Learn the who, what, and why of unbecoming a mother In a society where becoming a mother is naturalized, unbecoming a motherthe process of coming to live apart from biological childrenis regarded as unnatural, improper, or even contemptible. Few mothers are more stigmatized than those who are perceived as having given up, surrendered, or abandoned their birth children. Unbecoming Mothers: The Social Production of Maternal Absence examines this phenomenon within the social and historical context of parenting in Canada, Australia, Britain, and the United States, with critical observations from social workers, policymakers, and historians. This unique book offers insights from the perspectives of children on the outside looking in and the lived experiences of women on the inside looking out. Unbecoming Mothers: The Social Production of Maternal Absence explores how gender, race, class, and other social agents affect the ways women negotiate their lives apart from their children and how they attempt to recreate their identities and family structures. An interdisciplinary, international collection of academics, community workers, and mothers draws upon sources as diverse as archival records, a therapist's interview, a dance script, and the class presentation of a student to offer refreshing insights on maternal absence that are innovative, accessible, and inspiring. Unbecoming Mothers examines five assumptions about maternal absence and the families that emerge from that absence: the focus on parenting as highly gendered caring work done by women the idea that women share the same experience of unbecoming mothers and share the same circumstances and background the perception of maternal absence as a recent phenomenon the notion that women who want to manage their mother-work will make choices to overcome life's obstacles the Western concept of womanhood being achieved through motherhood and the unrealistic ideal of the good mother Unbecoming Mothers: The Social Production of Maternal Absence is a rich, multidisciplinary resource for academics working in women's studies, psychology, sociology, history, and any health-related fields, and for policymakers, social workers, and other community workers.

In this fascinating study, Boden considers the changing social and cultural significance of the wedding in Britain. The book focuses upon a number of issues including the commercialization of the event, the dynamics of heterosexual partnerships, and the influence of romance. The new commercial wedding is further explored in relation to broader socio-structural transformations and the modernization of marriage law. This book draws upon the experiences of marrying couples as well as media evidence.

In September 2014, the French government entrusted Tobie Nathan with the task of counselling radicalized young people who had been drawn to jihadism and in this book he recounts his experiences of some of the young people he met and counselled. He describes what he heard, felt and perceived in his encounters with these young people and their loved ones as he tried to understand the forces running through them and tried to grasp what their fate held in store for them. In so doing, he shows that the history of radicalizations is not the history of 'natures' but of metamorphoses - an unpredictable journey, with moments of immobility punctuated by sudden intoxication at the thought of other futures. It is a history of wandering souls who find themselves unable to form a narrative of origin and in thrall to harmful forces but who may find a way home one day. This deeply humane and engaging book will be of great interest to everyone concerned with the issue of radicalization and with the deep and growing challenges our societies face in accommodating difference.

There are many lessons to be learned about work-family interaction. It is clear that some people have learned how to combine work and family in ways that are mutually supporting--at least much of the time--and some employers have created work environments and policies that make positive interdependence of these two spheres more likely to occur. This book discusses measures of work-family, conflict, policies designed to reduce conflict, comparisons with other industrialized nations, and reasons why family-friendly work-policies have not been adopted with enthusiasm. The purpose is to consider a broad range of topics that pertain to work and family with the goal of helping employers and working families understand the work-life options that are available so they can make choices that offer returns-on-investments to employers, families, and society at large that are consistent with personal and societal values. This book brings together a superb panel of experts from different disciplines to look at work and family issues and the way they interact. Part I is an overview--with a brief discussion by a psychologist, economist, and a political scientist--each of whom provide their own interpretation of how their discipline views this hybrid field that none exclusively "owns." Part II considers the business case of the question of why employers should invest in family-friendly work policies, followed by a section on the employer response to work family interactions. Families are the focus of the Part IV, followed by a look at children--many of whom are at the heart of work and family interaction.

There are many lessons to be learned about work-family interaction. It is clear that some people have learned how to combine work and family in ways that are mutually supporting--at least much of the time--and some employers have created work environments and policies that make positive interdependence of these two spheres more likely to occur. This book discusses measures of work-family, conflict, policies designed to reduce conflict, comparisons with other industrialized nations, and reasons why family-friendly work-policies have not been adopted with enthusiasm. The purpose is to consider a broad range of topics that pertain to work and family with the goal of helping employers and working families understand the work-life options that are available so they can make choices that offer returns-on-investments to employers, families, and society at large that are consistent with personal and societal values.
This book brings together a superb panel of experts from different disciplines to look at work and family issues and the way they interact. Part I is an overview--with a brief discussion by a psychologist, economist, and a political scientist--each of whom provide their own interpretation of how their discipline views this hybrid field. Part II considers the business case of the question of why employers should invest in family-friendly work policies, followed by a section on the employer response to work family interactions. Families are the focus of the Part IV, followed by a look at children--many of whom are at the heart of work and family interaction.

Explore legal issues that often hinder the work of child welfare practitioners! Child Welfare in the Legal Setting: A Critical and Interpretive Perspective is a revolutionary study of the child welfare system that is essential for practitioners, educators, and students interested in public child welfare work. It examines the legal system surrounding child welfare workers and highlights their need for agency-specific training. This insightful book challenges the traditional rules of child welfare and paves the way for alternate methods of conceptualizing and organizing child protection. It explores why many family interventions fail and others never even occur. By identifying incongruities between the philosophy of child welfare and its function, this book advocates a more individualistic and efficient technique for assisting clients. Addressing issues and challenges from the initial identification of problems to navigating the legal system, this book is also thorough enough for public child welfare workers who want to take their skills to the next level. The large-system perspective in this book uses the concentric circle model, the rational legal model of legal and court action, and the ritualized process model to examine child welfare practice. Learn why terms such as child abuse and neglect have become social constructions that vary depending on the values of social workers, judges, attorneys, agencies, and communities. Child Welfare in the Legal Setting: A Critical and Interpretive Perspective examines the standardization of the organizational activities of child welfare systems and how this limits professionals' ability to accurately recognize unique problems and intervene in the most beneficial manner. Child Welfare in the Legal Setting also provides controversial opinions on emerging issues including: family investigations sanction for Child Protective Services intervention the legal setting as a host environment the function of the child welfare system rationalization of child welfare intervention trained incapacity of social workers Title IVE programs the court system Child Welfare in the Legal Setting: A Critical and Interpretive Perspective identifies vital issues by analyzing the ethical and moral foundations of the child welfare system. This insightful book also takes a close look at how practitioners inadvertently devalue their clients by using language that creates stigmatized social categories such as victim and convicted felon. Supervisors, managers, social workers and child welfare practitioners will benefit from this information. The vignettes that supplement the narrative also make the book an important resource in any child welfare course.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the process of building healthy early social and emotional relationships with infants from a developmental perspective. The book synthesizes current research on the contextual influences of attachment, family relationships, and caregiving practices on social-emotional development. Chapters examine the processes of socioemotional development-particularly in relationships with parents, other family members, and peers-and identify areas for promoting healthy attachments and resilience, improving caregiving skills, and intervening in traumatic and stressful situations. Chapters also present empirically-supported intervention and prevention programs focused on building early relationships from birth through three years of age. The book concludes with future directions for supporting infant mental health and its vital importance as a component of research, clinical and educational practice, and child and family policy. Topics featured in this book include: The effect of prenatal and neonatal attachment on social and emotional development. The impact of primary relationships and early experiences in toddlerhood. Toddler autonomy and peer awareness in the context of families and child care. Supporting early social and emotional relationships through The Legacy for Children (TM) Intervention. How to build early relationship programming across various cultures. Building Early Social and Emotional Relationships with Infants and Toddlers is a must-have reference for researchers, clinicians and professionals, and graduate students in the fields of infant mental health, developmental psychology, pediatrics, public health, family studies, and early childhood education.

Family stories of the ties between mothers and daughters form the foundation of Mothers and Daughters: Complicated Connections Across Cultures. Nationally and internationally known feminist scholars frame, analyze, and explore mother-daughter bonds in this collection of essays. Cultures from around the world are mined for insights which reveal historical, generational, ethnic, political, religious, and social class differences. This book focuses on the tenacity of the connection between mothers and daughters, impediments to a strong connection, and practices of good communication. Mothers and Daughters will interest those studying communication, women s studies, psychology, sociology, anthropology, counseling, and cultural studies.

Too often accounts of African family life have tended to describe the family in purely static terms. The contributors to this book emphasize the developmental or time dimension of the family, analysing it as a process. In the seven different societies described in East Africa, the Congo and the Transvaal the changing nature of the distribution of rights in the family property and resources is directly linked with the growth and change of the family itself. First published in 1964.

The study of kinship is a fundamental part of the study and the practice of social anthropology. This volume examines the work of three distinguished anthropologists that bear on kinship and determines what theoretical models are implicit in their writings and assesses to what extent their claims have been validated. The anthropologists studied are from France, the UK and USA: Claude Levi-Strauss, Meyer Fortes and G.P. Murdock. First published in 1971.

Against the background of the problems involved in the comparative study of human society, the essays in this book show the comparative ideal in practice, which combines elements from both sociology and anthropology. In each essay, specific problems are treated in a way which tests theory against evidence, to replace assertion by demonstration. Topics covered include: * Incest and Adultery * Double descent systems * Inheritance, social change and the boundary problem * Marriage policy * The circulation of women and children in northern Ghana * Indo-European kinship. First published in 1969.

Constituting a measured but devastating critique of Levi-Strauss's work on kinship systems, this book deals with prescriptive forms of social classification and had far-reaching implications for anthropological theory when it was originally published. Originally published in 1973.

Volunteering and its nonprofit organizations have commonly been analyzed in economic terms, with volunteering being referred to as "unpaid (productive) work". This economic definition has been around far longer than that of volunteering conceived of as leisure, which is discussed as the volitional definition. By means of a lengthy literature review, this book sets out the theoretical and empirical contributions of the serious leisure perspective to understanding volunteer motivation. This second approach began more than 40 years ago. It answers the key motivational question of why people engage in unpaid productive work, laborious or not. Since in this conception payment in cash or in kind is not an incentive to perform such work, what encourages people to volunteer? The serious leisure perspective, unlike mainstream economics, can shed considerable light on this question.

This book provides an examination of common familial trends and differences across Europe from the 1960s. It ties in with current major concerns on social policy and the family, and the changing nature of the family in Europe - and the West in general. It applies the different cases of Spain and Finland to the rest of Europe. It includes historical context of changing family structures, implications for social policy, demographic issues, family practices.This book examines common familial trends and differences throughout Europe from the 1960s onwards and discusses the most common theoretical explanations for convergence and divergence. Eriikka Oinonen reveals how structural factors such as the labour market, the welfare state and the EU affect Europeans' family related choices.

In The American Father, Wade C. Mackey documents a wealth of infor mation demonstrating the vast benefits to society when its children are raised in families with fathers. The biopsychosocial approach Mackey in human employs is consistent with the current treatment of topics development. This approach-which is grounded in a variety of diverse sources-assumes that we understand little about people when we study them a bit at a time; rather, the fullness of the individual requires a fullness of examination. For example, in the cases of fathers, we note that humans do not reproduce alone; after all, we are not an asexual species. No, human reproduction and its sequelae are social, just as clearly as they are biological, and involve the whole panoply of psychic function (mo tivation, sociability, intelligence, and the like). The evidence marshaled by Mackey indicates strongly that indi viduals and societies have an essential requirement for something more than mothering; they also need fathering. Much of the discourse and publication on fathers during the past several decades has been posited on a "more is better" model of male parenting in which it is seldom stated who it is better for-the father, the child, the mother, the couple, or the family. Further, much of this discussion infers that fathers are merely "Mr. Moms"; yet this is not so."

This volume is concerned with two of the fundamental topics of social anthropology, kinship and marriage, approached from a variety of viewpoints by an international group of contributors of diverse experience and background. The wide range of subjects examined includes: Incest, epistemology, linguistics, prescriptive alliance and methodology. Fieldwork from the following countries is drawn on: Burma, Sri Lanka, New Guinea, Australia, Africa and South America.

This handbook provides a meaningful overview of topical themes within family sociology as an academic field as well as empirical realities in various societal contexts across Europe. More than sixty prominent European scholars' original texts present the field's main theoretical and methodological approaches in addition to issues such as families as relationships, parental arrangements, parenting practices and child well-being, family policies in welfare state regimes, family lives in migration, and family trajectories. Presenting cutting-edge research on findings, theoretical interpretations, and solutions to methodological challenges, it is a timely tool for researchers, teachers, students, and family practitioners who wish to familiarise themselves with the state of family sociology in Europe.

The work and family revolution of the latter part of the 20th century has profoundly changed the social structures, institutions, and cultures that constitute the fabric of our lives. Given the nature of work and family changes, it is little wonder that numerous social science researchers have studied these changes and their impacts on society. This bibliography seeks to identify the primary thematic and topical strands that have contributed to the understanding of the work-family field.

The bibliography is organized by major themes and topics. Within each chapter, entries for articles, books, chapters, reports, and other materials are organized alphabetically and provide full citations as well as annotations. This will be a major research tool for students, academics, and professionals with interests in the contemporary family and work-family roles.

Any parent who has raised more than one child is likely to be keenly aware of subtle or even striking differences among their offspring. The central premise of this volume is that children bring personal qualities to their relationships with other family members that help shape family interaction, relationships, and even processes that family researchers have called "parenting." The chapters address how children's personal qualities make their mark on families in ways that may in turn influence children's subsequent development.
The volume is based on the presentations and discussions from a national symposium on "Children's influence on family dynamics: The neglected side of family relationships" held at the Pennsylvania State University, as the ninth in a series of annual interdisciplinary symposia focused on family issues. It is divided into four parts, each dealing with a different aspect of the topic. Part I sets the stage by focusing on the features of children that make a difference, as well as the kinds of research designs that are likely to shed light on the role of child influences. Part II focuses on early childhood, particularly the role of infant temperament and other individual differences in very young children in shaping their parents' behaviors, reactions in turn that feedback and influence the developing child. Part III focuses on adolescence, a time when young people are able to exert more choice in how they spend their time and who they spend it with. Part IV pulls the themes of the volume together and points the way for future research.

This book is an extensive and thorough exploration of the ways in which the middle class in India select their spouse. Using the prism of matchmaking, this book critically unpacks the concept of the 'modern' and traces the importance of moralities and values in the making of middle class identities, by bringing to the fore intersections and dynamics of caste, class, gender, and neoliberalism. The author discusses a range of issues: romantic relationships among youth, use of online technology and of professional services like matrimonial agencies and detective agencies, encounters of love and heartbreak, impact of experiences of pain and humiliation on spouse-selection, and the involvement of family in matchmaking. Based on this comprehensive account, she elucidates how the categories of 'love' and 'arranged' marriages fall short of explaining, in its entirety and essence, the contemporary process of spouse-selection in urban India. Though the ethnographic research has been conducted in India, this book is of relevance to social scientists studying matchmaking practices, youth cultures, modernity and the middle class in other societies, particularly in parts of Asia. While being based on thorough scholarship, the book is written in accessible language to appeal to a larger audience.

They must make mature decisions before they are out of school, take on adult responsibilities before they have left home, and care for their children before they have completed their own childhood. One of today's greatest social issues, pregnant teens walk the boundary between childhood and adulthood, no longer able to reside in one world, and unprepared for the next. While society traditionally is quick to condemn, Wendy Luttrell counters the stigmatising ways in which such girls have been traditionally held with this moving ethnography of their lives. Focusing on fifty girls enrolled in a model public school program for pregnant teens in the US, Luttrell explores how pregnant girls experience society's view of them and also considers how these girls view themselves and the choices they've made. She pays particular attention to how schools react to pregnant teens and what they are doing to help these vulnerable young women to achieve their education. Readers learn the real problems that pregnant teens are dealing with, and how society's racial and class stereotypes continue to stigmatise and scapegoat them. These individual stories are accompanied by personal self-portraits that present a carefully detailed and powerfully moving picture of the issues these girls face everyday.

Gender can be rendered invisible when the gendered nature of institutions is ignored or when the genders of participants in events or movements are not identified. The genders of non-binary and gender-diverse individuals can be erased when gender is conceived of as binary. From an intersectional perspective, genders of people of various classes, castes, races, ethnicities, ages, occupations, or other specific characteristics may be absent from data, erased from public view or rendered invisible by stereotypes or policy decisions. Gender Visibility and Erasure offers a unique way of focusing on gender by identifying the multiple contexts in which issues of visibility, invisibility, and erasure manifest. It is a consideration of who is seen and who is ignored, who has voice and who is silenced, who has agency and who is controlled. Social, cultural, and political factors associated with gender and visibility are also discussed throughout the work. International in perspective, further considerations are made around how gender visibility may change over time in varying contexts such as migration, a program for recruiting lower income girls into STEM fields, academia, government family planning policy, and domestic violence. This 33rd volume of the Advanced Gender Research series, Gender Visibility and Erasure is the ideal work for those studying and researching the in/visibility aspects regarding gender and how this currently and may continue to impact society.

This book explores the diverse ways people engage with social media to build, maintain and display personal networks. Despite the remarkable technological possibilities for global networking, most people's online connections are personal, localized or stem from previous local connections. Yet this study also shows how social media are used to generate new modes of self presentation, interaction, and etiquette. Deborah Chambers develops a theory of mediated intimacies to understand how digital communication coincides with new intimacies and meanings of 'friendship' as features of a networked society. The book combines sociological debates about intimacy, family and friendship with media studies of computer mediated communication. How social media transforms personal life is investigated through five broad themes of social media engagement: the presentation of online self; teenage friendships; home, families and new media; digital dating; virtual community and online social capital. The author explains how social media technology contributes to a dramatic reconfiguration of our ideas about intimacy and friendship.

What kinds of obligations do parents have towards their children as family life becomes more complex? Many children pass through a number of different households,living with one or both parents and later step parents and step brothers and sisters. How are the new forms of family life accommodated in the legal system? The answer is that parenthood, rather than marriage, is now emerging as the central mechanism through which moral principles are converted into legal and social obligations. This study of 250 children who do not live with both of their parents shows, however, that despite the comparative legal emptiness of marriage, the experience of living longer with both parents than is usually the case of children of cohabiting or single parents endows the child with social capital in the form of enduring involvement with the outside parent, even after divorce, and that this happens to a greater extent than for children whose parents were not married.