Beatrix A. Hamburg

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.

The aim of the book is to enhance understanding of the great danger and some sources of animosity between human groups and to focus on developmental processes by which it should be possible to diminish orientations of ethnocentrism, prejudice and hatred. Teaching prejudice and ethnocentrism to children has, all too often in so many places, been virtually automatic and has been conducive to terrible harm in the past. The dangers of hateful outlooks are likely to be much greater as the twenty-first century unfolds. Scholarship and practice in international relations, including war and peace issues, have gravely neglected the crucial psychological aspects of these terrible problems and the educational opportunities. There is a fruitful conjunction of developmental and social psychology in understanding such vital issues and in working toward a more humane, democratic and safe course of adolescent and child development than can in turn affect the safety of humanity in the long run. There are many intriguing examples of research, educational innovations, and visionary leadership in several countries. Most of the book is devoted to promising lines of inquiry and innovation that foster a more humane and less violent development in childhood and adolescence. It should be of interest to scholars, to the education community, and to a well-educated and socially concerned segment of the community.