Brings together articles and sections of books that reflect all facets of the new history of the family.

The American family has come a long way from the days of the idealized family portrayed in iconic television shows of the 1950s and 1960s. The four volumes of The Social History of the American Family explore the vital role of the family as the fundamental social unit across the span of American history. Experiences of family life shape so much of an individual’s development and identity, yet the patterns of family structure, family life, and family transition vary across time, space, and socioeconomic contexts. Both the definition of who or what counts as family and representations of the “ideal” family have changed over time to reflect changing mores, changing living standards and lifestyles, and increased levels of social heterogeneity. Available in both digital and print formats, this carefully balanced academic work chronicles the social, cultural, economic, and political aspects of American families from the colonial period to the present. Key themes include families and culture (including mass media), families and religion, families and the economy, families and social issues, families and social stratification and conflict, family structures (including marriage and divorce, gender roles, parenting and children, and mixed and non-modal family forms), and family law and policy. Features: Approximately 600 articles, richly illustrated with historical photographs and color photos in the digital edition, provide historical context for students. A collection of primary source documents demonstrate themes across time. The signed articles, with cross references and Further Readings, are accompanied by a Reader’s Guide, Chronology of American Families, Resource Guide, Glossary, and thorough index. The Social History of the American Family is an ideal reference for students and researchers who want to explore political and social debates about the importance of the family and its evolving constructions.

One of the prevailing myths about the American family is that there once existed a harmonious family with three generations living together, and that this "ideal" family broke down under the impact of urbanization and industralization. The essays in this volume challenge this myth and provide dramatic revisions of simplistic notions about change in the American family. Based on detailed research in a variety of sources, including extensive oral history interviews of ordinary people, these essays examine major changes in family life, dispel myths about the past, and offer new directions in research and interpretation. The essays cover a wide spectrum of issues and topics, ranging from the organization of the family and household, to the networks available to children as they grow up, to the role of the family in the process of industralization, to the division of labor in the family along gender lines, and to the relations between the generations in the later years of life. While discussing family relations in the past and revising prevailing notions of social change, these interdisciplinary essays also provide important perspectives on the present.

Growing Up in America offers substantial and dramatic evidence that the history of childhood has come of age. Its authors demonstrate the breadth and depth of interest, as well as high quality of work, in a field that is finally attracting the attention it deserves. Strongly influenced by new social history and its concern for the powerless and inarticulate, Growing Up in America provides illuminating insights on children from infancy to adolescence and from the colonial period to present. "The very title of this fine and enormously instructive anthology of essays makes its quiet but important point---that children grow up in a particular nation, rather than in a family or home isolated from the influence of social, cultural, political, and historical forces. . . . An admirably diverse and instructive collection." -- Georgia Historical Quarterly

Bringing together essays by twenty-one distinguished scholars who have helped shape the field of family sociology in the last decade, this interdisciplinary anthology examines variation within family experience, especially as it has evolved across racial, ethnic, social, gender, and generational lines. The essays place historical and institutional frameworks at the center of the discussion. In-depth chapter introductions along with critical questions to spark class discussion make this an ideal text for courses focusing on family composition, trends, and controversies in the United States.

An examination of how the concept of “family” has been transformed over the last three centuries in the U.S., from its function as primary social unit to today’s still-evolving model. Based on a wide reading of letters, diaries and other contemporary documents, Mintz, an historian, and Kellogg, an anthropologist, examine the changing definition of “family” in the United States over the course of the last three centuries, beginning with the modified European model of the earliest settlers. From there they survey the changes in the families of whites (working class, immigrants, and middle class) and blacks (slave and free) since the Colonial years, and identify four deep changes in family structure and ideology: the democratic family, the companionate family, the family of the 1950s, and lastly, the family of the '80s, vulnerable to societal changes but still holding together.