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Two generations ago, young men and women with only a high-school degree would have entered the plentiful industrial occupations which then sustained the middle-class ideal of a male-breadwinner family. Such jobs have all but vanished over the past forty years, and in their absence ever-growing numbers of young adults now hold precarious, low-paid jobs with few fringe benefits. Facing such insecure economic prospects, less-educated young adults are increasingly forgoing marriage and are having children within unstable cohabiting relationships. This has created a large marriage gap between them and their more affluent, college-educated peers. In Labor’s Love Lost, noted sociologist Andrew Ch...
With roller coaster changes in marriage and divorce rates apparently leveling off in the 1980s, Andrew Cherlin feels that the time is right for an overall assessment of marital trends. His graceful and informal book surveys and explains the latest research on marriage, divorce, and remarriage since World War II.Cherlin presents the facts about family change over the past thirty-five years and examines the reasons for the trends that emerge. He views the 1950s, when Americans were marrying and having children early and divorcing infrequently, as the aberration, and he discusses why this period was unusual. He also explores the causes and consequences of the dramatic changes since 1960--increases in divorce, remarriage, and cohabitation, decreases in fertility--that are altering the very definition of the family in our society. He concludes with a discussion of the increasing differences in the marital patterns of black and white families over the past few decades.
In a landmark book that's "intriguing [and] provocative" and presents "an original thesis [to explain] this peculiar paradox—we idealize marriage and yet we’re so bad at it” (The New York Times). Andrew J. Cherlin's three decades of study have shown him that marriage in America is a social and political battlefield in a way that it isn’t in other developed countries. Americans marry and divorce more often and have more live-in partners than Europeans, and gay Americans have more interest in legalizing same-sex marriage. The difference comes from Americans’ embrace of two contradictory cultural ideals: marriage, a formal commitment to share one's life with another; and individualism, which emphasizes personal choice and self-development. Religion and law in America reinforce both of these behavioral poles, fueling turmoil in our family life and heated debate in our public life. Cherlin’s incisive diagnosis is an important contribution to the debate and points the way to slowing down the partnership merry-go-round.
Designed for courses in sociology of the family, this work covers a variety of topics, including: the history of the family; gender and families; class; race and ethnicity; families and the state; family formation; spouses and partners; and domestic violence.
Explores the effects of divorce on children and their parents.
Two leading sociologists of the family examine the changing role of American grandparents—how they strive for both independence and family ties.
This volume explores the causes and consequences of family inequality in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.
This book brings social science perspective to bear on family change and family policy; identifies the determinants of change and analyzes the role that government has played and can play in affecting the course of family life.
Today, one third of all American babies are born to unmarried mothers—a startling statistic that has prompted national concern about the consequences for women, children, and society. Indeed, the debate about welfare and the overhaul of the federal welfare program for single mothers was partially motivated by the desire to reduce out of wedlock births. Although the proportion of births to unwed mothers has stopped climbing for the first time since the 1960s, it has not decreased, and recent trends are too complex to attribute solely to policy interventions. What are these trends and how do they differ across groups? Are they peculiar to the United States, or rooted in more widespread socia...
This comprehensive book provides a balanced overview of the current research on divorce. The authors examine the scientific evidence to uncover what can be said with certainty about divorce and what remains to be learned about this socially and politically charged issue. Accessible to parents and teachers as well as clinicians and researchers, the volume examines the impact of marital breakup on children, adults, and society. Alison Clarke-Stewart and Cornelia Brentano synthesize the most up-to-date information on divorce from a variety of disciplinary perspectives with thoughtful analysis of psychological issues. They convey the real-life consequences of divorce with excerpts from autobiographies by young people, and they also include guidelines for social policies that would help to diminish the detrimental effects of divorce.