In MBT for families (MBT-F), psychoeducation leads to learning about mentalizing problems. Techniques that stabilize mentalizing in all family members are discussed. The stabilizing of individual and interactive mentalizing in the family is achieved through exploration of identified problems using the MBT Loop to bring the family members together so as to create a sense of collectively mentalizing the moment, while also holding on to the idea that each family member has a different perspective. The aim is to generate perspectives from all family members, and then to work on a shared perspective. Exercises are used to enhance this process, and these are illustrated using clinical examples.

This chapter discusses ways in which the Arthurian legend was transformed between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries by French and English romance writers, focusing on the introduction of new characters, changes to the roles of traditionally central characters, and conflicting loyalties and values. Arthur is often displaced from the central role in the plot and can seem passive and ineffective. Gawain is the Top Knight in the English tradition, but Lancelot (a French addition) becomes increasingly important, not least because of his long affair with the queen, which is a contributing factor to the final collapse of Camelot. Family matters increasingly lead to conflicts of loyalties: Morgan le Fay is hostile to her brother, Arthur, and his Orkney nephews grow in number, some loyal but some treacherous. Mordred is not only Arthur’s nephew but sometimes also his son by incest, destined to kill his father. The Grail quest features first Perceval and then Galahad (Lancelot’s illegitimate son); its spiritual values challenge the ethos of secular chivalry and ennobling love. Does this quest bring glory to Arthur’s Round Table, or is it a critique of a fatally flawed society? Important variations in medieval approaches to the legend appear through this period.

Chapter 2 provides an overview of caregiver discrimination in the workplace. It provides a history of the gendered norms that still affect our workplaces and our lives. It describes the three facets of what I call the “caregiver conundrum”—(1) not enough time; (2) not enough money and opportunities for advancement; and (3) the stereotypes affecting caregivers in the workplace. The chapter then discusses several “lackluster laws” that fail to provide sufficient protection for working caregivers. These include Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which protects against sex discrimination; the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which protects against discrimination based on pregnancy; and the Family and Medical Leave Act, which mandates job-protected leave in certain circumstances. This chapter demonstrates how inadequate the protections are for most workers who are trying to balance work and family, despite these three laws.

This chapter considers the private lives of the German generals. As men who are typically studied exclusively for their military roles, this chapter uses their letters to ask questions about how they expressed themselves in the ‘private’ sphere. Not surprisingly, their wives, to varying degrees, served as confidants as well as sources of strength. The role of the prominent military wife is also directly discussed with reference to letters by Margarete Guderian – the only available collection from one of the generals’ wives. The role of family is discussed, including the presence of military-age sons who were serving on the Eastern Front in 1941. The demands of senior command took a serious toll on each of the men and the letters over the course of 1941 chart their exposure to physical danger as well as psychological pressure. Coping mechanisms employed by the generals, such as free-time hobbies or spiritual beliefs are also evaluated from their writings. Overall, the value of the correspondence in illuminating a much more rounded view of the panzer generals charged with leading Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union is highlighted.

Africans were commodities during chattel capitalism, producing that was appropriated by Whites. This was instrumental discrimination: racially differential treatment because it was profitable. Chattel capitalism was ended by government policy, during the US civil war. White control of Black citizenship was the core element of structural racism during servitude capitalism. Instrumental discrimination included convict leasing, debt peonage, sharecropping, and the chain gang: policies that held down black wages and wealth accumulation, reduced public expenditure on services to the African American community, and public infrastructure that transferred wealth from Blacks to Whites. Lynching was used to enforce racial identity norms. Labor market discrimination increased during the Nadir, even as Blacks closed the skills gap with Whites. Black self-help was also expressed in The Great Migration and Urbanization (1914–1965). African American self-help, President Roosevelt’s New Deal, World War II era changes in federal hiring and the utilization of Black troops, and President Johnson’s Great Society gave rise to racialized managerial capitalism. Thereafter, exclusion is expressed as differential socioeconomic opportunities due to racial wealth disparity and identity norms governing access to resources, especially managerial power, along with relatively greater injustice in the criminal legal system and greater exposure to hate crimes.

Alevtina Kuzicheva surveys the intense family life that was the one constant of Chekhov’s existence by examining Chekhov’s correspondence with his parents, brothers, sister, and wife.

In this chapter, we begin by examining the term ‘family’ and how it is defined in different contexts. As we examine these different definitions you will come to understand the complexity of ‘family’ and the diverse ways in which families can be defined. We then explore some of the structural and functional definitions of the family before moving towards examining some of the underlying assumptions made about families within wider society, including how these assumptions might position families in educational contexts. Through this exploration, some of your own underlying assumptions may be challenged as you come to understand the importance of educators and families working together to achieve the best educational outcomes for children. The chapter continues by discussing the idea of a subjective definition of families and what this might mean for you as an educator. We then move toward the term ’partnership’ and explore some of the barriers and opportunities to partnership work and how they can be harnessed and/or overcome. The chapter concludes by introducing the notion of innovative partnership work, your role in it as an educator, and the importance of this work in the educational context.

Chapter 5 recounts the story of Giorgio Amendola from his birth in 1907 through the complexities of his family life and politics until his father’s death. His father’s murder and his combative personality ensured that he dismissed liberal Anti-Fascism as hopelessly feeble and, in 1929, he joined the Communist Party of Italy (PCdI). He soon left for Paris and for his education as a party chief in the making, notably from the Machiavellian Palmiro Togliatti, his ‘second father’. Giorgio loved Paris, City of the Revolution; he did not visit Leningrad or Moscow until after 1945. A young working-class woman called Germaine Lecocq, almost the embodiment of Paris, came suddenly into his life in a story of love at first sight. Unlike his parents’ marriage, it remained that way. The couple’s marriage and first full sexual encounter occurred on the prison island of Ponza. Not long afterwards, a daughter was born with some difficulty in Rome; Germaine’s mother arrived and thereafter remained part of their family. Eventually they moved back to Paris, and, after a brief time in Tunisia, they stayed in France until Giorgio crossed the Italian border to become a fighting partisan in April 1943.

The rise in prison populations in the 1980s coupled with the silencing of the voices of those in prison compromised the visibility of some Black writers. Writers who were not incarcerated began to write about the prison experience, especially in terms of its effect on families. Although that trend can be seen earlier and later, the neoconservative 1980s catalyzed the need for a new approach to Black prison writing that would enable prisoners’ stories to be told by family members. At the vanguard of that movement is John Edgar Wideman whose willingness to tell the story of his incarcerated brother changed the trajectory of contemporary African American literature and its intersection with prison writing. This chapter utilizes the lens of Michel Foucault’s concept of the carceral archipelago in order to advance a broader literary/cultural critique. Foucault enables us to extend Wideman’s inquiry outward from prison into a series of institutions designed to preserve and promote the idea of racial hierarchy despite mythological national claims of opportunity, democracy, equality, and equal justice for all well after the abolition of slavery and the end of legal segregation.

Chapter 2 implicates how the definition of the Black middle class has evolved over time and how the earlier research underlying such definitions has principally focused on Black married-couple families with children, and largely overlooked those who live SALA lifestyles. Chapter 2 addresses this gap in the literature by interrogating how those within the Love Jones Cohort conceptualize themselves as members of the Black middle class and how they define the Black middle class more generally. Chapter 2 also questions whether the emergence and presence of the Cohort complicates established definitions of the Black middle class. Chapter 2 demonstrates that, in general, those within the Cohort conceptualized middle-classness according to broader definitions of the Black middle class, in terms that align with the scholarship outlining objective, subjective, and a combination of both measures. Chapter 2 documents how education and income are central to the way Cohort members judge their (and others’) middle-class status, and associated subjective measures, such as education-related networks and the lifestyle commodities, as well as activities that a middle-class income provides.

Chapter 6 outlines how the existence of the Love Jones Cohort offers a fresh lens with which to explore the lifestyle characteristics of the Black middle class. Earlier research on the Black middle class – who have often been equated with married-couple families – asserts that they face the ongoing problem of having to stabilize their class position. This can take on one or more forms, including developing and exemplifying behavior patterns and lifestyles appropriate to the middle class. Chapter 6 unpacks the lifestyle strategies and attributes of the Love Jones Cohort and examines how the decision to not marry and instead continue to live alone may impact such attempts to stabilize their class position. Chapter 6 emphasizes that own space and life, freedom, and self-reliance emerge as central aspects of the Cohort lifestyle, as well as situational loneliness. The Cohort places a great emphasis on the human interaction and companionship provided by family, friends, and social networks and discusses how the pressures emanating from family and friends help shape their lifestyles and navigate the ebbs and flows that arise.

In this final chapter, we offer some comparative analysis and tentative concluding comments. We begin with an examination of different aspects of the law and practice of advance directives (ADs) in these jurisdictions, identifying similarities and trends. With this summary of the various connections between these jurisdictions, we then offer some broader reflections on two key features common to Asian jurisdictions, the role of religion and the role of the family. We conclude with a critical examination of this emerging picture of ADs in Asia, arguing that these insights suggest that distinctive patterns of “generative accommodation” are observable as a way of aligning international consensus with localised traditions and expectations in a more nuanced account of the meeting ground between the East and the West.