Beyond the Average Divorce provides marriage and family scholars and students a rich depiction of how children and adults of all ages respond to diverse divorce experiences. Rather than emphasizing means and averages in looking at "typical" family reactions to divorce, authors David H. Demo and Mark A. Fine emphasize variability and change over time in the pre-divorce, divorce, and post-divorce process. The book′s three parts explore theoretical and methodological tools fo...

A polemic against love that is “engagingly acerbic ... extremely funny.... A deft indictment of the marital ideal, as well as a celebration of the dissent that constitutes adultery, delivered in pointed daggers of prose” (The New Yorker).Who would dream of being against love? No one. Love is, as everyone knows, a mysterious and all-controlling force, with vast power over our thoughts and life decisions.But is there something a bit worrisome about a...

Does your family make you smarter? James R. Flynn presents an exciting new method for estimating the effects of family on a range of cognitive abilities. Rather than using twin and adoption studies, he analyses IQ tables that have been hidden in manuals over the last 65 years, and shows that family environment can confer a significant advantage or disadvantage to your level of intelligence. Wading into the nature vs. nurture debate, Flynn banishes the pessimistic notion that by the age of ...

Described by some as a “necropolis for babies,” the province of Quebec in the early twentieth century recorded infant mortality rates, particularly among French-speaking Catholics, that were among the highest in the Western world. This “bleeding of the nation” gave birth to a vast movement for child welfare that paved the way for a medicalization of childbearing.In Babies for the Nation, basing her analysis on extensive documentary research and more than fifty interviews w...

Research skills are as critical to social work practitioners as skills in individual and group counselling, policy analysis, and community development. Adopting strategies similar to those used in direct practice courses, this book integrates research with social work practice, and in so doing promotes an understanding and appreciation of the research process.This second edition of Practising Social Work Research comprises twenty-three case studies that illustrate differen...

Bestselling author William Bennett addresses the central social issue of our time—the deline of the family—in a book as intellectually provocative and politically controversial as his landmark The Death of Outrage.Our recent economic prosperity has masked the devastation of the American family, which is now under seige as never before. From the dramatic rise in illegitimacy, divorce, and single parenthood to the call for the recognition of gay marriages, the traditional nu...

Making Families Through Adoption provides a comprehensive look at adoption practices both in the United States and in other cultures, and a general understanding of the practices and ideology of kinship and family. The subject of adoption allows a window into discussions of what constitutes family or kin, the role of biological connectedness, oversight of parenting practices by the state, and the role of race, gender, sexuality, and socio-economic class in the building of ...

An in-depth study of lesbian, bi, and queer women's experiences of thinking about and trying to become a parent, Beyond Expectation draws on eighty-two narrative interviews conducted during the late 1990s in British Columbia. Jacquelyne Luce chronicles these women's experiences, which took place from 1980 to 2000, during a period that saw significant changes to the governance of assisted reproduction and the status of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender parents and same-sex pa...

This book considers the largely under-recognised contribution that young writers have made to life writing genres such as memoir, letter writing and diaries, as well as their innovative use of independent and social media. The authors argue that these contributions have been historically silenced, subsumed within other literary genres, culturally marginalised or co-opted for political ends. Furthermore, the book considers how life narrative is an important means for youth agency and cultur...

Most unmarried women who engage in sexual intercourse do not become unwed mothers; they use contraceptives, secure an abortion, or get married before the baby is born. What happens to the minority of women who bear illegitimate children? This book is the first study to describe in detail the actual situation of unwed motherhood, as opposed to the causes and pathology of deviance. Based largely on observation of middle-class white girls in a psychiatricallyoriented mater nity home and lower...

This book explores contemporary families as sites of consumption, examining the changing contexts of family life, where new forms of family are altering how family life is practised and produced, and addressing key social issues – childhood obesity, alchohol and drug addiction, social networking, viral marketing – that put pressure on families as the social, economic and regulatory environments of consumption change.

First published in 1969, this book presents a one-volume anthology of Charles Booth’s Life and Labour of the People in London, the classic early study of the poor in the urban environment. The original text consists of a vast compendium of descriptions of families, homes, streets, conditions of work, cultural and religious practices, much of it illustrated with charts, maps and statistics — giving the public an idea of the dimensions and meaning of poverty. The editors have select...