Marriage and Family

This volume examines multiple issues facing contemporary families. It presents and discusses these issues from a variety of theoretical and disciplinary perspectives, uses current trends and evidence to speculate on the future of marriage, and informs 'hot' policy debates regarding healthy and stable marriages. The book has a multidisciplinary richness with a distinguished group of scholars known for their expertise in marriage, its developmental trajectories, and its social, economic, and psychological consequences. An excellent and comprehensive volume. -- David H. Demo, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and editor, Journal of Marriage and Family Bringing together historical and current thinking about marriage and family, this volume extensively covers marriage, addressing such issues as low-income couples and cohabitating as a trajectory toward as well as a substitute for marriage. -- Marilyn Coleman, University of Missouri, and author of Families in the Twentieth Century Marriage and Family addresses the diversity of marriage and families from several angles and is strongly rooted in theory, with each author clearly presenting a theoretical lens through which he or she examines the literature. -- Ben Beitin, Seton Hall University

Family life has been radically transformed over the past three decades. Half of all households are unmarried, while only a quarter of all married households have kids. A third of the nation's births are to unwed mothers, and a third of America's married men earn less than their wives. With half of all women cohabitating before they turn thirty and gay and lesbian couples settling down with increasing visibility, there couldn't be a better time for a book that tracks new conceptions of marriage and family as they are being formed. The editors of this volume explore the motivation to marry and the role of matrimony in a diverse group of men and women. They compare empirical data from several emerging family types (single, co-parent, gay and lesbian, among others) to studies of traditional nuclear families, and they consider the effect of public policy and recent economic developments on the practice of marriage and the stabilization--or destabilization--of family. Approaching this topic from a variety of perspectives, including historical, cross-cultural, gendered, demographic, socio-biological, and social-psychological viewpoints, the editors highlight the complexity of the modern American family and the growing indeterminacy of its boundaries. Refusing to adhere to any one position, the editors provide an unbiased account of contemporary marriage and family.