The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap

by Coontz, Stephanie

• ISBN13: 9780465090976
• ISBN10: 0465090974
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1993-10-05
• Publisher: Basic Books

Summary

The Way We Never Wereexamines two centuries of American family life and shatters a series of myths and half-truths that burden modern families. Placing current family dilemmas in the context of far-reaching economic, political, and demographic changes, Coontz sheds new light on such contemporary concerns as parenting, privacy, love, the division of labor along gender lines, the black family, feminism, and sexual practice.

Author Biography

Stephanie Coontz is a member of the faculty of Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA, where she is a historian and an expert on American culture.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Introduction	1	(7)
1 The Way We Wish We Were: Defining the Family Crisis	8	(15)
2 "Leave It to Beaver" and "Ozzie and Harriet": American Families in the 1950s	23	(19)
3 "My Mother Was a Saint": Individualism, Gender Myths, and the Problem of Love	42	(26)
4 We Always Stood on Our Own Two Feet: Self-reliance and the American Family	68	(25)
5 Strong Families, the Foundation of a Virtuous Society: Family Values and Civic Responsibility	93	(29)
6 A Man's Home Is His Castle: The Family and Outside Intervention	122	(27)
7 Bra-Burners and Family Bashers: Feminism, Working Women, Consumerism, and the Family	149	(31)
8 "First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage, Then Comes Mary with a Baby Carriage": Marriage, Sex, and Reproduction	180	(27)
9 Toxic Parents, Supermoms, and Absent Fathers: Putting Parenting in Perspective	207	(25)
10 Pregnant Girls, Wilding Boys, Crack Babies, and the Underclass: The Myth of Black Family Collapse	232	(23)
11 The Crisis Reconsidered	255	(28)
Epilogue Inventing a New Tradition	283	(6)
Notes	289	(88)
Select Bibliography	377	(4)
Index	381