Family Problems: Stress, Risk, and Resilience presents an interdisciplinary collection of original essays that push the boundaries of family science to reflect the increasingly diverse complexity of family concerns in the modern world. Represents the most up-to-date family problem research while addressing such contemporary issues as parental incarceration, same sex marriage, health care disparities, and welfare reform Features brief chapter introductions that provide context and direction to guide the student to the heart of what’s important in the piece that follows Includes critical thinking questions to enhance the utility of the book for classroom use Responds to family problem issues through the lens of a social justice perspective

This volume tackles key issues in the changing nature of family life from a global perspective, and is essential reading for those studying and working with families. Covers changes in couple relationships and the challenges these pose; parenting practices and their implications for child development; key contemporary global issues, such as migration, poverty, and the internet, and their impact on the family; and the role of the state in supporting family relationships Includes a stellar cast of international contributors such as Paul Amato and John Coleman, and contributions from leading experts based in North Africa, Japan, Australia and New Zealand Discusses topics such as cohabitation, divorce, single-parent households, same-sex partnerships, fertility, and domestic violence Links research and practice and provides policy recommendations at the end of each chapter

When Tammy Wynette sang "D-I-V-O-R-C-E," she famously said she "spelled out the hurtin' words" to spare her child the pain of family breakup. In this innovative work, Ted Ownby considers how a wide range of writers, thinkers, activists, and others defined family problems in the twentieth-century American South. Ownby shows that it was common for both African Americans and whites to discuss family life in terms of crisis, but they reached very different conclusions about causes and solutions. In the civil rights period, many embraced an ideal of Christian brotherhood as a way of transcending divisions. Opponents of civil rights denounced "brotherhoodism" as a movement that undercut parental and religious authority. Others, especially in the African American community, rejected the idea of family crisis altogether, working to redefine family adaptability as a source of strength. Rather than attempting to define the experience of an archetypal "southern family," Ownby looks broadly at contexts such as political and religious debates about divorce and family values, southern rock music, autobiographies, and more to reveal how people in the South used the concept of the family as a proxy for imagining a better future or happier past.

The latest work from respected family policy expert Shirley Zimmerman. Family Policy offers the only single-authored reference book to provide a comprehensive and coherent introduction to the topic. The author clearly and cogently guides students through the foundations, policy frameworks, and implications of policy decisions for family well-being, ending with a carefully considered set of conclusions and implications for policy practice.

The area of work and family is a hot topic in the social sciences and appeals to scholars in a wide range of disciplines. There are few edited volumes in this area, however, and this may be the only one that focuses on low-income families--a particularly important group in this era of welfare-to-work policy. Interdisciplinary in nature, the volume brings together contributors from the fields of psychology, social work, sociology, demography, economics, human development and family studies, and public policy. It presents important work-family topics from the point of view of low-income families at a time in history when welfare to work programs have become standard. Divided into four parts, each section addresses a different aspect of the topic, consisting of a big picture lead essay which is followed by three papers that critique, extend, and supplement the final paper. Many of the chapters address important social policy issues, giving the volume an applied focus which will make it of interest to many groups. Serving to organize the volume, these issues and others have been encapsulated into four sets of anchor questions: *How has the availability, content, and stability of the jobs available for the working poor changed in recent decades? How do work circumstances for low-income families vary as a function of gender, family structure, race, ethnicity, and geography? What implications do these changes have for the widening inequality between the haves and have-nots? *What features of work timing matter for families? What do we know about the impacts of shift work, long hours, seasonal work, and temporary work on employees, their family relationships, and their children's development? *How are the child care needs of low-income families being met? What challenges do these families face with regard to child care, and how can child-care services be strengthened to support parents and to enhance child development? *How are the challenges of managing work and family experienced by low-income men and women? The primary audience for the book is academicians and their students, policy specialists, and people charged with developing and evaluating family-focused programs. The volume will be appropriate for classroom use in upper-level undergraduate courses and graduate courses in the fields of family sociology, demography, human development and family studies, women's studies, labor studies, and social work.

This book provides insightful sociological analyses of Japanese demography and families, paying attention not only to national average data, but also to regional variations and community level analyses. In analyzing Japanese family issues such as demographic changes, courtship and marriage, international marriage, divorce, late-life divorce, and the elderly living alone, this book emphasizes the significance of two theoretical frameworks: the dual structure and regional variations of the community network in Japan. By emphasizing the extensive cultural diversity from one region to another, this book represents a paradigm shift from former studies of Japanese families, which relied mostly on national average data. The method of analysis adopted in the study is qualitative, with a historical perspective. The book is thus an invitation to more in-depth, qualitative dialogue in the field of family sociology in Japan. This book will be of great interest not only to Asian scholars, but also to other specialists in comparative family studies around the world.

Overcoming Parent-Child Contact Problems describes interventions for families experiencing a high conflict divorce impasse where a child is resisting contact with a parent.