Race and Family: A Structural Approach

The second edition of Race and Family maintains the book’s distinctive feature—introducing students to key concepts through a structural lens—while featuring new material throughout. Race and Family focuses on structural factors impacting all families, such as demographic, economic, and historic trends, which illuminate the similarities and distinctions among and within racial and ethnic groups. After introductions to the study of race, ethnicity, and the family, the book explores various issues such as family structure, divorce, non-marital births, gender roles, racial identity formation, intergenerational roles, grandparenting, care of elders, and more. The book offers specific chapters on racial-ethnic groups including African American, Asian American, Latino American, Middle Eastern American, and Native American, while also discussing white families, multiracial families, the acculturation process, and more. Key updates to the second edition include recent census and survey data, a new chapter on Middle Eastern Americans, new material on multiracial and multicultural families, updated resources, and more. The second edition of Race and Family is a comprehensive introduction to race and family through a distinctive structural lens. The book provides structural factors, cross-cultural perspectives, and historical overviews that students can use to analyze the whys and ways of family across races and ethnicities. A complimentary test bank is available to adopters as a Word document or via the free program Respondus.

Roberta L. Coles is professor of sociology at Marquette University. She specializes in the study of family and is the author of The Best Kept Secret: Single Black Fathers and coeditor of The Myth of the Missing Black Father.