Sociology

Find cross-cultural perspectives on families in 25 countries worldwide, including mate selection, fertility and socialization, gender roles, marriage, family, stresses and violence, divorce, and more.

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.

Learn about the marriage customs and ceremonies of various cultures, including changes in attitudes and legislation over time.

The past five decades have witnessed a dramatic change in our understanding of the nature of the family and its role in society. In a thorough revision of the first edition of this classic text and reference, published by Plenum in 1987, the editors have assembled a distinguished roster of contributors to address such topics as past, present, and future perspectives on family diversity; theory and methods of the family; changing family patterns and roles; the family and other institutions; and family dynamics and processes.

Everyone is part of a family, but what constitutes a family is one of the most hotly debated issues in the United States today. Battleground: The Family provides extensive coverage of those critical issues in U. S. culture concerning current and future family life, such as dating, marriage, parenting, work and family, abuse, and divorce. The scholarly contributors to this set provide unbiased coverage on these often incendiary topics, allowing students to assess the role of these controversies in their own lives.

With a focus on nine different national contexts, this book explores contemporary family diversity. With attention to the different welfare states and cultures of care in each setting, it problematises the pre-eminence of research and policy centred on heteronormative families, showing the extent to which family diversity exists cross-nationally in relation to different gendered and "family-friendly" policies.

Women around the world are opting out of marriage. Through nuanced ethnographic accounts of the ways that women are moving the needle on marital norms and practices, Opting Out reveals the conditions that make this widespread phenomenon possible in places where marriage has long been obligatory. Each chapter invites readers into the lives of particular women and the changing circumstances in which these lives unfold - sometimes painfully, sometimes humorously, and always unexpectedly.