In Europe, the percentage of lone-parent families has risen from 14% to 19% between 1996 and 2012. Only in Greece and Finland did the rates fall, while in Denmark and the Republic of Ireland the rise has reached or exceeded 10 percent. As of 2017, there are 2.9 million lone parents with dependent children in the UK, and nine out of ten lone parents are women. Sadly, lone parents are known to experience considerable social, financial, and health problems. Fertility, Health and Lone Parenting examines the way in which lone parents live their lives, and how it impacts their health and well-being. Topics explored in these interdisciplinary contributions include lifestyle, nutrition, and the mental health of both parents and children. Unique empirical case studies within a European context help to expand the reader’s understanding, whilst also drawing comparisons between the impacts of lone parenting on young mothers, fathers and their children. A timely volume, this book will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in subjects such as Sociology of the Family, Social Policy, Social Work, Gender Studies and Family Policy.

Lone parenthood is an increasing reality in the 21st century, reinforced by the diffusion of divorce and separation. This volume provides a comprehensive portrait of lone parenthood at the beginning of the XXI century from a life course perspective. The contributions included in this volume examine the dynamics of lone parenthood in the life course and explore the trajectories of lone parents in terms of income, poverty, labour, market behaviour, wellbeing, and health. Throughout, comparative analyses of data from countries as France, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland, Hungary, and Australia help portray how lone parenthood varies between regions, cultures, generations, and institutional settings. The findings show that one-parent households are inhabited by a rather heterogeneous world of mothers and fathers facing different challenges. Readers will not only discover the demographics and diversity of lone parents, but also the variety of social representations and discourses about the changing phenomenon of lone parenthood. The book provides a mixture of qualitative and quantitative studies on lone parenthood. Using large scale and longitudinal panel and register data, the reader will gain insight in complex processes across time. More qualitative case studies on the other hand discuss the definition of lone parenthood, the public debate around it, and the social and subjective representations of lone parents themselves. This book aims at sociologists, demographers, psychologists, political scientists, family therapists, and policy makers who want to gain new insights into one of the most striking changes in family forms over the last 50 years. This book is open access under a CC BY License.

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. Single parents face a triple bind of inadequate resources, employment, and policies, which in combination further complicate their lives. This book - multi-disciplinary and comparative in design - shows evidence from over 40 countries, along with detailed case studies of Sweden, Iceland, Scotland, and the UK. It covers aspects of well-being that include poverty, good quality jobs, the middle class, wealth, health, children’s development and performance in school, and reflects on social justice. Leading international scholars challenge our current understanding of what works and draw policy lessons on how to improve the well-being of single parents and their children.

This valuable textbook for advanced students and practitioners helps readers cultivate a deeper knowledge and critical understanding of the contexts in which practice with children and young people takes place, and to develop as critical reflective practitioners. This new edition is substantially updated to reflect the changes in the field since the publication of the first edition. It contains additional chapters discussing new and emerging topics including: • key theoretical perspectives for critical practice • the politics of child protection • working with grieving children • the impact of devolution on policy and practice with children and young people. Giving equal attention to practice with both children and young people, this book will be essential both for students and for practitioners in fields such as social work, education, health care and related fields.

Work orientations and work attitudes have to do with the productive capacities in society. Insofar as individuals are positively oriented towards contributing their labour, we can expect a great amount of work to be done and to be carried out efficiently, carefully and responsibly. These subjective factors are thus very vital in modern working life. Work Orientations: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Findings offers up-to-date research on people’s commitment to work and employment and job satisfaction in economically advanced countries. It will also analyse changes that have taken place in these respects over the last decades. Among the key issues in Work Orientations are questions about whether patterns of work centrality and employment commitment tend to remain stable or have changed across time in various countries. Moreover, we assume that the circumstances under which people participate in the social division of labour colour their subjective relationships to their jobs and to employment in general. A major aim of the book is to explore the impact of factors such as occupation, education, age and gender on work orientations and work attitudes. Work Orientations will be invaluable for researchers and scholars in the fields or organizational studies, the sociology of work, employee engagement and related disciplines.

Around 1 in 10 children born in the UK are fathered by men under the age of 25. These men are often from socially disadvantaged areas and frequently overlooked in both research and practice settings. Using findings from a major Economic and Social Research Council study, supplemented with additional data, the authors focus on the transitions of the young men into early parenthood and their unfolding lives thereafter. As negative popular and media discourse around young fathers begins to shift, policy makers, practitioners, researchers and students will find future policy and practice directions designed to nurture the potential of these young men and their children.

In Europe, the percentage of lone-parent families has risen from 14% to 19% between 1996 and 2012. Only in Greece and Finland did the rates fall, while in Denmark and the Republic of Ireland the rise has reached or exceeded 10 percent. As of 2017, there are 2.9 million lone parents with dependent children in the UK, and nine out of ten lone parents are women. Sadly, lone parents are known to experience considerable social, financial, and health problems. Fertility, Health and Lone Parenting examines the way in which lone parents live their lives, and how it impacts their health and well-being. Topics explored in these interdisciplinary contributions include lifestyle, nutrition, and the mental health of both parents and children. Unique empirical case studies within a European context help to expand the reader’s understanding, whilst also drawing comparisons between the impacts of lone parenting on young mothers, fathers and their children. A timely volume, this book will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in subjects such as Sociology of the Family, Social Policy, Social Work, Gender Studies and Family Policy.

Public Health, Personal Health and Pills explores the processes and effects of the increasing governance of our lives through pharmaceuticals, looking at the moral, interactional, social and political forces that shape our use of them. It demonstrates the ways in which social relationships and identities are developed, sustained and transformed through medication use. Building on the extensive medicalisation of health literature, and the more recent concept of pharmaceuticalisation, this pioneering book is firmly based on empirical research and sociological theory. It brings together macro considerations of trends in pharmaceutical consumption, regulation and policy, micro considerations of the decision-making and the negotiation of medication use in homes and clinics, and an institutional analysis of the role of drug monitoring agencies, drug subsidising agencies, drug trial methodologies and the media. This book is a contribution to a burgeoning sociological interest in medication use, and will be of interest to a multidisciplinary audience of scholars and students of sociology, science and technology studies, pharmacy and health studies.

This timely book critically examines the European Social Model as a contested concept and concrete set of European welfare and governance arrangements. It offers a theoretical and empirical analysis of new economic models and existing European investment strategies to address key issues within post-Covid-19 Europe.

By means of a historical, legal and scientific approach, this book identifies the issues, progress and setbacks in the right for women to access abortion in various countries of the Global North. The book provides insights on the past, present and potential actions and struggles in the future about continuing to have the right to procure an abortion. Rites and rituals in order to better understand the practices of Asian countries, such as China, Japan and Taiwan, permeate discussions and debates. The volume presents the repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic on access to abortion healthcare services and abortion, and the innovative initiatives and schemes designed and implemented. The latter encourages health professionals and decision-makers to reflect on the ‘good practices’ and retain and develop over the long term. This edited collection is intended for academics and students across the social sciences and healthcare sector, members of the legal profession, healthcare professionals, activists, policy-makers, and any stakeholders working for and caring about women’s reproductive rights and abortion rights.