These companion volumes provide a "behind the scenes" look into the personal experiences of researchers in an effort to eliminate the lack of communication surrounding family research methodology. They show how the researchers achieved their results and why they chose particular methodologies over others. These volumes present more than just findings -- they present the real experiences of the authors in their own styles and personalities, exposing the problems, mistakes, and concerns they experienced during their research projects. Volume I presents the experiences of researchers into typical normative populations. Volume II describes work with clinical, atypical populations.

Family Studies is a key area of policy, professional and personal debate. Perhaps precisely because of this, teaching texts have struggled with how to approach this area, which is both 'familiar' and also contentious and value laden. This innovative and reflective book deals with such dilemmas head-on, through its focus on family meanings in diverse contexts in order to enhance our understanding of everyday social lives and professional practices. Drawing on extracts and research by leading authors in the field of family studies, Understanding Family Meanings provides the reader with an overview of the basic concepts and theories related to families using readings with questions and analysis to encourage reflection and learning. Published in association with The Open University, the book centralises the question what is 'family' and focuses on family meanings as the key underpinnings for academic study and professional training. It explores the shifting and subtle ways in which individuals, researchers, policy-makers and professionals make sense of the idea of 'family' and in doing so considers issues of power, inequality and values which are integral to any understanding of family meanings. Audio discussions with leading authorities in the field are also available online to enhance the content and key concepts of the book. It therefore provides an excellent foundation for any module in family studies, as well as all professional training modules that include attention to families and close relationships, and for further learning in the area of families and relationships.

This cutting-edge edited collection examines the impact of political and social change upon the modern German family. By analysing different family structures, gender roles, social class aspects and children's socialization, The Family in Modern Germany provides a comprehensive and well-balanced overview of how different political systems have shaped modern conceptualizations of the family, from the bourgeois family ideal right up to recent trends like cohabitation and same-sex couples. Beginning with an overview of the 19th-century family, each chapter goes on to examine changes in family type, size and structure across the different decades of the 20th century, with a focus on the relationship between the family and the state, as well as the impact of family policies and laws on the German family. Lisa Pine and her expert team of contributors draw on a wealth of primary sources, including legal documents, diaries, letters and interviews, and the most up-to-date secondary literature to shed new light on the continuities and changes in the history of the family in modern and contemporary Germany. This book is a fantastic resource for scholars, postgraduates and advanced undergraduates studying modern German history, sociology and social policy.

This book analyzes children's agency as interactional achievement in formal and informal contexts of education and illuminates how agency can be encouraged and supported in these educational contexts. Taking a sociological approach, the author deals with children as social agents rather than learners and considers structures of interaction which encourage and support agency, rather than teaching. The book draws from field research conducted over more than twenty years in a variety of Italian and international contexts. This book is unique in providing a theoretical reflection on the social structures that can support children's agency, as well as a large amount of examples which show how these structures and agency work.

With the field of personal relationships having grown dramatically in the past quarter century, The Cambridge Handbook of Personal Relationships, Second Edition serves as a benchmark of the current state of scholarship, synthesizing the extant theoretical and empirical literature, tracing its historical roots, and making recommendations for future directions. Written by internationally known experts from key disciplines, the Handbook addresses both fundamental questions and cutting-edge concerns. This second edition has been thoroughly updated to reflect recent developments in analytical techniques, shifts in theoretical emphases, and an increased attention to social processes. New chapters include the Neuroscience of Salutary Close Relationships; Self-Disclosure in Relationships; Acceptance, Rejection, and the Quest for Relational Value; Relationships and Physical Health; Personal Relationships and Technology in the Digital Age; and Promoting Healthy Relationships. This compendium of state-of-the-art research and theory on personal relationships will be of great value to researchers, graduate students, and practitioners.

This edited collection uses the concept of 'displaying families' as a new way to understand contemporary family and personal life, addressing how, in a world of fluid relationships, family life must not only be 'done' but also be 'seen to be done'.

African American Families: Research, Theory, and Practice illuminates the historical and contemporary experiences of African American families in the United States and demonstrates how they have survived and excelled in a nation not established for them. Section I describes the African American family, including unique features, family structure, diversity, where they live, historical and contemporary influences on their lived experiences, and theoretical and methodological approaches to studying African American families. In Section II, readers learn about processes, adjustments, and well-being within African American families. Coverage includes parents' influences on children's physical, mental, and academic well-being, as well as religion and spirituality. The final section highlights diversity among African American families with chapters on African American fathers, grandparents raising grandchildren, and families with children in the child welfare system. Each chapter features learning objectives, discussion questions, and a section titled "Did You Know?" which draws attention to unique, forgotten, or thought-provoking facts about African American families. African American Families is an ideal textbook for courses in African American studies, cultural and ethnic studies, sociology, psychology, social work, and education, and for practitioners, researchers, and others interested in the African American family.

Disturbing the Nest assesses the future of the family as an institution through an historical and comparative analysis of the nature, causes, and social implications of family change in advanced western societies such as the United States, New Zealand, and Switzerland by focusing on the one society in which family decline is found to be the greatest, Sweden.

The founding of the modern Swedish welfare state was based in large part on the belief that it was necessary for the state to intervene in society in order to improve the situation of the family. Of great concern was the low birthrate, which was seen as a threat to the very survival of Swedes as a national population group. The Social Democrats pioneered welfare measures that aimed to strengthen the family, to alleviate its worst trials and tribulations, and to make possible harmonious living. With the Social Democrats remaining in power continuously until 1976, a period of almost forty-five years, Sweden went on to implement governmental "family policies" that are among the most comprehensive (and expensive) in the world.

In view of this major policy goal of family improvement, the actual situation of the Swedish family today presents a genuine irony; some have claimed that Swedish welfare state policies have had consequences that are the opposite of those originally intended. Comparing contemporary Swedish family patterns with those of other advanced nations, one finds a very high family dissolution rate, probably the highest in the Western world, and a high percentage of single-parent, female headed families. Even marriage seems to have fallen increasingly out of favor, with Sweden having the lowest marriage rate and latest age of first marriage, and the highest rate of children born out-of-wedlock. The early pronatalist aspirations of the Swedish government have been spectacularly unsuccessful, as Sweden continues to have one of the world's lowest birthrates and smallest average family sizes.

First published in 1987. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Motherhood and Mothering in Anglo-Saxon England sifts through the historical evidence to describe and analyze a world of violence and intrigue, where mothers needed to devise their own systems to protect, nurture, and teach their children. Mary Dockray-Miller casts a maternal eye on Bede, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and Beowulf to reveal mothers who created rituals, genealogies, and institutions for their children and themselves. Little-known historical figures--queens, abbesses, and other noblewomen--used their power in court and convent to provide education, medical care, and safety for their children, showing us that mothers of a thousand years ago and mothers of today had many of the same goals and aspirations.

This is a collection of previously unpublished essays exploring the meanings of marriage in South Asian Hindu culture: its practices, assumption, sensibilities and discontents. The authors use new understandings of gender to study local practices, attitudes, folk narratives, ritual symbols, and religious sensibilities as they bear on religion, gender, and social life in the Hindu world.

During the twentieth century arrangements governing love, work, and their routinization in households and employment underwent a transformation. During this period women gained employment opportunities. This reduced sex differentiation, but did not equalize the roles or power of men and women. The goal of this book is to describe the trends and patterns that remain constant amidst the change, and to provide an integrated framework for understanding them. The authors focus on a three-tier level of integration that is not available in other studies of this kind. First, they combine the topics of households and employment, showing similarities and causal links between household and employment arrangements. Second, a conceptual framework is provided that gives attention to both individuals' choices and to the structural constraints that limit available options. Finally, an integration of economic and sociological views of employment, demographic behavior, and other household behavior is examined. By using both individual and structural views, Paula England and George Farkas provide an overview of this coupling. This work is unique in that it draws from both economics and sociology and from demographers in both disciplines. "Households, Employment, and Gender" is an analytic synthesis for scholars and an invaluable sourcebook for classes on gender, labor, the family, social demography, economics, and economic sociology.

The central focus of this work is that partners entrance one another into enmeshed bonding through the euphoric idealization of perfect love. This idealization is found to serve as a hypnotic allure which, by its sheer luster, blinds partners to its perilous powers of manifest magnetism. The stages of hypnotic entrancement are delineated, starting with fantasy fixation of perfect love and its eventual demise.

Partners entrance one another into enmeshed bonding through the euphoric idealization of perfect love. This idealization is found to serve as a hypnotic allure which, by its sheer luster, blinds partners to its perilous powers of manifest magnetism. The stages of hypnotic entrancement are delineated, starting with fantasy fixation of perfect love and its eventual demise. The essential premise describes the addictive enmeshment as the result of consciously irresistible hypnotic pulls from entrancement, which involves a coming together or fusion of idealized images superimposed upon physical attributes of one's partner. Partners merge their ideal images of love and beauty with the size, shape, contour, etc. of their mates, creating the entrancing, whirlwind addiction.

Numerous case examples are utilized in demonstrating a four-stage parallel between addictive bonds and hypnosis. Reawakening is described as coming of (en)trance(ment). Genuine awakening is the emergence of innate, artistic motifs inherent in partners, which can bring empowerment and recovery. This book is recommended for both academic and professional readers.

First published in 1986. This study seeks to answer some of the psychosocial questions around adolescent fathers that has heightened interest by the increasing concern that has surfaced around the financial burdens imposed on society in the need to support single mothers and their infants. This research looks at the fathers of infants born to adolescent mothers as they seen as an essential component of an important and expensive social problem.

First published in 1986. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This edited volume discusses and analyses the impact of neoliberal policies and ideologies on public and private care practices in Nordic, Central, and East European welfare states. Through new conceptualizations of care practices, chapters take the reader directly into the homes, workplaces, and everyday life of urban and rural residents throughout Europe. The book argues that common neoliberal responses to care crises are not about revaluing care but rather a normalization of precarious work as expressed in moving care from public institutions to families within private homes. Featuring contributions from eight countries, chapters contribute to research on gender, care, migration, and welfare policies by discussing how recent developments in global capitalism and neoliberal policies influence welfare policies and care arrangements in post-egalitarian and post-socialist societies in Europe.

This book focuses on the literacy beliefs and practices of parents and children from Asian and Latinx heritage backgrounds. In the US, children from Asian and Latinx immigrant backgrounds represent the largest population of dual language learners in schools. While existing research has paid significant attention to the roles of parenting and the home literacy environment on children's literacy development, relatively little attention has been allocated to immigrant families. Chapters aim to meet the need in the field to understand the roles of culture and immigrant experiences on children's literacy learning and development, including immigrant families' home environments and parents' involvement in literacy-related activities in both English and the parents' native language. As Hispanic/Latinx and Asian American populations grow in the US, this book answers an urgent call for school systems and child and family professionals to be aware of issues in this area and how to address them in culturally responsive ways.

First published in 1985. The dual-career family is emerging as the modal family form in the United States. Yet, despite its prevalence, traditional orientations and social institutions have not adapted to this pattern. This volume reports the results of a pioneering investigation of men in dual-career families and considers interventions at the societal and individual level that will ease the difficulties associated with the transition to this new family form.

Whether members of the family are headed to school or work, smartphones accompany family members throughout the day. The growing sophistication of mobile communication has unleashed a proliferation of apps, channels, and platforms that link parents to their children and the key institutions in their lives. While parents may feel empowered by their ability to provide their children assistance with a click on their smartphone, they may also feel pressured and overwhelmed by this need to always be on call for their children. This book focuses on the phenomenon of transcendent parenting, where parents actively use technology to go beyond traditional, physical practices of parenting. In drawing on the experiences of intensely digitally-connected families in Singapore to tell a global story, Sun Sun Lim argues how transcendent parenting can embody and convey, intentionally or not, the parenting priorities in these households. Chapters outline how parents exploit mobile connectivity to transcend the physical distance between themselves and their children, the online and offline social interaction environments, and the timelessness of seemingly ceaseless parenting. Transcendent Parenting further explores how mobile communication allows parents to be more involved than ever in their children's lives, leaving readers to question whether or not parents have become too involved as a result. With its clear discussions of the effects of transcendent parenting on parents' wellbeing and children's personal development, Transcendent Parenting will appeal to a broad audience of readers, from scholars, educators and policy makers to parents and young people across the globe.

Before the advent of printing, the preaching of the friars was the mass medium of the middle ages. This edition of marriage sermons reveals what a number of famous preachers actually taught about marriage. David D'Avray teases out the close connection between marriage symbolism and social, cultural, and legal realities in the thirteenth century; and assesses the impact of this preaching.

First published in 1984. In the last two decades, countries throughout the Western world have witnessed dramatic changes in social attitudes concerning sex roles. The aim of this book is to review the evidence concerning: a) the factors that limit or constrain male involvement in child care; b) the ways in which some of these factors are being or might be changed; and c) the effects of traditional and increased paternal involvement on men, women, and children.

"Rooted in historical, site-based, narrative, and political accounts, Full Surrogacy Now is the seriously radical cry for full gestational justice that I long for. This kind of gestation depends on realizing the implications of knowing that we all actually, materially, make one another, and that this labor continues to be exploited, extracted, and alienated-unequally-at every turn in Capitalism and Patriarchy. Full of brilliant, generative, and also shamelessly biting critique of both bourgeois and communist tracts, feminist and otherwise, Lewis's voice is unique and bracing. I need it; it fills my whole self with reimagined possibilities for making oddkin who are not property. Lewis set out to write an immoderate, utopian, partisan, anti-authoritarian communist defense of surrogates and surrogacy in ramifying registers of meanings and practices, and she has succeeded. Lewis asks the necessary questions, 'Can we parent politically, hopefully, nonreproductively-in a comradely way?' Can we become full surrogates for and with each other? In a book full of fierce demystifications and sharp dissections of injustice masquerading as humanitarianism, nonetheless Lewis convincingly and radically affirms: 'Everywhere about me, I can see beautiful militants hell-bent on regeneration, not self-replication.'" - Donna Haraway