Handbook of Parenting: Volume 3: Being and Becoming a Parent, Third Edition, Edition 3

Volume 3, Being and Becoming a Parent, considers a large cast of characters responsible for parenting, each with her or his own customs and agenda, and examines what the psychological characteristics and social interests of those individuals reveal about what parenting is. Chapters in Part I, on The Parent, show just how rich and multifaceted is the constellation of children’s caregivers. Considered first are family systems and then successively mothers and fathers, coparenting and gatekeeping between parents, adolescent parenting, grandparenting, and single parenthood, divorced and remarried parenting, lesbian and gay parents and, finally, sibling caregivers and nonparental caregiving. Parenting also draws on transient and enduring physical, personality, and intellectual characteristics of the individual. The chapters in Part II, on Becoming and Being a Parent, consider the intergenerational transmission of parenting, parenting and contemporary reproductive technologies, the transition to parenthood, and stages of parental development, and then chapters turn to parents' well-being, emotions, self-efficacy, cognitions, and attributions as well as socialization, personality in parenting, and psychoanalytic theory. These features of parents serve many functions: they generate and shape parental practices, mediate the effectiveness of parenting, and help to organize parenting.