The Changing Face of Canada


Book Description

Canadian society is rapidly changing. This concise, up-to-date volume masterfully captures this change. Edited by two of Canada's leading demographers, Roderic Beaujot and Don Kerr, this book is an exciting entry in Canadian population studies, drawing from a variety of disciplines, including sociology, geography, economics, history, and epidemiology. The Changing Face of Canada is an essential text for demography courses across the country. Each reading has been meticulously edited and concisely ordered into five essential sections: fertility mortality international migration, domestic migration and population distribution population aging population composition Vital issues include: the role of immigration in Canada's future; the deteriorating economic welfare of immigrants; globalization, undocumented migration, and unwanted refugees; Aboriginal population change; implications of unprecedented low fertility; and the astonishing demographic transformation of Canadian cities.




The Boomerang Age


Book Description

* The Boomerang Age was named an Outstanding Academic Title of 2007 by Choice Magazine.Domestic changes are taking place in the lives of young adults in Western industrialized societies. Today's young people often experience less permanency and more movement in a variety of family-related roles, statuses, and living arrangements. Among the most prominent changes is the phenomenon of "boomerang kids," young adults returning to the parental home after their initial entrance into the adult world. The Boomerang Age, explores the implications of this development in a changing sociocultural, economic, and demographic landscape.Mitchell begins by addressing definitional, conceptual, and measurement issues relevant to the "boomerang age." She then places the issues in historical perspective by considering trends in family organization--the nuclear family, marriage and divorce rates and fertility--over the past hundred years with emphasis on the 1950s family as a cultural benchmark. The book then turns to the contemporary trajectory of home leaving and returning, analyzing the "launch" and return phases with regard to economic factors, regional differences, and racial and ethnic backgrounds.Mitchell then explores the more personal dimensions of how a return to the family is complicated by partnership (marriage, divorce, cohabitation, homosexuality) and parenthood among young couples. Moving outside the home, she looks at how public issues such as globalization, the decline of the welfare state, and various forms of social inequality affect the circumstances of young adulthood. Here Mitchell offers specific social policy recommendations pertaining to education, housing and dependency issues, childcare, and gender and racial equality. The book concludes by critically evaluating the advantages and drawbacks of two possible future scenarios: increased individualization in the pursuit of social g




Strong Families Around the World


Book Description

The strengths of families from culture to culture, when compared to each other, are remarkably similar and give us common ground around the world upon which to unite and develop mutual understanding. Strengths-Based Research and Perspectives: Strong Families Around the World, provides a conceptual framework for global family strengths, discussing the diverse strengths and challenges that families face regardless of location. This book presents 43 expert authors from 18 countries in all seven major areas in the world who explain what it means to be a family in the context of their country and the challenges their country faces in the world today. Focusing on the latest studies of similarities between strong families of different cultures, Strengths-Based Research and Perspectives: Strong Families Around the World presents a wide variety of disciplines, including family studies, family education, family therapy, modern languages, psychology, social work, sociology, cultural anthropology, and nursing. This insightful text centers on the Family Strengths Perspective, a paradigm that not only recognizes that there are problems in families today, but demonstrates clearly how these can be dealt with successfully. This valuable resource provides case study examples, quotations from literature and cultural mythology, tables, figures, and extensive references to give readers an in-depth understanding of the issues from strengths-based perspectives. Topics in Strengths-Based Research and Perspectives: Strong Families Around the World include: an introduction into the Family Strengths Perspective the International Family Strengths Model the propositions of the Family Strengths Perspective how the Family Strengths Perspective fits with other conceptual frameworks families from a global perspective a conceptual framework for understanding global family strengths and challenges Strengths-Based Research and Perspectives: Strong Families Around the World is useful as a text in marriage and family relationships classes, cross-cultural family patterns classes, strengths-based practitioner training classes, and family therapy and family educator training classes. This valuable resource will also be of great interest to family educators, family therapists, psychologists, social workers, nurses, and religious counselors.




Transforming Law's Family


Book Description

In Transforming Law's Family, Fiona Kelly explores the complex issues encountered by planned lesbian families as they work to define their parental rights, roles, and family structures within the tenets of family law. While Canadian courts recognize lesbian parenthood in some circumstances, a number of issues that are largely unique to planned lesbian families � such as the legal status of known sperm donors and non-biological mothers � remain undefined. Drawing on interviews with lesbian mothers, Fiona Kelly illuminates the changing definitions of family and suggests a model for law reform that would enable the legal recognition of alternative forms of parentage.




Home Truths


Book Description




The Making of a Generation


Book Description

Secondary school graduates of the late 1980s and early 1990s have found themselves coping with economic insecurity, social change, and workplace restructuring. Drawing on studies that have recorded the lives of young people in two countries for over fifteen years, The Making of a Generation offers unique insight into the hopes, dreams, and trajectories of a generation. Although children born in the 1970s were more educated than ever before, as adults they entered new labour markets that were de-regulated and precarious. Lesley Andres and Johanna Wyn discuss the consequences of education and labour policies in Canada and Australia, emphasizing their long-term impacts on health, well-being, and family formation. They conclude that these young adults bore the brunt of policies designed to bring about rapid changes in the nature of work. Despite their modest hopes and aspirations for security, those born in the 1970s became a vanguard generation as they negotiated the significant social and economic transformations of the 1990s.




Social Reproduction


Book Description

Contributors include Sedef Arat-Koç (Ryerson), Kate Bezanson (Brock), Susan Braedley, (PhD candidate, York), Barbara Cameron (York), Marcia Cohen (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, BC), Marjorie Griffin Cohen (Simon Fraser), Bonnie Fox (Toronto), Meg Luxton (York), Leah F. Vosko (York), and Alice de Wolff (Toronto-based researcher and activist).




Advances in the Conceptualization of the Stress Process


Book Description

In 1981, Leonard Pearlin and his colleagues published an article that would ra- cally shift the sociological study of mental health from an emphasis on psychiatric disorder to a focus on social structure and its consequences for stress and psyc- logical distress. Pearlin et al. (1981) proposed a deceptively simple conceptual model that has now influenced sociological inquiry for almost three decades. With his characteristic penchant for reconsidering and elaborating his own ideas, Pearlin has revisited the stress process model periodically over the years (Pearlin 1989, 1999; Pearlin et al. 2005; Pearlin and Skaff 1996). One of the consequences of this continued theoretical elaboration of the stress process has been the development of a sociological model of stress that embraces the complexity of social life. Another consequence is that the stress process has continued to stimulate a host of empirical investigations in the sociology of mental health. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to suggest that the stress process paradigm has been primarily responsible for the growth and sustenance of sociological research on stress and mental health. Pearlin et al. (1981) described the core elements of the stress process in a brief paragraph: The process of social stress can be seen as combining three major conceptual domains: the sources of stress, the mediators of stress, and the manifestations of stress. Each of these extended domains subsumes a variety of subparts that have been intensively studied in recent years.




Canadian Parties in Transition, Third Edition


Book Description

Alain-G. Gagnon and A. Brian Tanguay continue the work of earlier editions of Canadian Parties in Transition by presenting a multi-faceted image of party dynamics, electoral behaviour, political marketing, and representative democracy, with chapters written by an outstanding team of political scientists. Innovative features of the third edition include an examination of party alignments and the mobilization of interests, a discussion of democratic participation, and a critical exploration of direct democracy through referendums and other mechanisms. The comparative literature on party politics is brought in systematically to provide a better account of Canadian party politics. The greater part of this volume consists of entirely new chapters; others have been completely revised and updated. An appendix that provides Canadian federal election results from 1925 to 2006 rounds out the book.




Youth and Society


Book Description

In this essential third edition, Vappu Tyyskä examines the challenges faced by today's young people through a critical lens. Difficult questions related to such issues as employment, education, social pressure, identity, and crime are explored by Tyyskä as she paints a fascinating picture of modern youth in three countries: Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. The author explores the negative stereotypes surrounding young people, and argues that it is time to contextualize our understanding of youth by addressing the underlying social, economic, and political issues they face. Each of the ten revised chapters begins with a list of key learning objectives and ends with discussion questions to aid in the learning process and stimulate critical thinking. This new edition incorporates updated statistics, comprehensive tables, and revised narratives in which the author explores topics pertinent to today's youth such as the influence of social media, eating disorders, and recent changes to the juvenile justice system.