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Learn how public policies can help families provide the care their elderly relatives need Family and Aging Policy examines how public initiatives to assist the elderly in the United States, Canada, Singapore, Denmark, and Sweden can impact families who provide them with long-term care. For the majority of older people, the aging experience involves their families directly and indirectly, affecting income security, housing, and health care. This unique book addresses the aging issues that matter most to families struggling to deal with the demands of care giving and provides answers on how the public sector can help. As the traditional nuclear family becomes a memory and the notion of extende...
[A] useful reference book. Readers will find themselves returning to chaptersagain and again..." --PsycCritiques This is the 20th and final volume in the "Societal Impact on Aging" series. It focuses on what has been learned over the span of the previous volumes regarding the continuing challenges for older persons in a rapidly changing society and tries to forecast what may be the next set of issues to lie at the intersection of social structures and the individual aging process. The editors therefore invited major organizers of, and contributors to, the 19 earlier volumes to review both the accomplishments and omissions of their efforts, discuss some timely new topics, and provide guidelines for future research and theoretical explanations. The book is divided into five broad topics: health and wellbeing, including the role of religion; personality and cognition; the impact of changes in technology and the work place; issues of socio-cultural change and historical context; and the familial and societal contexts of aging.
Noted for its interdisciplinary approach to family studies, Families with Futures provides an engaging, contemporary look at the discipline's theories, methods, essential topics, and career opportunities. Featuring strong coverage of theories and methods, readers explore family concepts and processes through a positive prism. Concepts are brought to life through striking examples from everyday family life and cutting-edge scholarship. Throughout, families are viewed as challenged but resilient. Each chapter opens with a preview of the chapter content and concludes with key terms and varied learning activities that promote critical thinking. The activities include provocative questions and ex...
In this masterful work of family-focused sociology, Lois Benjamin considers the lives of Pennie and Roscoe James and their children, revealing how a large, close-knit African American family with humble origins in a small town of North Carolina is shaped by the contours of its religious and ethical value system. Despite the challenges of daily experiences, the James elders transmitted values to their children that provided them with the resources to thrive and the resilience to meet adversity. The James children recount their personal, unique perspectives on how faith, familial solidarity, and savvy entrepreneurship led to their continued generational success. Benjamin uses a blend of ethnographic and qualitative methods to place the James family's experiences in broader historical context. In doing so, she shows that the family's values of compassion, empathy, and communitarian and enterprising spirit offer hope in this polarized society.
The concepts of gender, love, and family - as well as the personal choices regarding gender-role construction, sexual and romantic liaisons, and family formation - have become more fluid under a society-wide softening of boundaries, hierarchies, and protocols. Sylvia Barack Fishman gathers the work of social historians and legal scholars who study transformations in the intimate realms of partnering and family construction among Jews. Following a substantive introduction, the volume casts a broad net. Chapters explore the current situation in both the United States and Israel, attending to what once were considered unconventional household arrangements - including extended singlehood, cohabi...
Do you want the greatest challenges of the day to be addressed with thoughtful, reality-based solutions rather than with cherry-picked quotations from scripture? Do you want to shrink religion—especially fundamentalist religion—to the point that it plays no noticeable role in American public life? Do you want right-wing religious leaders to be so unpopular that politicians avoid them rather than pander to them for endorsements? Drawing on the latest social-scientific research on religion to help interested nonbelievers—and even progressive believers—weaken the influence of fundamentalist religion in society at large, How to Defeat Religion in 10 Easy Steps illustrates specific, actionable steps we all can take to facilitate fundamentalist religion's decline. It covers topics as far ranging as education, welfare, sex, science, capitalism, and Christmas, and each of the 10 chapters focuses on a specific action that research has shown can weaken religion, detailing why and how, and concluding with specific recommendations for individuals, local groups, and national organizations.
Equipping the church to recover from sexual confusion In After the Revolution, David J. Ayers provides the Christian heirs of the sexual revolution a resource to understand their challenges and social context to find a way forward. Drawing on social sciences and history, Ayers traces recent worldview shifts in North America and Europe. The historic Christian understanding of sex and marriage has been supplanted. And sexual confusion has infiltrated the church, especially influencing younger Christians. The church can uniquely and compassionately support sexual faithfulness and flourishing, but we need to reject formulas, surefire methods, and judgmentalism. Instead, we must recover a positive vision for Christian sexuality, singleness, and marriage that is firmly grounded in God's word.
Argues for legal reforms to protect couples who live apart but perform many of the functions of a family Living Apart Together is an in-depth look at a new way of being a couple and “doing family”—living apart together (LAT)—in which committed couples maintain separate residences and finances. In Bowman’s own 2016 national survey, 9% of respondents reported maintaining committed relationships while living apart, typically spending the weekend together, socializing together, taking vacations together, and looking after one another in illness, but maintaining financial independence. The term LAT stems from Europe, where this manner of coupledom has been extensively studied; however, ...
Despite enduring whispers, sideway glances, and blatant discrimination, men and women today are choosing to remain single—and are enjoying complete and joyful lives. In this carefully crafted, thoroughly researched book, Elyakim Kislev delivers groundbreaking insights on the fastest growing demographic in the world: singles. Happy Singlehood investigates how unmarried people create satisfying lives in a world where social structures and policies are still designed to favor married couples. The book challenges readers to rethink how single people organize social and familial life in new ways, and illuminates how educators, policymakers, and urban planners ignore their needs. Based on personal interviews, singles’ writings, and widespread quantitative analysis, Happy Singlehood investigates how singles nurture social networks, create innovative communities, and effectively deal with discrimination. Showcasing voices of singles, Kislev charts a way forward to assist singles to live life on their terms, and explains how everyone—single or otherwise—benefits from the freedom to develop new and fulfilling lifestyles.
There has been increased interest among scholars in recent decades focused on the intersection of family and religion. Yet, there is still much that is not well-understood in this area. This aim of this special issue is to further explore the influence of religion on family life. In particular, this issue includes a collection of studies from leading scholars on religion and family life that focus on ways in which religion and spirituality may influence various aspects of family life including family processes, family structure, family formation, family dissolution, parenting, and family relationships. The studies included incorporate both qualitative and quantitative analyses, incorporate a number of different religious traditions, focus on religiosity among both adults and youth, and explore a number of important issues such as depression, intimacy, sexual behavior, lying, divorce, and faith transmission.