104 books match the query 'Parenting' and 7 start with a

cover of A Catechism for Family Life

A Catechism for Family Life

Sarah Bartel

Catholic University of America Press, 2018

The purpose of A Catechism for Family Life: Insights from Catholic Teaching on Love, Marriage, Sex, and Parenting is to present the teachings of the Catholic Church as they relate to specific questions in marriage and family life. Many Catholics are under-catechized and have trouble both understanding and articulating Church teaching on sexuality and marriage to an increasingly challenging culture. Pope Francis, along with the fathers of the two recent Synods on the Family, have called for better formation for those who work in the area of marriage and family life (see Amoris Laetitia, 202).

To address this need, we gathered pertinent questions facing men, women, and pastoral workers in marriage and family life. We then found passages relevant to these questions by researching Church documents on marriage and family from the past one hundred years. These include papal encyclicals, apostolic exhortations, and addresses, Vatican II documents, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Mainstream media coverage of Church events and Church teaching leads many to misunderstand Catholic positions on marriage and family life. While the Catholic Church has developed a rich, detailed, and positive teaching on marriage, family, and sexuality, many Catholics do not have access to this teaching, buried as it is in lengthy Church documents which many find intimidating. Finding the relevant teaching to address specific questions is not always a simple task, either. This book’s main contribution is to present Church teaching relevant to marriage and family in one volume clearly organized by topic and question.
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cover of A House on Stilts: Mothering in the Age of Opioid Addiction

A House on Stilts

Mothering in the Age of Opioid Addiction

Paula Becker

University of Iowa Press, 2019

A House on Stilts tells the story of one woman’s struggle to reclaim wholeness while mothering a son addicted to opioids. Paula Becker’s son Hunter was raised in a safe, nurturing home by his writer/historian mom and his physician father. He was a bright, curious child. And yet, addiction found him.

More than 2.5 million Americans are addicted to opioids, some half-million of these to heroin. For many of them, their drug addiction leads to lives of demoralization, homelessness, and constant peril. For parents, a child’s addiction upends family life, catapulting them onto a path no longer prescribed by Dr. Spock, but by Dante’s Inferno. Within this ten-year crucible, Paula is transformed by an excruciating, inescapable truth: the difference between what she can do and what she cannot do.
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cover of A Mother’s Spiritual Dialogue, Meditations, and Elegies

A Mother’s Spiritual Dialogue, Meditations, and Elegies

Mary Carey

Iter Press, 2023

Key insights into women’s multi-dimensional roles as wives, widows, and mothers during the seventeenth century.

Lady Mary Carey (c. 1609–c. 1680) was a noblewoman who examined her life and expressed her views in a handwritten manuscript that she intended for self-reflection and for sharing with restricted audiences of family and friends, rather than for print publication. Her poetry and prose, composed and revised between 1650 and 1658, were important enough to her inner circle, however, that her autograph manuscript was carefully copied by another hand in 1681. In addition to providing us with key insights into women’s multidimensional roles as wives, widows, and mothers during the seventeenth century in England, Carey’s work teaches us a great deal about a woman’s deepest emotional and spiritual states while confronting the hardships of life—from the fears of childbearing to the sorrows over child loss to the terrors of war.
 
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cover of Adult Supervision Required: Private Freedom and Public Constraints for Parents and Children

Adult Supervision Required

Private Freedom and Public Constraints for Parents and Children

Rutherford, Markella B

Rutgers University Press, 2011

Adult Supervision Required considers the contradictory ways in which contemporary American culture has imagined individual autonomy for parents and children. In many ways, today’s parents and children have more freedom than ever before. There is widespread respect for children’s autonomy as distinct individuals, and a broad range of parenting styles are flourishing. Yet it may also be fair to say that there is an unprecedented fear of children’s and parents’ freedom. Dread about Amber Alerts and “stranger danger” have put an end to the unsupervised outdoor play enjoyed by earlier generations of suburban kids. Similarly, fear of bad parenting has not only given rise to a cottage industry of advice books for anxious parents, but has also granted state agencies greater power to police the family.

Using popular parenting advice literature as a springboard for a broader sociological analysis of the American family, Markella B. Rutherford explores how our increasingly psychological conception of the family might be jeopardizing our appreciation for parents’ and children’s public lives and civil liberties.

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cover of All that We Ask of You Is to Always Be Happy

All that We Ask of You Is to Always Be Happy

Bridget Bell

CavanKerry Press, 2025

Poems that offer an honest portrayal of the complex realities of motherhood, including the devastating effects of postpartum depression.

Maternal mental illness is an ongoing health crisis and deserves awareness, not only in the medical world but in the poetry world, too. Bridget Bell’s All that We Ask of You Is to Always Be Happy offers support to current mothers, mothers-to-be, family members of people suffering from perinatal mental illnesses, OB-GYNs, nurses, and any other healthcare providers. Bell uses various poetic forms to shed light on the challenges that come with motherhood, including the physical and emotional challenges of childbirth while celebrating the beauty of women’s strength and resilience. Written with deep care and fearlessness, Bell’s debut collection is both an educational tool and a powerful component of recovery in that shares others’ similar stories.
 
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cover of Amy Signs: A Mother, Her Deaf Daughter, and Their Stories

Amy Signs

A Mother, Her Deaf Daughter, and Their Stories

Rebecca Willman Gernon

Gallaudet University Press, 2012

“Thirty-seven years ago, I vowed to write a truthful book about raising a deaf child.” Rebecca Willman Gernon followed through on her promise with her deaf daughter Amy Willman in this extraordinary new narrative. Many stories have been told about a parent’s struggle to help her deaf child succeed in a mostly hearing world. Amy Signs marks a signature departure in that both Rebecca and Amy relate their perspectives on their journey together.

       When she learns of 11-month-old Amy’s deafness in 1969, Rebecca fully expresses her anguish, and traces all of the difficulties she endured in trying to find the right educational environment for Amy. The sacrifices of the rest of her family weighed heavily on her, also. Though she resolved to place four-year-old Amy in Nebraska’s residential school for deaf students, the emotional toll seemed too much to bear.

       Amy’s view acts as the perfect counterpoint. Interwoven with her mother’s story, Amy’s account confirms that signing served her best. She summarizes life in boarding school as “laughter and homesickness.” She laughed with all of her deaf friends, though felt homesick at times. Amy thanks her mother for the gift of sign, asserting that a mainstream education would never have led her to earn a master’s degree and later teach American Sign Language at the University of Nebraska. Amy Signs is a positive albeit cautionary tale for parents of deaf children today whose only choice is a mainstreamed education.

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cover of Attachments: Essays on Fatherhood and Other Performances

Attachments

Essays on Fatherhood and Other Performances

Lucas Mann

University of Iowa Press, 2024

Lucas Mann turns his attention, tenderness, self-reflection, and humor to contemporary fatherhood. He looks closely at all the joys, frustrations, subtleties, and contradictions within an experience that often goes under-discussed. At once intimate and expansive, Mann chronicles his own life with his young daughter, but also looks outward to the cultural and political baggage that surrounds and permeates these everyday experiences. Moving through memoir, lyric essay, literary analysis, and pop culture criticism, Attachments treats the subject of fatherhood with the depth, curiosity, and vivid emotion that it deserves.
 
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