Developmental and clinical researchers have only just discovered the phenomenon of adolescent romance as a topic of serious scientific inquiry. This discovery may be related to the overwhelming evidence that adult romantic relationships are failing at alarming rates. Dramatic increases in the rates of divorce, out of wedlock childbirth, and relationship violence lead to questions about the developmental precursors of romantic love and commitment. What's wrong with love and can it be fixed? This book brings together a diverse group of experts from various disciplines to address a serious gap in the understanding of adolescent development. Part I focuses on romantic relations and sexual behavior from the perspective of normative adolescent development. Part II centers on high-risk adolescents and Part III explores the practical implications of current theory and research for clinicians, educators, and health administrators. Together the chapters in this integrative and clinically useful book lay a foundation for understanding how adolescents successfully navigate the tumultuous waters of young love.

Developmental and clinical researchers have only just discovered the phenomenon of adolescent romance as a topic of serious scientific inquiry. This discovery may be related to the overwhelming evidence that adult romantic relationships are failing at alarming rates. Dramatic increases in the rates of divorce, out of wedlock childbirth, and relationship violence lead to questions about the developmental precursors of romantic love and commitment. What's wrong with love and can it be fixed?
This book brings together a diverse group of experts from various disciplines to address a serious gap in the understanding of adolescent development. Part I focuses on romantic relations and sexual behavior from the perspective of normative adolescent development. Part II centers on high-risk adolescents and Part III explores the practical implications of current theory and research for clinicians, educators, and health administrators. Together the chapters in this integrative and clinically useful book lay a foundation for understanding how adolescents successfully navigate the tumultuous waters of young love.

The rate of young unwed couples and teens having children is increasing, and many of these couples choose to "co-parent" children, rather than to marry and remain in a relationship. Young parents are at risk for engaging in dysfunctional parenting practices and intimate partner violence, and face additional challenges on top of their own developmental struggles. Social workers and other mental health services providers can play a role in this process by supporting the interpersonal development of young couples who are at-risk for intimate partner violence, child abuse/neglect, and paternal disengagement. Unfortunately, many professionals lack formalized training in this area and there are few programs available to give the necessary support. The Young Parenthood Program (YPP) was designed and launched in order to meet this need. YPP is a brief program (12-14 sessions), initiated prior to childbirth when both parents are more willing and able to participate in co-parent counseling. The program is intended to teach the young couple a basic set of interpersonal communication and problem solving skills to provide a foundation for a co-parenting model for raising their child. Clinical trials have indicated that couples who participated in YPP demonstrated better relationship skills, lower rates of intimate partner violence (IPV), less paternal disengagement, and more positive parenting behavior among young fathers. The importance and challenges of working with young fathers who are reluctant to engage and participate is emphasized throughout this proposed guide. The guide is designed to help social workers and practitioners by offering a solution-oriented approach to the challenges of co-parenting among adolescents and young adults. This practitioner's guide would expand the training materials that Florscheim and his colleagues have developed. In addition to the manual itself, the authors are developing a CEU module, to be hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, to try to reach into practitioner markets and encourage the use of the program.

Over the past six decades, there have been dramatic changes in the dynamics of family life in the United States. Today, about seven out of 10 babies born to mothers under the age of 25 will not live with their fathers. From the perspective of many social scientists and politicians, this change has wreaked havoc on society, trapping women and children in poverty and loosening the civilizing bond between men and their families. Gallons of ink have been spilled making arguments that place the blame for this shift at the feet of either these individuals themselves, or point to eroding family and cultural values or systemic failures in social support programs. This book, however, is different: the goal of Lost and Found is not to look for blame, but instead to tell the stories of young men becoming fathers, to help readers understand the complexity of young couples who are struggling to work together as parents, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. Drawing from their research with over 1,000 young parents in Chicago and Salt Lake City, Paul Florsheim and David Moore focus on a group of about 20 young fathers whose stories-conveyed in their own words-help the reader make sense of what is happening to fatherhood in America. Having interviewed young fathers and their partners before and after their children were born, these stories provide a dynamic perspective on the development of young men and their relationships. Young mothers both corroborate and sometimes offer alternative or contradictory perspectives. Oriented to undo stereotypes, Florsheim and Moore introduce the notion of "good enough" fathering, tempering the tendency to think simply in terms of good or bad fathers. Throughout, the authors draw from a wide body of scholarship, from evolutionary biology to the economics of women's rights, to explain how young fathers came to occupy such a precarious position in contemporary society. In the final chapters, Florsheim and Moore provide concrete recommendations for strengthening fathers' roles, offering detailed descriptions of what can be done to help young fathers and mothers create stable home environments for their children, whether the parents are together or not.