Statistics on the American family are sobering. From 1975 to 2000, one-third of all children were born to single mothers, and one-half of all marriages ended in divorce. While children from broken homes are two to three times more likely to develop behavioral and learning difficulties, two-parent families are not immune to problems. The cost of raising children has increased dramatically, and married couples with children are now twice as likely as childless couples to file for bankruptcy. Clearly, the American family is in trouble. But how this trouble started, and what should be done about it, remain hotly contested. In a multifaceted analysis of the current state of a complex institution, "Family Transformed" brings together outstanding scholars from the fields of anthropology, demography, ethics, history, law, philosophy, primatology, psychology, sociology, and theology. Demonstrating that the family is both distinctive in its own right and deeply interwoven with other institutions, the authors examine the roles of education, work, leisure, consumption, legal regulation, public administration, and biology in shaping the ways we court and marry, bear and raise children, and make and break family bonds. International in approach, this wide-ranging volume situates current American debates over sex, marriage, and family within a global framework. Weighing mounting social science evidence that supports a continued need for the nuclear family while assessing the challenges posed by new advocacy for same-sex marriage, and delegalized coupling, the authors argue that only by reintegrating the family into a just moral order of the larger community and society can we genuinely strengthen it. This means not simply upholding traditional family values but truly grasping the family's growing diversity, sustaining its coherence, and protecting its fragility for our own sake and for the common good of society.
List of Figures and TablesAcknowledgementsIntroduction:No Place Like HomeSteven M. Tipton and John Witte, Jr. Part I: All in the Family: Levels of Analysis, Angles of Vision1. Marriage in the Matrix of Habit and HistoryRobert N. Bellah 2. The Biology of Family Values: Reproductive Strategies of Our Fellow PrimatesFrans B.M. de Waal and Amy S. Pollick 3. Sex, Marriage, and Family Life: The Teachings of NatureStephen J. Pope Part II: Happily Ever After? Profiles in Motion of Marriage and the Family4. The Family as Contested TerrainRobert Wuthnow 5. An Economic Perspective on Sex, Marriage, and the Family in the Contemporary United StatesRobert T. Michael 6. The Family in Trouble: Since When? For Whom?Claude S. Fischer and Michael Hout Part III: I Do, I Don't: Reasons and Rites for and against Marriage and Family Life 7. Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood: The Social Science Case and Thoughts about a Theological CaseLinda J. Waite and William J. Doherty 8. The Changing Pathway to Marriage: Trends in Dating, First Unions, and Marriage among Young AdultsBarbara Dafoe Whitehead 9. American Middle-Class Families: Class, Social Reproduction, and Ritual Bradd Shore Part IV: Blessed Yoke and Fragile Freedom 10. The Heart of the Matter: The Family as the Site of Fundamental Ethical StruggleJean Bethke Elshtain 11. Inside the Preindustrial Household: The Rule of Men and the Rights of Women and Children in Late Medieval and Reformation EuropeSteven Ozment 12. Retrieving and Reconstructing Law, Religion, and Marriage in the Western TraditionJohn Witte, Jr. 13. The World Situation of Families: Marriage Reformation as a Cultural WorkDon S. BrowningEpilogue: It Takes a Society to Raise a FamilyRobert N. Bellah ContributorsIndex
