Families Count: Effects on Child and Adolescent Development

Description

This book is concerned with the question of how families matter in young people's development - a question of obvious interest and importance to a wide range of readers, which has serious policy implication. A series of key current topics concerning families are examined by the top international scholars in the field, including the key risks affecting children, individual differences in their resilience, links between families and peers, the connections between parental work and children's family lives, the impact of childcare, divorce, and parental separation, grandparents, and new family forms such as lesbian and surrogate mother families. The latest research findings are brought together with discussion of policy issues raised.

Alison Clarke-Stewart is a psychologist whose work focuses on the effects of social environments on children's cognitive and emotional development. Since receiving her Ph.D. from Yale University in 1972, she has studied family interactions, child care, divorce and custody, and children's eyewitness testimony. She is currently a professor in the Department of Psychology and Social Behavior and Associate Dean for Research in the School of Social Ecology, University of California, Irvine. She is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Society, a member of the Society for Research in Child Development, and a Principal Investigator in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. She has been a visiting scholar at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and at Wolfson College, Oxford University. She has written more than 100 articles for scholarly journals such as Child Development and the American Psychologist and her recent books include What We Know about Childcare (Harvard Press, 2005) and 'Til Divorce Do Us Part (Yale Press, 2006). Judy Dunn is a psychologist whose research is focused on children's social, emotional and communicative development. She has studied children's family relationships (she pioneered research on siblings) and friendships, stepfamilies, and children's understanding of other people with a particular interest in longitudinal naturalistic observation approaches. She began her research in Cambridge University, spent 8 years in the US, and is currently a professor at the Institute of Psychiatry in London. She is a fellow of the British Academy and of the Academy of Medical Sciences. She has received the Society for Research in Child Development's Award for Distinuished Scientific Contribution and the American Psychological Association's G. Stanley Hall Award. She has been a visiting scholar at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, the Van Leer Foundation in Jerusalem, and universities in Italy. She has written scholarly articles and books, including most recently Children's Friendships: The Beginnings of Intimacy (Blackwell Publications 2004).

"...the breadth and clarity of its coverage is unique and edifying. ...with its incisive analyses and abundant references, Families Count is a must-have reference for all who are concerned with the factors in children's development. It would also be an excellent starting point for graduate, or upper division undergraduate, seminars in psychology or sociology courses concerned with children, families, or both. Certainly, the contents would provide an overview and multiple ideas for further investigations. Finally, the volume should be required reading for all those in academic considerations of public policy affecting children and families, as well as all those involved in the pragmatic development and implication of such policies." -Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books "The first essay will be an excellent resource for courses on child development: it provides and excellent, readily understood orientation to the various models of influence, and it is an essential guide to the other essays. The last three chapters offer a satisfying wrap-up to the valuable research in this densely packed volume. " -Choice