from: Routledge
Discount Price: $39.95
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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.850973
EAN num: 9780415915748
ISBN number: 0415915740
Label: Routledge
Manufacturer: Routledge
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 536
Printing Date: November 02, 1998
Publishing house: Routledge
Sale Popularity Level: 613261
Studio: Routledge
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Product Description:
This collection testifies to the extraordinary variety of families in the United States, revealing that family arrangements have always been diverse and have often been in flux. Case studies describe the wide array of family forms and values, gender roles, and parenting practices that have prevailed in different times and places for different population groups. Paying special attention to the intersections and cross-currents of class, race, and ethnicity, as well as their differential impact on gender, sexuality, and personal identity, the contributors highlight the socioeconomic and cultural forces that affect the organization and internal dynamics of family life.
These articles provide a variety of perspectives that nonetheless point to a common theme: the myth of family homogeneity has not merely excluded some groups; it has deformed our understanding of all families. Social policies and psychological practice must take account of the complexity, contradictions, conflicts, and accommodations that shape people's individual and group experience of family life.
Drawing on historical, sociological, anthropological, and psychological research, American Families provides an overview of the theoretical and conceptual issues involved in studying the variations and interactions among different, constantly changing, families. It also considers the social, political, and practical implications of viewing family life through the lens of multiculturalism.
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Rated by buyers 
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This is an excellent book for students of sociology, family history, human development or other fields that explore family life as it exists in our world today.
I especially appreciate how the author expands the reader's understanding of family forms from the common view of The Family as a mother/father, white, middle class, with two children "Ozzie and Harriot" stereotype to a more realistic understanding of the complexities of families in this country. I enjoyed reading stories that revealed how the factors of race, class, and gender effect families in our society. I also appreciated the inclusion of family stories that reveal the impact of historical contexts. For example, the stories from immigrants reveal how our society has historically valued labor as a means for profit over labor as a means to support families.
I didn't find the text to be overly academic, but rather fascinating, accessible and informative.
Rated by buyers 
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This really is an excellent book, full of really clear and well-organized information on some very important, often over-looked issues in sociology and family development issues. But I still found it a little too academic-oriented. Am looking for something more accessible to not-well-educated people I work with in my job, families who are not readers. Stories and content are useful to me, however, in a big way, as both a community-based worker and as a serious student of these types of "non-traditional" but very current issues. I appreciated the book alot, but it still isn't quite "earthy" enough to use with non-academically-oriented clients...other than via me telling them some of the real life "stories" encountered in the book. I give it three stars and wait for a second edition!
Rated by buyers -
This really is an excellent book, full of really clear and well-organized information on some very important, often over-looked issues in sociology and family development issues. But I still found it a little too academic-oriented. Am looking for something more accessible to not-well-educated people I work with in my job, families who are not readers. Stories and content are useful to me, however, in a big way, as both a community-based worker and as a serious student of these types of "non-traditional" but very current issues. I appreciated the book alot, but it still isn't quite "earthy" enough to use with non-academically-oriented clients...other than via me telling them some of the real life "stories" encountered in the book. I give it three stars and wait for a second edition!
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