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

New York: BasicBooks, 1997. Second printing [stated]. Hardcover. vi, [2], 238, [8] pages. Notes. Index. Signed by the author on title page. Black mark on bottom edge. Stephanie Coontz (born August 31, 1944) is an author, historian, and faculty member at Evergreen State College. She teaches history and family studies and is Director of Research and Public Education for the Council on Contemporary Families, which she chaired from 2001-2004. Coontz has authored and co-edited several books about the history of the family and marriage. She won the Washington Governor's Writers Award in 1989 for The Social Origins of Private Life: A History of American Families. In 1995 she received the Dale Richmond Award from the American Academy of Pediatrics. In 2004, she received the first-ever "Visionary Leadership" Award from the Council on Contemporary Families. In the landmark United States Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges, justices cited Coontz's book, Marriage, A History in their decision to grant marriage equality to same-sex couples. A historian of the American family debunks the myth that a return to the so-called traditional two-parent nuclear family can provide us with an unassailable refuge from the social, economic, and psychological stresses Americans seem to feel these days. Coontz focuses on the anxieties of contemporary American women and men about their lives, work, and families, and addresses these fears in the context of more accurate historical data and the most recent sociological research. What people really miss about the so-called Golden Age of the 1950s, Coontz points out, is an economy that supported unprecedented growth in real wages. The burden of housework and child care falling almost exclusively on women has been the primary source of recent marital conflict and family stress. Coontz's refreshingly grounded perspective encourages the development of a broader social intelligence that would enable us to come up with social policies that truly assist more of us in improving our lives. Condition: Very good / Very good.

Keywords: Families, Working Mothers, Sociology, Marriage, Divorce, Child Care, Coprovider, Gender Roles, Parenting, Poverty, Single-parent, Socioeconomic, Working Women

ISBN: 9780465077878

[Book #78113]

Price: $45.00

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