This award-winning text treats
family diversity as the norm, while highlighting how race, class, gender, and sexuality produce varieties of familial relationships.
Diversity in Families looks at families not as building blocks of societies but rather, as products of social forces within society. The authors undertake a critical examination of society, asking questions such as, How do families really work? and Who benefits under the existing arrangements, and who does not? Their goal is to demystify and demythologize the family by exposing existing myths, stereotypes, and dogmas.
The seventh edition includes new research and extensive updates from government data and some of the best family studies resources such as the Handbook of Marriage and Family, 2/e, the Handbook of Family Diversity, and the Journal of Marriage and the Family. New Emergent Family Trends boxes investigate and analyze new family patterns and what they might mean for families in the future.
Each chapter begins with “Myths and Realities.”
Preface.
1. Images, Ideals, and Myths.
Images and Ideals.
Images and Reality.
The Mythical American Family.
A New Framework for Understanding Families.
Additional Features of This Book.
2. Pre-Industrial Families and the Emergence of a Modern Family Form.
Family and the New Social History.
Family Life in Colonial America.
The Emergence of Modern Family Life.
3. The Historical Making of Family Diversity.
Industrialization and Family Life.
Immigration and Family Life.
Racial Control and Family Life.
4. Economic and Demographic Upheavals in Society and Family Formation
The Structural Transformation of the Economy and Families.
The New Immigration and the Changing Racial Landscape.
The Aging of Society.
The Three Structural Transformations of Society.
5. Class, Race, and Gender.
Class, Race, and Gender as Structured Inequalities.
Class.
Race.
Gender.
6. Meshing the Worlds of Work and Family.
The Changing Work Patterns of Women, Men, and Children.
Work and Family Overlap.
Invisible and Unpaid Family Work.
Coping with Work and Family.
7. The Social Construction of Intimacy.
Heterosexual Courtship and Mate Selection.
Changing Sexual Behavior.
Differentiated Forms of Intimacy.
8. Contemporary Marriages.
Marriage: Private and Public Spheres.
Recent Trends.
Are There Benefits to Marriage?
Micro Aspects of Marriage.
Reconstructing Gender Roles: Building an Egalitarian Marriage.
The Future of Marriage: Changing or Dying?
9. Parents and Children.
The Social Construction of Parenting.
Demographic Patterns.
The Impact of Children on Marriage.
The Impact of Parents on Children and of Children on Parents.
The Structure of the Family Embedded in a Larger Network of Influences.
Parents and Children in Dual-Earner Families.
Single Parents and Their Children.
Reprise: The Duality of Parenting.
10. Violence in Families.
Families in a Violent Society.
Spouse Abuse.
Child Abuse and Neglect.
Incest.
Battered Elders.
11. Divorce and Remarriage.
Divorce Rates.
Predicting the Divorce Rate: Up or Down?
The Consequences of Divorce for Adults and Children.
Remarriage after Divorce.
The Politics of Divorce.
Is Marriage a Failed Institution?
12. Emergent Families in the Global Era.
The Rise in New Family Arrangements.
Single Life.
Heterosexual Cohabitation.
Same-Sex Partners and Families.
Families Separated by Time and Space.
13. Family Policy for the Twenty-First Century.
The Ideological Fault Lines.
The Government and Reproductive Rights.
Welfare.
What Is Missing in the New Welfare Legislation?
Meeting the Needs of Disadvantaged Children.
Working Parents.
Principles to Guide Family Policy: An Immodest Proposal.
Glossary.
Bibliography.
Photo Credits.
Text Credits.
Name Index.