Are you prepared to deliver effective services to a wide range of families and family situations?Diverse Families, Competent Families provides human service professionals with a portrait of the real lives and practical challenges of our nation's families as they face a new millennium. It examines family adaptation and competence in a variety of contexts and situations such as, day-to-day issues of coping and survival, as well as major milestones such as sending children off to school and becoming a caregiver for a family member. This unique book also spans multiple levels of families'existence, examining home, school, and the larger community to provide you with an understanding of the societal dynamics that can have an influence on families. With Diverse Families, Competent Families, you'll explore: the need to reexamine the ways that single parent families are viewed, and the risks inherent in over-generalizing about this type of family ways that men can make the most of their experience as fathers the relationship between parents'perceptions of teacher behavior and how willing they are to become involved at school the ways in which changes or disruptions in a family's functioning can influence their children's academic skills the results of an innovative intervention for "sandwiched" generation mothers who must simultaneously care for an older family member and attend to the needs of their own children ways to help Mexican immigrant parents feel more effective in their parenting rolesIn Diverse Families, Competent Families, you will discover new, and positive ways to view families, particularly ethnic minority families, low-income families, immigrant families, and families who are coping with specific life stressors such as financial loss, unemployment, divorce, and death.