Continuity And Change In The American Family

Continuity and Change in the American Family engages students with issues they see every day in the news, providing them with a comprehensive description of the social demography of the American family. Understanding ever-changing family systems and patterns requires taking the pulse of contemporary family life from time to time. This book paints a portrait of family continuity and change in the later half of the 20th century, with a focus on data from the 1970's to present. The authors explore such topics as the growth in cohabitation, changes in childbearing, and how these trends affect family life. Other topics include the changing lives of single mothers, fathers, and grandparents and increasing economic disparities among families; child care and child well-being; and combining paid work and family. The authors are talented writers who bring considerable professional and scholarly background to bear in illuminating this topic in a thoughtful yet lively presentation.

In this richly interdisciplinary work twenty-eight of the nation's leading critics and scholars offer a comprehensive exploration of American society and culture. Each outstanding in his or her own field, the contributors address "America" from a diversit

A review of debates about the biological origins of the nuclear family and gender roles.

Over the last forty years, the number of American households with a stay-at-home parent has dwindled as women have increasingly joined the paid workforce and more women raise children alone. Many policy makers feared these changes would come at the expense of time mothers spend with their children. In Changing Rhythms of American Family Life, sociologists Suzanne M. Bianchi, John P. Robinson, and Melissa Milkie analyze the way families spend their time and uncover surprising new findings about how Americans are balancing the demands of work and family. Using time diary data from surveys of American parents over the last four decades, Changing Rhythms of American Family Life finds that—despite increased workloads outside of the home—mothers today spend at least as much time interacting with their children as mothers did decades ago—and perhaps even more. Unexpectedly, the authors find mothers' time at work has not resulted in an overall decline in sleep or leisure time. Rather, mothers have made time for both work and family by sacrificing time spent doing housework and by increased "multitasking." Changing Rhythms of American Family Life finds that the total workload (in and out of the home) for employed parents is high for both sexes, with employed mothers averaging five hours more per week than employed fathers and almost nineteen hours more per week than homemaker mothers. Comparing average workloads of fathers with all mothers—both those in the paid workforce and homemakers—the authors find that there is gender equality in total workloads, as there has been since 1965. Overall, it appears that Americans have adapted to changing circumstances to ensure that they preserve their family time and provide adequately for their children. Changing Rhythms of American Family Life explodes many of the popular misconceptions about how Americans balance work and family. Though the iconic image of the American mother has changed from a docile homemaker to a frenzied, sleepless working mom, this important new volume demonstrates that the time mothers spend with their families has remained steady throughout the decades.

Presents the most recent theories, research, terms, concepts, ideas, and histories on educational leadership and school administration as taught in preparation programs and practiced in schools and colleges today.

Of all concepts used by family therapists, the family development framework is among the least studied, in spite of its relevance to understanding spontaneous family change and to facilitating therapeutic intervention. The notion that a "developmental difficulty" underlies the appearance of clinical symptoms has become a time-honored tradition in family therapy just as it has been in individual therapy. Yet, unlike the well-established and well-researched models of child and adult development, those in family development are rudimentary. Despite increasing interest in the family life cycle as a framework for family therapy, relatively little has been done to elucidate the specific dimensions and processes of spontaneous and therapeutically-induced change over the family life cycle. This volume gathers original contributions of some of the most prominent family theorists, researchers, and clinicians of our time to improve our understanding of these important and hitherto neglected domains. The book opens with a comprehensive overview by the editor that outlines contributions to the family life cycle framework from family sociology, and crisis theory. This is followed by a comparative analysis of developmental thinking, explicit or implicit, in the theory and interventions of the major family therapy approaches. Then divided into four parts, FAMILY TRANSITIONS introduces new conceptual models that integrate the temporality of the life cycle approach with systems theory.By their very nature, these models cut across therapeutic orientations and have important clinical applications. In Part II, family therapy's views of development are freed from the confines of the therapist's office, and placed in the context of other disciplines. Chapters provide analysis of changing--or static--sociocultural values that can affect conceptions of development; potential misuse of the concept of "cultural identity" in health, mental health, and education; how "family identity" operates as a vehicle for cultural transmission over generations; and family therapists assumptions about women's development. The role of expected and unexpected events in the family life cycle is the focus of Part III. Chapters on clinical approaches geared to dislocations of life cycle occurrences due to unexpected crises, chronic illnesses, loss, or drug abuse provide illustrations of interventions that utilize, enhance, or potentially detract from the family's developmental flow. Part IV explores the articulation of the life cycle framework within four major family therapy orientations: intergenerational, structural, systemic, and symbolic-experiential. Each of these chapters endeavors to elucidate: what is the place of family development in each orientation; concepts of continuity and change; use of the concept of stages, transitions, or developmental tasks; the specific dimensions that change in most families over time; and the links between family dysfunction and life cycle issues. Finally, each chapter illustrates through clinical example assessment strategies, formulation of treatment goals and interventions as these emerge from a particular life cycle model. FAMILY TRANSITIONS presents a significant advance in our understanding of functional and dysfunctional family development and offers a range of interventions to promote developmental change. It is an invaluable resource for clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and counselors that will also interest human development professionals, family sociologists, and family researchers. FAMILY TRANSITIONS can serve as a developmentally oriented textbook for teaching family therapy in academic and professional settings.

For more than 200 years, America has turned to the decennial census to answer questions about itself. More than a mere head count, the census is the authoritative source of information on where people live, the types of families they establish, how they identify themselves, the jobs they hold, and much more. The latest census, taken at the cusp of the new millennium, gathered more information than ever before about Americans and their lifestyles. The American People, edited by respected demographers Reynolds Farley and John Haaga, provides a snapshot of those findings that is at once analytically rich and accessible to readers at all levels. The American People addresses important questions about national life that census data are uniquely able to answer. Mary Elizabeth Hughes and Angela O'Rand compare the educational attainment, economic achievement, and family arrangements of the baby boom cohort with those of preceding generations. David Cotter, Joan Hermsen, and Reeve Vanneman find that, unlike progress made in previous decades, the 1990s were a time of stability—and possibly even retrenchment—with regard to gender equality. Sonya Tafoya, Hans Johnson, and Laura Hill examine a new development for the census in 2000: the decision to allow people to identify themselves by more than one race. They discuss how people form multiracial identities and dissect the racial and ethnic composition of the roughly seven million Americans who chose more than one racial classification. Former Census Bureau director Kenneth Prewitt discusses the importance of the census to democratic fairness and government efficiency, and notes how the high stakes accompanying the census count (especially the allocation of Congressional seats and federal funds) have made the census a lightening rod for criticism from politicians. The census has come a long way since 1790, when U.S. Marshals setout on horseback to count the population. Today, it holds a wealth of information about who we are, where we live, what we do, and how much we have changed. The American People provides a rich, detailed examination of the trends that shape our lives and paints a comprehensive portrait of the country we live in today. A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Census Series