Family studies

This volume provides an international perspective on parental leave policies in different countries, goes beyond this to examine a range of issues in depth, and aims to stimulate thinking about possible futures and how policy might underpin them.

Child welfare, state welfare and parenting issues are high on the UK policy agenda; this timely book examines recent policy developments, parental perspectives about parenting and child-rearing and parental rights to 'welfare state support'.

Based on involved creative, qualitative work with families in India and the UK who live in different contexts, this book illuminates how environmental practices are negotiated within families, and how they relate to values, identities, and society.

Understanding Family Meanings provides an overview of the basic concepts and theories related to families using readings with questions and analysis to encourage reflection and learning. It focuses on family meanings as the key underpinnings for academic study and professional training.

Using Sweden as a case study, this book combines theories of family practices, care and childhood studies with the personal perspectives of nannies, au pairs, parents and children to provide new understandings of what constitutes care in nanny families.

Combining social, psychological and child development aspects, this book provides a holistic view of how children develop agency.

Based upon cross-national case studies of public and private sector workplaces, "Work, families and organisations in transition" illustrates how workplace practices and policies impact on employees' experiences of "work-life balance" in contemporary shifting contexts.

The politics of parental leave policies addresses how and why, and by whom, particular policies are created and subsequently developed in particular countries. It examines the factors that bring about variations in leave policy, covering fifteen countries in Europe and beyond.

This book presents new empirical research about in-home child care in Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada, three countries where governments are pursuing new ways to support the recruitment of in-home childcare workers through funding, regulation and migration.

This book analyses the specific ways in which family lives have changed and how they have been affected by the major structural and cultural changes of the second half of the twentieth century.

Using a bio-communities of practice framework, this thought-provoking empirical analysis explores the emotional and material dimensions of the growing phenomenon of milk sharing in the Global North and its implications for contemporary understandings of infant feeding in the US, providing new insights into a much-debated topic.

This insightful book discusses the origins and theoretical underpinnings of family led decision making and brings together the current research on the efficacy and limitations of family group conferences into a single text.