This book explores the prevailing role of rites of passage, ritual, and ceremony in contemporary children's lives through the lens of modern-day incarnations of uniformed youth movements. It focuses on the socialising ritual and customary practices of present-day grass-roots Scout and Guide groups, asking how Britain's largest and best-known uniformed youth organisations employ ritualised activities to express their values to their young members through language and gesture, story and song, dress, and physical artifacts. The author shows that these practices exist against a backdrop of culturally-constructed beliefs about what constitutes the 'good child' and 'good childhood' in twenty-first century Britain, with in-movement practices intended to help children develop positively and prepare for social life. The book draws on case study accounts of group performances, incorporating the voices of children and adults reflecting on their practices and experiences.

This book discusses many aspects of fetuses and motherhood from fields as wide as sociology and medicine. It examines changing perceptions of the fetus over recent decades, comparing western ideas with those of non-western countries; examining maternal mental health during COVID-19 and charting the ascent of the 'fetus' to a cult phenomenon, which has currently reappeared in the courts. This work, given its multifaceted approach, will be of interest to a varied and wide range of people, from parents to doctors and nurses, to anthropologists and ethnologists, to scientists, to students of various disciplines, to psychologists and psychoanalysts, to lawyers dealing with the topic and to a general public simply interested in these fundamental themes.

The widening gap between the rich and the poor is turning the American dream into an impossibility for many, particularly children and families. And as the children of low-income families grow to adulthood, they have less access to opportunities and resources than their higher-income peers--and increasing odds of repeating the experiences of their parents. Families in an Era of Increasing Inequality probes the complex relations between social inequality and child development and examines possibilities for disrupting these ongoing patterns. Experts across the social sciences track trends in marriage, divorce, employment, and family structure across socioeconomic strata in the U.S. and other developed countries. These family data give readers a deeper understanding of how social class shapes children's paths to adulthood and how those paths continue to diverge over time and into future generations. In addition, contributors critique current policies and programs that have been created to reduce disparities and offer suggestions for more effective alternatives. Among the topics covered: Inequality begins at home: the role of parenting in the diverging destinies of rich and poor children. Inequality begins outside the home: putting parental educational investments into context. How class and family structure impact the transition to adulthood. Dealing with the consequences of changes in family composition. Dynamic models of poverty-related adversity and child outcomes. The diverging destinies of children and what it means for children's lives. As new initiatives are sought to improve the lives of families and children in the short and long term, Families in an Era of Increasing Inequality is a key resource for researchers and practitioners in family studies, social work, health, education, sociology, demography, and psychology.

This open access book brings together current childhood research and contemporary ethical theory to draw attention to how children depend upon a scope of action for risky play for their mental and physical development. In many countries, the opportunities for children to play away from adults' close attention have decreased. At both school and home, protection and avoidance of harm take increasing priority. This book draws a distinction between do-good ethics and avoid-harm ethics to highlight ethical tensions and dilemmas encountered by professionals who work with children, and suggests better ways to balance these ethical dimensions in approaching risky play.

This book examines how pathologising ideas of failing, chaotic and dysfunctional families create a powerful consensus that Britain is in the grip of a `parent crisis' and are used to justify increasingly punitive state policies.

This volume provides a unique perspective on elderly working-class West Indian migrants in the UK, particularly examining how they negotiate their sense of belonging. Utilizing the life span gaze and including elements of oral history and narrative, this ethnography provides rich insight into the ordinary lives, migratory circumstances, social networks, and interactions with the state as residents in a sheltered housing scheme in Brixton, London. The author further compiles a variety of genealogy charts, providing a uniquely vivid scholarly analysis of the Caribbean migrant experience both in a "place" and through space and time. Ultimately, this work contemplates how communities face change whilst at once developing a local symbolic cultural site, navigating adaptation to new economic and social environments.

Drawing on research from the Timescapes Study, this volume discusses the life chances and experiences of children and young people, parents and older generations. A unique qualitative longitudinal study forms the basis for the chapter contributions, delivering policy-relevant findings to address individual and family lives over time.

This volume provides a close look at the ways in which LGBTQ2 people form familial bonds. It brings together stories from non-binary families across continents and cultures and recenters care as a foundational value for creating familial ties. This volume therefore addresses a gap in the literature concerning non-binary family configurations by going beyond the legal battle for non-binary partnership rights. In recent discussions on marriage equality, the notion of familial bonds, which was important in early discussions on non-binary family research, has been decentered in favor of legal and homonormative understandings of individual rights. This volume centers familial bonds as the first step toward reimagining how to do research on the family and adds to research on family studies as well as gender studies. Students and researchers of sociology, anthropology, social work, gender studies, family research, well-being research, and anyone else working on or with non-binary families will find this book highly topical and interesting.

This interdisciplinary volume examines the relationship between community resilience and family resilience, identifying contributing factors on the micro-, meso-, and macro-level. Scholars and practitioners focus on how community-level policies and programs facilitate the distribution of resources, assets, and opportunities that provide valuable assistance to families who are struggling or in crisis due to economic hardship, mental illness, and the effects of natural and human made disasters. Additionally, representatives of local government and community agencies on the "front lines" of developing policies and programs to assist families provide valuable context for understanding the ways communities provide environments that encourage and nurture family resilience. Among the topics covered: How cities promote resilience from a public health perspective Family resilience following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill Resilience in women from trauma and addiction Trauma-sensitive schooling for elementary-age students Developing family resilience through community based missions Resilience and the Community will be of interest to policy-makers, researchers, and practitioners seeking to facilitate the development of evidence-based resilience practices, programs, and/or policies for those working with families at risk.

This book advocates the application of holistic and humanistic approaches in elderly care and services to achieve the goal of ageing with dignity in Hong Kong and Asia. It responds to the needs of an increasing ageing population that has to deal with related health needs in long-term care, community health and social services, particularly for chronic conditions and psychosocial support. The book consists of three sections on policy and development of aged care, holistic and humanistic care for older adults, and capacity building for ageing with dignity, respectively. Topics include the latest initiatives in aged care, appropriate services and delivery models, lifestyle modification, psychosocial and environmental considerations, professional development, technologies, and social capital. The chapters review and discuss these issues within a global context, illustrated by examples from Asian countries, underpinned by locally based empirical research. Contributors include academics and practitioners from diversified professional backgrounds that include medicine, nursing, pharmacy, traditional Chinese medicine, dietetics, and allied health. The book traverses into territories in the social sciences, life sciences, and sports sciences, while also touching on areas of business and administration, hospitality, law, public policy, and information technology in connection with public health. The contents serve as a topical reference for tertiary studies in ageing and related disciplines such as well-being and are also useful to policymakers, community and public health practitioners, health executives and interns working in areas of policy and practice pertinent to care development, health delivery models, planning, quality, ethics, better health promotion, professional training, and monitoring for older adults.

Among the elementary human stories, parenthood has tended to go without saying. Compared to the spectacular attachments of romantic love, it is only the predictable sequel. Compared to the passions of childhood, it is just a background. But in recent decades, far-reaching changes in typical family forms and in procreative possibilities (through reproductive technologies) have brought out new questions. Why do people want (or not want) to be parents? How has the 'choice' first enabled by contraception changed the meaning of parenthood? Looking not only at new parental parts but at older parental stories, in novels and other works, this fascinating book offers fresh angles and arguments for thinking about parenthood today.

A New Birth of Marriage provides a history of the changes to marriage throughout the American experience and a theoretical argument for the goodness of the traditional American family in fostering private happiness and the public good. A New Birth of Marriage argues that the American Founders placed marriage as the cornerstone of republican liberty. The Founders' vision of marriage relied on a liberalized form of marital unity that honored human equality, rights, and the beauty of intimate marital love. This vision of marriage remained largely healthy in the culture until the Progressive Era and persisted in law until the 1960s. A New Birth of Marriage vindicates the Founders' understanding of marriage and argues that a prudential return toward this understanding is vital to America's political health and Americans' private happiness. Brandon Dabling argues that Founders at the state and national level shaped marriage law to reflect five vital components of marital unity: the equality and complementarity of the sexes, consent and permanence in marriage, exclusivity in marriage, marital love, and a union oriented toward procreation and childrearing. Devoting a chapter to each of these principles, A New Birth of Marriage gives a thorough account of how each tenet has been challenged and stands now vindicated in American political thought. The book provides a philosophical and political case for the beauty and vitality of each of these components to the nature of marriage and will appeal to students and scholars of marriage, family, the American founding, democracy, and liberalism.

This book presents an original contribution to the study of care and care work by addressing pressing issues in the field from a Latin American and intersectional perspective. The expansion of professional care and its impacts on public policies related to care are global phenomena, but so far the international literature on the subject has focused mainly on the Global North. This volume aims to enrich this literature by presenting results of research projects conducted in five Latin American countries - Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Uruguay -, and comparing them with researches conducted in other countries, such as France, Japan and the USA. Latin America is a social space where professional care has expanded dramatically over the past twenty years. However, unlike Japan, USA and European countries, such expansion took place in a context of heterogeneous and poorly structured markets, in societies which stand out for its reliance on domestic workers to provide care work in the household as paid workers, in both formal and informal arrangements. CareandCareWorkers: A Latin American Perspective will be a useful tool for sociologists, anthropologists, social workers, gerontologists and other social scientists dedicated to the study of the growing demand for care services worldwide, as well as to decision makers dealing with public policies related to care services. "Society cannot function without the unpaid (and poorly and informally paid) work of caregivers. Having the data - and this book presents this data - allows public policy to be based on the realities rather than on the prejudices, habits, or structural injustices of a previous time about gender roles, class, ethnicity, race, migrant status. (...) This volume not only presents the data, then, but also shows how some countries have begun to innovate to provide solutions to the problem that some people are overburdened by care while others do little of it. (...) Scholars and activists in Latin American countries lead the way in showing both how resistance remains and how to innovate. So the rest of the world has much to learn from this volume." - Excerpt from the Foreword by Professor Joan C. Tronto

This book provides the reader with a comprehensive introduction to the distinguishing features of Chinese families. This first full scale study seeks to understand Chinese families within the Chinese social context and draws comparisons with existing western theories and models of the family. It also explores the connection between two Chinese societies across the Taiwan Strait and investigates if the unique features of Chinese families can be applied to broaden the scope of family analysis in general. This book covers ten core areas, including co-residence, marriage, fertility, education, mobility, gender preferences, family supports, filial feedbacks, housework allocation, and the dynamics of family norm changes.
The book uses theory-based empirical studies with data collected from a unique panel survey conducted in various areas across the Taiwan Strait, namely Taiwan and Southeast China. The two focal points of the study are geographically close, ethnically homogeneous, and are open to the modern market economy. A comprehensive analysis of these two areas provides new insights into the similarities and differences of Chinese families, to what extent they are distinct from Western ones, and how these similarities and differences were formed. The uniquely complex nature of intra-family interactions in Chinese families and the rapidly changing social background against which these interactions occur make this a hugely fascinating topic.

How can we prevent intimate partner violence (IPV)? And how do we define and measure "success" in preventing it? This book brings together researchers and practitioners from a wide range of fields to examine innovative strategies and programs for preventing IPV. The authors discuss evaluations of current prevention efforts, paying particular attention to underserved groups, including racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants and refugees.

This two-volume, edited collection lays the groundwork for an international exploration of incarceration and generation, covering a range of geographic, judicial and administrative contexts of incarceration from contributors across a range of subjects. Volume II examines intergenerational relations issues within contexts of incarceration. It focuses on the intergenerational continuities in imprisonment; intergenerational justice and citizenship; the impacts of incarceration on multiple generations and within families; and media representations of the intergenerationality of incarceration. Volume I explores an array of experiences, dynamics, cultures, interventions, and impacts of incarceration in different generations. This collection speaks to academics in criminology, sociology, psychology, and law, and to practitioners and policymakers interested in incarceration.

Over the past four decades, the American family has undergone a radical transformation. Skyrocketing rates of divorce, single parenthood, and couples with children out of wedlock have all worked to undermine an idealized family model that took root in the 1950s and has served as a beacon for traditionalists ever since. But what are the causes of this change? Conservatives blame it on moral decline and women's liberation. Progressives often attribute it to women's greater freedom and changing sexual mores, but they typically paint these trends in a positive light. In Family Classes, Naomi Cahn and June Carbone contend that these views miss the forest for the trees. Armed with authoritative evidence, they show that the changing structure of our economy is the root cause of the transformation, and that working class and poorer families have paid the highest price. Increasing inequality and instability in the labor market over the past three decades has had a disproportionately negative impact on family stability and marriage rates among working-class and lower-income Americans. In particular, the decline of stable blue collar jobs for men has upended the labor market in the lower deciles of the income chart. Conversely, educated middle class Americans now have the highest rates of both marriage and marital stability despite the fact that they are relatively unlikely to espouse 'traditional values.' In fact, their family stability rate appears to be increasing. That is important because the children of stable two-parent families really do have a leg up in life. They draw from truly fascinating sociological data to drive home their point that economic factors weigh heaviest. For instance, when eligible (i.e., desirable and marriageable) men outnumber eligible women, the marriage and marital stability rates are significantly higher than when the reverse situation occurs - the exact situation we have in America today. Among the educated middle classes, eligible men outnumber eligible women in the area that truly matters-high incomes-and people in that strata therefore have far more stable family lives than working class and poorer Americans. In these latter sectors, men have lost economic ground vis-a-vis women, and family lives have become increasingly unstable in the last two decades. Interestingly, religion and moral values are insignificant factors in generating this difference in comparison to class. To make families stronger, then, we need to increase the level of economic stability in the bottom half of the population. The authors close with a series of policy proposals to address the family-related problems that flow from economic instability. A rigorous and enlightening account of why American families have changed so much since the 1960s, Family Classes cuts through the ideological and moralistic rhetoric that drives our current debate.

This book examines the implications of exploring spirituality through the lens of human relationships. It addresses systemic supervision and training and explores a systemic approach to the development of the self. The book provides an educational methodology that lays a foundation in describing an operational model of spirituality that is applicable for both theistic and nontheistic perspectives. In addition, it details how spirituality is itself a diversity as well as explores spirituality through a lens of diversity. In addition, a pilot research project on spirituality set in a MFT Live Supervision Group illustrates how to apply a systemic approach to spirituality. Finally, the book offers examples of practice using spirituality in various training settings. Key areas of coverage include: * How a systemic approach to spirituality enables the lens of relationship and diversity to enrich supervising and teaching family therapy emerging from the self of therapist concerns. * Theoretical perspectives that connect systemic practice with spirituality in an approach for family therapy. * How a systemic spiritual approach can be used in training marriage and family therapists. * Interventions that focus on how a relational systemic approach views transcendence and immanence from both clinical and spiritual perspectives. * Concepts that inform supervision and training with the goals of educating students to be spiritually literate and spiritually sensitive. * Barriers to implementing this approach with examples of how to address such obstacles. Spirituality in Systemic Family Therapy Supervision and Training is a must-have resource for researchers, professors, graduate students as well as clinicians, supervisors, and professionals in clinical psychology, family studies / family therapy, and public health as well as all interrelated disciplines.

Refiguring childhood stages a series of encounters with biosocial power, which is a specific zone of intensity within the more encompassing arena of biopower and biopolitics. Assembled at the intersection of thought and practice, biosocial power attempts to bring envisioned futures into the present, taking hold of life in the form of childhood, thereby bridging being and becoming while also shaping the power relations that encapsulate the social and cultural world(s) of adults and children. Taking up a critical perspective that is attentive to the contingency of childhoods - the ways in which particular childhoods are constituted and configured - this book offers a transversal genealogy that moves between past and present while also crossing a series of discourses and practices framed by children's rights (the right to play), citizenship, health, disadvantage, and entrepreneurship education. The overarching analysis converges on contemporary neo-liberal enterprise culture, which is approached as a conjuncture that helps to explain, and also to trouble, the growing emphasis on the agency and rights of children. It is against the backdrop of this problematic that the book makes its case for refiguring childhood, focusing on the how, where and when of biosocial power. -- .

The one emotion that matters most to many people is the one about which social thinkers rarely speak - love. For many people, love is the thing that matters most in their lives: they are searching for love, hoping to find in love a kind of happiness that they cannot find in their work or by surrounding themselves with material goods. But where does this peculiar and powerful blending together of love and happiness come from, and why do we find it such a compelling idea today? In this short book Jean-Claude Kaufmann offers a fresh account of the history of a feeling unlike any other. The modern idea of love as passion was born in the 12th century but it was marginalized by the rise of a kind of instrumental, calculating reason that became increasingly central to modern societies. As calculating reason began to encroach on the personal domain, many individuals sought to escape from it, searching for happiness elsewhere. As our societies become dominated by calculating reason and selfish individualism, we search elsewhere for the kind of happy love that will heal all our wounds. This is why we experience so many changes of heart in our personal lives: at times we are coldly calculating and then, a few moments later, we sacrifice ourselves to love without a second thought. Written by one of France's leading sociologists, this highly readable book sheds new light on love and happiness and will resonate with many readers.

Responding to demographic changes among physicians and six years of new experiences since the first edition, Dr. Myers has revamped his well received work. He includes new information on older physicians, gay and lesbian physicians, medical student abuse, economic strain on interns, depression, malpractice, ethical violations, and other stressors which may cause marital difficulties. Therapists seeking to council symptomatic physicians, as well physicians themselves, will find this a humane, readable, and useful book.

This book examines family interactions and relationships during the transition to parenthood. It offers a unique integration of different lines of research on prenatal family dynamics contributed by leading family researchers in North America and Europe who use observational approaches to study emergent family processes. The book explores prenatal dynamics in diverse families, including adolescent couples, same-sex couples, couples experiencing infertility, and couples expecting their second child. The introduction, anchored in family systems and structural theories, provides an overview of challenges couples commonly experience during the transition to parenthood and details prenatal family processes that predict postpartum adjustment in families. This sets the stage for subsequent chapters by emphasizing unparalleled windows into prenatal family dynamics provided by direct observation. Initial chapters focus on predictors of prenatal interactions and partners' representations of parenthood. Subsequent chapters describe original research on prebirth couple interactions and the coparenting relationship emerging during pregnancy. The volume includes several studies that rely on innovative research designs using observations of simulated couple encounters with their newborn, represented by a life-sized infant doll. The book concludes with a review of recent prenatal intervention programs designed to improve interpersonal and coparenting relationships of married and unmarried couples. The volume offers recommendations for future research on prenatal family dynamics, including suggestions for methodological advances, exploration of prenatal risk factors, expansion of conceptual models to incorporate culturally-meaningful coparents besides mothers and fathers, and further focus on prenatal intervention programs. This book is an essential resource for researchers, clinicians and professionals, and graduate students in the fields of infant mental health/early child development, family studies, pediatrics, developmental psychology, public health, social work, and early childhood education.

This book examines military families' well-being and health outcomes by providing a critical theoretical perspective on their position and the risks and challenges affecting them. Authors explore the tension between demands made by two greedy institutions-the military and the family-and how the well-being of families is negotiated between the two. Uniquely, the book employs an integrative approach to observing and analyzing military-specific risk and protective factors for health outcomes of military families on various social-ecological levels, including relationship satisfaction and dissatisfaction, intimate partnership violence, parent-child relationships, child well-being, psychoactive substance abuse, depression, and PTSD. Throughout the chapters, the authors analyze research findings that reveal new health outcomes and present an empirically-tested model of military-specific risk and protective factors.

Veteran clinicians offer a unique framework for understanding the psychological origins of behaviors typical of Alzheimer's and other dementias, and for providing appropriate care for patients as they decline. Guidelines are rooted in the theory of retrogenesis in dementia--that those with the condition regress in stages toward infancy--as well as knowledge of associated brain damage. The objective is to meet patients where they are developmentally to best be able to address the tasks of their daily lives, from eating and toileting to preventing falls and wandering. This accessible information gives readers a platform for creating strategies that are respectful, sensitive, and tailored to individual needs, thus avoiding problems that result when care is ineffective or counterproductive. Featured in the coverage: Abilities and disabilities during the different stages of Alzheimer's disease. Strategies for keeping the patient's finances safe. Pain in those with dementia, and why it is frequently ignored. "Help! I've lost my mother and can't find her!" Sexuality and intimacy in persons with dementia. Instructive vignettes of successful caring interventions. Given the projected numbers of individuals expected to develop dementing conditions, Care Giving for Alzheimer's Disease will find immediate interest among clinical psychologists, health psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and primary care physicians.

This book examines the experiences of migrant peasant workers in China who care for parents diagnosed with cancer and explores to what extent contextual changes after the economic reform initiated in 1978 affected practices and experiences of caring. In his own attempt to develop a localized methodology, the author considers identifying similarities between Chinese philosophies and Foucault's theories as the key step for localizing Foucauldian discourse analysis. Three similarities are located and articulated with regard to filial care. Firstly, the complexity of discursive relations identified by Foucault resembles the complicated Chinese notion of the relationality of the self. Secondly, both sides have a tendency to look back to ancient times for solutions and to critique the notion of 'progress' in modernity. For Foucault, the way to attain freedom or agency is through technologies of the self, such as speaking truth (parrhesia). Lastly, both value action and practice in their theories. The book then analyzes, through this localized methodological approach, statements made by migrant peasant workers to take readers through their discursive mechanisms to construct filial piety in relation to their subjective care experiences.