Single parents face countless hardships, but they can be boiled down to a triple bind: inadequate resources, insufficient employment, and limited support policies. This book brings together research from a range of disciplines from more than forty countries--with particularly detailed case studies from the United Kingdom, Iceland, Sweden, and Scotland. It addresses numerous issues related to the struggles of single parents, including poverty, employment, health, children's development and education, and more.

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. Single parents face a triple bind of inadequate resources, employment, and policies, which in combination further complicate their lives. This book - multi-disciplinary and comparative in design - shows evidence from over 40 countries, along with detailed case studies of Sweden, Iceland, Scotland, and the UK. It covers aspects of well-being that include poverty, good quality jobs, the middle class, wealth, health, children’s development and performance in school, and reflects on social justice. Leading international scholars challenge our current understanding of what works and draw policy lessons on how to improve the well-being of single parents and their children.

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. Single parents face a triple bind of inadequate resources, employment, and policies, which in combination further complicate their lives. This book - multi-disciplinary and comparative in design - shows evidence from over 40 countries, along with detailed case studies of Sweden, Iceland, Scotland, and the UK. It covers aspects of well-being that include poverty, good quality jobs, the middle class, wealth, health, children’s development and performance in school, and reflects on social justice. Leading international scholars challenge our current understanding of what works and draw policy lessons on how to improve the well-being of single parents and their children.

With a synthesis of research on issues key to understanding family interaction, as well as an analysis of many theoretical and methodological choices made by researchers studying family communication, the Handbook serves to advance the field by reframing old questions and stimulating new ones. The contents are comprised of chapters covering: theoretical and methodological issues influencing current conceptions of family; research and theory centering around the family life course communication occurring in a variety of family forms individual family members and their relationships dynamic communication processes taking place in families family communication embedded in social, cultural, and physical contexts. Key changes to the second edition include: updates throughout, providing a thorough and up-to-date overview of research and theory new topics reflecting the growth of the discipline, including chapters on "singles" as family members, emerging adults, and physiology and physical health. Highlighting the work of scholars across disciplines--communication, social psychology, clinical psychology, sociology, family studies, and others--this volume captures the breadth and depth of research on family communication and family relationships. The well-known contributors approach family interaction from a variety of theoretical perspectives and focus on topics ranging from the influence of structural characteristics on family relationships to the importance of specific communication processes.

"This engaging collection gathers theoretical and empirical insights from leading family policy experts. The authors - representing diverse countries, disciplines, and methods - bring to life the volume's innovative conceptual framework, which is organized around policy institutions, both public and private. The volume closes with a call for new lines of research that should inform family policy scholars for years to come."--Janet Gornick, Professor of Political Science and Sociology, and Director of the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA "Featuring exciting contributors from a range of often-siloed scholarly disciplines, countries and cultures, this Handbook offers nuanced insights into how interacting societal inequality factors influence family policy enactment to reinforce or improve inequality outcomes across gender, class, and nations. It is ambitious, broad-reaching, and succeeds in providing a strategic view within and across nations to inspire thoughtful evidence-based policy implications to improve societies in the future."--Ellen Ernst Kossek, Basil S. Turner Professor of Management, Purdue University, USA This open access handbook provides a multilevel view on family policies, combining insights on family policy outcomes at different levels of policymaking: supra-national organizations, national states, sub-national or regional levels, and finally smaller organizations and employers. At each of these levels, a multidisciplinary group of expert scholars assess policies and their implementation, such as child income support, childcare services, parental leave, and leave to provide care to frail and elderly family members. The chapters evaluate their impact in improving children's development and equal opportunities, promoting gender equality, regulating fertility, productivity and economic inequality, and take an intersectional perspective related to gender, class, and family diversity. The editors conclude by presenting a new research agenda based on five major challenges pertaining to the levels of policy implementation (in particular globalization and decentralization), austerity and marketization, inequality, changing family relations, and welfare states adapting to women's empowered roles

The Triple Bind that girls face today: • Act sweet and nice • Be a star athlete and get straight A's • Seem sexy and hot even if you're not In many ways, today is the best time in history to be a girl: Opportunities for a girl's success are as unlimited as her dreams. Yet societal expectations, cultural trends, and conflicting messages are creating what psychologist and researcher Stephen Hinshaw calls "the Triple Bind." Girls are now expected to excel at "girl skills," achieve "boy goals," and be models of female perfection, 100 percent of the time. Here, Dr. Hinshaw reveals key aspects of the Triple Bind, including • genes, hormones, and the role of biology in confronting the Triple Bind • overscheduled lives and how the high pressure to excel at everything sets girls up for crisis • how traditionally feminine qualities (such as empathy and self-awareness) can put girls at risk for anxiety, depression, and other disorders • the oversexualization of little girls, preteens, and teenagers • the reasons girls are channeling pressure into violence Combining moving personal stories with extensive research, Dr. Hinshaw provides tools for parents who want to empower their daughters to deal in healthy ways with today's pressures.

This open access book provides an overview of the ever-growing phenomenon of children in shared physical custody thereby providing legal, psychological, family sociological and demographical insights. It describes how, despite the long evolution of broken families, only the last decade has seen a radical shift in custody arrangements for children in divorced families and the gender revolution in parenting which is taking place. The chapters have a national or cross-national perspective and address topics like prevalence and types of shared physical custody, legal frames regulating custody arrangements, stability and changes in arrangements across the life course of children, socio‐economic, psychological, social well-being of various family members involved in different custody arrangements. With the book being an interdisciplinary collaboration, it is interesting read for social scientists in demography, sociology, psychology, law and policy makers with an interest family studies and custody arrangements.