Life without Father: Compelling New Evidence That Fatherhood and Marriage Are Indispensable for the Good of Children and Society - Softcover

Popenoe, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674532600 ISBN 13: 9780674532601

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1999

Synopsis

The American family is changing. Divorce, single parents, and stepfamilies are redefining the way we live together and raise our children. Is this a change for the worse? David Popenoe sets out the case for fatherhood and the two-parent family as the best arrangement for ensuring the well-being and future development of children.

His argument has two critical assumptions, which he supports with evidence from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, biology, and history. The first is that children flourish best when raised by a father and a mother with their differing psychological and behavioral traits. The second is that marriage, which serves to hold fathers to the mother-child bond, is an institution we must strengthen if the decline of fatherhood is to be reversed.

About this title

About the Author

David Popenoe is Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University, and author of Disturbing the Nest: Family Change and Decline in Modern Society and The Suburban Environment: Sweden and the United States.

From the Back Cover

Life without Father is a gracefully written and courageously argued contribution to the national discussion concerning the crisis of fatherlessness ... This book deserves the respectful attention of everyone worried about the consequences of family breakdown in contemporary America.-William A. Galston, University of Maryland at College Park

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674532600
• ISBN 13: 9780674532601
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288