This book critically analyzes how European countries manage family-related challenges as they grapple with social and political transformations. It contributes to our understanding of contemporary family issues and serves as a bridge between academic analysis and practical policymaking. In an era marked by dynamic and precarious societal shifts, evolving family structures, and intricate policy landscapes, the imperative to comprehensively examine family life, social risks, and policies becomes increasingly apparent. This contributed volume delves into how changes in family and gender roles, work, and household composition have affected the intricacies of parental leave policies, societal attitudes, and the inherent precarity within family life. The chapters, composed by esteemed authors, provide both a national and a cross-national perspective, offering invaluable insights into the diverse ways families and states navigate the complexities of contemporary society, highlighting the unaddressed vulnerabilities created by existing public policies. The contents explore the nexus of changes in family, policy, and welfare state responsibilities with a focus on: Parental Leave Policies and Effects Lone Parenthood The Effects of Family Policy on Entering and Exiting the Labor Force Changing Attitudes Around Gender Roles and Policy Navigating Family Policies in Precarious Times guides readers through the complex interplay of familial experiences, social risks, and the multifaceted landscape of family policies across Europe. The book is an indispensable resource for examining policies and challenges encountered by contemporary families for policymakers, scholars, and practitioners. Its focus on Eastern European countries makes it a particularly relevant and engaging resource for students and educators interested in social policy and the complexities of family life in this region. With an interdisciplinary approach to a growing social issue, the book is a valuable resource for researchers in sociology, social work, economics, psychology and political science. It also can be used as a text in undergraduate and graduate courses on family such as Family Studies, Human Behavior & Social Environment, and Social and/or Family Policy courses.

This volume offers a timely collection of research-based studies that engage with contemporary conditions of precarity across an array of locations, exploring how it is understood, experienced, and acted upon by educators in schools, universities, and nonformal educational spaces. Precarity presents as layered, unpredictable, destabilizing, and rapidly shifting sociopolitical and economic dynamics, shown here in various forms, including the global pandemic, divisive populist politics, displacement of refugees and the landless, race and gender injustices, and neoliberal policies that constrain educational and social possibilities. Grouped around reflection, educational practice, and social activism, the authors show how educators engage these precarious conditions as they work toward a more interconnected, humane, and just society. This text will benefit researchers, academics, and educators with an interest in social foundations of education, multicultural and social justice education, educational policy, and international and comparative education, sociology and anthropology of education, and cultural studies within education, among other fields.

This prescient Research Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the challenges that young people from across the globe face as they navigate the transition from adolescence to adulthood.

Parenthood can be one of the most fulfilling, altering, and challenging life events. This book is set within the background of the reality of many parents’ return-to-work experience, the task of re-engaging with work and maintaining a job or a career, and the difficulties that parenthood poses for balancing the demands of a new family with the demands of work. It helps us understand this reality, give voice to new parents, and offer relief in the knowledge that we know a lot about these challenges and, most importantly, how we can start to address them. The book brings together a number of internationally recognized experts from research, practice, and policy to explore the issues and offer evidence-based solutions around return-to-work after having children. It takes a balanced approach to theory and practice to cover topics such as equality, stereotypes, work-family conflict, training and development, and workplace culture, among others, whilst integrating research and policy, and illustrating learnings with case studies from parents and examples from countries that lead the way. It will appeal to parents, researchers, and employers in any sector or economy across the world. Ultimately, it will help develop ways for new parents to re-engage with work successfully while maintaining their work-family well-being.

"I don′t know how often I′ve wished for an introductory text on family life which encompassed critical contemporary sociological thinking alongside the basic information students need, and have only found fossilised thinking on a stodgy subject. But now all that has changed. McKie and Callan have achieved what I thought was almost impossible in Understanding Families - a textbook which provides unrivalled foundations for a critical understanding of contemporary families and relationships." - Carol Smart, The Morgan Centre, University of Manchester "This excellent, innovative, comprehensive and easy to read text should be essential reading for everyone keen to understand families across the globe... It will make an outstanding contribution to family studies and is highly recommended." - Janet Walker, Newcastle University "Easy to read text, which debates current thinking surrounding modern families. Case studies and questions for the reader throughout the text help traslate theory into practice." - Justine Gallagher, Northumbria University Families are the core building blocks of society. Our experience of them affects many aspects of our everyday lives shaping our expectations and future plans. Written by experts in family studies and family policy, this clear, engaging book adopts a global perspective to usefully examine how modern families can be explored and understood in research, policy and practice. Packed with critical pedagogy, including case-studies, think points, key words and a glossary, it guides students through topics such as relationships, sexualities and paid and unpaid work, continually returning to its central themes of process and structure. The book also: Applies key social theories to contemporary analysis Examines key studies on researching families and family life Explores the role of government policies and practices This comprehensive introduction to the study of families and relationships is a timely resource for students and lecturers working across the social sciences, particularly students of family studies, the sociology of the family, family policy, and social work and the family Linda McKie is Professor of Sociology, Glasgow Caledonian University; Samantha Callan is based at the Centre for Social Justice. They are both affiliated to the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships at the University of Edinburgh.

For 50 years, researchers at UCL’s Thomas Coram Research Unit have been undertaking ground-breaking policy-relevant social research. Their main focus has been social issues affecting children, young people and families, and the services provided for them. Social Research for our Times brings together different generations of researchers from the Unit to share some of the most important results of their studies. Two sections focus on the main findings and conclusions from research into children and children services, and on family life, minoritised groups and gender. A third is then devoted to the innovative methods that have been developed and used to undertake research in these complex areas. Running through the book is a key strategic question: what should be the relationship between research and policy? Or put another way, what does ‘policy relevant research’ mean? This perennial question has gained new importance in the post-Covid, post-Brexit world that we have entered, making this text a timely intervention for sharing decades of experience. Taking a unique opportunity to reflect on research context as well as research findings, this book will be of interest to researchers, teachers, students and those involved in policy making both in and beyond dedicated research units, and can be read as a whole or sampled for individual standalone chapters.