Marriage And Family Experience: Intimate Relationships in a Changing Society

This text presents the study of marriage and family in a manner that enlarges both personal and intellectual understanding. It maintains the viewpoint throughout the text that families need to be cherished, honored, and supported. The book's approach is interdisciplinary, incorporating work from sociology, psychology, history, economics, folklore, communications, and literature.

Theodore Cohen is the Ella Fulton Dunham Professor of Sociology and current chairperson of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio. Before coming to Ohio Wesleyan in 1984, he earned his B.A. in sociology from Brooklyn College (1977), and his M.A. (1981) and Ph.D. (1984) in sociology from Boston University. In addition to his teaching career at Ohio Wesleyan, Cohen has taught at a variety of public and private universities including Boston University, Northeastern University, Clark University, and Rowan University. Throughout these different educational contexts, he has found that enthusiasm, humor and determination to engage students to apply sociological concepts to their own lives, has worked with equal effectiveness whether in classes of nine or ninety. He brings those same objectives to his writing. In 1990, Dr. Cohen received The Sherwood Dodge Shankland Award for the Encouragement of Teachers, one of two awards Ohio Wesleyan gives for teaching excellence. In addition to being the co-author of The Marriage and Family Experience since its eighth edition, Cohen is also the editor of a text-reader on men and gender, Men & Masculinity: A Text Reader (Wadsworth 2001). He has also published articles and book chapters on aspects of men's lives, especially their transitions to marriage and fatherhood, and on the family and work lives of a sample of nontraditional couples (some in which men were caregivers and women wage-earners and some in which spouses worked different or unusual shifts). Cohen's own family experiences include many of the issues covered and addressed in this text. He has been married, widowed, in a long distance relationship, remarried, separated, a father, stepfather, and caregiver. He currently lives in central Ohio, where, in addition to his children, his passions include the music of Tom Waits, New York Yankees baseball, Seinfeld reruns and Modern Family.