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Families are undergoing dramatic changes in our society. Our tradi tional views are being challenged by new family arrangements. These new family arrangements are forcing redefinitions of what consti tutes a family and raising significant issues regarding the potential developmental consequences for children in these families, if such exist. Moreover, the ramifications of redefined families and their bear ing on children's development extend into the legal, political, and societal arenas. This book focuses on the relationships between di verse family arrangements and children's development, as well as on legal and social implications. Our interest in this area emanates from our experience in directing the Fullerton Longitudinal Study. In the course of this investigation, we observed families undergoing transformation, most commonly in maternal employment and marital status. Our initial research on the role of maternal employment in children's development provided the scientific foundation for our interest. Just as we feel that maternal employment and dual-earner families should be comprehensively re searched regarding their relationships to children's development, we also believe that other contemporary family arrangements should receive extensive attention in the developmental literature. Hence, the idea for this book emerged.
List of contents
I. Introduction.- 1 Demography and Changing Families: Introduction to the Issues.- II. Alternative Families and Children's Development.- 2 Primary-Caregiving Fathers in Intact Families.- 3 Role of Maternal and Dual-Earner Employment Status in Children's Development: A Longitudinal Study from Infancy through Early Adolescence.- 4 Revolution and Reassessment: Child Custody in Context.- 5 The Gap between Psychological Assumptions and Empirical Research in Lesbian-Mother Child Custody Cases.- 6 Gay Dads.- 7 Custodial Grandparenting: Implications for Children's Development.- III. Overview.- 8 Impact of Redefined Families on Children's Development: Conclusions, Conceptual Perspectives, and Social Implications.
