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.
1. Images, Ideals, and Myths
2. Preindustrial Families and the Emergence of a Modern Family Form
3. The Historical Making of Family Diversity
4. Economic and Demographic Upheavals in Society and Family Formation
5. Class, Race, and Gender
6. Meshing the Worlds of Work and Family
7. The Social Construction of Intimacy
8. Contemporary Marriages
9. Parents and Children
10. Violence in Families
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