Human Development

Examines three key life stages from a sociological perspective, exploring how enduring experiences, as well as transitions and events such as childcare, education, stress, marriage, career, addiction, friendship, parenthood, disease, spirituality, and retirement influence the individual's life course. The life stages examined are: Childhood and Adolescence; Adulthood; and Later Life.

Provides an interdisciplinary approach to everything from prenatal development to education, pediatrics, neuroscience, theories and research methods to physical development, social development, cognitive development, psychopathology and parenting. It also looks at cultural issues, sex differences and the history of child development.

Guide to the current body of knowledge, theory, policy and practice relevant to age researchers and gerontologists around the world. The broad focus of the book is on the behavioral and social sciences but it also includes important contributions from the biological and medical sciences.

The Cambridge Handbook of Personal Relationships serves as a benchmark of the current state of scholarship in this dynamic field synthesizing the extant theoretical and empirical literature, tracing its historical roots, and making recommendations for future directions.

An international and inter-disciplinary roster of experts shed light by exploring such topics as hip hop culture; punk culture; social justice movements; video games and others.

Provides information on the central terms, concepts, topics, issues, themes, debates, theories, and texts and examines the topic of motherhood in various contexts such as history and geography and by academic discipline.

The second edition of the International Encyclopedia of Marriage and Family revises and expands Macmillan's 1995 Encyclopedia of Marriage and the Family, adopting an international, cross-cultural approach to such diverse topics as adolescent parenthood, family planning, cohabitation, widowhood, domestic violence, child abuse and neglect, codependency and commuter marriages. It includes articles specific to countries and to religious traditions, examining the history of family life within these cultures and discussing how families have been affected by political and social change.