This anthology continues to reflect the cultural diversity of the American family by providing a range of relevant
articles integrating race, class, gender, and ethnicity.
Taken as a whole, these readings reveal both historical trends and unique variations that widen our understanding
of the diversity, patterns, and dynamics of the American family.
Features :
Maintains its emphasis on the cultural diversity of the American family.
The readings avoid jargon and sophisticated statistical techniques, making them easily accessible for students.
Introductory essays in each section outline the major issues and concerns of the family.
Each selection is accompanied by a brief introductory statement that highlights its sociological significance
and focuses on pertinent issues and concerns.
Reflects a social-policy orientation for examining family continuity and change.
New To This Edition :
Extensively revised and expanded--19 new readings have been added to provide greater depth to the text while
retaining the existing organizational framework.
Half of the selections in this edition focus on the diversity of the American family, including different ethnic
groups such as Arab, Jewish, Puerto Rican, Chinese, and Native Americans.
New topics include: Internet dating, the Internet and family relations, wives and families of professional
baseball players, the depiction of fathers in comic books, single parenthood by choice, divorce and fatherhood.
Selections on social policy and legal issues (Selections 4, 34, 35) address the impact of policy on the American
family.
Table of Contents
* denotes selections new to this edition.
Preface.
General Introduction.
I. MULTICULTURAL PERSPECTIVES.
1. The Changing Family: History and Politics.
Where Are the Good Old Days?--Stephanie Coontz.
Immigrant Families in the City--Mark Hutter.
Interpreting the African Heritage in Afro-American Family Organization--Niara Sudarkasa.
Setting the Clock Forward or Back? Covenant Marriage and the Divorce Revolution--Laura Sanchez, Steven L. Nock,
James D. Wright, and Constance T. Gager.*
2. The Family, Kinship, and the Community.
The Female World of Cards and Holidays: Women, Families, and the Work of Kinship--Micaela di Leonardo.
Mexican American Women Grassroots Community Activists: The Mothers of East Los Angeles--Mary Pardo.
Muscogee Women's Identity Development--Barbara B. Kawulich.*
Long Distance Community in the Network Society: Contact and Support Beyond Netville--Keith N. Hampton and Barry
Wellman.*
II. GENDER RELATIONS: INEQUALITY, SEXUALITY, AND INTIMACY.
3. Premarital and Mate Selection Relationships.
Dating on the Net: Teens and the Rise of "Pure" Relationships--Lynn Schofield Clark.*
Getting a Man or Getting Ahead--Alexandra Berkowitz and Irene Padavic.*
Asian Indian Marriages--Arranged, Semi-Arranged, or Based on Love--Johanna Lessinger.*
"You Go 'Cause You Have to" : The Bridal Shower as a Ritual of Obligation--Beth Montemurro.*
4. Sexuality, Intimacy, and the Family.
The Feminization of Love--Francesca M. Cancian.
"That's Our Kind of Constellation" Lesbian Mothers Negotiate Institutionalized Understandings of Gender
within the Family--Susan E. Dalton and Denise D. Bielby.*
Islamic Family Ideals and Their Relevance to American Muslim Families--Bahira Sherif.*
5. Gender Roles, Work and the Family.
There's No Place Like Work--Arlie Russell Hochschild.
Gender, Class, Family, and Migration: Puerto Rican Women in Chicago--Maura I. Toro-Morn.
Baseball Wives: Gender and the Work of Baseball--George Gmelch and Patricia Mary San Antonio.*
III. GENERATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS.
6. Patterns of Parenthood, Childhood, and Adolescence.
Single Mothers by Choice--Valerie S. Mannis.*
Shifting the Center: Race, Class, and Feminist Theorizing About Motherhood--Patricia Hill Collins.
Black Teenage Mothers and their Mothers: The Impact of Adolescent Childbearing Daughters' Relations with Mothers--Elaine
Bell Kaplan.
The Changing Culture of Fatherhood in Comic-Strip Families: A Six-Decade Analysis--Ralph LaRossa, Charles Jaret,
Malati Gadgil, and G. Robert Wynn.*
Nonfamily Living in Context: Household, the Life Course, and Family Values--Frances K. Goldscheider and Calvin
Goldscheider.
7. The Family and the Elderly.
To Be Old and Asian: An Unsettling Life in America--Florentius Chan.
Intimate Strangers: The Elderly and the Elderly Health Care Giver Relationships--Mark Hutter.
"The Normal American Family" as an Interpretive Structure of Family Life Among Grown Children of Korean
and Vietnamese Immigrants--Karen Pyke.*
IV. Families in Crisis and Change.
8. Family Stress, Crisis, and Violence.
The Batterer's View of the Self and Others in Domestic Violence--Sarah Goodrum, Debra Umberson, and Kristin
L. Anderson.*
Ten Myths That Perpetuate Corporal Punishment--Murray A. Straus.
Karla and the Armstrongs: Two Oral Histories of Homeless American Families--Steven Vanderstaay.
9. Divorce, Remarriage, and the Future of the Family.
Divorce Culture: A Quest for Relational Equality in Marriage--Karla B. Hackstaff.*
Rethinking Relationships Between Divorced Mothers and Their Children: Capitalizing on Family Strengths--Joyce A.
Arditti.*
The Social Self as Gendered: A Masculinist Discourse of Divorce--Terry Arendell.
Divorce and Fatherhood--Erma Jean Lawson and Aaron Thompson.*
Stepparents: De Facto Parents or Legal Strangers--Mary Ann Mason, Sydney Harrison-Jay, Gloria Messick Svare and
Nicholas H. Wolfinger.*
Family Law in the New Millennium: For Whose Families?--Mary Ann Mason, Mark A. Fine, and Sarah Carnochan.*
