Produced under the auspices of the "Section on the Sociology of Children and Youth of the American Sociological Association", this volume provides a cohesive, wide-ranging source of information on the life courses of children and youths. Contributions reflect: demographic analyses and projections; dualitative aspects of children's lives; children and youth in historical and cross-cultural perspective; issues of development in social context; children and public policy; and social and psychological dynamics of childhood and adolescence.

This volume is subtitled "New Frontiers in Socialization". With a combination of invited and author initiated papers - all anonymously peer reviewed - this volume seeks to produce a cohesive source of information on socialization and the life course. It advances theory and research related to socialization during specific periods of adult life or across adulthood. We focus on the adult years because most scholarship on socialization pertains to the first two decades of life. The book addresses socialization experiences within one or more contemporary contexts - families, neighbourhoods and communities, peer and friendship groups, educational settings, work organizations, volunteer associations, medical institutions, the media, and nation and culture. It also discusses the processes that occur in these settings, the primary agents of socialization, the content of socialization messages, and the consequences of these experiences for individuals and society at large.

Children born during the post-WWII era of peace and prosperity entered history at a time dominated by I-Like-Ike politics and domestic security. As they approached adolescence, however, their world was shaken by major cultural, economic, social, and political upheaval. And although it was time of great innovation and progress, a sense of chaos and bitterness began to envelop the country. It was the a ~60s. For many Americans, a mere mention of this decade evokes an extraordinary time and place in the countrya (TM)s - and their own - history.

Adolescents who had been enjoying the technological and medical advances of the era - television, drive-in movies, rock-and-roll, vaccinations that prevented once-incurable diseases - now were also experiencing the fallout from the Civil Rights Movement, domestic terrorism, stagflation, and (perhaps most significant) the Vietnam War.

From Adolescence to Adulthood in the Vietnam Era provides a unique, detailed, long-term study of the psychological and social worlds of male adolescents who were on the cusp of adulthood as the 1960s were ending. This longitudinal analysis follows adolescent boys who graduated with the class of 1969 and transitioned into adulthood either through military service, full-time employment, or college life. The results examine the different pathways these boys chose and the affect these choices had on their transition from adolescents to young adult men.

This volume represents a new name and a new focus for its predecessor, "Current Perspectives on Aging and the Life Cycle" (volumes 1-4). We begin our new series, now titled "Advances in Life Course Research," with volume 5. Its statement of purpose is "the publication of theoretical analyses, reviews, policy analyses and positions, and theory-based empirical papers on issues involving all aspects of the human life course." It adopts a broad conception of the life course, and invites and welcomes contributions from all disciplines and fields of study interested in understanding, describing, and predicting the antecedents of and consequences for the course that human lives take from birth to death, within and across time and cultures (construed in its broadest sense), regardless of methodology, theoretical orientation, or disciplinary affiliation.

This volume is presented in four sections based on recent research in the field: the sources of identity, the tie between identity and the social structure, the non-cognitive outcomes - such as emotional - of identity processes, and the idea that individuals have multiple identities. This timely work will be of interest to social psychologists in sociology and psychology, behavioral scientists, and political scientists.

This book is an in-depth examination of self-esteem--people's positive and negative evaluation of themselves as a person. Beginning with self-esteem's conceptualization and measurement, the book carefully examines the role of self-esteem in society and within and across various domains and contexts of the human experience. Inspired by the seminal work on self-esteem carried out by American social psychologist Morris Rosenberg, the book serves as a comprehensive statement on self-esteem theory and research in the late 20th century, with an eye toward the direction it will take in the 21st century.

Self-esteem is an academic and popular phenomenon, vigorously researched and debated, sometimes imbued with magical qualities, other times vilified as the bane of the West's preoccupation with self. Though thousands of articles have been devoted to the topic, and bookshops work to feed the public's appetite for advice on revealing, enhancing and maintaining self-esteem, conflicting claims and findings have placed the field in disarray. In a very real sense, self-esteem is a victim of its own popularity. This book seeks to add clarity to a concept earlier examined by such notable self theorists as Morris Rosenberg but eminently worthy of re-examination and extension. We do this by asking some leading thinkers on self-esteem theory, measurement and application to assess what we know about self-esteem, and link it to important aspects of society and the human experience.

Children born during the post-WWII era of peace and prosperity entered history at a time dominated by I-Like-Ike politics and domestic security. As they approached adolescence, however, their world was shaken by major cultural, economic, social, and political upheaval. And although it was time of great innovation and progress, a sense of chaos and bitterness began to envelop the country. It was the '60s. For many Americans, a mere mention of this decade evokes an extraordinary time and place in the country's - and their own - history.

Adolescents who had been enjoying the technological and medical advances of the era - television, drive-in movies, rock-and-roll, vaccinations that prevented once-incurable diseases - now were also experiencing the fallout from the Civil Rights Movement, domestic terrorism, stagflation, and (perhaps most significant) the Vietnam War.

From Adolescence to Adulthood in the Vietnam Era provides a unique, detailed, long-term study of the psychological and social worlds of male adolescents who were on the cusp of adulthood as the 1960s were ending. This longitudinal analysis follows adolescent boys who graduated with the class of 1969 and transitioned into adulthood either through military service, full-time employment, or college life. The results examine the different pathways these boys chose and the affect these choices had on their transition from adolescents to young adult men.

This volume is presented in four sections based on recent research in the field: the sources of identity, the tie between identity and the social structure, the non-cognitive outcomes - such as emotional - of identity processes, and the idea that individuals have multiple identities. This timely work will be of interest to social psychologists in sociology and psychology, behavioral scientists, and political scientists.