Summary
Contents
Subject index
“I really enjoyed reading this book and found it to be chock-full of good information. It is well-written and readable.”
– Dorina Noble, Louisiana State University
“The information provided is accurate and certainly very current; a definite strength of the text.”
– Jessica Ziembroski, University of Notre Dame
With so many challenges facing families and governments in the United States today, this is an important time to be thinking about family policy. Respected family policy expert Shirley Zimmerman offers the only single-authored core textbook to provide a comprehensive and coherent introduction to family policy. The application of the frameworks to real life issues in family policy provides the opportunity for students to learn to think conceptually about family policy in relation to family problems. She clearly and cogently guides students through the foundations, policy frameworks, and implications of policy decisions for family well-being, ending with a carefully considered set of conclusions and implications for policy practice.
Family Policy offers concrete illustrative examples that bring the academic subject matter to life for students. Questions at the end of each chapter help students test their comprehension of the material, deepen their understanding of the subject matter, and spur classroom discussion.
Laying the Foundations
In these beginning chapters, I lay the foundations for talking about family policy. In Chapter 1, 1 deal with definitions of family policy and talk about the historical developments related to families in the United States and those developments that have led to the emergence of family policy as a field of activity, study, discourse, research, and other knowledge-producing activity. The chapter provides the context for the discussion that follows. The term family policy, although not a common household phrase, probably is familiar to more people today than in the past (Al Gore even used the term on The Oprah Winfrey Show during the 2000 presidential campaign). The second chapter talks about family policy discourse within the context of postmodernism ...
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