Editor Nancy Chase defines parentified children as parents to their parents—those are the children who are compelled to fulfill the role of parent at the expense of their own developmentally appropriate needs and pursuits. With uncanny sensibilities, these children are attuned to their parents′ moods, wishes, vulnerabilities, and nuances. This volume is a comprehensive study of parentification in the family, covering both theoretical as well as clinical topics. Contributors have written chapters that are grouped into two sections: theory and research, and clinical and broader contextual perspectives. Part One of this book covers research related to parentification and gender, work addiction, families with a disabled or chronically ill child, and assessment for clinical or research practices. The chapters having a stronger clinical or contextual emphasis address varied interventions and theoretical orientations and posit parentification in cultural and ethnic contexts. Students, academics, and professionals in areas of family studies, social work, child abuse, developmental psychology, school psychology, and family therapy will find Burdened Children an excellent resource on this phenomenon.

This volume is a comprehensive study of parentification in the family—children who fulfill the role of parents to their own parents or to their siblings, almost always at the expense of their own development. The book is divided into two sections: theory and research and contextual perspectives.

Birth order has a powerful effect on children's emotional development, on their self-esteem, and on their sense of well-being. The youngest child, the firstborn, the middleborn, twins, and the only child all have specific birth order issues that, if not atted to early on, can impair their functioning and their interpersonal relations at home and at school, and can follow them into adulthood. Parental birth order, too, plays an important role, as do such other factors as gender and family size. To understand these birth order blues, the author, an expert in parent-child relationships, first raises parents' awareness of the impact of birth order upon children. She then shows how to identify their children's birth order problems, often disguised by behaviors such as underachievement or aggression, and suggests how they can resolve these issues and prevent negative behavioral patterns from developing.

What are the developmental effects on children who must fulfill the family role of parent? Editor Nancy D. Chase defines parentified children as children who are compelled to perform the role of parent at the expense of their own developmentally appropriate needs and pursuits. With uncanny sensibilities, these children are attuned to their parents moods, wishes, vulnerabilities, and nuances. This volume is a comprehensive study of parentification in the family, covering both theoretical as well as clinical topics by a group of distinguished contributors. Students, academics, and professionals in family studies, social work, child abuse, developmental psychology, school psychology, and family therapy will find Burdened Children an excellent resource on this phenomenon.

Bioethics is the study of ethical issues arising out of advances in the life sciences and medicine. Historically, bioethics has been associated with issues in research ethics and clinical ethics as a result of research scandals such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and public debates about the definition of death, medical paternalism, health care rationing, and abortion. As biomedical technologies have advanced, challenging new questions have arisen for bioethics and new sub-disciplines such as neuroethics and public health ethics have entered the scene. This volume features ten original essays on five cutting-edge controversies in bioethics written by leading philosophers. I. Research Ethics: How Should We Justify Ancillary Care Duties? II. Clinical Ethics: Are Psychopaths Morally Accountable? III. Reproductive Ethics: Is There A Solution to the Non-Identity Problem? IV. Neuroethics: What is Addiction and Does It Excuse? V. Public Health Ethics: Is Luck Egalitarianism Implausibly Harsh? S. Matthew Liao and Collin O’Neil’s concise introduction to the essays in the volume, the annotated bibliographies and study questions for each controversy, and the supplemental guide to additional current controversies in bioethics give the reader a broad grasp of the different kinds of challenges in bioethics.

"Based on groundbreaking research that has the power to change the lives of countless children--and the adults who love them." --Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts. A book that offers hope and a pathway to success for parents, teachers, psychologists, and child development experts coping with difficult children. In Tom Boyce's extraordinary new book, he explores the "dandelion" child (hardy, resilient, healthy), able to survive and flourish under most circumstances, and the "orchid" child (sensitive, susceptible, fragile), who, given the right support, can thrive as much as, if not more than, other children. Boyce writes of his pathfinding research as a developmental pediatrician working with troubled children in child-development research for almost four decades, and explores his major discovery that reveals how genetic make-up and environment shape behavior. He writes that certain variant genes can increase a person's susceptibility to depression, anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and antisocial, sociopathic, or violent behaviors. But rather than seeing this "risk" gene as a liability, Boyce, through his daring research, has recast the way we think of human frailty, and has shown that while these "bad" genes can create problems, they can also, in the right setting and the right environment, result in producing children who not only do better than before but far exceed their peers. Orchid children, Boyce makes clear, are not failed dandelions; they are a different category of child, with special sensitivities and strengths, and need to be nurtured and taught in special ways. And in The Orchid and the Dandelion, Boyce shows us how to understand these children for their unique sensibilities, their considerable challenges, their remarkable gifts.