Parent-Child Relations Throughout Life

by Tim Unwin, Kathleen McCartney (Editor)

The study of parent-child relationships has long been of interest to behavioral scientists, both for its theoretical importance and for its practice and policy implications. There are, however, certain limitations to the knowledge in this area. First, research on parents and children is spread throughout a number of disciplines and as a consequence is not well integrated. Further, there has been little dialogue among researchers concerned with parents of young children and those interested in middle-aged and elderly parents and their offspring. The present volume predicates the notion that there is considerable similarity in the issues explored by researchers on different points of the life course. Contributions by leading scholars in psychology, sociology, and anthropology are organized into four sections, each of which contains a treatment of at least two stages in the life course. The sections cover attachment in early childhood and in later life, life course transitions, relationships within families, and the influence of social structural factors on parent-child relations. Although the chapters make important contributions to basic research and theory, many also deal with issues of public concern, such as day care, maternal employment, gay and lesbian relationships, and care of the elderly.

304 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 7, 2013

About the author

P.T.H. (Tim) Unwin is UNESCO Chair in ICT4D, Director of the ICT4D Collective and Professor of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London. He also serves as Chair of the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the UK, and Academic Advisor and External Examiner for the Institute of Masters of Wine.
From 2001-2004 he led the UK Prime Minister’s Imfundo: Partnership for IT in Education initiative based within the Department for International Development, and from 2007 he was Director and then Senior Advisor to the World Economic Forum’s Partnerships for Education initiative with UNESCO. He was previously Head of the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London (1999–2001), and has also served as Honorary Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) (1995-1997).
He has written or edited 15 books, and more than 200 papers and other publications, including "Wine and the Vine" (Routledge, 1991), "The Place of Geography" (Longman, 1992), as well as his edited "Atlas of World Development" (Wiley, 1994) and "A European Geography" (Longman, 1998). His research has taken him to some 25 countries across the world, from Estonia to Sierra Leone, and Ethiopia to Singapore, and he has worked on subjects as diverse as the role of banknotes as expressions of national identity, and the historical-geography of viticulture and the wine trade.
Over the last decade his research has concentrated on information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D), focusing especially on the use of ICTs to support people with disabilities, and to empower out of school youth. His latest collaborative book, entitled simply ICT4D, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2009.
In 2011, he received a Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, UK-China Fellowship for Excellence, and is a Visting Scholar at Peking University. He has also received a Royal Holloway Individual Teaching Award in 2006, and in 2011 received an Apple for the Teacher Award from the Student Union at Royal Holloway.