Families as They Really Are - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393932788 ISBN 13: 9780393932782

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009

Synopsis

A fresh collection of original essays by leading scholars that focuses on how families operate in everyday life: what they are, how they work, and why they matter.

Families as They Really Are goes to the heart of the family values debate by reframing the question about families from “Are they breaking down?” to “Where are they going, how, and why?”

Essays in the book are not reprints; you won’t find them anywhere else. Each article is a new contribution to the research and theory about families, drawn from an interdisciplinary community of experts.

The four parts of Families as They Really Are focus on how we got to where we are today, what’s happening in relationships, youth in the 21st century, and the state of the gender revolution.

About this title

About the Author:

Barbara J. Risman is Professor and Head of the Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She was previously Alumni Distinguished Research Professor, as well as the Founding Director of the Gender and Women’s Studies Program at North Carolina State University. Risman is the author of Gender Vertigo: American Families in Transition and over two dozen journal articles. She is also the president of the board of The Council on Contemporary Families, a national organization whose mission is to bring new research findings and clinical expertise to public attention. In 2005, Risman was honored with the Katherine Jocher Belle Boone Award from the Southern Sociological Society for lifetime contributions to the study of gender. In 2013, she was elected vice president of the American Sociological Association. She is currently testing theories about whether hormonal exposure in utero influences gendered selves in adulthood. Risman strongly believes that sociologists have a responsibility both to do good research and to teach about it in the classroom and to the public at large.

Review:

“Families as They Really Are is an anthology as it really should be―an admirably comprehensive collection of provocative essays by the top scholars studying families today.”
- Brian Powell, Indiana University

“Here’s a book destined to make publishers of textbooks on U.S. family studies tremble. Families as They Really Are is bursting its generous seams with lively, lucid, authoritative, original essays on every form and facet of contemporary family life. This fabulous collection presents work by a cavalcade of the field’s most preeminent and creative scholars. No textbook can possibly compete.”
- Judith Stacey, author, In the Name of the Family

“Families as They Really Are is a dream edited collection--solid sociology from leading scholars yet also readable and real.”
- Mary Blair-Loy, University of California, San Diego

“This incredibly useful book goes well beyond rebutting myths about family change to provide succinct and highly readable introductions to practically every controversial family issue on the public agenda today. The attention to how class, race, gender and sexuality challenge families and shape family concerns is thoughtful and balanced.”
- Myra Marx Ferree, University of Wisconsin

“The story of America’s families is too often narrowed to fit a predetermined theme. Instead, this collection presents powerful, well-written new work by a diverse roundtable of social scientists, whose wealth of research expertise is matched by a common commitment to clarity without over-simplification.”
- Philip Cohen, University of North Carolina

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0393932788
• ISBN 13: 9780393932782
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 576
• Editor: Risman Barbara J.