Valarie King – författare

This book examines the implications of rural residence for adolescents and families in the United States, addressing both the developmental and mental health difficulties they face. Special attention is given to the unique circumstances of minority families residing in rural areas and how these families navigate challenges as well as their sources of resilience. Chapters describe approaches for enhancing the well-being of rural minority youth and their families. In addition, chapters discuss the challenges of conducting research within rural populations and propose new frameworks for studying these diverse communities. Finally, the volume offers recommendations for reducing the barriers to health and positive development in rural settings.

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Rural Families and Communities in the United States is a must-have resource for researchers, professors, clinicians, professionals, and graduate students in developmental psychology, family studies, public health as well as numerous interrelated disciplines, including sociology, demography, social work, prevention science, educational policy, political science, and economics.

This book examines the many roles of families in their members’ food access, preferences, and consumption. It provides an overview of factors – from micro- to macro-levels – that have been linked to food insecurity and discusses policy approaches to reducing food insecurity and hunger. In addition, it addresses the links between food insecurity and overweight and obesity. The book describes changes in the U.S. food environment that may explain increases in obesity during recent decades. It explores relationships between parenting practices and the development of eating behaviors in children, highlighting the importance of family mealtimes in healthful eating. The volume provides an overview of efforts to prevent or reduce obesity in children, with attention to minority populations and discusses research findings on targets for obesity prevention, including a focus on fathers as change agents who play a crucial, yet understudied, role in food parenting. The book acknowledges that with the current obesigenic environment in the United States and elsewhere around the world, additional and innovative efforts are needed to foster healthful eating behavior and orientations toward food in childhood and in families.

This book is a must-have resource for researchers, professors, clinicians, professionals, and graduate students in developmental psychology, family studies, public health as well as numerous interrelated disciplines, including sociology, demography, social work, prevention science, educational policy, political science, and economics. 

This book examines the similarities in children’s short- and long-term development and adjustment when they have been separated from their parents because of larger institutional forces. It addresses the unique circumstances and the similarities faced by parents and children under three different institutional contexts of separation: parental migration and deportation, parental incarceration, and parental military deployment. Chapters describe the difficulties faced by families in each of these circumstances, along with the challenges in conducting research under the multidimensional and dynamic complexities of parent-child separation. Finally, the volume offers recommendations for creating supportive structures and interventions for families facing separation that can bolster youth well-being in childhood and beyond.

· Parental migration.

· Parental incarceration.

· Parental military deployment.

· Undocumented migration and deportation.

· Child-parent relationship and child resilience and adjustment.

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Environmental Impacts on Families is a must-have resource for researchers, professors, and graduate students as well as clinicians, therapists, policymakers, and other related professionals in developmental psychology, family studies, environmental health and policy, social work, public health, educational policy and politics, economics, migration studies, and all interrelated disciplines.

This book examines the ways in which families can address racial and ethnic inequalities and racism and the impacts of these systems on health, education, and other family and family member outcomes. It addresses the historical context of race and racism in the United States, ethnic-racial socialization in families of color, and White parents’ attitudes and practices related to antiracist socialization. Chapters describe structural racism, debunk the myth of racial progress, and explore the representation of race and racism in family research; provide a historical account of ethnic-racial socialization literature, propose a model of ethnic-racial socialization of Latinx families; describe how racial socialization can be used therapeutically; and address White normativity, expand models of White racial socialization and learning, and grapple with the complexities of antiracist socialization. Finally, the volume offers recommendations for the field of family research to meaningfully include race and racism as well as provides suggestions for translational work in this area related to policies, programs, and practice.

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Family Socialization, Race, and Inequality in the United States is a must-have resource for researchers, professors, clinicians, professionals, and graduate students in developmental psychology, family studies, and sociology, as well as interrelated disciplines, including demography, social work, prevention science, public health, educational policy, political science, and economics.

This book examines how immigration law impacts U.S. immigrant families. It addresses how admission and border policies shape family formation and contribute to prolonged family separation; how immigration enforcement affects parenting practices; and how immigrants’ unique challenges spill over to influence broader kinship support networks. Chapters describe family reunification and separation policies; return migration and binational family life; how young immigrants reconnect with family abroad and navigate romantic relationships in the United States; parents’ engagement with surveilling actors and institutions; the impact of immigration policy on parenting, including during the pandemic; the health and well-being of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals)-eligible adults and their children; aging and family dynamics among Asian immigrant families; and the impact of immigrant legal status across generations. Finally, the volume offers recommendations for family researchers on ways to advance our understanding of the short and longer-term effects of immigration law and policies on the formation, structure, and functioning of immigrant families.

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Immigration Policy and Immigrant Families is a must-have resource for researchers, professors, and graduate students as well as clinicians, therapists, and other professionals in developmental psychology, family studies, sociology, and such interrelated disciplines as demography, social work, prevention science, public health, educational policy, political science, and economics.

This provocative volume is comprised of psychological, socioeconomic, and cultural perspectives on couple dynamics, particularly gender dynamics, and the future of marriage. Featuring data on married, cohabitating, male/female, and same-sex couples, the authors of the book''s chapters analyze the changing impacts of work, parenting, and the health benefits of marriage for men and women. Trajectories in the evolution toward gender equality provide the backdrop for discussions of women and men as partners, parents, and workers in contemporary society. Contributors also keep a sharp focus on the complexities of gender issues as they intersect with crucial contexts of cohort, class, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation.

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Gender and Couple Relationships documents social roles and social change with fascinating insight to advance research in fields of psychology, sociology, demography and economics and to the benefit of work organizations, policy makers, family and couple therapists and other mental health professionals.

This unique volume advances the literature on sleep and health by illuminating the impacts of family dynamics on individuals’ quality and quantity of sleep. Its lifespan perspective extends across childhood, adolescence, adulthood and older age considering both phenomena of individual development and family system dynamics, particularly parent-child and marital relationships. It extends, as well, to the broader contexts of social disparities in sleep as a significant health behavior.  Emerging concepts and practical innovations include ancestral roots of sleep in family contexts, sleep studies as a lens for understanding family health, and methodologies, particularly the use of actigraphy technology, for studying sleep patterns in individuals and families. This rich area of inquiry holds significant keys to understanding a vital human behavior and its critical role in physical, psychological, and relational health and wellbeing.

Among the topics covered:

·         Couple dynamics and sleep quality in an international perspective.

Family Contexts of Sleep and Health Across the Life Course will advance the work of researchers and students in the fields of population health, family demography and sociology, sleep research and medicine, human development, neuroscience, biobehavioral health, and social welfare, as well as that of policymakers and health and human services practitioners.