Full Description
Offering a diverse variety of perspectives, Exploring Family Theories, Fourth Edition, is a combined text/reader that integrates theory with research and applications. In each chapter, Suzanne R. Smith and Raeann R. Hamon present the history, scholarship, and critiques of one principal family theory in a concise manner. Numerous examples and illustrations augment and clarify content, while application questions help students relate these theories to the
real world. After each chapter, a follow-up journal article exemplifies how that particular theory is used to guide actual research.
Contents
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
New to the Fourth Edition
Introduction
What is Theory?
Family Theory
Text Organization
1. Symbolic Interactionism Theory
History
Basic Assumptions
Primary Terms and Concepts
Common Areas of Research and Application
Critique
Application
SAMPLE READING: We Are Family: Black Lesbian Couples Negotiate Rituals with Extended Families, by Valerie Q. Glass
2. Structural Functionalism Theory
History
Basic Assumptions
Primary Terms and Concepts
Common Areas of Research and Application
Critique
Application
SAMPLE READING: Who Now Reads Parsons and Bales?: Casting a Critical Eye on the "Gendered Styles of Caregiving" Literature, by Michael Carroll and Lori Campbell
3. Family Development Theory
History
Basic Assumptions
Primary Terms and Concepts
Common Areas of Research and Application
Critique
Application
SAMPLE READING: Risk and resilience factors in families under ongoing terror along the life cycle, by Michal Finklestein
4. Family Stress Theory
History
Basic Assumptions
Primary Terms and Concepts
Common Areas of Research and Application
Critique
Application
SAMPLE READING: An Application of Family Stress Theory to Clinical Work with Military Families and other Vulnerable Populations, by Kathrine Sullivan
5. Family Systems Theory
History
Basic Assumptions
Primary Terms and Concepts
Common Areas of Research and Application
Critique
Application
SAMPLE READING: Adolescents' Perceptions of Family Belonging in Stepfamilies, by Valerie King, Lisa M. Bond, and Maggie L. Thorsen
6. Human Ecological Theory
History
Basic Assumptions
Primary Terms and Concepts
Common Areas of Research and Application
Critique
Application
SAMPLE READING: Using an Ecological Framework to Understand Men's Reasons for Spousal Abuse: An Investigation of the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey 2007, by Rifat Akhter and Janet K. Wilson
7. Conflict Theory
History
Basic Assumptions
Primary Terms and Concepts
Common Areas of Research and Application
Critique
Application
SAMPLE READING: Does Relative Out-Group Size in Neighborhoods Drive Down Associational Life of Whites in the U.S.? Testing Constrict, Conflict and Contact theories, by Michael Savelkoul, Miles Hewstone, Peer Scheepers, and Dietlind Stolle
8. Social Exchange Theory
History
Basic Assumptions
Primary Terms and Concepts
Common Areas of Research and Application
Critique
Application
SAMPLE READING: The Sweetness of Forbidden Fruit: Interracial Daters are More Attractive than Intraracial Daters, by Karen Wu, Chuansheng Chen, and Ellen Greenberger
9. Feminist Family Theory
History
Basic Assumptions
Primary Terms and Concepts
Common Areas of Research and Application
Critique
Application
SAMPLE READING: Feminist Ethnography in Cyberspace: Imagining Families in the Cloud, by Sophie Bjork-James
10. Biosocial Theory
History
Basic Assumptions
Primary Terms and Concepts
Common Areas of Research and Application
Critique
Application
SAMPLE READING: Aging in the Biosocial Order: Repairing Time and Cosmetic Rejuvenation in a Medical Spa Clinic by Stephen Katz and Jessica Gish
Epilogue
Index
