Marriage Sociology

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.

Forced by her father to marry a man three times her age, young Nujood Ali was sent away from her parents and beloved sisters and made to live with her husband and his family in an isolated village in rural Yemen. There she suffered daily from physical and emotional abuse by her mother-in-law and nightly at the rough hands of her spouse. Flouting his oath to wait to have sexual relations with Nujood until she was no longer a child, he took her virginity on their wedding night.

In her first book of comic strips, Emma reflects on social and feminist issues by means of simple line drawings, dissecting the mental load, ie all that invisible and unpaid organizing, list-making and planning women do to manage their lives, and the lives of their family members. Most of us carry some form of mental load - about our work, household responsibilities, financial obligations and personal life; but what makes up that burden and how it's distributed within households and understood in offices is not always equal or fair.

Clint Smith’s vibrant and compelling new collection traverses the vast emotional terrain of fatherhood, and explores how becoming a parent has recalibrated his sense of the world. There are poems that interrogate the ways our lives are shaped by both personal lineages and historical institutions. There are poems that revel in the wonder of discovering the world anew through the eyes of your children, as they discover it for the first time. There are poems that meditate on what it means to raise a family in a world filled with constant social and political tumult.

Let’s admit it: No marriage is perfect. Every couple has some misunderstandings and conflicts. However, happy couples can prevent their misunderstandings from escalating. Even if they argue emotionally, they never resort to psychological abuse. They always figure out a compromise, afterward. Some unhappy couples can’t deal with the tiniest disagreement. Any random word or action can trigger a violent conflict.

When police raided the Short Creek compound of the Fundamental Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in 1953, it soon became a political and publicity nightmare and eventually cost the governor of Arizona his job. From that point on, skittish public officials allowed the polygamist sect to practice its tenants unmolested for the next 50 years and turned a blind eye to child abandonment, kidnapping, statutory rape, incest, and massive tax and welfare fraud. But then Warren Jeffs, a new FLDS prophet, escalated the sect’s crimes to near madness.

As long as she can remember, Leah has had the mysterious feeling that she's searching for a twin - that she belongs as one of an intimate pair. It begins with friends, dance partners, and her own reflection in the mirror as she studies ballet growing up; continues with physical and emotional attractions to girlfriends in college; and leads her, finally, to Eric, whom she moves across the country for and marries. But her steadfast, monogamous relationship leaves her with questions she can't answer about her sexuality and her identity, so she and her husband decide to try an open marriage.

After her traditional engagement to her high school sweetheart falls apart, Liza Monroy faced the prospect of another devastating loss: the deportation of her best friend Emir. Desperate to stay in America, Emir tried every legal recourse to obtain a green card knowing that his return to the Middle East where gay men are often beaten and sometimes killed was too dangerous. So Liza proposes to Emir in efforts to keep him safe and by her side. After a fast wedding in Las Vegas, the couple faces new adventures and obstacles in both L.A. and New York City as they dodge the INS.

“Family Mobbing” is a strategic process of power and control. When daughters are mobbed, they’re not just shunned, attacked, or slandered: they’re also subjugated by a system of family rules that reinforces patriarchal oppression. What makes mobbing so insidious—and so under-reported—is that here, family itself is the site of violence, trauma, and shame.

Sociologist Margaret A. Hagerman zeroes in on affluent white kids to observe how they make sense of privilege, unequal educational opportunities, and police violence. In fascinating detail, Hagerman considers the role that they and their families play in the reproduction of racism and racial inequality in America. White Kids, based on two years of research involving in-depth interviews with white kids and their families, is a clear-eyed and sometimes shocking account of how white kids learn about race.

Little Jeff Pearce grew up in a postwar Liverpool slum. His father lived the life of an affluent gentleman whilst his mother was forced to steal bread to feed her starving children. Life was tough, and from the moment Jeff could walk he learned to go door to door, begging rags from the rich, which he sold down the markets. Leaving school at the age of 14, he embarked on an extraordinary journey and found himself, before the age of 30, a millionaire. Then, after a cruel twist of fate left him penniless, he, his wife and his children were forced out of their beautiful home.

Ben Mattlin's wife, ML, recalls falling in love with his confidence and sheer determination. On one of their earliest dates, he persuaded her to ride on his lap in his wheelchair on their way home from an Elvis Costello concert. Thirty years later, they still travel like this from time to time, undaunted by the curious stares following them down the street. But In Sickness and in Health is more than an "inspiring" story of how a man born with spinal muscular atrophy

More than a decade after the New York Times best-selling anthology The Bitch in the House spoke up loud and clear for a generation of young women, nine of the original contributors are back - along with 16 captivating new voices - sharing their ruminations from an older, stronger, and wiser perspective about love, sex, work, family, independence, body image, health, and aging: the critical flash points of women's lives today.

Every year, more than 3.5 million children under age 15 require medical treatment for sports injuries, nearly half of which are the result of simple overuse. Journalist Mark Hyman investigates the evolution of youth sports from mere games to full-on quests to turn children into tomorrow's superstar athletes by pushing them beyond physical and emotional limits. Opening up a crucial discussion about the perils of youth-sports culture today, Hyman offers the solutions and answers we need.

Look around you and think for a minute: Is America too crowded? For years, we have been warned about the looming danger of overpopulation: people jostling for space on a planet that's busting at the seams and running out of oil and food and land and everything else. It's all bunk. The population bomb never exploded. Instead, statistics from around the world make clear that since the 1970s, we've been facing exactly the opposite problem: people are having too few babies.

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.

For a woman traveling without her husband in the late nineteenth century, there was only one reason to take the train all the way to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, one sure to garner disapproval from fellow passengers. On the American frontier, the new state offered a tempting freedom often difficult to obtain elsewhere: divorce. In The Divorce Colony, writer and historian April White unveils the incredible social, political, and personal dramas that unfolded in Sioux Falls and reverberated around the country through the stories of four very different women.

The Supreme Court has issued a decision, but that doesn't end the debate. Now that the Supreme Court has ruled, Americans face momentous debates about the nature of marriage and religious liberty. Because the Court has redefined marriage in all 50 states, we have to energetically protect our freedom to live according to conscience and faith as we work to rebuild a strong marriage culture.

Romance is much more than a date night out or a week away. A passionate, long-lasting love requires two people who are sensually in love with life and each other. In this fascinating book, the authors explore research on seven activities that prompt passion, then describe how Mediterranean cultures practice these secrets in everyday life. Steve and Misty also share how these fun-to-apply secrets have taken their own marriage from confused to confident, from discouraged to delighted - and how you can do it, too.

Here is a revolutionary perspective on the relationship between religion and science that builds a bridge between people of all beliefs.