Focusing on insights from feminist researchers and the role of gender in family life, this text explores both the structural features of society that shape families and the everyday personal experiences of individual family members--as well as the interplay between the two.

Product Description: American families today are noted for their wide variety of guises. Among the mix are single-parent families, childless-by-choice marriages, nuclear families, multigenerational families, and same-sex couples. Although this diversity has come under the scrutiny of everyone from politicians to the media, family diversity is not a recent development of contemporary culture...read more

What is household government? To the vast majority of those living in America from the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century it was the government. The head of a household, invariably an adult male, had authority over the property, labor, and mobility of not only his minor children but also his wife, servants, slaves, and the occasional debtors, indigents, or orphans the county paid him to board in the absence of institutional facilities.A History of Household Government in America tells the story of the seldom noted expansion and then dramatic contraction in household authority and the effects these changes had on the governmental system. The disintegration of household powers during the mid-nineteenth century―the household’s "civil war"―is much more central to what makes that period seem modern than industrialization or urbanization.Carole Shammas offers new explanations for why the American household head became such an early victim of household egalitarianism. Previous theories involving the frontier or the Revolution have ignored other factors unique to the American household system such as testamentary freedom, weak lineage controls, and the lack of an established church, all of which left the head vulnerable to challenges by dependents. These factors also affected the development of social services: In the United States, public and private welfare agencies originated largely out of concerns about the adequacy of household management and discipline. Religious rivalries eventually forced a partial return to household solutions through a welfare state system. That history helps explain why even today any departure from heterosexual two-parent family units continues to be viewed as dysfunctional by a significant portion of the population. (view table of contents)

Product Description: Argues that the gradual growth of feminist consciousness lies not in oppression or feelings of victimisation, but in a growing sense of the empowerment of women as wives and mothers. Johnston also explores critical questions concerning American women's sexual lives.

The internal dynamics of families have altered dramatically as the family has gradually shifted from a unit of economic production to a collection of individuals in pursuit of different goals. Taking examples from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, this eclectic reader illuminates changes in the American family and presents some of the methods and approaches used to study families. Linking family patterns with changing social circumstances, Family and Society in American History considers husband-wife and parent-child relationships in light of language usage, gender roles, legal structures, and other contexts. For example, new legal attitudes toward divorce emerged as marriage came to be seen as a site for individual satisfaction. Marital fertility declined as American society modernized and pregnancy and childbirth came to be seen as medical rather than family issues. Schools and other institutions of the state absorbed functions formerly performed by the family, and women's economic contributions to the family disappeared from view as the social values of the early republic divided the male (work) from the female (home) sphere. Do-It-Yourself-developed in the wake of suburbanization. In addition to identifying trends within the dominant culture, contributors consider the experiences of ethnic and immigrant families, reassessing generational conflict in Italian Harlem, comparing the attitudes of male and female Mexican migrant workers in Kansas, and showing how Chinese immigrant women targeted for rescue by Presbyterian mission workers took advantage of the gap between Chinese and American culture to increase their leverage in family and marital relationships. A diverse compendium of family life, Family and Society in American History provides an intriguing commentary on the permeability of social structures and interpersonal behavior. (view table of contents)

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This book focuses specifically on the role of the family in communal life. Communal groups are one type of nontraditional families, some communes are predisposed to families while others are not and some communal families can be replacements or substitutes for nuclear families. Historic communal groups such as Shakers, Oneida, Amana, and the Mormons are investigated as are contemporary rural and urban communal groups such as Twin Oaks, Jesus People USA, and the Hutterites. (view table of contents)

Product Description: Assumptions about the family of the past pervade the expectations we bring to our personal interactions and shape the way we think about and study the family as a social institution. Most often, undergraduate courses in family sociology have a “marriage and family” focus, which emphasizes the dynamics of interpersonal relations and contemporary family roles...read more

Product Description: Helena Wall shows what life was like in colonial America, a culture where individuals and family were subordinated to the demands of the community. Using local town, church, and especially court records from every colony, she examines the division of authority between family and community throughout colonial America...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: While historians have written with ease about the state and the church, the family has so far defied historical analysis. As the primary cell of human social organisation, upon which both state and church depend, it is of crucial importance...read more

Product Description: An account of one family's experiences in postwar America chronicles their cultural transformation through a flight to suburbia, materialism, and the sixties counterculture, describing where they are today. 50,000 first printing. $75,000 ad/promo.

Product Description: This work serves as an introductory reference guide to the growing body of literature on the history of the American family. Recognizing the family unit as the institution most central to any society, the volume covers a broad range of theoretical approaches which concentrate on relationships within the family and between the family and the wider community...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Book by Kain, Edward L.

Looks at the ways the American family has adapted to change over the past three hundred years, and discusses the families of American Indians, slaves, and immigrants

Product Description: This is a book

Ranging over the entire span of American history, this book discusses such topics as the changing nature of fatherhood, child abuse, adolescent and middle-age life from colonial times to the present, and the relevance of the past for present-day policy making.