Managing to Make It: Urban Families and Adolescent Success: 1998 (John D & C T Macarthur FNDTN Ser Mental Health/DEV MF) - Hardcover

One of the myths about families in inner-city neighbourhoods is that they are characterized by poor parenting. The sociologist Frank Furstenberg and his colleagues explode this and other misconceptions about success, parenting, and socioeconomic advantage in this text. The book launches a series which focuses on how and why youth are able to overcome - rather than succumb to - social disadvantages. Based on more than 500 interviews and qualitative case studies of families in inner-city Philadelphia, the text reveals how parents managed different levels of resources and dangers in low-income neighbourhoods and how this management, rather than community involvement, contributed to the success of their children. The authors detail the factors that shape the trajectories of adolescents and in so doing provide information about programmes and services that should be useful to policy makers, sociologists, educators, and indeed anyone concerned with the fate of the urban poor.

Frank F. Furstenberg is the Zellerbach Family Professor of Sociology Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of many books, most recently Destinies of the Disadvantaged: The Politics of Teenage Childbearing. Glen H. Elder Jr. is the Howard W. Odum Distinguished Research Professor of Sociology and research professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.