This book is concerned with the question of how families matter in young people's development - a question of obvious interest and importance to a wide... range of readers, which has serious policy implication. A series of key current topics concerning families are examined by the top international scholars in the field, including the key risks affecting children, individual differences in their resilience, links between families and peers, the connections between parental work and children's family lives, the impact of childcare, divorce, and parental separation, grandparents, and new family forms such as lesbian and surrogate mother families. The latest research findings are brought together with discussion of policy issues raised.

This book explores the link between family life and antisocial behavior. In recent years, researchers from a variety of disciplines have investigated... the relationship between society's most fundamental social institution--the family--and various forms of criminal behavior. Simons et al. fill a fundamental void in the literature by demonstrating how these seemingly disparate lines of research can be woven together using classic and contemporary theories of delinquency and crime. The book is designed to serve as a supplement for courses on juvenile delinquency, criminology, deviance, and child development.Families, Delinquency, and Crime evaluates and explores popular explanations using the results of studies by sociologists, criminologists, and psychologists. Each chapter succinctly defines terminology, establishes a review of empirical literature, and provides an effective argument that families are a dynamic aspect of our social lives that are intricately related to delinquency and other problem behaviors. Clear examples of each situation are provided.Part I explains child and adolescent antisocial behavior. The chapters review theory and research regarding the effect of family structure, marital conflict, parental antisocial behavior, and parents' childrearing practices on a child's risk for conduct problems and delinquency. Part II focuses on adult antisocial behavior and shows how the various family socialization processes and childhood behavior problems discussed in Part I influence the probability of later adult crime. Explanations are provided for both the continuity and discontinuity of antisocial behavior across the life course. Consideration is given to the manner in which romantic partners often modify deviant life course trajectories. The book also explores the link between family experiences during childhood and adult risk for either perpetrating or becoming the victim of marital violence.

A down-to-earth and highly practical guide, this is the first book to explain and illustrate the relationship between family systems, illness, and loss.... This updated paperback edition includes theoretical information along with specific suggestions for developing the important skills needed to manage psychosocial symptoms in the patient and family, both during illness and after death. The author explains how to understand the dynamics of the family as an interactive, intradepAndent system. He also explains how to help families define and facilitate the tasks they must take to adjust to illness and loss.

When a family member is diagnosed with cancer or faces challenges from living with a disability, the impact reverberates throughout the family, leaving... no one untouched. How should a clinician help the parents of a child who is critically ill? How can a marital relationship be skewed and a child’s well-being compromised when a parent becomes permanently disabled—and how can a clinician best intervene in such cases? In presenting his clinically powerful Family Systems Illness Model, John Rolland addresses these and other vital questions of importance to families in which there is a member with a major illness or disability.Rolland’s integrative treatment model is based on his experience with more than five hundred families, first as Founding Director of the Center for Illness in Families while at Yale University and currently at the University of Chicago. He applies it to a broad range of disorders that affect adults and children over the entire course of the life cycle. Richly illustrated with varied case examples, Families, Illness, and Disability is unique in describing this comprehensive model and in providing a highly practical guide to effective intervention.Through a normative, preventive lens, the book’s useful framework shows how the biopsychosocial demands of different illness and disabilities create particular strains on the family, how the stages of an illness affect the family, how family legacies of loss and illness shape their coping responses, and how family belief systems play a crucial role in the ability to manage health and illness. Practitioners will learn how to help families live well despite physical limitations and the uncertainties of threatened loss, how to encourage empowering rather than shame-based illness narratives, how to rewrite rigid caregiving scripts, how to encourage intimacy and maximize autonomy for all family members. With its superb integration of individual and family modalities, this outstanding book is ideal for all health and mental health professionals and students who work with illness, disability, and loss in a wide variety of clinical settings.

Four respected scholars of the Hebrew Bible and early Judaism provide a clear portrait of the family in ancient Israel. Important theological and... ethical implications are made for the family today.The Family, Culture, and Religion series offers informed and responsible analyses of the state of the American family from a religious perspective and provides practical assistance for the family's revitalization.

Marilyn Ihinger-Tallman and Teresa M. Cooney's Families in Context introduces foundational ideas and concepts about families and applies them to issues... and events relevant to today's college student population. This comprehensive but concise paperback--written in clear, student-friendly language--fills the following needs not being met by existing texts:* The text is structured consistently, featuring an overarching framework that combines family systems theory and ecological systems theory. This approach bridges both micro- and macro-perspectives on families.* Each chapter places families squarely within their respective environments--their neighborhood, community, and national context--and provides conceptual linkages between the different aspects of family life.* Diversity is integrated into each chapter. * The text's emphasis on social context allows the exploration of families in at least three ways: (1) how individuals live out their intimate experiences within families and communities; (2) the impact of family groups on their neighborhoods and communities, and vice versa; and (3) the ways in which the larger social contexts influence families within different class levels and racial groups.* The book's brevity and reasonable price allow ample time for instructors to easily supplement their courses with additional materials.Each chapter opens with a "Did You Know?" box, detailing ideas related to chapter content and preparing students for the chapter's topics. Similarly, a box entitled "Things to Think About" offers questions, definitions, or comments intended to provoke students' critical thinking.The text provides a "hands-on" approach by featuring critical-thinking activities at the end of each chapter, enabling students to apply learned concepts and principles. Finally, additional readings and a glossary of relevant theoretical concepts are provided.A comprehensive electronic Instructor's Manual/Testing Program accompanies the text--as well as a dedicated Website. In addition, an Interactive Student Study Guide is available.

This updated edition brings the study of the family into the era of Barack Obama. A hallmark of Families in Context remains the well-researched,... data-driven nature of the text. Beyond thoroughly updated statistics, a new chapter explores the family and public issues under the administration of George W. Bush and now under the leadership of Obama. Another new essay explores questions of bias in the study of the family, in public debates, and in textbooks. These new chapters are ideal for spurring classroom discussion or student papers. The underlying discussion remains as balanced as the second edition, allowing students to draw their own conclusions about controversial topics.

This textbook and professional reference offers early interventionists across multiple disciplines clear information on the development of young... children as well as risk factors and environmental circumstances that can hinder a child's development.

The Second Edition of Families in Global and Multicultural Perspective travels across geographic, cultural, and historical boundaries to explore the... diversity of the world’s families-in family structure, processes, history, and social and environmental contexts. Editors Bron B. Ingoldsby and Suzanna D. Smith examine a full range of topics including family origin and universality, family functions, marital structure, kinship rules, comparative research methods, family development, marriage adjustment, parenting, divorce, and aging. This comprehensive text increases students’ recognition of and respect for cultural diversity as it influences family life.

This edited reader, with contributions from experts on families in various countries, documents and explains family life and practices throughout the... world, including preindustrial, developing, fully industrialized, and postmodern information societies. Each article is organized around a set of similar themes and concerns: socio-historical and demographic information about the families being studied, religious and cultural beliefs tied to family practices, husband-wife/parent roles and responsibilities, parent-child socialization, and policy initiatives within that society. The opening chapters provide a theoretical overview and a basis for examining family changes and organization patterns from evolutionary and postmodern perspectives.

Fumie Kumagai, a Japanese family sociologist with keen insight into regional variations and a comparative perspective, analyzes the dynamics and... variations in Japanese families throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The theoretical frameworks utilized are the dual structural perspective and the community network in the Information Age Society. This book provides insightful sociological analyses of Japanese families, paying attention not only to national average data, but also to regional variations and community level analyses. It is a paradigm shift from former studies of Japanese families, which relied on national average data only. The focus is on sociocultural variations and the diversity of families in Japan. Topics include marriage, divorce, fertility rates, the elderly, labor force participation, population decline, trends among youth, and the changing roles of women.

The ideal core text for courseS on Families in Later Life, this is the only book on the subject that addresses the diversity of aging experiences in... society by race, gender, and social class, and in a form which combines insight from the humanities as well as the social sciences.

At last, an honest guide to family therapy in the trenches!This is a moving and inspiring book, chock-full of the best insights of systems thinking... applied with a sustained and passionate commitment to working with families in child welfare agencies.

Poverty is a social problem, and finding solutions requires us to look closely at our society, laws and social institutions. Families in Poverty brings... together the best and most recent quantitative and qualitative data to examine poverty among U.S. families, the problems poor families face, and discusses how solutions to poverty do exist. Some major topics found in the text include: Trends in poverty in the United States; Discussion on how poverty is measured and defined; Critiques on several explanations of poverty; Consequences of poverty on children and adults; Labor market issues such as unemployment, minimum wage, employer-sponsored fringe benefits; Programs in the United States designed to eliminate or red.

To help families manage an intense medical-related event, Power and Dell Orto propose that a family-oriented life and living perspective should be... combined with a family intervention philosophy. Stressing acknowledgment of the adverse effects of the illness and an affirmation approach to family struggle and opportunities, the authors explore issues relevant to treatment, family adaptation, quality of life, and family survival. A unique feature of the text includes the organization of the chapters around thought-provoking personal statements followed by questions/experiential tasks designed to stimulate thought and discussion. This book is must reading for health and allied health professionals including physicians, nurses, rehabilitation counselors, social workers, psychologists, and family advocates and will serve as a useful textbook for professionals-in-training.