In Her Own Time: Women and Development Issues in Pastoral Care

This new guidebook by leading pastoral theologians challenges much in contemporary developmental theory. Arguing that women's developmental stages cannot automatically be assumed to match those of men, the authors provide a fresh analysis of the rewards and challenges of women at different stages of the life cycle.

Useful as a text or reference, the book sheds new light on developmental themes, passages, and issues in the lives of women from the perspective of pastoral care. From pre-adolescence to end-of-life-passages, from such diverse themes as the developmental context for intimate violence and the impact of trauma on development to issues of women's power and authority across the life-span, In Her Own Time provides a much-needed framework for the pastoral care of women. Designed to be used as either a textbook for students or a reference for pastors and counselors, In Her Own Time takes a probing theological and psychological look at the possibilities and hurdles in the life-span of today's women.

Like Gail Sheehy's Passages, Daniel Levinson's Seasons of a Lifetime, or Mary Pipher's Reviving Ophelia, In Her Own Time will provide a frameworkin this case, a religious and theological frameworkfor seeing the specific issues in the lives of today's women.

Jeanne Stevenson-Moessner is professor of pastoral care and pastoral theology at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University; an ordained Presbyterian minister (PCUSA); a psychotherapist in ACPE; a member of the International Academy of Practical Theology; a Henry Luce III Fellow; a McCord Fellow at the Center of Theological Inquiry; and a former president of the Society for Pastoral Theology. She coedited a volume that transformed the field of pastoral theology, Women in Travail and Transition: A New Pastoral Care (Fortress Press, 1990). Three additional pioneering volumes followed, all with Fortress Press.