Understanding personal relationships throughout the life course is one of the most crucial issues in the behavioral and social sciences. This book brings together perspectives from different disciplines on individual development and personal relationships across the life span. The book addresses two pertinent dimensions of personal relationships: 1) structures of relationship networks (e.g. kin vs non-kin, peripheral vs intimate, short-term vs long-term) and 2) processes (i.e. change or stability) and outcomes of personal relationships across the life span. The book stimulates discussion of personal relationships as resources for and outcomes of individual development throughout the life course. Different qualities of personal relationships serve as catalysts for individual development. At the same time, relationship qualities reflect changes of developing individuals. The book does not give exclusive priority to one phase of the human life span. Rather, each chapter addresses social development across the entire life span from childhood to later adulthood.
• Covers relationships across entire life span, from birth to old age (even pre-natality and after death) • Covers types of relationships people of different ages have and the functions underlying them - few volumes cover both • Authors represent cross-national collaboration across 3 continents
Contents
Contributors; Acknowledgements; 1. Coming together: a perspective on relationships across the life span Karen L. Fingerman and Frieder R. Lang; 2. Relationships as outcomes and contexts Toni C. Antonucci, Elizabeth S. Langfahl, and Hiroko Akiyama; 3. Child-parent relationships Peter Noack and Heike M. Buhl; 4. A dynamic ecological systems perspective on emotion regulation development within the sibling relationship context Victoria Hilkevitch Bedford and Brenda L. Volling; 5. Romantic and marital relationships Hans-Werner Bierhoff and Martina Schmohr; 6. Close relationships across the life span: toward a theory of relationship types Keiko Takahashi; 7. Friendship across the life span: reciprocity in individual and relationship development Rosemary Bliezner and Karen A. Roberto; 8. The consequential stranger: peripheral relationships across the life span Karen L. Fingerman; 9. Stress in social relationships: coping and adaptation across the life span Karen Rook, Dara Sorkin and Laura Zettel; 10. Social support and physical health across the life span: socioemotional influences Susan Turk Charles and Shahrzad Mavandadi; 11. Social cognition and social relationships Fredda Blanchard-Fields and Carolyn Cooper; 12. Dyadic fits and transactions in personality and relationships Franz J. Neyer; 13. Relational competence across the life span Robert O. Hansson, Eric L. Daleiden and Bert Hayslip, Jr; 14. Social motivation across the lifespan: a goal-resource-congruence model of social relationships Frieder R. Lang; 15. A lifetime of relationships mediated by technology Rebecca G. Adams and Michelle L. Stevenson; Indexes.
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