Drawing an unfavourable contrast between the position of students and graduates with that of their baby boomer parents has become a staple for media comment. Indeed, student indebtedness and difficulties in finding graduate jobs and housing typically contrasts markedly with their parents’ experiences. Broadening the investigation, ‘Helicopter Parenting’ and ‘Boomerang Children’ depicts how students and graduates are now likely to be close to their parents, receive considerable financial and emotional support from them and, upon graduation, return home. Using qualitative data from two interview studies of middle-class families, this title explores the impact of these changes on young people’s transition to independence and adulthood and on intergenerational and intragenerational equality. This enlightening monograph will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in fields such as Social Policy, Family Sociology and Education.

Helicopter parents—the kind that continue to hover even in college—are one of the most ridiculed figures of twenty-first-century parenting, criticized for creating entitled young adults who boomerang back home. But do involved parents really damage their children and burden universities? In this book, sociologist Laura T. Hamilton illuminates the lives of young women and their families to ask just what role parents play during the crucial college years. Hamilton vividly captures the parenting approaches of mothers and fathers from all walks of life—from a CFO for a Fortune 500 company to a waitress at a roadside diner. As she shows, parents are guided by different visions of the ideal college experience, built around classed notions of women’s work/family plans and the ideal age to “grow up.” Some are intensively involved and hold adulthood at bay to cultivate specific traits: professional helicopters, for instance, help develop the skills and credentials that will advance their daughters’ careers, while pink helicopters emphasize appearance, charm, and social ties in the hopes that women will secure a wealthy mate. In sharp contrast, bystander parents—whose influence is often limited by economic concerns—are relegated to the sidelines of their daughter’s lives. Finally, paramedic parents—who can come from a wide range of class backgrounds—sit in the middle, intervening in emergencies but otherwise valuing self-sufficiency above all. Analyzing the effects of each of these approaches with clarity and depth, Hamilton ultimately argues that successfully navigating many colleges and universities without involved parents is nearly impossible, and that schools themselves are increasingly dependent on active parents for a wide array of tasks, with intended and unintended consequences. Altogether, Parenting to a Degree offers an incisive look into the new—and sometimes problematic—relationship between students, parents, and universities.

Why are adults in their twenties and thirties stuck in their parents’ homes in the world’s wealthiest countries? There’s no question that globalization has drastically changed the cultural landscape across the world. The cost of living is rising, and high unemployment rates have created an untenable economic climate that has severely compromised the path to adulthood for young people in their twenties and thirties. And there’s no end in sight. Families are hunkering down, expanding the reach of their households to envelop economically vulnerable young adults. Acclaimed sociologist Katherine Newman explores the trend toward a rising number of “accordion families” composed of adult children who will be living off their parents’ retirement savings with little means of their own when the older generation is gone. While the trend crosses the developed world, the cultural and political responses to accordion families differ dramatically. In Japan, there is a sense of horror and fear associated with “parasite singles,” whereas in Italy, the “cult of mammismo,” or mamma’s boys, is common and widely accepted, though the government is rallying against it. Meanwhile, in Spain, frustrated parents and millenials angrily blame politicians and big business for the growing number of youth forced to live at home. Newman’s investigation, conducted in six countries, transports the reader into the homes of accordion families and uncovers fascinating links between globalization and the failure-to-launch trend. Drawing from over three hundred interviews, Newman concludes that nations with weak welfare states have the highest frequency of accordion families while the trend is virtually unknown in the Nordic countries. The United States is caught in between. But globalization is reshaping the landscape of adulthood everywhere, and the consequences are far-reaching in our private lives. In this gripping and urgent book, Newman urges Americans not to simply dismiss the boomerang generation but, rather, to strategize how we can help the younger generation make its own place in the world.

This edited collection explores advancing understandings of child centred practice through the lens of childhood studies. Contributions from around the world offer a foundation to acknowledge and support the place that children’s voices must play in creating effective practice as we respond to seismic social change.

With this practical guide, parents can end daily power struggles with their preschoolers, toddlers, and infants and create more time for the family to spend on things that matter by encouraging early childhood independence skills. We’ve all heard the news about helicopter parents and boomerang children—but how can parents safeguard against these trends when our children’s lives are increasingly scheduled and competitive? Pediatrician Dr. Alanna Levine offers a commonsense parenting approach that avoids divisive strategies and helps parents find a balanced ground between overindulgence and strict control. Raising a Self-Reliant Child focuses on teachable moments where parents can instill independence, such as sleep time, toilet training, mealtime, and playtime. With Dr. Levine’s practical strategies and techniques, young children learn to take responsibility for their daily routines: babies learn to sleep through the night, toddlers learn to nap without their parents stretched out alongside, and school-age children learn to dress themselves and make breakfast with little parental intervention. Overprotection and micromanagement keep young children from the self-development that comes naturally from learning and doing on one’s own. And children who don’t learn independence skills at an appropriate age grow into adults who expect others to fix challenges and conflicts for them. Dr. Levine helps you break the cycle of daily power struggles so that you and your family will have more time to focus on the things that really matter.

Headlines from news sources are combined with the latest and best social science research to offer scholars, practitioners, and parents a much-needed source for understanding contemporary American parenthood. News and social media headlines abound with contradictory stories about parents, from tales of neglect to fear of helicopter parenting. What readers know about parenting and parenthood can stem from misinformation and oversimplification. In Contemporary Parenting and Parenthood, a wide variety of contributors share research on topics ranging from international adoption to technology to talking with children about racial issues. Scholars, students, parents, and practitioners alike will find that this book breaks new ground in terms of its timely approach, its spotlight on current topics, and its attention to thinking through exaggerated and conflicting media claims about contemporary parenting. Importantly, the book focuses on both parenting, the lived experiences of parents, and parenthood, the social and cultural construction of parenthood in today's world, making it a resource for those interested in the truth of the everyday lives of American parents.

"She's 22 years old, for heaven's sake! We thought she'd be grown up by now. But no, it's one more crisis after another. And then she calls on us—for emotional support, problem-solving advice. Even money...although we've gotten pretty tough about that. It's like she's still a teen! Why is it so hard for her just to act like an adult?" Around age 18, most young people expect, and are expected to, move out and live on their own—either at college or in an apartment. But more and more often, "boomerang kids" are returning home defeated, leaving you frustrated and at a loss for how to help them. In this breakthrough book, Carl Pickhardt, author of Why Good Kids Act Cruel, exposes the hidden period of development that's causing increasing numbers of post-high school and college age kids to fail on their own and tells parents what you can do to fix it. His new approach to understanding young adulthood proposes that 18–to–23 year-olds have reached not adulthood, but a final stage of adolescence called "trial independence." Boomerang Kids helps parents understand this little-discussed period in your children's lives, so you can help them get through this last and most difficult stage of adolescence and get back out on their own, to become fully, and successfully, independent adults.

A paradigm-shifting model of parenting children in two homes from an internationally recognized expert. A researcher, therapist, and mediator, Robert Emery, Ph.D., details a new approach to sharing custody with children in two homes. Huge numbers of children are affected by separation, divorce, cohabitation breakups, and childbearing outside of marriage. These children have two homes. But their parents have only one chance to protect their childhood. Building on his 2004 book The Truth About Children and Divorce and a strong evidence base, including his own research, Emery explains that a parenting plan that lasts a lifetime is one that grows and changes along with children’s—and families’—developing needs. Parents can and should work together to renegotiate schedules to best meet the changing needs of children from infancy through young adult life. Divided into chapters that address the specific needs of children as they grow up, Emery: • Introduces his Hierarchy of Children’s Needs in Divorce • Provides specific advice for successful parenting, starting with infancy and reaching into emerging adulthood • Advocates for joint custody but notes that children do not count minutes and neither should parents • Highlights that there is only one “side” for parents to take in divorce: the children’s side Himself the father of five children, one from his first marriage, Emery brings a rare combination of personal and professional insight and guidance for every parent raising a child in two homes.

Higher Education is in a state of ferment. People are seriously discussing whether the medieval ideal of the university as being excellent in all areas makes sense today, given the number of universities that we have in the world. Student fees are changing the orientation of students to the system. The high rate of non repayment of fees in the UK is provoking difficult questions about whether the current system of funding makes sense. There are disputes about the ratio of research to teaching, and further discussions about the international delivery of courses.

Autumn is a time of bright colors and full harvest moons; a time to reap and savor what we’ve sown. Our autumn years are the ideal time to reexamine our lives. Often spurred on by a 50th birthday or the last child leaving home, it becomes important to question who we are in the larger scheme of things, to wonder what we really want from our lives. Finding Meaning, Facing Fears (Winner of the Alpha Sigma Nu Book Awards 2013) invites us to explore the many opportunities this time of life presents: opportunities to stretch in our capacities, to face and conquer old demons, and to meet new challenges with greater resources than were available to us before. We will also have a greater opportunity to give back to the world the benefit of our experiences and to think about and implement our personal legacies. Dr. Shapiro helps us discover which alternatives will serve best in our relationships, career, even spiritual quests, and offers answers to the inevitable questions we face as we get older, such as: “Is that all there is?” “Is it too late to change my life?” “Where do I go from here?” and, “I’ve got everything I thought I wanted; why aren’t I happy?”