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In many Western societies, there has been a tremendous increase in family diversity over the course of the past few decades, resulting in a considerable prevalence of non-traditional family forms. The increased instability of marital and non-marital unions entails new challenges for both parents and children. In this special issue, family studies scholars from different disciplines examine from a life course perspective how re-partnering processes work and how family relationships are rearranged in order to adapt to the altered needs and requirements of post-separation family life.
This open access book collects the major discussions in divorce research in Europe. It starts with an understanding of divorce trends. Why was divorce increasing so rapidly throughout the US and Europe and do we see signs of a turn? Do cohabitation breakups influence divorce trends or is there a renewed stability on the partner market? In terms of divorce risks, the book contains new insights on Eastern European countries. These post socialist countries have evolved dramatically since the fall of the Wall and at present they show the highest divorce figures in Europe. Also the influence of gender, and more specifically women’s education as a risk in divorce is examined cross nationally. Th...
Whether considered from an American or a European perspective, the past four decades have seen family life become increasingly complex. Changing Family Dynamics and Demographic Evolution examines the various stages of change through the image of a kaleidoscope, providing new insights into the field of family dynamics and diversity.
This open access book assembles landmark studies on divorce and separation in European countries, and how this affects the life of parents and children. It focuses on four major areas of post-separation lives, namely (1) economic conditions, (2) parent-child relationships, (3) parent and child well-being, and (4) health. Through studies from several European countries, the book showcases how legal regulations and social policies influence parental and child well-being after divorce and separation. It also illustrates how social policies are interwoven with the normative fabric of a country. For example, it is shown that father-child contact after separation is more intense in those countries...
Bringing social theory and philosophy to bear on popular movies, novels, myths, and fairy tales, The Gift and its Paradoxes explores the ambiguity of the gift: it is at once both a relation and a thing, alienable and inalienable, present and poison. Challenging the nature of giving as reciprocal, the book engages critically with the work of Mauss and develops a new theory of the gift according to which the gift cannot be reduced to a model of exchange, but must instead entail a loss or sacrifice. Ultimately, the gift is examined in the book as the impossible occurrence of gratuitous giving.
This edited volume addresses how single mothers and fathers are represented in novels, self-help literature, daily newspapers, film and television, as well as within their own narratives in interviews on social media. With proportions varying between countries, the number of single parents has been increasing steadily since the 1970s in the Western world. Contributions to this volume analyse how various societies respond to these parents and family forms. Through a range of materials, methodologies and national perspectives, chapters make up three sections to cover single mothers, single fathers and solo mothers (single women who became parents through assisted reproductive technologies). The authors reveal that single parenthood is divided along the lines of gender and socioeconomic status, with age, sexuality and the reason for being a single parent coming into play. Chapter 11 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.
The Rowman & Littlefield Handbook on Aging and Work is a comprehensive resource for students, scholars, and practitioners seeking a broad overview of interrelated topics concerning the aging workforce or insightful discussions of specific issues and challenges facing people in the demographic. Notably, its chapters address the impact of current conditions and developments on the individual worker, organizations and employers, and society as a whole.
This handbook provides a meaningful overview of topical themes within family sociology as an academic field as well as empirical realities in various societal contexts across Europe. More than sixty prominent European scholars’ original texts present the field’s main theoretical and methodological approaches in addition to issues such as families as relationships, parental arrangements, parenting practices and child well-being, family policies in welfare state regimes, family lives in migration, and family trajectories. Presenting cutting-edge research on findings, theoretical interpretations, and solutions to methodological challenges, it is a timely tool for researchers, teachers, students, and family practitioners who wish to familiarise themselves with the state of family sociology in Europe.
The technological capacity to transform biology - repairing, reshaping and replacing body parts, chemicals and functions – is now part of our lives. Humanity is confronted with a variety of affordable and non-invasive 'enhancement technologies': anti-ageing medicine, aesthetic surgery, cognitive and sexual enhancers, lifestyle drugs, prosthetics and hormone supplements. This collection focuses on why people find these practices so seductive and provides ethnographic insights into people’s motives and aspirations as they embrace or reject enhancement technologies, which are closely entangled with negotiations over gender, class, age, nationality and ethnicity.
"Evolutionary social science is having a renaissance. This volume showcases the empirical and theoretical advancements produced by the evolutionary study of romantic relationships. The editors assembled an international collection of contributors to trace how evolved psychological mechanisms shape strategic computation and behavior across the lifespan of a romantic partnership. Each chapter provides an overview of historic and contemporary research on the psychological mechanisms and processes underlying initiation, maintenance, and dissolution of romantic relationships. Contributors discuss popular and cutting-edge methods for data analysis and theory development, critically analyse the sta...