Key Concepts in Family Studies

Jane Ribbens McCarthy is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Open University. She has long-standing interests in family sociology, particularly around parent-child relationships, and her research has included, among other things, mothers and their children, parenting and step-parenting, and the family lives of young people aged 16-18. She has published extensively on these areas, on qualitative methodologies, including auto/biography, and on theories of public and private. Her most recent book, with Rosalind Edwards and Val Gillies, is Making Families: Moral Tales of Parenting and Step-Parenting, Sociologypress, 2003. She is currently engaged on a literature review on 'Young People, Bereavement and Loss'. Further details of her work can be found at http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/staff/jribbens-mccarthy/ Rosalind is Professor in Social Policy, and an elected member of the Academy of Social Sciences. Ros recently joined the Division (December 2010) from London South Bank University where she directed a 5-year ESRC research group programme of work concerned with families and social capital. She is founding and co-editor of the International Journal of Social Research Methodology (with Julia Brannen).

Introduction Attachment and Loss Biology Care Child Development Childhood and Children Comparative Approaches Conflict Theories Coupledom: Marriage, Partnership and Cohabitation Demography Division of Labour Domestic Violence and Abuse Families of Choice Family as Discourse Family Change and Continuity Family Effects Family Forms Family Law Family Life Cycle and Life Course Family Policies Family Practices Family Systems Fatherhood, Fathers and Fathering Feminisms Functionalism Grandparents Home Household Individualization Intimacy Kinship Motherhood, Mothers and Mothering Negotiation New Right Parenthood, Parents and Parenting Personal Phenomenological Approaches Post-Coupledom: Separation, Divorce and Widowhood Power Problem Families Public and Private Rationalities Role Theory Siblings Social Divisions Socialization Transnational Families

This is a thoughtful and sometimes challenging elaboration of some of the key concepts in contemporary family studies. In each of the forty-eight short essays, the reader will find a theoretically informed and cross-referenced guide to the major themes that have constituted this highly significant area of the social sciences. Students and researchers will want to have this book close to hand, not simply as a reference work but as a stimulus to critical social analysis David H J Morgan Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Manchester Key Concepts in Family Studies is written in an intelligent, engaging, and accessible manner by two leading and highly respected family scholars whose contributions to the field over the past two decades have been path-breaking. This is an important resource for students and professionals studying, and working in, the field of family studies within and across the disciplines of sociology, social policy, social work, health studies, education, and gender studies Andrea Doucet Professor of Sociology Carleton University, Canada