Marriage Sociology

Beyond soccer leagues, music camps, and drama lessons, today's youth are in an education arms race that begins in elementary school. In Hyper Education, Pawan Dhingra uncovers the growing world of high-achievement education and the after-school learning centers, spelling bees, and math competitions that it has spawned.

This extraordinary book presents scenarios of one family's therapy experience and explains what underlies each encounter. You will discover the general patterns that are common to all families - stress, polarization and escalation, scapegoating, triangulation, blaming, and the diffusion of identity - and you will gain a vivid understanding of the intriguing field of family therapy.

Nobody affects us as deeply as our brothers and sisters - not parents, not children, not friends. From the time we - and they - are born, our siblings are our collaborators and co-conspirators, our role models and cautionary tales. They teach us how to resolve conflicts and how not to, how to conduct friendships and when to walk away.

Picture yourself as a young mother with a three-year-old daughter and a newborn at the playground. In the moment you’ve turned to the diaper bag, your toddler disappears—at first, all you can feel is terror, and then instinctively you look up—and there she is at the top of the slide, looking so proud of herself. At this moment, you might find yourself deluged with conflicting feelings, including anger and relief and resentment and gratitude and fear and even flashes of hate—you told her to wait for you before running off.

Committing to a long-term relationship is a big deal - especially if you have doubts. With a focus on common sense over emotion, world-renowned sex and relationship therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer offers straight-up advice on whether you should stick it out or cut your losses and move on.

Over 90 percent of couples experience some level of tension around money. In fact, money issues are the number one stressor in relationships. So many books try to fix the surface problems, such as how to budget and what to prioritize when it comes to finances, but the issues go much deeper than just a simple spreadsheet. How do men and women view money differently? What do most couples fight about? How can they get on the same page?

Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines investigates the political and cultural significance of marriages and other sexual encounters between Christians and Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula, from the Islamic conquest in the early eighth century to the end of Muslim rule in 1492. Interfaith liaisons carried powerful resonances, as such unions could function as a tool of diplomacy, the catalyst for conversion, or potent psychological propaganda.

When Kristin Meekhof lost her husband to cancer, she discovered what all widows learn: the moment you lose your partner, you must make crucial decisions that will impact the rest of your life. But where do you begin? This inspiring audiobook shows grieving widows what to expect and how to deal with the challenges of losing a life partner.

In this magisterial work, leading cultural critic Mary Eberstadt delivers a powerful new theory about the decline of religion in the Western world. The conventional wisdom is that the West first experienced religious decline, followed by the decline of the family. Eberstadt turns this standard account on its head. Marshalling an impressive array of research, Eberstadt shows that the reverse has also been true: the undermining of the family has further undermined Christianity itself.

In this must-have for anyone who wants to better understand their love life, a mathematician pulls back the curtain and reveals the hidden patterns—from dating sites to divorce, sex to marriage—behind the rituals of love. The roller coaster of romance is hard to quantify; defining how lovers...

It's time to stop leaving love to chance. Time to stop being too shy to meet someone, wondering why a promising first date wound up going nowhere, or realizing too late that it happened with the wrong person anyway. Nicholas Boothman has a much better way. Drawing on his expertise in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), Boothman charts a three-step plan that will help anyone find the love of his or her life.

In Why Have Kids?, Valenti explores these controversial questions through on-the-ground reporting, startling new research, and her own unique experiences as a mom. She moves beyond the black and white “mommy wars” over natural parenting, discipline, and work-life balance to explore a more nuanced reality: one filled with ambivalence, joy, guilt, and exhaustion. Would-be parents must navigate the decision to have children amidst a daunting combination of cultural expectations and hard facts.

El «amor triste» y trágico surge cuando pensamos que el amor es sinónimo de felicidad, y esta sinónimo de bienestar inmediato. El amor que defiende Jenkins va mucho más allá, porque rompe el tablero de juego tradicional y establece otras coordenadas. Contra la visión romántica, Jenkins propone un amor «eudaimónico» o de los «buenos espíritus». Es decir, que no debemos buscar nuestra media naranja en algún lugar del mundo, sino generar relaciones que nos hagan mejores; rodearnos, en suma, de buenos espíritus que contribuyan al florecimiento personal y al desarrollo de nuestras capacidades.

Are you ready to have kids? More and more gay men are turning to adoption and surrogacy to start their own families. An estimated two million American LBGTQ people would like to adopt and an estimated 65,000 adopted children are living with a gay parent. Unlike other parenting books that have whole chapters focusing on things specifically related to mothers (such as how to get the perfect latch when breastfeeding), this parenting book replaces those sections with things relevant to gay dads.

Whether you're the one with a fear of intimacy, or whether it's your partner who has the intimacy issues, the good news is there are things that can be done to overcome this relationship-crippling problem. Thanks to more and more scientific research, psychologists are beginning to understand more about the disorder and how people can get beyond the barriers they have placed in their own relationships. This audiobook will share many useful tips on how you and your partner can deal with the fear of intimacy and create a long-lasting and meaningful relationship for many years to come.

On May 23, 2009, Amanda Stott-Smith drove to the middle of the Sellwood Bridge in Portland, Oregon, and dropped her two children into the Willamette River. Forty minutes later, rescuers found the body of four-year-old Eldon. Miraculously, his seven-year-old sister, Trinity, was saved. As the public cried out for blood, Amanda was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to thirty-five years in prison.

Weaving together over 100 years of history with scenes from the contemporary landscape, Labor of Love offers a fresh feminist perspective on how we came to date the ways we do. This isn't a guide to "getting the guy". There are no ridiculous "rules" to follow. Instead Weigel helps us understand how looking for love shapes who we are and hopefully leads us closer to the happy ending that dating promises.

In the past thirty years, polygamy has become a flashpoint of conflict as Western governments attempt to regulate certain cultural and religious practices that challenge seemingly central principles of family and justice. In Forbidden Intimacies, Melanie Heath comparatively investigates the regulation of polygamy in the United States, Canada, France, and Mayotte.

Julie, 28, Chicago. All Eddie had were her photos—her green eyes and her wayward posture. Who made the first move doesn’t matter—or does it? Off jump, he could tell she was bad news and a great catch. But how to bring it to the real world? That’s what a whirlwind vacation in St. Barth’s is for. Follow along as one man tries to turn his supreme confidence and complete vulnerability into three little words.

Army Wives goes beyond the sound bites and photo ops of military life to bring listeners into the hearts and homes of today's military wives. Biank tells the story of four typical Army wives who, in a flash, find themselves in extraordinary circumstances that ultimately force them to redefine who they are as women and wives.