (the Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Issues) An in-depth, transnational primer on the current state of same-sex marriage post legalization The summer of 2008 was the summer of love and commitment for gays and lesbians in the United States. Thousands of same-sex couples stood in line for wedding licenses all over California in the first few days after same-sex marriage was legalized. On the other side of the country, Massachusetts, the very first state to give gay couples marriage rights, took the last step to full equality by allowing same-sex couples from other states to marry there as well. These happy times for same-sex couples were the hallmark of true equality for some, yet others questioned whether the very bedrock of society was crumbling. What would this new step portend? In order to find out the impact of same-sex marriage, M. V. Lee Badgett traveled to a land where it has been legal for same-sex couples to marry since 2001: the Netherlands. Badgett interviews gay couples to find out how this step has affected their lives. We learn about the often surprising changes to their relationships, the reactions of their families, and work colleagues. Moreover, Badgett is interested in the ways that the institution itself has been altered for the larger society. How has the concept of marriage changed? When Gay People Get Married gives readers a primer on the current state of the same-sex marriage debate, and a new way of framing the issue that provides valuable new insights into the political, social, and personal stakes involved. The experiences of other countries and these pioneering American states serve as a crystal ball as we grapple with this polarizing issue in the American context. The evidence shows both that marriage changes gay people more than gay people change marriage, and that it is the most liberal countries and states making the first move to recognize gay couples. In the end, Badgett compellingly shows that allowing gay couples to marry does not destroy the institution of marriage and that many gay couples do benefit, in expected as well as surprising ways, from the legal, social, and political rights that the institution offers.

Understanding Stepfamilies takes a large step toward achieving integration of the many variables presented in understanding the stepfamily system. The book examines the dynamics and resources within these complex family systems. It helps clinicians and researchers understand the underlying structural patterns and dynamics of stepfamilies, promoting more successful, positive treatment outcomes. Chapters in Understanding Stepfamilies offer clinicians and researchers an international perspective, including contributions from the U.S., Canada, Israel, and The Netherlands. Readers learn of unique theoretical approaches to understanding stepfamily typologies and behaviors and specific clinical models for assessment and intervention, as well as more empirically-based findings regarding parent-child interactions.