[Ebook PDF] Marriages and Families in the 21st Century: A Bioecological Approach, 2nd Edition

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[Ebook PDF] Marriages and Families in the 21st Century: A Bioecological Approach, 2nd Edition

ISBN-13: 978-1506340968
ISBN-10: 1506340962

Author: Tasha R. Howe (Author)

Marriages and Families in the 21st Century puts contemporary relationships and family structures in context for today’s students. Using a bioecological framework, the book reveals how families are shaped by multiple influences, from biological to cultural, that interact with one another. Chapters cover topics from parenting to gender issues within an interdisciplinary context, weaving in stories, visuals, and examples of diverse families to dispel longstanding myths. The book creates a personalized learning experience with frequent self-assessments and strengths exercises, while ensuring that students come to understand the research and build scientific analysis and critical thinking skills along the way. Robust digital tools and resources including SAGE edge and an interactive eBook with SAGE Premium Video help readers develop a multi-layered understanding of today′s modern families while challenging them to re-evaluate their own assumptions and experiences.

Preface
Dear Instructors and Students,
I am thrilled to be able to bring a fresh new perspective to a topic near and dear to my heart: family relationships. During the decade that I taught the marriages and families course in my department, I struggled
to find an adequate textbook that would truly reflect the diverse and dynamic family lives most of us experience. I found that books either focused a lot on individuals from a psychological perspective, or they
emphasized the larger social systems that influence families, but they did not integrate the two perspectives, and they certainly didn’t include any information on human biology or neuroscience. I was trained to believe that in order to truly understand humans, we must go “out from neurons and in from culture,” a perspective known as “bioecological theory.” This theoretical framework allows us to examine families in all their messy complexities, never simplifying something so profoundly personal yet so culturally universal as the connection we share with our family members.
Once my dissertation advisor convinced me to take what I had learned in my training as a developmental psychologist and put it into my own textbook, I knew my main goal would be to create a fun read for students that didn’t dumb down the science but also didn’t feel like a long slog through too much scientific jargon. I gave the final manuscript a dry run with my own students, who gave it a resounding “thumbs up.” Every time I teach the course, students tell me it feels like they’re having a conversation with me instead of trudging through dense prose. Professional reviewers have also commended the book for its lively, engaging writing style, multidisciplinary focus, and depth of analysis—all of which encourage students to think critically. I was delighted by the positive evaluations from both students and professors and I feel I was successful in writing a textbook unlike any other on the market. It covers all topics instructors are accustomed to examining in marriage and family courses (e.g., divorce, mate selection) yet it explores them in a way no other book does, from a bioecological and multidisciplinary approach. This makes the book appropriate for classes in many departments, such as family studies, sociology, psychology, social work, and nursing.
I have scoured the research from fields as diverse as medicine, economics, psychiatry, nursing, anthropology, psychology, sociology, social work, and neuroscience, in order to approach each topic in a comprehensive yet clear and concise manner. We are all biological beings, with brains that have been organized to reflect our social and cultural milieu. The inner workings of our nervous systems, hormones, and neurotransmitters are not laid down solely through some genetic blueprint but are intimately linked to the environments that shape us. Biology and context work bidirectionally to impact family functioning, whether it be to create healthy, safe, stable relationships, or those that are less than optimal. By the end of each chapter, students will have a clear idea of how each topic is affected by biology, personality, childhood experiences, interpersonal interactions, social norms, and cultural and historical forces.
Several pedagogical features are included in each chapter to help students develop their critical thinking regarding family relationships. Each chapter includes a How Would You Measure That? box, which presents an innovative research study and encourages students to build their scientific analysis skills. Each chapter also has a Brain Food box, which examines new or interesting laws, facts, and policies that shape family life.
Because the book sets up a complex theoretical and analytical research lens at the outset, students immediately begin to assimilate skills for analyzing research in each subsequent chapter. I have used this framework for years in my classes and I find that within the first month of class, students become so well-versed in the bioecological approach that they can use it to understand their own and other people’s families with ease.
They know, for example, that something like “love” is not simply a feeling but is a concept affected by everything from neurotransmitters to religion to culture. Indeed, the bioecological approach makes intuitive
sense right away and students easily apply it to new topics. My intent in writing this book is to engage students in critical analysis so they are no longer swayed by arguments such as “it’s in the genes!” or “his
mother made him that way!” The bioecological model makes it clear that all aspects of family life are multiply determined.
In addition to this organizing theoretical framework, other aspects of the text also make it unique and effective at eliciting deep learning, analysis, and personal insight. For example, diversity has always been the norm in regard to families and a key focus of the book is the historical context and evolution of current family forms. Many of us grow up with biases and stereotypes regarding some family forms being better for individuals’ adjustment (e.g., having heterosexual married parents). I emphasize that we cannot understand the health and well-being of a family based solely on its structure. The only way to assess family strengths is to look inside, to examine the processes, the dynamics, and the attachment patterns within the home. Only with a process-based analysis can one determine if a family is dysfunctional or has an abundance of strengths. All family structures can have many strengths and ultimately, this textbook helps students develop a strengthsbased lens through which to view diverse family forms.
I have included a plethora of Self-Assessment and Building Your Strengths exercises so that students can reflect on their own families’ strengths and attempt to build on them. When we focus on the positive
attributes of families, we see that most of us have a lot in common. These commonalities tie the human family together and unite people from extremely diverse backgrounds. Each of us lives an intersectional life, carrying with us our age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity, history, “race,” social class, religion, language, (dis)ability status, and biochemical makeup. These intersectional sources of our identity constitute the unique strands of who we are, yet all of us are members of the same global village. It is no longer an option to be isolationist, insular, or ethnocentric. What happens in every tiny corner of the globe happens to us all.
The 21st-century family is a diverse and globalized one. Each chapter in the text illuminates trends from across the world; diversity is the driving force in the text’s analysis of families, not something that is featured in a sidebar or in discrete boxes in a few chapters.
A multicultural lens leads to cognitive, social, and even spiritual advancement. Those who learn how to integrate multiple perspectives into their own worldviews can become cognitively flexible, solve problems, and act in more creative, critical, and innovative ways. To enhance this perspective, each chapter features a “Focus on My Family” box, wherein families wrote essays about their lives and submitted family photos to provide students a tiny glimpse at the diverse experiences parents, partners, children, and extended kin use to build their strengths. Pedagogical tools and digital materials will also help instructors and students explore these concepts in more depth. Each chapter begins with several learning objectives, which are revisited at the end of the chapter, with summary material organized around the objectives. Each chapter also includes self-quizzes and web resources. Instructors will benefit from PowerPoint slides and an instructor’s manual with discussion topics, class activity ideas, and exam questions.