Sociology: An Introduction for Nurses, Midwives, and Health Visitors focuses on the approaches, principles, and methodologies involved in sociology, including health care, patient care, social class, educational achievement, and kinship. The book first elaborates on health care from the classical era to the present, population structure and change, and family and kinship. Discussions focus on the family in a changing society, future of the family, population theory of Malthus, world population, developments in anatomy, physiology, and public health in Renaissance Europe, and origins in ancient Greece and Rome. The manuscript then examines social class and social stratification, education, religion, and secularization, and the provision of health care. Concerns include relationship between health care and health need, religion and total patient care, religion in contemporary society, social class and educational achievement, and social class and health. The text takes a look at the need for collaboration between nursing and sociology, sociological aspects of the care of the chronic sick, elderly, and the dying, and the sociological aspects of the care of the mentally ill, including challenges to the concept of mental illness, care of the chronic sick in institutions, and institutional care of the elderly. The manuscript is a dependable source of information for sociologists and researchers interested in sociology.