The Case of Zhenhua and Shuqin -- The Case of Fuchang and Liyin -- Part 4 Broader Perspectives -- 13 Family Change and Historical Change: An Uneasy Relationship -- Introduction -- Myths About the Past -- The Malleable Household -- Interdependence Among Kin -- Privacy and the Family's Retreat from the Community -- The Ideology of Domesticity and Women's Work -- Changes in the Timing of Life Transitions -- Reducing the Misfit -- 14 What Difference Does It Make? -- Reweaving the Tapestry -- Time and Motion -- Reexamining Social Change -- Proto-Industrializatiori -- Family Strategies -- The Role of Human Agency -- The Subjective Reconstruction of Past Lives -- The Life Course and the Rediscovery of Complexity -- Looking to the Future -- Cross-Cultural Dimensions -- Notes -- References -- Credits -- Index

An intriguing study on families and their changing roles, Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Families, Work, and Change provides fresh viewpoints on factors that have an impact on family life and relationships. This thematic volume, with chapters from scholars in Italy, Australia, Israel, Jordan, West Germany, Yugoslavia, Norway, and Finland, is truly international and covers a variety of substantive concerns. Among these is the concern for new familial models which will meld both the individual and the whole into a viable family entity capable of providing for the wishes, needs, and aspirations of the whole and individual members of a family. Discussing various concepts relating to family structure in lieu of the recent shift toward gender equity and the greater acceptance of varied forms of families and lifestyles, this book carefully links the most supportive and nurturing components of modern society with tried and true components of traditional cultures and systems. The chapters take a conceptual approach, focusing on applications and future needs, policies, and problems surrounding the family. Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Families, Work, and Change represents the increasing shift of mothers to professionals with chapters on increasing female employment and its effect on family life. The much-needed search for explanations of family and society change and for new family models is a common thread throughout the book. In reading this insightful work, family and marriage counselors, students and academicians in family studies, researchers, social workers, and psychologists will see new ways of perceiving families in their critical roles over generations of time.

Examines the changing face of family life, in the United States and from culture to culture. This book offers a global viewpoint about family issues and help readers to think critically about family life in cultures beyond their own. It is intended for courses on marriage and the family in disciplines such as Family Studies and Sociology.

First Published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Exposes graduate students, faculty, and social workers to a variety of cultural values and perspectives so that they can effectively counsel couples and families of all different kinds. Readers will learn how to use clients' religious history, family values, rituals, and community in attaining positive treatment outcomes. Advocates placing value on diversity in families, supporting ethnic differences, and recognizing the strength and resiliency of modern day families. Also offers insight on the treatment of interracial couples, domestic violence from various perspectives, Native American family circle, and the realities of racism in the worker-client relationship. Paper edition (unseen), $19.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

One of the prevailing myths about the American family is that there once existed a harmonious family with three generations living together, and that this "ideal" family broke down under the impact of urbanization and industrialization. The essays in Families, History, and Social Change challenge this myth and provide dramatic revisions of simplist