The few available books that deal specifically with men's issues tend to lack a central theoretical focus, are highly psychoanalytic in content, or simply do not provide specific guidelines for working with men. This unique and timely volume fills an important gap in the literature by demonstrating why change is often so difficult for them. It provides detailed guidelines for helping men initiate and sustain change in their personal, familial, and professional lives. The authors' approach is an integration of several theoretical schools including family systems, humanistic, experiential, and psychoeducational models. Using a psychosocial lens, they take men as individuals into account while examining the different roles males occupy as parents, husbands, workers, and friends. Separate chapters illustrate how each of these roles challenges men to confront many of the traditional and stereotypical messages that they have internalized from boyhood. The wide range of resulting problems--including depression, relationship conflicts, workaholism, and parenting difficulties--are discussed in relation to specific strategies which clinicians can employ to ameliorate them. Throughout, the authors use clinical vignettes and case examples to illustrate the ways practitioners can engage men and help them discover rewards of emotional vulnerability.

Clinicians, social service providers, and professionals in associated fields often face issues related to diverse family structures--particularly the one-parent family. Unfortunately, current family-centered literature does not devote a great deal of space to intervention and assessment of these families who now comprise a quarter of all families. In Single-Parent Families, special treatment methods for single-parent families based on such factors as gender of the head of household, ethnicity, age, and sexual orientation are discussed. The authors devote special attention to interventions with mother-headed households--nearly 90 percent of single-parent families are managed by women today--and emphasize the importance of social policies and services that help single parents meet the challenging dual roles of caregiving and wage earning. Clearly written and gender sensitive, Single-Parent Families provides concrete, practical suggestions on how to better empower single parents to obtain the resources they need to attain their aspirations and gain control over their environment. Both professionals and students of social services, counseling, psychology, family studies, and gender studies will find this volume informative, helpful, and above all, useful. ""The book is an excellent addition to literature on family-centered practice. It is written in a clear and concise manner, with helpful topical headings. . . . Highly recommended for students and practitioners in social work, counseling, and other related disciplines." --Choice "Kissman and Allen have created a brief book rich with insight into the complexities of single-parent family life. . . . This book is written by and primarily for practitioners working in a therapeutic setting with single-parent families. However, the perspective presented by this book could well be important and appreciated by family life educators, researchers, and other non-clinical professionals interested in single-parent families." --Family Relations