This important work examines in detail and depth how, as a consequence of changing technologies, diet, patterns of reproduction, and work, relations between children and parents have altered.

The editors and contributors hold that biosocial science is particularly relevant to research on human family systems and parenting behavior. The family is the universal social institution in which the care of children is based and the turf where cultural tradition, beliefs, and values are transmitted to the young as they fulfill their biological potential for growth, development and reproduction. The biosocial perspective takes into account the biological substratum and the social environment as critical co-determinants of behavior and pinpoints areas in which contemporary human parental behavior exhibits continuities with and departures from, patterns evident throughout history.

This work crosses disciplinary lines without ignoring their relevance to the broader themes of the book. School age pregnancy and parenthood is a powerful anchor for the dissection of large scale issues. The contributors deal in turn with ethnic and historical experience, examine normative and ethical issues, and cast new light on methodological concerns. What the editors call culturally-defined responses to basic needs helps explain both dramatic improvements in this area, and how they expand the challenge of teen reproduction. Contributors emphasize new demands for training and education to research this growing phenomenon. The book contributes to humane concerns as well as the scientific imagination.

"Jane B. Lancaster" is professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico. She serves as editor of a major journal in the field, "Human Nature: An Interdisciplinary Biosocial Perspective." She also edited two related volumes: "Child Abuse and Neglect" (1987), "Parenting across Life Span" (1987).

"Beatrix A. Hamburg" is at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, in the field of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. She is recipient of the Gallagher Award for Outstanding Achievement in Adolescent Medicine, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Mental Health Administration, and edits "Behavioral and Psychosocial Issues in Diabetes."

The aim of the book is to enhance understanding of the great danger and some sources of animosity between human groups and to focus on developmental processes by which it should be possible to diminish orientations of ethnocentrism, prejudice and hatred. Teaching prejudice and ethnocentrism to children has, all too often in so many places, been virtually automatic and has been conducive to terrible harm in the past. The dangers of hateful outlooks are likely to be much greater as the twenty-first century unfolds. Scholarship and practice in international relations, including war and peace issues, have gravely neglected the crucial psychological aspects of these terrible problems and the educational opportunities. There is a fruitful conjunction of developmental and social psychology in understanding such vital issues and in working toward a more humane, democratic and safe course of adolescent and child development than can in turn affect the safety of humanity in the long run. There are many intriguing examples of research, educational innovations, and visionary leadership in several countries. Most of the book is devoted to promising lines of inquiry and innovation that foster a more humane and less violent development in childhood and adolescence. It should be of interest to scholars, to the education community, and to a well-educated and socially concerned segment of the community.

Experts from a range of disciplines use a variety of perspectives, notably those of public health, criminology, ecology, and developmental psychology, to review the latest research on the causes of youth violence. The authors examine the nation's schools and communities and school-based interventions that have prevented or reduced violence. They describe and evaluate strategies for the prevention and treatment of violence that go beyond punishment and incarceration. Violence in American Schools offers a new strategy for the problem of youth violence, arguing that the most effective interventions use a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary approach. This approach takes into account differences in stages of individual development and involvement in overlapping social contexts, families, peer groups, schools, and neighborhoods. This book will be relevant and enlightening to school teachers and administrators, scholars, policy makers, and those who work with young people at risk, as well as by the general reader who is concerned with current social problems.

Experts from a range of disciplines use a variety of perspectives, notably those of public health, criminology, ecology, and developmental psychology, to review the latest research on the causes of youth violence. The authors examine the nation's schools and communities and school-based interventions that have prevented or reduced violence. They describe and evaluate strategies for the prevention and treatment of violence that go beyond punishment and incarceration. Violence in American Schools offers a new strategy for the problem of youth violence, arguing that the most effective interventions use a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary approach. This approach takes into account differences in stages of individual development and involvement in overlapping social contexts, families, peer groups, schools, and neighborhoods. This book will be relevant and enlightening to school teachers and administrators, scholars, policy makers, and those who work with young people at risk, as well as by the general reader who is concerned with current social problems.