while not exacerbating inequality. But this is a welcome critique, as it means that the editors and

contributors have given us much to think about—and much more research to do.

Sarah Winslow-Bowe

University of Pennsylvania, Department of Sociology,

3718 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104, United States

E-mail address: swinslow@ssc.upenn.edu.

Deborah Ghate, Neal Hazel, Parenting in Poor Environments: Stress, Support, and

Coping, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London, 2002, ISBN: 1-84310-069-X, 305 pp.

In Parenting in Poor Environments: Stress, Support and Coping authors Deborah Ghate and

Neal Hazel report the findings of a nationally representative British study conducted with over

1700 parents or caregivers of children under 16 years of age. In a refreshing departure from

problem focused family research, the aim of the study reported in this book is to present the

caregivers’ perspective of their parenting resilience in the face of challenging circumstances.

Using Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model as the theoretical frame for the research, bpoorenvironmentsQ takes on a much more complex meaning than poverty alone and incorporates

factors associated with low social cohesion and social class. The book consists of five sections

that take the reader from conceptualization and methodology, to data rich descriptions of

parenting stress, social support, and coping, concluding with well-reasoned implications for

policy and practice.

The introductory chapter provides a solid theoretical foundation for this survey of main

caregivers and qualitative follow-up interviews of forty study participants. Parenting in poor

environments is conceptualized as a system buffered by resiliency factors located at the level of

the individual, family, and community. The primary goal of the study is to explore, from the

caregivers’ perspective, how factors in these three subsystems interact to make parenting easier.

The authors largely are successful at presenting the voices of caregivers through strategic and

liberal use of qualitative data throughout the book.

The researchers created a multi-dimensional measure of parenting environment, moving beyond

poverty as a single indicator to capture other salient factors that contribute to a less than optimal

parenting context. Building on the maltreatment literature, they developed the Poor Parenting Index

(PPI) which incorporates indicators of poverty, social cohesion, and socio-economic status. Areas

within the U.K. were selected if they were in the upper 30% of the national distribution on the PPI.

Holding parenting environment constant, the study explored the relationship between stress at the

individual, family, community and neighborhood level, various types of social support, and coping.

Qualitative interviews were conducted with parents in a range of especially difficult personal or

family situations to shed light on the meaning of the survey findings.

The results of this complicated, multilayered study are presented in a clear and

understandable fashion that should be accessible to even those with very little research

background. The yield, a nuanced picture of parenting resilience in poor environments, provides

important information about the strengths parent draw upon and the challenges they face. For

instance, level of neighborhood distress emerged as a less important predictor of coping than

individual and family level characteristics. While parents were aware of the shortcomings of

their neighborhood, they were generally positive about their local community and own support

doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2005.11.005

Book reviews 857

networks. These and other study findings are the foundation for a thoughtful and creative

concluding chapter on the implications for policy and practice.

Overall, I was extremely positive about the research this book is based upon and the authors’

ability to convey the findings and build a rationale for practice implications. A limitation of the

study is the lack of diversity in the study sample. Almost 90% of the sample is white, although

families of color are disproportionately represented in poor communities. It would be interesting,

and make a significant contribution, if the study could be replicated with communities of color.

Despite this shortcoming, Parenting in Poor Environments is an important addition to the

literature on family well-being, one that will be useful to researchers and practitioners alike.

Maureen Marcenko

School of Social Work, University of Washington, Seattle,

WA 98105-6299, United States

E-mail address: mmarcenk@u.washington.edu.

Tel.: +1 206 543 3456.

John S. Lyons, Redressing the Emperor—Improving our Children’s Public Mental Health

System, Westport, CT7 Praeger, 2004, ISBN: 0-275-98143-6, 258 pp.

The book is an engaging, well researched, and provocative examination of the children’s

public mental health system. Not only is the reader provided a concise history of the children’s

public mental health system and a review of current tensions, but Dr. Lyons provides a vision for

reconceptualizing the public mental health system to better serve the needs of children and

families.

The basic assumption in this book is that the existing children’s public mental health system,

designed to help children with mental health problems and their families is not working and

needs to be changed. Dr. Lyons presents a new vision to improve the children’s public mental

health system grounded in a clear understanding of the existing system.

The book is organized into seven chapters. The first chapter is a brief, historical review of the

treatment of children with mental health problems. This review captures the evolution of the

children’s mental health system from an institutional based model of care to a community based,

system of care model. The chapter concludes by suggesting to the reader that the children’s

public mental health system is at a crossroads with decisions that need to be made to inform the

path that the system will follow.

Chapter 2 operationalizes the tensions and syndromes present in the current public mental

health system. These tensions and syndromes are identified at multiple levels (the system level,

the program level and the child and family level). One of the strengths of this book is the way

that Dr. Lyons illustrates the tensions by using real world case examples. He helps the reader to

understand how competing goals operate to create pressure within the current system at multiple

levels. These pressures over time have created maladaptive patterns of behavior in the system

that have resulted in what Dr. Lyons calls syndromes. The syndromes highlight the challenges

that are involved in working with systems intended to help children and families that instead

may create more problems for them.

Dr. Lyons reflects that to develop balance in the children’s public mental health system, one

needs to understand the different roles of key partners in the delivery of child mental health

doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2005.11.002

Book reviews858