In chapters that each include a brief essay and an analysis section with data and student questions, Egelman (Iowa College) examines changes in the family over the past 30 years that he has been teaching sociology of family classes. Lacks an index. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

First published in 1986. Over the past decade and a half the rising divorce rate, coupled with other changes in family life, has led some observers to conclude that the traditional nuclear family today is analogous to a species of dinosaur facing an inevitable Ice Age and, with it, extinction. During this recent period of social upheaval, in which the American family has undergone considerable change, there has been an exciting upswing in research on the family and the introduction of novel perspectives for seeking to understand this most important societal institution. This volume brings together the writings of a set of researchers who represent one of these emerging approaches.

Understanding what 'family' means - and how best to support families - depends on challenging politicised assumptions that frame 'ordinary' families in comparison to an imagined problematic 'other'. Learning from the perspectives of people who were in care in childhood, this innovative book helps redefine the concept of family. Linking two longitudinal studies involving young adults in England, it reveals important new insights into the diverse and dynamic complexity of family lives, identities and practices in time - through childhood and beyond. Paving the way for future policy and practice, this book makes an important contribution to the theorisation of family in the 21st century.

If questions of subjectivity and identification are at stake in all biographical writing, they are particularly trenchant for contemporary women biographers of women. Often, their efforts to exhume buried lives in hope of finding spiritual foremothers awaken maternal phantoms that must be embraced or confronted. Do women writing in fact have any greater access to their own mothers' lives than to the lives of other women whose stories have been swept away like dust in the debris of the past? In Thinking through the Mothers, Janet Beizer surveys modern women's biographies and contemplates alternatives to an approach based in lineage and the form of thought that emphasizes the line, the path, hierarchy, unity, resemblance, reflection, and the aesthetic-mimesis-that depends on these ideas. Through close readings of memoirs and fictions about mothers, Beizer explores how biographers of the women who came before rehearse and rewrite relationships to their own mothers biographically as they seek to appropriate the past in a hybrid genre she calls "bio-autography." Thinking through the Mothers features the work of George Sand and Colette and spans such varied figures as Gustave Flaubert, Julian Barnes, Louise Colet, Eunice Lipton, Vladimir Nabokov, Huguette Bouchardeau, and Christa Wolf. Beizer seeks an alternative to women's "salvation biography" or "resurrection biography" that might resist nostalgia, be attentive to silence, and reinvent the means to represent the lives of precursors without appropriating traditional models of genealogy.

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 'Chart a child's path with less stress and more optimization for healthy habits and future success' Time From age 5 to 12, parenting decisions get more complicated and have lasting consequences. What's the right kind of school? Should they play a sport? When's the right time for a phone? Making these decisions is less about finding the specific answer and more about taking the right approach. Along with these bigger questions, Oster investigates how to navigate the complexity of day-to-day family logistics. The Family Firm is a smart and winning guide to how to think more clearly - and with less ambient stress - about the key decisions of these early years.

An innovative, comprehensive guide—the first of its kind—to help parents understand and accept learning disabilities in their children, offering tips and strategies for successfully advocating on their behalf and helping them become their own best advocates. In Thinking Differently, David Flink, the leader of Eye to Eye—a national mentoring program for students with learning and attention issues—enlarges our understanding of the learning process and offers powerful, innovative strategies for parenting, teaching, and supporting the 20 percent of students with learning disabilities. An outstanding fighter who has helped thousands of children adapt to their specific learning issues, Flink understands the needs and experiences of these children first hand. He, too, has dyslexia and ADHD. Focusing on how to arm students who think and learn differently with essential skills, including meta-cognition and self-advocacy, Flink offers real, hard advice, providing the tools to address specific problems they face—from building self-esteem and reconstructing the learning environment, to getting proper diagnoses and discovering their inner gifts. With his easy, hands-on “Step-by-Step Launchpad to Empowerment,” parents can take immediate steps to improve their children’s lives. Thinking Differently is a brilliant, compassionate work, packed with essential insights and real-world applications indispensable for parents, educators, and other professional involved with children with learning disabilities.

In a single volume, Bringing Systems Thinking to Life: Expanding the Horizons for Bowen Family Systems Theory presents the extraordinary diversity and breadth of Bowen theory applications that address human functioning in various relationship systems across a broad spectrum of professions, disciplines, cultures, and nations. Providing three chapters of never-before-published material by Dr. Bowen, the book also demonstrates the transcendent nature and versatility of Bowen theory-based social assessment and its extension into fields of study and practice far beyond the original psychiatric context in which it was first formulated including social work, psychology, nursing, education, literary studies, pastoral care and counseling, sociology, business and management, leadership studies, distance learning, ecological science, and evolutionary biology. Providing ample evidence that Bowen theory has joined that elite class of theories that have enjoyed broad application to social phenomena while lending credibility to the claim that Bowen theory is one of the previous and current centuries’ most significant social-behavioral theories. More than a “resource manual” for Bowen theory enthusiasts, this book helps put a new great theory on the intellectual landscape.