Family Social Work

Lauren Golden, founder of The Free Mama movement, teaches women how to have a life many have only dreamed about: one where they can make good money and be there for their families - without sacrificing one for the other and without guilt.

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.

You probably don't realise this, but every working day you replay and re-enact conflicts, dynamics and relationships from your past. Whether it's confusing an authority figure with a parent; avoiding conflict because of past squabbles with siblings; or suffering from imposter syndrome because of the way your family responded to success, when it comes to work we are all trapped in our own upbringings and the patterns of behaviour we learned while growing up.

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.

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.

As home life and work life become increasingly integrated in contemporary life, success (or failure) in either has an undeniable effect on the other. And while the profound events that began the 21st century have intensified the desire to focus on what matters most to us, there is still often a substantial gap between what we say matters most and the way we actually spend our time and money. Our credit-card and checking-account statements may clearly reflect this. But it is possible to keep both areas moving forward in positive ways.

In Work Mate Marry Love, Harvard Business School professor and former Barnard College president Debora L. Spar offers an incisive and provocative account of how technology has transformed our intimate lives in the past, and how it will do so again in the future. Surveying the course of history, she shows how marriage as we understand it resulted from the rise of agriculture, and that the nuclear family emerged with the industrial revolution. In their day, the street light, the car, and later the pill all upended courtship and sex.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Valerie Flournoy and Jerry Pinkney created a warmhearted intergenerational story that became an award-winning perennial. Since then children from all sorts of family situations and configurations continue to be drawn to its portrait of those bonds that create the fabric of family life.

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.

In a time when communal rituals and cultural ceremonies fail, longtime scholar, storyteller, and ceremonialist Stephen Jenkinson asks what it means to lose cultural inheritance. In examining matrimony and its ritual twin, patrimony, Matrimony contemplates culture-making, building and preserving cultural memory, and the ache of living in a world bereft of meaning and connection. There is a real and palpable consequence to turning away from public ceremony—and not just for the celebrants.

Myra Strober became a feminist on the Bay Bridge, heading toward San Francisco. It is 1970. She has just been told by the chairman of Berkeley's economics department that she can never get tenure. Driving home afterward, wondering if she got something out of the freezer for her family's dinner, she realizes the truth: she is being denied a regular faculty position because she is a mother. Flooded with anger, she also finds her life's work: to study and fight sexism, in the workplace, in academia, and at home.

Our relationships enrich our lives. Strong bonds with family, friends, and colleagues make our lives full and vibrant, but they can also be a source of distress or even trauma. Few relationships are perfect, and we often find ourselves let down by even the people we count on most; learning to navigate the challenges is vital to protecting our health and wellbeing. In this book the author presents a model for forgiveness that addresses how we either repair relationships when someone has harmed us, or how we move forward when relationships are beyond repair.

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.

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.