Originally published in 1983, this book offers a perspective on the secondary school years from the standpoint at home. In the early 1980s as now, there was no shortage of advice to parents on how they should bring up their children, and what their relationship should be with the schools their children attended. More rarely heard was the parent’s voice of experience on the stages of family life and how the children’s school life is seen from the family point of view. The purpose of this book was to urge reconsideration of taken-for-granted assumptions about the appropriate relationship between home and secondary school. It can be read today in its historical context.

This fourth Rural Sociological Society decennial volume provides advanced policy scholarship on rural North America during the 2010's, closely reflecting upon the increasingly global nature of social, cultural, and economic forces and the impact of neoliberal ideology upon policy, politics, and power in rural areas. The chapters in this volume represent the expertise of an influential group of scholars in rural sociology and related social sciences. Its five sections address the changing structure of North American agriculture, natural resources and the environment, demographics, diversity, and quality of life in rural communities.