In just a few decades, sport has undergone a radical gender transformation. However, Cheryl Cooky and Michael A. Messner suggest that the progress toward gender equity in sports is far from complete. The continuing barriers to full and equal participation for young people, the far lower pay for most elite-level women athletes, and the continuing dearth of fair and equal media coverage all underline how much still has yet to change before we see gender equality in sports.The chapter...

Is sport good for kids? When answering this question, both critics and advocates of youth sports tend to fixate on matters of health, whether condemning contact sports for their concussion risk or prescribing athletics as a cure for the childhood obesity epidemic. Child’s Play presents a more nuanced examination of the issue, considering not only the physical impacts of youth athletics, but its psychological and social ramifications as well.The eleven original scholarly es...

Winner of the 2010 Distinguished Publication Award from the Association for Women in PsychologyWinner of the 2010 Susan Koppelman Award for the Best Edited Volume in Women’s Studies from the Popular Culture AssociationWe have all seen the segments on television news shows: A fat person walking on the sidewalk, her face out of frame so she can't be identified, as some disconcerting findings about the "obesity epidemic" stalking the nation are read by a dise...

A landmark volume exploring covert bias, prejudice, and discrimination with hopeful solutions for their eventual dissolutionExploring the psychological dynamics of unconscious and unintentional expressions of bias and prejudice toward socially devalued groups, Microaggressions and Marginality: Manifestation, Dynamics, and Impact takes an unflinching look at the numerous manifestations of these subtle biases. It thoroughly deals with the harm engendered by ...

More and more, fathers are deciding to stay at home and care for their children rather than work full-time outside of the home. More and more, Canadian families are lead by single fathers. Shining a spotlight on the lives of stay at home dads and single fathers, Do Men Mother? provides groundbreaking evidence of dramatic changes in mothering and fathering in Canada. Using evidence gathered in a four-year in-depth qualitative study, including interviews with over 100 fathers - from t...

Gendering Bodies explains how the social world shapes our physical bodies and how our bodies shape the social world. In this remarkable investigation into contemporary ideas of gender, sociologists Crawley, Foley, and Shehan argue that bodies are constantly being gendered, or encouraged to participate in (heterosexual) gender conformity. This engendering influences nutrition practices, work and employment choices, dieting, working out, cosmetic surgery, sexual practices, and train...

In sheer numbers, no form of government control comes close to the police stop. Each year, twelve percent of drivers in the United States are stopped by the police, and the figure is almost double among racial minorities. Police stops are among the most recognizable and frequently criticized incidences of racial profiling, but, while numerous studies have shown that minorities are pulled over at higher rates, none have examined how police stops have come to be both encouraged and instituti...

In today's world, it is more acceptable to be depressed than to be lonely-yet loneliness appears to be the inevitable byproduct of our frenetic contemporary lifestyle. According to the 2004 General Social Survey, one out of four Americans talked to no one about something of importance to them during the last six months. Another remarkable fact emerged from the 2000 U.S. Census: more people are living alone today than at any point in the country's history—fully 25 percent of households cons...

This book provides a concise but comprehensive review of the full range of classic and contemporary theories of crime. With separate chapters on the nature and use of criminological theory as well as theoretical application, the authors render the difficult task of explaining crime more understandable to the introductory student. All of the main theories in criminology are reviewed including classical and rational choice, biological, psychological, and evolutionary, social structural, soci...

Winner of the Outstanding Publication Award, Section on Aging and the Life Course, American Sociological AssociationSenior citizens from all walks of life face a gauntlet of physical, psychological, and social hurdles. But do the disadvantages some people accumulate over the course of their lives make their final years especially difficult? Or does the quality of life among poor and affluent seniors converge at some point? The End Game investigates whether persistent socio...

Very few PreK-12 teachers are adequately trained to address the gender identity and sexual identity of their students in a developmentally-appropriate and pedagogically-sound manner. Yet responsible adults—parents, educators, pre-service teachers, coaches, religious instructors, camp administrators and school counselors— must help children navigate the inherently diverse, increasingly complex world of gender and sexuality in the twenty-first century.From the Dress-Up Corner to the ...

Demonstrating the power and potential of educators working together to use literacy practices that make changes in people's lives, this collaboratively written book blends the voices of participants in a teacher-led professional development group to provide a truly lifespan perspective on designing critical literacy practices. It joins these educators’ stories with the history and practices of the group - K-12 classroom teachers, adult educators, university professors, and community activi...