Main description:

Address the issues vital for women and their families

To be most effective, family therapists need to understand precisely what policies are in place and how they influence families and their relationships. The Politics of the Personal in Feminist Family Therapy: International Examinations of Family Policy provides an interdisciplinary look at family public and social policies and the influence they have on families around the globeall from a feminist perspective. Diverse international family policy experts discuss policies family therapists need to know covering gender, ethnicity, religion, and age, and the effects on women and their families.

As international family public policy shifts and changes, women and their families' lives are altered in substantial and very personal ways. The Politics of the Personal in Feminist Family Therapy gives therapists a clear view of policies and diverse issues involving family policy, family relationships, and mental health. The book reveals the interaction between policy and practice, interdependence as a principle of child and family policy, ways to increase women's labor force participation without causing a fall in birth rates, and intergenerational equity debates around the world. Qualitative studies are presented detailing women's experiences of family policies' effects on their lives, including their resiliency in times of disruption and their viewpoints on life-altering events that are used to disempower them.

Topics in The Politics of the Personal in Feminist Family Therapy include:

the interaction of British social policy with feminist practice

supportive rather than punitive interventions in the lives of families

an examination of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's Babies and Bosses report

evaluation of international family policies of elder care

research into women's roles and the way they are shaped in areas of conflict

research on Puerto Rican and Dominican women's perceptions of divorce

The Politics of the Personal in Feminist Family Therapy is timely, stimulating reading for psychotherapists, family therapists, psychologists, social workers, counselors, feminists/womanists, sociologists, educators and students in family studies, women's studies, gender studies, and war studies, and professionals in family policy and family law.

Contents:

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Editor's Foreword (Anne M. Prouty Lyness)

FEMINIST EXAMINATIONS OF FAMILY POLICY

The Morphing of Family Therapy and Family Support: How British Social Policy and Feminist Practice Are Interacting (Steven Walker)

The Notion of Interdependence and Its Implications for Child and Family Policy (Susan Brooks and Ya'ir Ronen)

Babies and Bosses: Family Policy Directions in the OECD (Celia Briar)

A Response to the Babies and Bosses Report: The Effects of Policies on Therapy and the Influence of Therapists on Politics (Markie Twist)

Aging Societies and Intergenerational Equity Issues: Beyond Paying for the Elderly, Who Should Care for Them? (Steven K. Wisensale)

Wisensale's Analysis: Thoughts from a Feminist Family Therapist (Scott Johnson)

FEMINIST RESEARCH OF WOMEN'S EXPERIENCES

Counter-Spaces as Resistance in Conflict Zones: Palestinian Women Recreating a Home (Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian)

Puerto Rican and Dominican Women's Perceptions of Divorced Women (Joyce A. Arditti and Nancy P. Lopez)

Index

Reference Notes Included