It's no secret that tens of thousands of Chinese children have been adopted by American parents and that Western aid organizations have invested in helping orphans in China—but why have Chinese authorities allowed this exchange, and what does it reveal about processes of globalization? Countries that allow their vulnerable children to be cared for by outsiders are typically viewed as weaker global players. However, Leslie K. Wang argues that China has turned this notion on its head by outsourcing the care of its unwanted children to attract foreign resources and secure closer ties with Western nations. She demonstrates the two main ways that this "outsourced intimacy" operates as an ongoing transnational exchange: first, through the exportation of mostly healthy girls into Western homes via adoption, and second, through the subsequent importation of first-world actors, resources, and practices into orphanages to care for the mostly special needs youth left behind. Outsourced Children reveals the different care standards offered in Chinese state-run orphanages that were aided by Western humanitarian organizations. Wang explains how such transnational partnerships place marginalized children squarely at the intersection of public and private spheres, state and civil society, and local and global agendas. While Western societies view childhood as an innocent time, unaffected by politics, this book explores how children both symbolize and influence national futures.

Is residential care 'inherently harmful'? This book argues that this conventional wisdom is wrong and is, itself, harmful to a significant number of children and youth. The presumptive view is based largely on overgeneralizations from research with infants and very young children raised in extremely deprived environments. A careful analysis of the available research supports the use of high-quality residential care as a treatment of choice with certain groups of needy children and youth, not a last resort intervention. The nature of high-quality care is explored through child development theory and research and two empirically supported models of care are described in detail. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of child development, child welfare, youth work, social work and education as well as professionals working within these fields.

Future Families explores the variety of family forms which characterize our contemporary culture, while addressing the implications of these increasingly diverse family units on child development. Reveals the diversity of new family forms based on the most current research on fathers, same-gender parents, new reproductive technologies, and immigrant families Illustrates that children and adults can thrive in a variety of non-traditional family forms Shows the interrelatedness of new trends in family organization through the common themes of embedded families and caregiving in community and cultural contexts Features an interdisciplinary approach, drawing from works in areas that include child development, family studies, sociology, cross-cultural scholarship, ethnic studies, biology, neuroscience, anthropology and even architecture Sets an agenda for future research in the area of families by identifying important gaps in our knowledge about families and parenting

"Working mothers are common in the United States. In over half of all two-parent families, both parents work, and women's paychecks on average make up 35 percent of their families' incomes. Most of these families yearn for available and affordable child care--but although most developed countries offer state-funded child care, it remains scarce in the United States. And even in prosperous times, child care is rarely a priority for U.S. policy makers.In In Our Hands: The Struggle for U.S. Child Care Policy, Elizabeth Palley and Corey S. Shdaimah explore the reasons behind the relative paucity of U.S. child care and child care support. Why, they ask, are policy makers unable to convert widespread need into a feasible political agenda? They examine the history of child care advocacy and legislation in the United States, from the Child Care Development Act of the 1970s that was vetoed by Nixon through the Obama administration's Child Care Development Block Grant. The book includes data from interviews with 23 prominent child care and early education advocates and researchers who have spent their careers seeking expansion of child care policy and funding and an examination of the legislative debates around key child care bills of the last half-century. Palley and Shdaimah analyze the special interest and niche groups that have formed around existing policy, arguing that such groups limit the possibility for debate around U.S. child care policy. Ultimately, they conclude, we do not need to make minor changes to our existing policies. We need a revolution"--

Mothers, Families, or Children? is the first comparative-historical study of family policies in Poland, Hungary, and Romania from 1945 until the eve of the global pandemic in 2020. The book highlights the emergence, consolidation, and perseverance of three types of family policies based on “mother-orientation” in Poland, “family orientation” in Hungary, and “child-orientation” in Romania. It uses a new theoretical framework to identify core and contingent clusters of benefits and services in each country and trace their development across time and under different political regimes, before and after 1989. It also examines and compares policy continuity and change with special attention to institutions, ideas, and actors involved in decision making and reform. As family policies continue to evolve in the era of European Union membership and new governmental and societal actors emerge, this study reveals mechanisms that help preserve core family policy clusters while allowing reform in contingent ones in each country.

As the government continues to open up child protection and social work in England to a commercial market place, what is the social cost of privatising public services? And what effect has the failure of previous privatisations had on their provision? This book, by best-selling author and expert social worker Ray Jones, is the first to tell the story of how crucial social work services, including those for families and children, are now being out-sourced to private companies. Detailing how the failures of previous privatisations have led to the deterioration of services for the public, it shows how this trend threatens the safety and wellbeing of vulnerable children and disabled adults.

Advocates within the growing field of children's rights have designed dynamic campaigns to protect and promote children's rights. This expanding body of international law and jurisprudence, however, lacks a core text that provides an up-to-date look at current children's rights issues, the evolution of children's rights law, and the efficacy of efforts to protect children. Campaigning for Children focuses on contemporary children's rights, identifying the range of abuses that affect children today, including early marriage, female genital mutilation, child labor, child sex tourism, corporal punishment, the impact of armed conflict, and access to education. Jo Becker traces the last 25 years of the children's rights movement, including the evolution of international laws and standards to protect children from abuse and exploitation. From a practitioner's perspective, Becker provides readers with careful case studies of the organizations and campaigns that are making a difference in the lives of children, and the relevant strategies that have been successful—or not. By presenting a variety of approaches to deal with each issue, this book carefully teases out broader lessons for effective social change in the field of children's rights.

From the famed author of the bestselling The Second Shift and The Time Bind, a pathbreaking look at the transformation of private life in our for-profit world The family has long been a haven in a heartless world, the one place immune to market forces and economic calculations, where the personal, the private, and the emotional hold sway. Yet as Arlie Russell Hochschild shows in The Outsourced Self, that is no longer the case: everything that was once part of private life—love, friendship, child rearing—is being transformed into packaged expertise to be sold back to confused, harried Americans. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and original research, Hochschild follows the incursions of the market into every stage of intimate life. From dating services that train you to be the CEO of your love life to wedding planners who create a couple's "personal narrative"; from nameologists (who help you name your child) to wantologists (who help you name your goals); from commercial surrogate farms in India to hired mourners who will scatter your loved one's ashes in the ocean of your choice—Hochschild reveals a world in which the most intuitive and emotional of human acts have become work for hire. Sharp and clear-eyed, Hochschild is full of sympathy for overstressed, outsourcing Americans, even as she warns of the market's threat to the personal realm they are striving so hard to preserve.

The purpose of the present book, An Intersectional Approach to Counseling Children and Adolescents with Health Conditions, is to provide mental health professionals and students of counseling, medicine, psychology, social work, and other helping professions, with useful information and helpful suggestions for their work with children and adolescents who experience significant health issues. The chapter authors rely on an intersectional understanding of the human experience and specifically focus on how diverse youth experience, understand, and seek support for specific health conditions and illnesses. Considering contemporary research that has shed light on some of the ways individuals’ multiple social identities interconnect and interact to compound experiences of illness, health psychology researchers would benefit from applying an intersectional lens in their explorations of the micro and macro-level variables that influence pathways towards health and illness for different groups. For mental health practitioners, an intersectional perspective on diverse children and adolescents’ experiences of specific health conditions will more likely lead to innovative and inclusive interventions that target change at multiple levels. We are confident that our book will be of great use to mental health practitioners and students who plan to or are currently working with children and adolescents with significant health issues. Readers of the book can focus on a specific health condition that is common among children/adolescents and develop their knowledge, skills, and awareness of the cultural and systemic considerations in working with children/adolescents and their families. Particular attention can be paid to the ways in which the clients’ and the counselors’ intersectional social identities may influence counseling children and adolescents with significant health issues.

Everyone is part of a family, but what constitutes a family is one of the most hotly debated issues in the United States today. Battleground: The Family provides extensive coverage of those critical issues in U. S. culture concerning current and future family life, such as dating, marriage, parenting, work and family, abuse, and divorce. The scholarly contributors to this set provide unbiased coverage on these often incendiary topics, allowing students to assess the role of these controversies in their own lives. Entries thoroughly introduce the topic of concern, describe the problem as it currently exists, provide context for the controversies surrounding it, synthesize the current knowledge on the topic, and guide the reader to additional areas for consideration. Battleground: The Family serves as a starting point for those advanced high school and beginning undergraduate students who wish to pursue a more detailed study of family controversies and cultural concerns for classroom assignments. Non-specialist readers will also find this a useful resource in critically assessing current trends and conflicts in constituent groups' conceptions of family.