Couple therapy is no longer simply a matter of helping couples adjust to the different stages of the life cycle: the life cycle itself has changed. Advances in reproductive technology, the rise of electronic communication, increasing time pressures of daily life, the continuing transformation of gender roles, and the loosening of constraints on same-sex and cross-cultural partnerships are just some of the developments reshaping relationships today. This cutting-edge book brings together prominent marital and family therapists to explore the new challenges--and opportunities--facing couples and the clinicians who work with them. Illustrated with vivid case material, the volume presents a range of approaches to helping couples reconsider and reorder their life priorities around such central issues as love, marriage, parenting, commitment, intimacy, and aging. The authors of these chapters represent many different outlooks and areas of expertise. What they share is the ability to translate social awareness into clinical practice--reexamining and reevaluating accepted family therapy models and techniques in light of the changing contexts in which couples live. Illuminating the many ways that the private world of the couple is affected by outside social, cultural, and technological forces, chapters cover such topics as: *Making time for each other in the information age *Delayed parenting, reproductive technologies, and the crisis of infertility *Divorce, remarriages, and growing old together *Multiculturalism in the family--issues facing cross-cultural couples *Myths and realities of gender roles today *Working with gay and lesbian couples *Current approaches to domestic violence *Treating depression in the couple therapy context Offering fresh perspectives and cogent clinical insights, this book is a vital resource for therapists working with couples and for advanced students of family therapy, social work, clinical psychology, and psychiatry. In the classroom, it will serve as a supplemental text in courses on the family life cycle and the treatment of couples. "...offers such a wide range of topics that almost any therapist interested in current trends in couples therapy will find relevant information in it. Most of the authors not only skillfully outline the problem at hand but also offer pragmatic therapeutic strategies based on their observations and experiences."-- Psychiatric Services "Papp has accomplished a great deal with this well-compiled, well-edited volume....A hallmark of this book is the relevancy of the real-world/real-time practice issues that the authors address....The book's breadth of scope is one of its main strengths. While it covers a wide range of topics....It nevertheless considers each with detail and creativity, and provides helpful case-study examples and forms."-- Behavioral Healthcare Tomorrow "What a wonderful gift to the clinical field! In this vital and extremely timely book, Peggy Papp and her outstanding group of contributors thoughtfully address the central social issues affecting the lives of contemporary couples. The seductive power of cyberspace romance, lack of 'time for love', the need to be like 'tourists' in mixed marriages, and the moral choices raised by reproductive technologies are just some of the many topics discussed. In these evocative descriptions and case studies, therapists will instantly recognize the issues they encounter in their offices and in their own lives. Throughout, social awareness is not just a fascinating background narrative; it is also part and parcel of creative therapeutic approaches that effectively meet the challenges of each couple's predicaments. Students, trainees, seasoned clinicians and lay readers will emerge from each chapter wiser, more empathetic, and more skilled. This is an extraordinarily rich and useful guide."--Celia Jaes Falicov, PhD, President, American Family Therapy Academy  "What is enduring about families, and what is changing? How are we to translate those equally valid dimensions into therapeutic practice? To answer these questions, Peggy Papp, with her wisdom and broad experience--her sure sense of what is gold and what is dross--has assembled this quite wonderful volume. The topics represented here are critical to couples' lives in these times. The authors take seriously the new realities of our world--changing gender relations and infertility technology, for example. They also are ever mindful of unchanging elements of the human need for intimacy. This book will be valuable to a wide range of readers. Students and practitioners in the human sciences will return to it often for guidance and encouragement."--Donald A. Bloch, MD, Co-Chair, Collaborative Family Healthcare Coalition "Rich in vision, heart, and clinical innovation, this is one of the most important books to emerge in the field of couple therapy today."--Harriet Lerner, PhD, author of The Dance of Anger "This wonderful collection of clin