Lucy is eight years old and ends up in foster care after being abandoned by her mum and kicked out by her new stepmother. Two aunties and then her elderly grandmother take her in but it seems nobody can cope with Lucy’s disruptive behaviour. Social Services hope a stay with experienced foster carer Angela will help Lucy settle down. She misses her dad and three siblings and is desperate for a fresh start back home, but will Lucy ever be able to live in harmony with her stepmother and her stepsister – a girl who was once her best friend at school?

The Girl Who Wanted to Belong is the fifth book from well-loved foster carer and Sunday Times bestselling author Angela Hart. A true story that shares the tale of one of the many children she has fostered over the years. Angela's stories show the difference that quiet care, a watchful eye and sympathetic ear can make to those children whose upbringing has been less fortunate than others.

Sex is usually assumed to be a closely guarded secret of prison life. But it has long been the subject of intense scrutiny by both prison administrators and reformers--as well as a source of fascination and anxiety for the American public. Historically, sex behind bars has evoked radically different responses from professionals and the public alike. In "Criminal Intimacy," Regina Kunzel tracks these varying interpretations and reveals their foundational influence on modern thinking about sexuality and identity. Historians have held the fusion of sexual desire and identity to be the defining marker of sexual modernity, but sex behind bars, often involving otherwise heterosexual prisoners, calls those assumptions into question. By exploring the sexual lives of prisoners and the sexual culture of prisons over the past two centuries--along with the impact of a range of issues, including race, class, and gender; sexual violence; prisoners' rights activism; and the HIV epidemic--Kunzel discovers a world whose surprising plurality and mutability reveals the fissures and fault lines beneath modern sexuality itself. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including physicians, psychiatrists, sociologists, correctional administrators, journalists, and prisoners themselves--as well as depictions of prison life in popular culture--Kunzel argues for the importance of the prison to the history of sexuality and for the centrality of ideas about sex and sexuality to the modern prison. In the process, she deepens and complicates our understanding of sexuality in America.

They go by many names: helicopter parents, hovercrafts, PFHs (Parents from Hell). The news media is filled with stories of well-intentioned parents going to ridiculous extremes to remove all obstacles from their child's path to greatness . . . or at least to an ivy league school. From cradle to college, they remain intimately enmeshed in their children's lives, stifling their development and creating infantilized, spoiled, immature adults unprepared to make the decisions necessary for the real world. Or so the story goes.

Drawing on a wealth of eye-opening interviews with parents across the country, Margaret K. Nelson cuts through the stereotypes and hyperbole to examine the realities of what she terms "parenting out of control." Situating this phenomenon within a broad sociological context, she finds several striking explanations for why today's prosperous and well-educated parents are unable to set realistic boundaries when it comes to raising their children. Analyzing the goals and aspirations parents have for their children as well as the strategies they use to reach them, Nelson discovers fundamental differences among American parenting styles that expose class fault lines, both within the elite and between the elite and the middle and working classes.

Nelson goes on to explore the new ways technology shapes modern parenting. From baby monitors to cell phones (often referred to as the world's longest umbilical cord), to social networking sites, and even GPS devices, parents have more tools at their disposal than ever before to communicate with, supervise, and even spy on their children. These play important and often surprising roles in the phenomenon of parenting out of control. Yet the technologies parents choose, and those they refuse to use, often seem counterintuitive. Nelson shows that these choices make sense when viewed in the light of class expectations.

Today's parents are faced with unprecedented opportunities and dangers for their children, and are evolving novel strategies to adapt to these changes. Nelson's lucid and insightful work provides an authoritative examination of what happens when these new strategies go too far.

This study explores the care pathways of minority ethnic children in three authorities in England, and considers possible differences in decision making and outcomes for them, in comparison with white children, especially in permanence.

Covering a wide range of subjects from non-resident fathers to father engagement in child protection, this major contribution to the field offers unique insights into how to research fathers and fatherhood in contemporary society.

The experience of becoming an ex is common to most people in modern society. Unlike individuals in earlier cultures who usually spent their entire lives in one marriage, one career, one religion, one geographic locality, people living in today's world tend to move in and out of many roles in the course of a lifetime. During the past decade there has been persistent interest in these "passages" or "turning points," but very little research has dealt with what it means to leave behind a major role or incorporate it into a new identity. Helen Rose Fuchs Ebaugh's pathbreaking inquiry into the phenomenon of becoming an ex reveals the profundity of this basic aspect of establishing an identity in contemporary life.
Ebaugh is herself an ex, having left the life of a Catholic nun to become a wife, mother, and professor of sociology. Drawing on interviews with 185 people, Ebaugh explores a wide range of role changes, including ex-convicts, ex-alcoholics, divorced people, mothers without custody of their children, ex-doctors, ex-cops, retirees, ex-nuns, and--perhaps most dramatically--transsexuals. As this diverse sample reveals, Ebaugh focuses on voluntary exits from significant roles. What emerges are common stages of the role exit process--from disillusionment with a particular identity, to searching for alternative roles, to turning points that trigger a final decision to exit, and finally to the creation of an identify as an ex.
"Becoming an Ex" is a challenging and influential study that will be of great interest to sociologists, mental health counselors, members of self-help groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Parents Without Partners, those in corporate settings where turnover has widespread implications for the organization, and for anyone struggling through a role exit who is trying to establish a new sense of self.

The heartbreaking true story of a young, troubled mother who needed help. The sixteenth fostering memoir by Cathy Glass. It is the first time Laura has been out since the birth of her baby when Cathy sees her in the school playground. A joyful occasion but Cathy has the feeling something is wrong. By the time she discovers what it is, it is too late. This is the true story of Laura whose life touches Cathy's in a way she could never have foreseen. It is also the true stories of little Darrel, Samson and Hayley who she fosters when their parents need help. Some stories can have a happy ending and others cannot, but as a foster carer Cathy can only do her best.

Sharing the daily struggles of children and families residing in transitional situations (homelessness or because of risk of homelessness, being connected with the child welfare system, or being new immigrants in temporary housing), this text recommends strategies for delivering mental health and intensive case-management services that maintain family integrity and stability. Based on work undertaken at the Center for the Vulnerable Child in Oakland, California, which has provided mental health and intensive case management to children and families living in transition for more than two decades, this volume outlines culturally sensitive practices to engage families that feel disrespected by the assistance of helping professionals or betrayed by their forgotten promises. Chapters discuss the Center's staffers' attempt to trace the influence of power, privilege, and beliefs on their education and their approach to treatment. Many U.S. children living in impoverished transitional situations are of color and come from generations of poverty, and the professionals they encounter are white, middle-class, and college-educated. The Center's work to identify the influences or obstacles interfering with services for this target population is therefore critical to formulating more effective treatment, interaction, and care.

As an adoptee, do you have mixed feelings about your adoption? If you do, you are not alone - adoptees often experience complex feelings of grief, anger, and questions about their identity. Sherrie Eldridge is an adoptee and adoption expert, and in this book she draws on her personal experiences and feelings relating to adoption as well as interviews with over 70 adoptees. Sherrie reveals how you can discover your own unique life purpose and worth, and sets out 20 life-transforming choices which you have the power to make. The choices will help you discover answers about issues such as: Why do I feel guilty when I think about my birth parents? Why can't I talk about the painful aspects of adoption? Where can I gain an unshakable sense of self-esteem? Sherrie also addresses the problem of depression among adoptees and common dilemmas such as if, when and how to contact a birth mother or father. This fully updated second edition includes new material on finding support online, contacting family through social media, and features three new chapters, including Sherrie's story of reuniting with her birth brother, Jon, in adulthood.

Growing up in care is not just a part of childhood, but can have ongoing impacts across a person's life. Various inquiries have revealed accounts of abuse and neglect, and a fracturing of family relationships. Organised thematically to allow comparison of different initiatives, this book considers the range of responses to adult care leavers in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and the UK. Initiatives examined include public inquiries, symbolic acknowledgements, redress schemes, specialist support services, access to personal records and family reunification programs. Featuring detailed case studies and examples of good practice, this is an excellent international source book for practitioners and policy makers in social work and social care.

First published in 1982. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

At turns humorous, irreverent, poignant and tender, "The Book of Dads" brings together twenty well-known and beloved writers on the subject of fatherhood, offering fathers--or anyone who has been or loved a parent--unrivaled insights into the complexity of fatherhood as it's experienced now. It is a literary reader for the contemporary dad, hip and on point, but with an eye toward becoming a classic for readers return to again and again. Contributors include Ben Fountain, Charles Baxter, Jim Shepard, Clyde Edgerton, Neal Pollack, Rick Bragg, Anthony Doerr, Michael Thomas, Davy Rothbart, Richard Bausch, Nick Flynn, Brandon R. Schrand, Rick Bass, Sebastian Matthews, Jennifer Finney Boylan, Steve Almond, David Gessner, Darin Strauss, Brock Clarke, and Sven Birkerts

This book details the communication and conflict-resolution skills that happy couples use to deal with differences. Psychologist Susan Heitler clarifies the basics of collaborative dialogue and shows how these techniques can be applied to even the most sensitive issues in ways that respond to both partners' needs and help to strengthen their relationship. Use this book to learn strategies for making decisions together, resolving conflicts, recovering after upsets, and converting difficulties into opportunities for growth.

Mediated Intimacy looks at contemporary sex and relationship advice, exploring how our intimate lives are shaped through different media, from manuals and magazines to television and Twitter. By exploring how intimacy is constructed through different media texts, the authors consider which ideas and practices these changing forms of 'sexpertise' open up, and which they close down. The book reveals the intimate operation of power in mediated advice, how words and images, stories and sound can work to shore up social injustice. It critically engages with the ideas of choice and responsibility in sex self-help, arguing that these can obscure and/or justify oppression, even if they're sometimes experienced as empowering and/or pleasurable. This bold and incisive book provides a radical challenge to the assumptions underlying the sex advice industry, and presents a critical, collaborative and consensual vision for sex advice of the future.

Pleasures and Perils follows a group of young girls living on Nevis, an island society in the Eastern Caribbean. In this provocative ethnography, Debra Curtis examines their sexuality in gripping detail: why do Nevisian girls engage in sexual activity at such young ages? Where is the line between coercion and consent? How does a desire for wealth affect a girl's sexual practices?

Curtis shows that girls are often caught between conflicting discourses of Christian teachings about chastity, public health cautions about safe sex, and media enticements about consumer delights. Sexuality's contradictions are exposed: power and powerlessness, self-determination and cultural control, violence and pleasure. Pleasures and Perils illuminates the methodological and ethical issues anthropologists face when they conduct research on sex, especially among girls. The sexually explicit narratives conveyed in this book challenge not only the reader's own thoughts on sexuality but also the broader limits and possibilities of ethnography.

Pleasures and Perils follows a group of young girls living on Nevis, an island society in the Eastern Caribbean. In this provocative ethnography, Debra Curtis examines their sexuality in gripping detail: why do Nevisian girls engage in sexual activity at such young ages? Where is the line between coercion and consent? How does a desire for wealth affect a girl's sexual practices?

Curtis shows that girls are often caught between conflicting discourses of Christian teachings about chastity, public health cautions about safe sex, and media enticements about consumer delights. Sexuality's contradictions are exposed: power and powerlessness, self-determination and cultural control, violence and pleasure. Pleasures and Perils illuminates the methodological and ethical issues anthropologists face when they conduct research on sex, especially among girls. The sexually explicit narratives conveyed in this book challenge not only the reader's own thoughts on sexuality but also the broader limits and possibilities of ethnography.

First published in 1977. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

aAt her best, Moore has a frank, breezy manner that may be partly due to her practical experience outside academe. . . . Sperm Counts is a lively, funny read.a
--Camille Paglia in "The Chronicle Review"

aWhile nearly every point she makes about the hidden significance of sperm is a home run, ultimately, this is an academic sociological study written in an appropriately starchy style. . . . [that] results in a fascinating read packed with conclusions.a -- "City Paper"

aSo fascinating and fresh. . . . Should be required reading for scholars in sexuality/queer studies, womenas and gender studies, social studies of science and cultural studies. . .. Essential.a--"Choice"

aSperm Counts is careful to include the history of semen research, as well as examining its role today. . . . [Moore] approach[es] the topic of semen with precision and diligence.a
--"Bitch"

aCartoon line-drawings of sperm wriggle over each page of text in this dissection of the ways societal views of sperm shape culture. A feminist account backed by sociological and scientific research, Mooreas academic tome is accessible to the masses.a
--"Bust"

Moore has analyzed religious, social, erotic and medical-scientifc investments in sperm, singular and plural.a--"Feminist Review"

aIn Sperm Counts, Moore's new book about the cultural meanings of sperm, she tells this story to illustrate her own childhood naivetA(c) about a substance that, as she now sees it, is far from simple. These days, according to Moore, sperm has tremendous cultural meaning--and looking at it in its many contexts, from children's books to pornography, can tell us a great deal about the skittish state of American masculinity. . . .Sperm Counts is a serious book, and the first on its subject. But it also includes anecdotes from Mooreas life, lending it a more conversational tone than most academic works. The bookas margins are even squiggled with sketches of sperm--flip the pages and they swim around. (This is a subject matter, after all, that requires a certain degree of levity.) Moore happily lists spermatic nicknames (ababy gravy, a agentlemenas relish, a apimp juicea) before skewering, in a later chapter, the burgeoning home sperm-test industry (sample ad slogan: aI donat know how that semen got in my underwear!a).a
--"Salon.com"

a[Moore] examines how sperm is seen through a variety of social lenses, including pornography, sperm banking, childrenas books on reproduction and criminal DNA evidence.a
--"Between the Lines Magazine"

aIrresistable. . . . A really rich read.a
--feministing.com

aIncredibly well researched and captivating read.a
--Girlwithpen.blogspot.com

aA clever yet comprehensive look at the asubstancea of manhood. Moore goes where few scholars dare to tread, and uses bodily fluids as a revealing window through which to observe the current nature of sexuality and gender relations.a
--Michael S. Kimmel, author of "Manhood in America: A Cultural Study"

aSperm Counts is a serious book, and the first on its subject. But it also includes anecdotes from Moore's life, lending it a more conversational tone than most academic works. The book's margins are even squiggled with sketches of sperm -- flip the pages and they swim around. (This is a subject matter, after all, that requires a certain degree of levity.) Moore happily lists spermatic nicknames ("baby gravy," "gentlemen'srelish," "pimp juice") before skewering, in a later chapter, the burgeoning home sperm-test industry (sample ad slogan: "I don't know how that semen got in my underwear!").a
--Salon.com

"In this intriguing feminist sociological account of sperm, Moore takes a subject we think we knew all about and proceeds to examine the multi-dimensional facets of its cultural subtexts. What is so unusual about this provocative book is the way Moore meshes history, technology, medicine, criminology, gender studies, children's books, and porn in her depiction of sperm as a manifestation of masculinity. Sperm Counts is witty, erudite, and informative-- a gem of social constructionist scholarship."
--Judith Lorber, author of "Paradoxes of Gender" and "Breaking the Bowls"

aMoore has crafted a smart and surprisingly funny book about semen. Original and refreshing, Sperm Counts follows the alittle guysa through laboratories, childrenas books, sex work, crime scenes, and bodies, illuminating varied meanings and representations of manhood and masculinity. This is engaged feminist scholarship at its best.a
--Monica J. Casper, author of "The Making of the Unborn Patient: A Social Anatomy of Fetal Surgery"

It has been called sperm, semen, seed, cum, jizz, spunk, gentlemen's relish, and splooge. But however the "tacky, opaque liquid that comes out of the penis" is described, the very act of defining "sperm" and "semen" depends on your point of view. For Lisa Jean Moore, how sperm comes to be known is based on who defines it (a scientist vs. a defense witness, for example), under what social circumstances it is found (a doctor's office vs. a crime scene), and for what purposes it will be used (invitro fertilization vs. DNA analysis). Examining semen historically, medically, and culturally, Sperm Counts is a penetrating exploration of its meaning and power.

Using a "follow that sperm" approach, Moore shows how representations of sperm and semen are always in flux, tracing their twisting journeys from male reproductive glands to headline news stories and presidential impeachment trials. Much like the fluid of semen itself can leak onto fabrics and into bodies, its meanings seep into our consciousness over time. Moore's analytic lens yields intriguing observations of how sperm is "spent" and "reabsorbed" as it spurts, swims, and careens through penises, vaginas, test tubes, labs, families, cultures, and politics.

Drawn from fifteen years of research, Sperm Counts examines historical and scientific documents, children's "facts of life" books, pornography, the Internet, forensic transcripts and sex worker narratives to explain how semen got so complicated. Among other things, understanding how we produce, represent, deploy and institutionalize semen-biomedically, socially and culturally-provides valuable new perspectives on the changing social position of men and the evolving meanings of masculinity. Ultimately, as Moore reveals, sperm is intimately involved in not only the physical reproduction of males and females, but in how we come to understand ourselves as men and women.

A generation ago Americans undertook a revolutionary experiment to redefine marriage. Where historically men and women had sought a loving bond, largely centered on the rearing of children, the new arrangement called for an intimate-and provisional-union of two adults. Now, as Kay Hymowitz argues in Marriage and Caste in America, the results of this experiment separating marriage from childrearing are in, and they turn out to be bad news not only for children but also, in ways little understood, for the country as a whole. The family revolution has played a central role in a growing inequality and high rates of poverty, even during economic good times. The family upheaval has hit African-Americans especially hard, Ms. Hymowitz shows, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan had famously predicted it would. While for decades feminists and academics toyed with the myth of the strong single black mother supported by kinship networks, black men drifted into fatherhood without being husbands, without even becoming part of a family, while black children were left behind.When Americans began their family revolution, they forgot to consider what American marriage was designed to do: it ordered lives by giving the young a meaningful life script. It supported middle-class foresight, planning, and self-sufficiency. And it organized men and women around The Mission-nurturing their children's cognitive, emotional, and physical development. More than anything, Ms. Hymowitz writes, it is The Mission that separates middle-class kids-who for all their overscheduling are doing very well indeed-from their less-parented and lower-achieving peers. In fact our great family experiment threatens to turn what the founders imagined as an opportunity-rich republic of equal citizens into a hereditary caste society.

"A tremendously important contribution to the study of gender and migration with its focus on the oft-ignored topic of masculinity." -Rhacel Salazar Parrenas, author of Children of Global Migration: Transnational Families and Gendered Woes "This book should be required reading for anyone with an interest in transnationalism, migration, cross-border marriages, or postwar Vietnamese diaspora."-Nicole Constable, author of Romance on a Global Stage: Pen Pals, Virtual Ethnography, and "Mail Order" Marriages "A beautifully conceptualized and fascinating book."-Barrie Thorne, University of California at Berkeley Marriage is currently the number-one reason people migrate to the United States, and women constitute the majority of newcomers joining husbands who already reside here. But little is known about these marriage and migration streams beyond the highly publicized and often sensationalized phenomena of mail-order and military brides. Less commonly known is that most international couples are immigrants of the same ethnicity. In For Better or For Worse, Hung Cam Thai takes a closer look at marriage and migration, with a specific focus on the unions between Vietnamese men living in the United States and the women who marry them. Weaving together a series of personal stories, he underscores the ironies and challenges that these unions face. He includes the voices of working-class immigrant men speaking about wanting "traditional" wives and young Vietnamese college-educated women, who express a preference for men of the same ethnicity but with a more liberal outlook on gender-men they imagine they will find in the United States. Thai captures the incompatible viewpoints of the couples who appear to be separated not only geographically but ideologically. Hung Cam Thai is an assistant professor of sociology and Asian American Studies at Pomona College.

Immigrant Families aims to capture the richness, complexity, and diversity that characterize contemporary immigrant families in the United States. In doing so, it reaffirms that the vast majority of people do not migrate as isolated individuals, but are members of families. There is no quintessential immigrant experience, as immigrants and their families arrive with different levels of economic, social, and cultural resources, and must navigate various social structures that shape how they fare. Immigrant Families highlights the hierarchies and inequities between and within immigrant families created by key axes of inequality such as legal status, social class, gender, and generation. Drawing on ethnographic, demographic, and historical scholarship, the authors highlight the transnational context in which many contemporary immigrant families live, exploring how families navigate care, resources, expectations, and aspirations across borders. Ultimately, the book analyzes how dynamics at the individual, family, and community levels shape the life chances and wellbeing of immigrants and their families. As the United States turns its attention to immigration as a critical social issue, Immigrant Families encourages students, scholars, and policy makers to center family in their discussions, thereby prioritizing the human and relational element of human mobility.

Perspectives on Modern South Asia presents an exciting core collection of essays drawn from anthropology, literary and cultural studies, history, sociology, economics, and political science to reveal the complexities of a region that is home to a fifth of humanity. * Presents an interdisciplinary overview of the origins and development of the eight nations comprising modern South Asia: Afghanistan, Bhutan, Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka * Explores South Asia s common cultures, languages and religions and their relationship to its ethnic and national differences * Features essays that provide understandings of the central dynamics of South Asia as an important cultural, political, and economic region of the world

Premarital sex, consensual relations, bigamy, polygamy, births out of wedlock, and clandestine affairs between clergy and laity were common components of everyday society in colonial Latin America. "Private Passions and Public Sins" focuses on the frequency and significance of illegitimacy and extramarital relationships in Lima, Peru, during the seventeenth century. Lima was Maria Mannarelli's selection for this study because it was the administrative, commercial, and religious center of the Viceroyalty of Peru and was home to numerous ethnic and social groups.

Chapter one deals with the Iberian family and extramarital relations in fifteenth-century Spain. Chapter two reconstructs the unequal numbers of men and women in Lima's population throughout the century. Chapter three shows the reactions of civil and church authorities and ordinary citizens to extramarital relationships. Chapter four explores adultery and chapter five follows with illegitimacy and its significance in Lima's society.

The relationship between illegitimacy and women is the focus of chapter six, with a view of colonial women and the emphasis on control of sexuality. The problem of child abandonment resulting from extramarital relationships is discussed in chapter seven.

During the past ten years, legal and political changes in the United States have dramatically altered the legalization process for millions of undocumented immigrants and their families. Faced with fewer legalization options, immigrants without legal status and their supporters have organized around the concept of the family as a political subject--a political subject with its rights violated by immigration laws.
Drawing upon the idea of the "impossible activism" of undocumented immigrants, Amalia Pallares argues that those without legal status defy this "impossible" context by relying on the politicization of the family to challenge justice within contemporary immigration law. The culmination of a seven-year-long ethnography of undocumented immigrants and their families in Chicago, as well as national immigrant politics, "Family Activism" examines the three ways in which the family has become politically significant: as a political subject, as a frame for immigrant rights activism, and as a symbol of racial subordination and resistance.
By analyzing grassroots campaigns, churches and interfaith coalitions, immigrant rights movements, and immigration legislation, Pallares challenges the traditional familial idea, ultimately reframing the family as a site of political struggle and as a basis for mobilization in immigrant communities.