Maintaining Long-Distance and Cross-Residential Relationships

<p>This thought-provoking volume offers an innovative and intriguing approach to the study of long-distance relationships. Author Laura Stafford examines romantic long-distance relationships and then expands the conception of long-distance relationships to include other relational types. She summarizes literature across the social sciences on various types of long-distance relationships and extracts themes and patterns across the relational types. In so doing, she reconsiders approaches to and offers an expanded vision of relational maintenance.<br><br>By expanding her scope beyond romantic relationships, Stafford includes those that span residences and relational types, such as noncustodial parent-child and geographically and residentially separated adult children and parents. She contends that face-to-face interaction is not necessary to maintain healthy relationships, and questions the assumption that maintaining, rather than terminating, a particular relationship is always best for the involved parties.<br><br>With its interdisciplinary approach to challenging commonly held assumptions about communication and close relationships, <i>Maintaining Long-Distance and Cross-Residential Relationships</i> will be engaging reading for scholars in communication, psychology, sociology, mass communication, and family studies. It is also appropriate for special topics graduate courses on long-distance relationships and human communication, and will serve as a unique supplemental text for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students in interpersonal, relational, and family communication and family studies.</p> <p><b>Contents: </b>Preface. Introduction. Rationale, Definitions, and Assumptions. Theoretical Orientations. Long-Distance Dating Relationships. Adult Romantic Relationships. Young Children and Parents. Across Generations: Adult Children, Parents, and Grandparents. Peer Relationships: Siblings and Friends. Computer Mediated LDRs. Propositions, Implications, Limitations, and Lacunae. Toward an Expanded Vision of Relational Maintenance.</p>