Family Social Work

Despite more power and choices than ever before, women are still angry - that's not necessarily a bad thing, as anger is what continues to open the door for change. In this collection, 15 women speak boldly and passionately about choices they've made - about sex, children, love, and work - and explore what's working and what is not. Their essays - always provocative, honest, witty, and wise - are the culmination of the lessons of the past two decades, the "me" years and the therapy years, the years that have taught women to express themselves and acknowledge their needs.

Over the last 60 years, women's lives have transformed from generation to generation. Without a template to follow, women make important decisions blindly, groping for a way forward, winging it, and hoping it all works out. Whether you're deciding if you should pass up a promotion in favor of more flex time, planning when to get pregnant, or wondering what the ramifications are of being the only person in your house who ever unloads the dishwasher, The Ambition Decisions is a guide to the changes that may seem arbitrary but are life defining, by women who've been there.

The work-family conflict that mothers experience today is a national crisis. Women struggle to balance breadwinning with the bulk of parenting, and stress is constant. Social policies don't help. Of all Western industrialized countries, the US ranks dead last for supportive work-family policies: No federal paid parental leave. The highest gender wage gap. No minimum standard for vacation and sick days. Can American women look to European policies for solutions?

The struggle to pay for college is one of the defining features of middle-class life in America today. At kitchen tables all across the country, parents agonize over whether to burden their children with loans or to sacrifice their own financial security by taking out a second mortgage or draining their retirement savings. Indebted takes listeners into the homes of middle-class families throughout the nation to reveal the hidden consequences of student debt and the ways that financing college has transformed family life.

This powerful and haunting memoir details the years Paula McLain and her two sisters spent as foster children after being abandoned by both parents in California in the early 1970s. As wards of the State, the sisters spent the next 14 years moving from foster home to foster home. The dislocations, confusions, and odd pleasures of an unrooted life form the basis of one of the most compelling memoirs in recent years - a book in the tradition of Jo Ann Beard's The Boys of My Youth and Mary Karr's The Liars' Club.

Sadie Wynn doesn't want a new life; her old one suits her just fine. But times are hard in drought-plagued Missouri, and Daddy thinks they'll be better off in Texas. Sadie hates this strange new place, where even children must work at the cannery to help make ends meet and people are rude to her disabled father. Yet when trouble comes, it is the kindness of these new neighbors that helps the family make it through.

In today’s contentious culture, how do you get what you want while preserving your important relationships and your own integrity? Some suffer in silence as chronic avoiders. Others can’t help but challenge people who say or do something they disagree with. But you can learn to transcend your innate personality and old habits to respond thoughtfully and strategically to any conflict. In Conflict Fluent, conflict resolution specialist Emily Taylor teaches listeners five proven approaches.

Education, employment, and home ownership have long been considered stepping stones to the middle class. But in Abandoned Families, social policy expert Kristin Seefeldt shows how many working families have access only to a separate but unequal set of poor-quality jobs, low-performing schools, and declining housing markets, which offer few chances for upward mobility. Through in-depth interviews over a six-year period with women in Detroit, Seefeldt charts the increasing social isolation of many low-income workers.

From National Book Award finalist Megan K. Stack, a stunning memoir of raising her children abroad with the help of Chinese and Indian women who are also working mothers....

We worry putting our family first means we'll be forced to abandon our careers. We're afraid if we pause our careers, we'll be forever off track. This thinking is outdated - forget what you've heard about how pauses are career limiting, about how those who pause lack ambition, or that if you do pause you won't be able to reenter the paid workforce. That's a flawed reality, one that doesn't reflect the truth of the careers of some of the most successful women in this country. Author Lisen Stromberg knows this success firsthand.

By the end of World War I, the skyrocketing divorce rate in the United States had generated a deep-seated anxiety about marriage. This fear drove middle-class couples to seek advice, both professional and popular, in order to strengthen their relationships. In Making Marriage Work, historian Kristin Celello offers an insightful and wide-ranging account of marriage and divorce in America in the 20th century, focusing on the development of the idea of marriage as "work."

Overwhelmed is a map of the stresses that have ripped our leisure to shreds, and a look at how to put the pieces back together. Schulte speaks to neuroscientists, sociologists, and hundreds of working parents to tease out the factors contributing to our collective sense of being overwhelmed, seeking insights, answers, and inspiration.

Feeling overwhelmed by demands or pressures and struggling to say "No"? Transform your life and relationships with Setting Boundaries Made Simple. This audiobook offers easy steps to setting boundaries and finding peace in all areas of your life. Whether you need guidance on setting boundaries at work, establishing personal boundaries, or navigating relationships with family, friends, or coworkers, this audiobook has you covered.

Ambition Redefined is a timely alternative to current women's business books that define professional ambition and success as climbing the corporate ladder. In fact, this is not a path that all women want or should feel pressured to follow. Sollmann's focus is on the more critical and widespread workplace issue for everyday women - to always work in a way that fits their lives alongside their two major caregiving roles: for children and aging parents.

On a snowy November day in 1997, in Flint, Michigan, police found the body of 45-year-old waitress Nancy Billiter. Her corpse had survived a botched attempt to burn it. An autopsy revealed that she'd been bound, beaten, sexually violated, and then injected with a lethal mixture of battery acid and heroin. Police suspected Nancy's friend, Carol Giles, 26, and Giles' boyfriend, Tim Collier, who had often boasted of a murderous gangland past.

This is a comprehensive guide for quality school admissions including the Ivy League. It is also a parenting method in direct contrast with the tiger mother, point for point. I have detailed information regarding test prep, extra curricular activities, how to choose schools, counselors, high schools, and much more. It has 375 references, a full resource guide that will save the listener hundreds of hours, an index, illustrations, tables, charts, etc.

Fatherhood today is far different from previous generations. Stay-at-home dads are increasingly common, and growing numbers of men are working part-time or flextime schedules to spend more time with their children. Dads today are more emotionally and physically involved on the home front. They are "all in", and - like mothers - they are struggling with work-life balance and doing it all.

There is no higher praise we can give people than to say they have good character. But what does this mean, really? What makes this quality so essential to achieving personal success and fulfillment? More importantly, how can we build our own character and live more satisfying lives? Reflecting society's diversity, the contributors to this unique collection of essays speak from various cultural and professional backgrounds to share their observations on living with integrity, honesty, and compassion.

This new edition of a classic is the go-to reference for anyone concerned with the developmental progress of preschool children. It provides the knowledge required for understanding children's developmental progress with age and within each developmental domain. Including new sections on atypical development for each of the core domains of development and additional material on the development of attention and self-regulation, this fifth edition integrates findings from the latest research throughout.

Balancing work, family, and your inner life! Dr. Borysenko gets to the heart of how busy women can find a center of inner peace even when life is swirling like a cyclone around them. You will learn how to manage your energy, say no without feeling guilty, honor and respect yourself as a prerequisite for loving and caring for others, make peace with the past, welcome change, and find your courage.