Full Description
The Way We Never Were examines two centuries of American family life and shatters a series of myths and half-truths that burden modern families. Placing current family dilemmas in the context of far-reaching economic, political, and demographic changes, Coontz sheds new light on such contemporary concerns as parenting, privacy, love, the division of labor along gender lines, the black family, feminism, and sexual practice.
Contents
* Introduction * The Way We Wish We WereLeave it to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet: American Families in the 1950s * My Mother Was a Saint: Individualism, Gender Myths, and the Problem of Love * We Always Stood on Our Own Two Feet: Self-reliance and the American Family * Strong Families, the Foundation of a Virtuous Society * Family Values and Civic Responsibility * A Mans Home Is His Castle: The Family and Outside Intervention * Bra-Burners and Family Bashers: Feminism, Working Women, Consumerism, and the Family * First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage, Then Comes Mary with a Baby Carriage: Marriage, Sex, and Reproduction * Toxic Parents, Supermoms, and Absent Fathers: Putting Parenting in Perspective * Pregnant Girls, Wilding Boys, Crack Babies, and the Underclass * The Myth of the Black Family Collapse * The Crisis Reconsidered * Epilogue: Inventing a New Tradition
