Handbook Of World Families

The Handbook of World Families clarifies and promotes a cross-cultural perspective on the family by an examination of 25 countries worldwide, with the same topics covered in parallel fashion for each. These topics include a brief demographic and historic description of the country, mate selection, child rearing practices, gender roles, family stresses and violence, divorce and remarriage, kinship, aging and death, and the family within the broader societal institutions including politics, economics, and religion.

Praise for the Handbook of World Families: "At a time when we are moving more and more toward a global village, this ambitious book provides evidence of world-wide trends in families and family relations. It also illustrates the resilience of local cultures, seen in variations among nations in trends and responses to them. This is a very useful resource for obtaining the kind of baseline information that is essential to comparative work. As well, a number of chapters contribute to our understanding of the complexities and politics of family life, starting with what is meant by family. This book will educate many about other parts of the world and the central place of families in them." —Ingrid Arnet Connidis, University of Western Ontario "In the Handbook of World Families, Bert Adams and Jan Trost, two of the leading scholars in the field of comparative family studies, have masterfully edited a book that comparatively examines families from 25 nations located around the world. The chapter contributors have both theoretical and research knowledge as well as lived experiences of respective nation′s families. The result is a well written, highly informed, and authoritative handbook that investigates an extensive range of family issues from local, national, and global perspectives." -Mark Hutter, Rowan University What defines a family? The term family is very complex with a vast range of meanings. It can mean a married couple with children, a single parent and child, a married couple with no children, even pets and close friends can be considered to some people as family. The variety is enormous and this family diversity is present not just in the United States, but around the world. The Handbook of World Families provides a cross-cultural perspective on the family by examining family life in 25 countries worldwide. The countries included in this volume are organized by six world regions including Africa, Asia/South Pacific, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and North America-offering readers the most thorough and balanced cross-cultural examination of world families available. Editors Bert N. Adams and Jan Trost, along with contributions by top family studies experts from around the world, ensure reliable, cutting-edge research and perspectives. While other books may provide a cross-cultural perspective on the family, this book offers a unique comparative view. In doing so, each chapter of the Handbook is organized in a parallel format beginning with an introduction to the region, followed by coverage of mate selection, fertility and socialization, gender roles, marriage, stresses and violence, divorce and remarriage, kinship, aging and death, family and other institutions, and special topics specific to the region. The Handbook of World Families is an excellent addition to any academic library and an important resource for scholars and academics in the fields of Family Studies and Sociology. It can also be used in graduate level courses on the family in cross-cultural perspective, comparative family organization, and world families.

The Handbook of World Families provides a cross-cultural perspective on the family by examining family life in 25 countries worldwide. The countries included in this volume are organized by six world regions including Africa, Asia/South Pacific, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and North America-offering readers the most thorough and balanced cross-cultural examination of world families available.

This volume is a synopsis of the diversity of all birds. It distills the voluminous detail of the 17-volume Handbook of Birds of the World into a single book. Based on the latest systematic research and summarizing what is known about the life history and biology of each group, this volume is the best single-volume entry to avian diversity available.

Family policy holds a particular status in the quest for a more equitable world as it intersects the rights of women, children, and workers. But despite local and global efforts and initiatives, the state of family policy in different areas of the world varies widely. Through a cross-section of countries on six continents, Family Policies Across the Globe offers the current state of the laws concerning family life, structure, and services, providing historical, cultural, and socioeconomic context. Lucidly written chapters analyze key aspects of family definition, marriage, child well-being, work/family balance, and family assistance, reviewing underlying social issues and controversies as they exist in each country. Details of challenges to implementation and methods of evaluating policy outcomes bring practical realities into sharp focus, and each chapter concludes with recommendations for improvement at the research, service, and governmental levels. The result is an important comparative look at how governments support families, and how societies perceive themselves as they evolve. Among the issues covered: Sierra Leone: toward sustainable family policies. Russia: folkways versus state-ways. Japan: policy responses to a declining population. Australia: reform, revolutions, and lingering effects. Canada: a patchwork policy. Colombia: a focus on policies for vulnerable families. Researchers , professors and graduate students in the fields of social policy, child and family studies, psychology, sociology, and social work will find in Family Policies Across the Globe a reference that will grow in importance as world events continue to develop.

"This engaging collection gathers theoretical and empirical insights from leading family policy experts. The authors - representing diverse countries, disciplines, and methods - bring to life the volume's innovative conceptual framework, which is organized around policy institutions, both public and private. The volume closes with a call for new lines of research that should inform family policy scholars for years to come."--Janet Gornick, Professor of Political Science and Sociology, and Director of the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA "Featuring exciting contributors from a range of often-siloed scholarly disciplines, countries and cultures, this Handbook offers nuanced insights into how interacting societal inequality factors influence family policy enactment to reinforce or improve inequality outcomes across gender, class, and nations. It is ambitious, broad-reaching, and succeeds in providing a strategic view within and across nations to inspire thoughtful evidence-based policy implications to improve societies in the future."--Ellen Ernst Kossek, Basil S. Turner Professor of Management, Purdue University, USA This open access handbook provides a multilevel view on family policies, combining insights on family policy outcomes at different levels of policymaking: supra-national organizations, national states, sub-national or regional levels, and finally smaller organizations and employers. At each of these levels, a multidisciplinary group of expert scholars assess policies and their implementation, such as child income support, childcare services, parental leave, and leave to provide care to frail and elderly family members. The chapters evaluate their impact in improving children's development and equal opportunities, promoting gender equality, regulating fertility, productivity and economic inequality, and take an intersectional perspective related to gender, class, and family diversity. The editors conclude by presenting a new research agenda based on five major challenges pertaining to the levels of policy implementation (in particular globalization and decentralization), austerity and marketization, inequality, changing family relations, and welfare states adapting to women's empowered roles

This colorful cross section of families introduces readers to fourteen real children from around the world and the people they love the most, from Sanne in the Netherlands, who has two moms; to Gilad, whose parents and siblings live on a kibbutz with other families in Israel; to Ji Eun in South Korea, whose parents both work outside the home. An engaging book about different cultures and what they share: the importance of family, and the familiar ways people care for one another.

Families are the cornerstone of Chinese society, whether in mainland China, in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, Singapore, Malaysia, or in the Chinese diaspora the world over. Handbook of the Chinese Family provides an overview of economics, politics, race, ethnicity, and culture within and external to the Chinese family as a social institution. While simultaneously evaluating its own methodological tools, this book will set current knowledge in the context of what has been previously studied as well as future research directions. It will examine inter-family relationships and politics as well as childrearing, education, and family economics to provide a rounded and in-depth view.