Unlike her two older brothers, Mary chose to put off college so she could experience life outside the classroom. She worked at a Medicaid clinic in her central Illinois hometown and, at the suggestion of her boyfriend, joined the medical detachment of an infantry battalion, Illinois National Guard. She began to consider a medical career, until ... in July 2003, the President federalized her Guard unit and sent it to Iraq. There she did indeed experience life outside the classroom, includin...

What do you see after looking deeply into the eyes of 40,000 people?In his first collection of 18 memoir stories, Robert Schoen uncovers the hidden rhythms of everyday life. After 37 years as an optometrist, Schoen trades his exam chair for a storyteller's bench, weaving together a lifetime of insights from music, nature, travel, and the unexpected "cultural collisions" that define us.With a classic Jewish sensibility-blending a self-effacing sense of humor...

A worldview built on humor, music, and human encounters.During his 37-year optometric career, Robert Schoen crossed paths with 40,000 patients. But it was his Jewish sense of humor, his years as a composer and performer, and a coast-to-coast walk that make these 18 stories so resonant.In this second collection of memoirs, Schoen brings a "diagnostic" eye to the page, illuminating the threads of humanity that are always present but mostly unseen. Moving from...

This book offers an overview of the latest developments in contemporary population issues by examining the current unprecedented changes in fertility, family behavior, mortality, and migration. It explores new theoretical perspectives that seek to incorporate narratives of the future, demographic uncertainty, and determinants of unplanned pregnancy. The context of fertility is changing, and the new, important subjects of policy interventions, multi-partner fertility and complex parenthood ...

This book provides an up-to-date survey on the nature, causes, and patterns of family change. The traditional nuclear family has been replaced by a multiplicity of other forms, as widespread cohabitation, high levels of divorce and union dissolution, rising childlessness, and far below replacement fertility have emerged to an extent never before seen. Theoretical perspectives on this “Second Demographic Transition” are presented, highlighting the dramatic changes in gender roles. New metho...

This edited volume offers state-of-the-art research on the dynamics of contemporary fertility by examining the implications of the economic and social forces that are driving the rapid change in fertility behavior, and the changing context, determinants, and measurement of contemporary human reproduction. The volume explores new theoretical avenues that seek to incorporate uncertainty, examine social contagion effects, and explain the rise in childlessness. Reproductive attitudes are re-ex...

In this book new mathematical and statistical techniques that permit more sophisticated analysis are refined and applied to questions of current concern in order to understand the forces that are driving the recent dramatic changes in family patterns. The areas examined include the impact of the evolving Second Demographic Transition, where complex patterns of gender dynamics and social change are re-orienting family life. New analyses of marriage, cohabitation, union dynamics, and union d...

This volume presents state of the art analyses from scholars dealing with a range of demographic topics of current concern, including longevity, mortality and morbidity, migration, and how population composition impacts intergenerational transfer schemes. New approaches are applied to such issues as measuring changes in cohort survivorship in low mortality populations, patterns of mortality improvement at older ages, and the consequences of heterogeneity in the susceptibility to death. Stu...