Way We Really Are : Coming to Terms With America's Changing Families

With a historically informed perspective, this classic book illuminates how every type of modern family—even the “nontraditional” ones—can find strength and success.

“Coontz’s book should offer reassurance to people in every kind of family muddling through every stressful stage.” ―New York Times 

Stefanie Coontz offers a guide to the causes and consequences of today’s family trends, demonstrating that a historically informed perspective can be as helpful in sorting through many family dilemmas as going into therapy and much more help than listening to today’s political debates. Every kind of family, Coontz shows, has strengths that can be fostered and vulnerabilities to be avoided. Stepfamilies, dual-earner couples, single-parent families, and divorced but cooperative families all operate in different ways, but with the right economic, cultural, and social support systems, all incarnations of the family can succeed.

Called “brilliant and invariably provocative” by the New York Times and “a treasure” by the Los Angeles Times, Stephanie Coontz has emerged as one of our preeminent social historians. The Way We Really Are will change the ways families think of themselves and their futures. 

Stephanie Coontz is director of research and public education at the Council on Contemporary Families and emeritus faculty at Evergreen State College. She is the author of several books, including The Way We Never Were, Marriage: A History, A Strange Stirring, and For Better and Worse. She lives in Olympia, Washington.