Age groups

This much-needed volume, part of the Ageing and the Lifecourse series, combines insights from different disciplines and real-life experiences to argue that the lifecourse perspective helps us understand causes and effects of population ageing.

This original book analyses the links between development, population ageing and the experiences of older people, especially in developing countries where more than 80% of the increase in people aged over 60 will take place over the coming decades.

The politics of parental leave policies addresses how and why, and by whom, particular policies are created and subsequently developed in particular countries. It examines the factors that bring about variations in leave policy, covering fifteen countries in Europe and beyond.

Challenging the ethics of care as a tradeable commodity, this book introduces the concept of ailment as a framework for understanding social care. Providing examples from Britain and Finland, it demonstrates how ailment shapes all societies, and by addressing the marketisation of care, the authors bring to light increasing inequalities in care.

How to respond to the needs of working parents has become a pressing social policy issue in contemporary Western Europe. This book highlights the politicising of parenthood in the Scandinavian welfare states - focusing on the relationship between parents and the state, and the ongoing renegotiations between the public and the private. 

Using the UK government’s play strategy for England (2008-10) as a case study, this is the first book to look in detail at children’s play within public policy. It is an essential tool for practitioners and campaigners around the world.

An examination of the early work of the innovative Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children Ethics and Law Committee. It will help anyone involved in other cohort studies to understand how ethical policies evolve.

Pushing forward new sociological theory, this book explores the theoretical and practical issues raised by ageing, and the associated problems of mental and physical frailty in later life.

This book provides a much-needed introductory guide to the issues surrounding pension policy and offers a critique of some of the dominant ideas and assumptions. Noting the intense debate that currently surrounds the subject, the book explores a wider view of the continuing issues about pension policy.

This book examines how pathologising ideas of failing, chaotic and dysfunctional families create a powerful consensus that Britain is in the grip of a ‘parent crisis’ and are used to justify increasingly punitive state policies.

Child welfare, state welfare and parenting issues are high on the UK policy agenda; this timely book examines recent policy developments, parental perspectives about parenting and child-rearing and parental rights to 'welfare state support'.

This collection explores a variety of job transitions for older people, including voluntary job moves, coming out of unemployment, temporary labour and passages into retirement. Each chapter hears the voices of older workers and employers, and is positioned within the context of various European countries, with important lessons for future policy.