This volume focuses on the relationship between change in the family and change in the roles of women and men on contemporary industrial societies. Of central concern is whether change in gender roles has fuelled - or is merely historically coincident with - such changes in the family as rising divorce rates, increases in out-of-wedlock childbearing, declining marriage rates, and a growing disconnection between the lives of men and children. Covering more that twenty countries, including the USA, the countries of western Europe, and Japan, each essay in the volume is organized around an important theoretical or policy question; all offer new data analyses, and several offer prescriptions of how to fashion more equitable and humane family and gender systems. The second demographic transition and microeconomic theory of marital exchange are the dominant theoretical models considered; several chapters feature state-of-the-art quantitative analyses of large scale surveys.

The authors highlight how structural circumstances in countries with various degrees of industrialization are associated with specific policies. The analyses of women’s experiences reveal the variety of ways in which private patriarchy in families combines with public patriarchy in economies and states to create a system of domination which subordinates women. The authors detail how gender is constructed under specific political, economic, and cultural circumstances, and seek to understand how state policies with differing sensitivities to women’s issues have produced mixed outcomes for women and their families in the process of economic development.

This open access book examines the triangle between family, gender, and health in Europe from a demographic perspective. It helps to understand patterns and trends in each of the three components separately, as well as their interdependencies. It overcomes the widely observable specialization in demographic research, which usually involves researchers studying either family or fertility processes or focusing on health and mortality. Coverage looks at new family and partnership forms among the young and middle-aged, their relationship with health, and the pathways through which they act. Among the old, lifelong family biography and present family situation are explored. Evidence is provided that partners advancing in age start to resemble each other more closely in terms of health, with the health of the partner being a crucial factor of an individual’s own health. Gender-specific health outcomes and pathways are central in the designs of the studies and the discussion of the results. The book compares twelve European countries reflecting different welfare state regimes and offers country-specific studies conducted in Austria, Germany, Italy - all populations which have received less attention in the past - and Sweden. As a result, readers discover the role of different concepts of family and health as well as comparisons within European countries and ethnic groups. It will be an insightful resource for students, academics, policy makers, and researchers that will help define future research in terms of gender and public health.

As a result of widespread mistreatment and overt discrimination, women in the developing world often lack autonomy. This book explores key sources of female empowerment and discusses the current challenges and opportunities for the future.

This book examines issues concerning how developing countries will have to prepare for demographic and epidemiologic change. Much of the current literature focuses on the prevalence of specific diseases and their economic consequences, but a need exists to consider the consequences of the epidemiological transition: the change in mortality patterns from infectious and parasitic diseases to chronic and degenerative ones. Among the topics covered are the association between the health of children and adults, the strong orientation of many international health organizations toward infant and child health, and how the public and private sectors will need to address and confront the large-scale shifts in disease and demographic characteristics of populations in developing countries.

How families and child development in traditional societies are affected by western-style development; the Javenese of Indonesia and the Yoruba of Nigeria are cited as examples.