Young adults in the modern era face a completely differently set of challenges from previous generations. Tracing historical constructions of adolescence and their role in maintaining social order, James E. Cote and Anton L. Allahar persuasively argue that young people today constitute one of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable groups in society. Today, for the first time, teenagers and young adults in the United states, Canada, Japan, Scandinavia and Western Europe can expect to have a lower standard of living than their parents. Youth are conditioned to stay young linger and have, as a result, become socially and economically marginalized. Many young people amass credentials regardless of employment prospects and continue to live at home, often dependent on their parents, into their thirties. With fewer jobs available, young people are ironically targeted increasingly as consumers, rather than as producers. As new technologies continually reduce the work force and alter the social fabric, an entire generation of young people has struggled to keep up. What then does it mean to come of age in an advanced industrial or post-industrial society?
About the Author :
JAMES E. CÔTÉ is Professor of Sociology at the University of Western Ontario and is the author of Generation on Hold: Coming of Age in the Late Twentieth Century (also available from NYU Press).
Review :
&8220;Richman's extensive archive and innovative approach supplies an instructive guide to how scholars can integrate various approaches to the law to influence judges, legal advocates, and other interested parties."
-"Law and Politics Book Review",
#8220;You could learn about the law that governs LGBT parents and their children by reading all the 316 reported court opinions about them from the last half century--or you could read this one book. Through her analysis of majority and dissenting opinions and her interviews with lawyers, judges, and parents, Richman deftly demonstrates that the legal standard 'best interests of the child' and the terms 'family' and 'parent' necessarily--and imperfectly--evolve. The path forward requires understanding where we've been. Thanks to Richman, that path just got a whole lot clearer."
-Nancy D. Polikoff, author of "Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage: Valuing All Families under the Law"
"No one has written more comprehendingly or searchingly about the topic of gay and lesbian custody and adoption than Richman. Courting Change is a must-read for scholars, students, and activists interested in family law and lesbian and gay rights."
-Verta Taylor, University of California, Santa Barbara
"Richman's exemplary scholarship reminds us of the incremental gains made by queer advocates and just how much work we have left in front of us."
-"Law and Politics Book Review",
"This superb study renders a startlingly original verdict about the creative potential that inheres within the maddening indeterminacy of our family law. Richman is an incomparably astute and nimble guide through the thorny thicket of the judiciary's first half century of contradictory decisions in contests over child custody, adoption, visitation, and the dramatically shifting definitions of parent and family. Itself a model of judicious reasoning, Courting Change will enrich discourses on family transformation, law and society, and critical legal studies and provide an invaluable resource for legal advocates of LGBT parent rights.Y
-Judith Stacey, New York University
