Family Sociology

Renowned media scholar Sherry Turkle investigates how a flight from conversation undermines our relationships, creativity, and productivity - and why reclaiming face-to-face conversation can help us regain lost ground. We live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection. Preeminent author and researcher Sherry Turkle has been studying digital culture for over 30 years. Long an enthusiast for its possibilities, here she investigates a troubling consequence.

Whether they conducted their research in life or in the lab, experts Tucker Max and Dr. Geoffrey Miller have spent the last 20-plus years learning what women really want from their men, why they want it, and how men can deliver those qualities.

This extraordinary book presents scenarios of one family's therapy experience and explains what underlies each encounter. You will discover the general patterns that are common to all families - stress, polarization and escalation, scapegoating, triangulation, blaming, and the diffusion of identity - and you will gain a vivid understanding of the intriguing field of family therapy.

Half of all marriages end. Unfortunately, about 20% of divorces are high-conflict, involving frequent visits to court, allegations of abuse, and chronic disagreements regarding parenting schedules. In response to this conflict, some children become aligned with one parent against the other - even a parent who has done nothing to warrant the hostile rejection of their formerly loving children. These parents are on a painful journey with an uncertain outcome. Surviving Parental Alienation fills the tremendous need for concrete help for these parents.

Like an urban Dian Fossey, Wednesday Martin decodes the primate social behaviors of Upper East Side mothers in a brilliantly original and witty memoir about her adventures assimilating into that most secretive and elite tribe. After marrying a man from the Upper East Side and moving to the neighborhood, Wednesday Martin struggled to fit in. Drawing on her background in anthropology and primatology, she tried looking at her new world through that lens, and suddenly things fell into place.

In this timely and necessary book, New York Times opinion writer Jessica Grose dismantles two hundred years of unrealistic parenting expectations and empowers today’s mothers to make choices that actually serve themselves, their children, and their communities.

Authored by experts and authorities in the field and professionally narrated by a medical doctor for accuracy, this crash course is a valuable tool both during school and when preparing for the USMLE, or if you're simply interested in family medicine.

Research reveals that American kids lag behind in academic achievement, happiness, and wellness. Christine Gross-Loh exposes culturally determined norms we have about "good parenting," and asks, Are there parenting strategies other countries are getting right that we are not? This book takes us across the globe and examines how parents successfully foster resilience, creativity, independence, and academic excellence in their children.

A century ago, it was a given that a woman with a college degree had to choose between having a career and a family. Today, there are more female college graduates than ever before, and more women want to have a career and family, yet challenges persist at work and at home. This book traces how generations of women have responded to the problem of balancing career and family as the twentieth century experienced a sea change in gender equality, revealing why true equity for dual career couples remains frustratingly out of reach.

Leave It to Beaver was not a documentary, a man's home has never been his castle, the "male breadwinner marriage" is the least traditional family in history, and rape and sexual assault were far higher in the 1970s than they are today. In The Way We Never Were, acclaimed historian Stephanie Coontz examines two centuries of the American family, sweeping away misconceptions about the past that cloud current debates about domestic life. The 1950s do not present a workable model of how to conduct our personal lives today, Coontz argues.

Following Overwhelmed, Brigid Schulte’s groundbreaking examination of time management and stress, the prizewinning journalist now turns her attention to the greatest culprit in America’s quality-of-life crisis: the way our economy and culture conceive of work. Americans across all demographics, industries, and socioeconomic levels report exhaustion, burnout, and the wish for more meaningful lives. This full-system failure in our structure of work affects everything from gender inequality to domestic stability, and it even shortens our lifespans.

Heterosexuality is in crisis. Reports of sexual harassment, misconduct, and rape saturate the news in the era of #MeToo. Straight men and women spend thousands of dollars every day on relationship coaches, seduction boot camps, and couples' therapy in a search for happiness. In The Tragedy of Heterosexuality, Jane Ward smartly explores what, exactly, is wrong with heterosexuality in the 21st century, and what straight people can do to fix it for good.

In 1994, Dr. John Gottman and his colleagues at the University of Washington made a startling announcement: Through scientific observation and mathematical analysis, they could predict, with more than 90 percent accuracy, whether a marriage would succeed or fail. The only thing they did not yet know was how to turn a failing marriage into a successful one, so Gottman teamed up with his clinical psychologist wife, Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman, to develop intervention methods.

A fascinating look at the key components of romantic love - sex, idealization, aggression, self-pity, guilt, and commitment - argues that romance does not diminish in a long-term relationship, describes the barriers to lasting love, and offers helpful advice on how to promote an enduring love by eliminating self-destructive efforts to protect oneself from its risks.

Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross created her classic seminal work, On Death and Dying, to offer us a new perspective on the terminally ill. It is not a psychoanalytic study, nor is it a "how-to" manual for managing death. Rather, it refocuses on the patient as a human being and a teacher, in the hope that we will learn from him or her about the final stages of life.

You probably don't realise this, but every working day you replay and re-enact conflicts, dynamics and relationships from your past. Whether it's confusing an authority figure with a parent; avoiding conflict because of past squabbles with siblings; or suffering from imposter syndrome because of the way your family responded to success, when it comes to work we are all trapped in our own upbringings and the patterns of behaviour we learned while growing up.

Committing to a long-term relationship is a big deal - especially if you have doubts. With a focus on common sense over emotion, world-renowned sex and relationship therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer offers straight-up advice on whether you should stick it out or cut your losses and move on.

In prospective, long-term research with over 700 couples, Gottman has discovered certain factors that distinguish happy, stable couples from both unstable, ultimately divorcing couples and stable but unhappy couples. These findings, which are explained here in understandable, nontechnical language, form the basis of his Sound Marital House theory of marriage, which guides the new therapy. This therapy has two goals: changing the marital friendship and teaching couples to regulate conflict.

Fans of MTV’s critically acclaimed hit series, Teen Mom, have followed Farrah Abraham’s tumultuous life as a single teen mother. Her fiery, relentless spirit, and her unwavering commitment to getting the best out of life for herself and her daughter, Sophia, in spite of all the drama constantly surrounding her have made her a beloved star and media sensation. Now, in this unflinching, at times heartbreaking, memoir, Farrah reveals the difficult truth about the life that hasn’t been seen on television.

What happened when Jane Austen’s heroines and heroes were finally wed? Marriage is at the center of Jane Austen’s novels. The pursuit of husbands and wives, advantageous matches, and, of course, love itself, motivate her characters and continue to fascinate people today. But what were love and marriage like in reality for ladies and gentlemen in Regency England? Rory Muir uncovers the excitements and disappointments of courtship and the pains and pleasures of marriage, drawing on fascinating first-hand accounts as well as novels of the period.