Overview

This important work examines in detail and depth how, as a consequence of changing technologies, diet, patterns of reproduction, and work, relations between children and parents have altered. The editors and contributors hold that biosocial science is particularly relevant to research on human family systems and parenting behavior. The family is the universal social institution in which the care of children is based and the turf where cultural tradition, beliefs, and values are transmitted to the young as they fulfill their biological potential for growth, development and reproduction. The biosocial perspective takes into account the biological substratum and the social environment as critical co-determinants of behavior and pinpoints areas in which contemporary human parental behavior exhibits continuities with and departures from, patterns evident throughout history. This work crosses disciplinary lines without ignoring their relevance to the broader themes of the book. School age pregnancy and parenthood is a powerful anchor for the dissection of large scale issues. The contributors deal in turn with ethnic and historical experience, examine normative and ethical issues, and cast new light on methodological concerns. What the editors call culturally-defined responses to basic needs helps explain both dramatic improvements in this area, and how they expand the challenge of teen reproduction. Contributors emphasize new demands for training and education to research this growing phenomenon. The book contributes to humane concerns as well as the scientific imagination.

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9780202303215

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Reviews

[This book] brings together a wide range of perspectives on a phenomenon that has been widely publicized as a critical social problem but little understood in a comparative framework... [T]his volume greatly expands the narrow perspective that prevails among many of those concerned with adolescent pregnancy... [H]ighly recommended. --Mercer L. Sullivan, Medical Anthropology Quarterly This book is essential reading for specialists, even if only to ensure that they do not use concepts like early or teenage pregnancy. To equate 18 year olds with 12-13 year olds in any society, or 16 year olds at different times and places is both socially and biologically absurd... The problem that makes the book important for all anthropologists--is its biological content. --Ronald Frankenberg, American Ethnologist School age pregnancy and parenthood are often referred to as a major social problem of epidemic proportions. However, prior to 1976, systematic research on school age pregnancy was rare, and very little progress has been made in coping with these issues... The editors of this book attempt to fill some of this gap by presenting papers that demonstrate the fruitfulness of a biosocial perspective in approaching these issues... This volume is successful in its intent--addressing... the basic issues raised... It is gratifying to see anthropologists working in an interdisciplinary context on problems that are both theoretically and methodologically challenging as well as relevant to pressing social issues. --Suzanne Frayser, American Anthropologist School-Age Pregnancy and Parenthood, edited by Lancaster and Hamburg, offers a very broad perspective on the topic of adolescent childbearing, and it is much better than you would guess... The nineteen chapters are written by anthropologists, sociologists, historians, psychiatrists, developmentalists, social workers, primatologists, and pediatricians... This volume offers a refreshing contrast to the social problem literature on adolescent pregnancies... [A] useful source of information on how this situation developed and on the societal tensions created by it. --Peter Uhlenberg, Contemporary Sociology

<p> [This book] brings together a wide range of perspectives on a phenomenon that has been widely publicized as a critical social problem but little understood in a comparative framework... [T]his volume greatly expands the narrow perspective that prevails among many of those concerned with adolescent pregnancy... [H]ighly recommended. <p> --Mercer L. Sullivan, Medical Anthropology Quarterly <p> This book is essential reading for specialists, even if only to ensure that they do not use concepts like early or teenage pregnancy. To equate 18 year olds with 12-13 year olds in any society, or 16 year olds at different times and places is both socially and biologically absurd... The problem that makes the book important for all anthropologists--is its biological content. <p> --Ronald Frankenberg, American Ethnologist <p> School age pregnancy and parenthood are often referred to as a major social problem of epidemic proportions. However, prior to 1976, systematic research on school age pregnancy was rare, and very little progress has been made in coping with these issues... The editors of this book attempt to fill some of this gap by presenting papers that demonstrate the fruitfulness of a biosocial perspective in approaching these issues... This volume is successful in its intent--addressing... the basic issues raised... It is gratifying to see anthropologists working in an interdisciplinary context on problems that are both theoretically and methodologically challenging as well as relevant to pressing social issues. <p> --Suzanne Frayser, American Anthropologist <p> School-Age Pregnancy and Parenthood, edited by Lancaster and Hamburg, offers a very broad perspective on the topic of adolescent childbearing, and it is much better than you would guess... The nineteen chapters are written by anthropologists, sociologists, historians, psychiatrists, developmentalists, social workers, primatologists, and pediatricians... This volume offers a refreshing contrast to the

[This book] brings together a wide range of perspectives on a phenomenon that has been widely publicized as a critical social problem but little understood in a comparative framework... [T]his volume greatly expands the narrow perspective that prevails among many of those concerned with adolescent pregnancy... [H]ighly recommended. --Mercer L. Sullivan, Medical Anthropology Quarterly This book is essential reading for specialists, even if only to ensure that they do not use concepts like early or teenage pregnancy. To equate 18 year olds with 12-13 year olds in any society, or 16 year olds at different times and places is both socially and biologically absurd... The problem that makes the book important for all anthropologists--is its biological content. --Ronald Frankenberg, American Ethnologist School age pregnancy and parenthood are often referred to as a major social problem of epidemic proportions. However, prior to 1976, systematic research on school age pregnancy was rare, and very little progress has been made in coping with these issues... The editors of this book attempt to fill some of this gap by presenting papers that demonstrate the fruitfulness of a biosocial perspective in approaching these issues... This volume is successful in its intent--addressing... the basic issues raised... It is gratifying to see anthropologists working in an interdisciplinary context on problems that are both theoretically and methodologically challenging as well as relevant to pressing social issues. --Suzanne Frayser, American Anthropologist School-Age Pregnancy and Parenthood, edited by Lancaster and Hamburg, offers a very broad perspective on the topic of adolescent childbearing, and it is much better than you would guess... The nineteen chapters are written by anthropologists, sociologists, historians, psychiatrists, developmentalists, social workers, primatologists, and pediatricians... This volume offers a refreshing contrast to the

Author Information

Beatrix A. Hamburg is at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, in the field of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. She is recipient of the Gallagher Award for Outstanding Achievement in Adolescent Medicine, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Alcohol, Drug Abuse and Mental Health Administration, and edits Behavioral and Psychosocial Issues in Diabetes.

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