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How do young adults decide to become parents or to remain childless? Is this an individual choice, a couple’s decision or are there other social influences involved, such as social networks? Using a mixed-methods design, Sylvia Keim combines problem-centred interviews and network data collected among young adults in western Germany. The author shows that personal relations strongly influence the perceptions, attitudes, and plans individuals express concerning parenthood. She identifies basic mechanisms and channels of social influence as well as relevant network structures. This book is valuable reading for academics, students, and policy makers interested in family research, the network perspective, and mixed-methods research.

Containing 15,000 headwords, each entry in this dictionary provides the German equivalents, variants and contexts, as well as the degree of currency/rarity of the idiomatic expression.

Unlike many writers from the former GDR, Christoph Hein's reputation and standing - and his creativity - have remained intact despite the demise of the GDR in 1989-90. Christoph Hein in Perspectivebrings together essays by both established and younger scholars from Britain, Germany and the USA which together cover a wide spectrum of his work, from the early writings of the 1970s to the play In Acht und Bannof 1999 and including his speeches and essays as well as all his major prose works. There is a marked emphasis in the volume on Hein's post-Wendeoutput, with about half the contributions focusing primarily on this period. Another feature is the diversity of perspectives from which the works are examined: historical and political viewpoints are complemented by formal and comparative studies as well as by gender-based perspectives. The volume includes additionally the first published English translation of what is for many Hein's most successful work for the stage, Die wahre Geschichte des Ah Qof 1983 ('The True Story of Ah Q'). The volume as a whole should be of interest to scholars concerned with the GDR and with contemporary German culture, to undergraduate and postgraduate students, and also the others interested in the history and culture of Germany since 1945. Six of the essays are in English and six in German.