Beset by socio-legal challenges, medical, and scientific advances in reproduction, feminist philosophies and complex questions regarding its contemporary relevance, the family--together with the core values that have sustained over the years--is being tested, re-evaluated, and redesigned. This book directs its focus to the current national debate on family values providing a strong and practical framework for decisionmaking in topical problem areas which integrate the social sciences, law, medicine, political science, economics, ethics, philosophy, and religion.

"An enormously knowledgeable & readable affirmation of the kinds of families people really live in, & a critique of the political & economic structure that cuts them off at the knees." Karen Brodkin UCLA "Even-handed analysis of the most hotly contested issues of our day in a work that is vigorously researched & a pleasure to read." Deborah Anna Luepnitz author of The Family Interpreted

Since the 1980s, religion has been most visible in American public life when issues of sexuality and reproduction are at stake. Paradoxically, however, the voices that speak most loudly in the name of religion are often unschooled in religious history, world religions, theology, or ethics. As a result, religion in America is misrepresented as anxiously and obsessively concerned with sex, and as uniformly supporting the conservative agenda of "family values." This volume corrects that distortion in American public discourse. Its thirteen previously unpublished articles introduce scholarly perspectives on issues including the family, gay rights, abortion, welfare policy, prostitution, and assisted reproduction. They richly display the complexities and conflicts that exist not only between but within America's various religious traditions--for example, the pro-choice strain within Christian history, the support of many religious denominations for gay rights, and the criticism of patriarchal family structures within religious communities past and present. In these essays, contributors put forth views of sexual ethics that are just and compassionate, respectful of cultural pluralism, and attentive to democratic processes. Thorougly researched, lucidly written, and carefully argues, this anthology will debunk the claims of the Religious Right to be the only "religious" word on sexuality in America.

From "a man's home was his castle" to "traditional families never asked for a handout", this provocative book explodes cherished illusions about the last two centuries of American family life to expose the falseness, sentimentality, and self-righteousness of our accepted familial morays.

Rejecting those who urge a "bootstrap" approach to people living in extreme poverty on the edge of society, sociologist Barbara Arrighi makes an eloquent, compassionate plea for empathy and collective responsibility toward those for whom "either the boots or the straps are missing." This book further offers solutions in consciousness raising, community collaboration, and informed, responsible public policy. The book is a critique of a system that purports to serve yet sometimes impedes the welfare of those who are in need of the basic elements for survival, including affordable shelter. It analyzes the structural factors of poverty and the social psychological costs of being poor and lacking a home. Utilizing interview findings from families who have lived in a shelter in northern Kentucky and from staff members, the book examines the degrading effects of shelter life on women's self-respect and children's development. Rather than an examination of individual pathologies leading to lack of shelter, it centers on women and children living in shelters and offers a sociological study of poverty and the family.

Making a compelling case for restoring the primal economic role of the family, Shirley Burggraf offers provocative new ideas for divorce regulations, social security, education, welfare policy, the liability of parents for their children, and the responsibility of children for their aging parents.Along the way she emphasizes the huge economic value of the nurturing roles traditionally exercised by women.

In reviewing the ideological frameworks that have shaped the US experience, this book argues that more has been attempted through American social-welfare policy than is possible in the present system.

This book grapples with a disturbing paradox: the very institutions that are supposed to be helping parents in the difficult enterprise of child rearing are often infected with pronounced anti-family views. Despite the attempt by politicians and social theorists alike to posture as being on the side of 'family values', Dana Mack argues, we live in a culture that is increasingly family -- unfriendly and indeed subtly undermines the efforts of parents when they are working harder than ever to raise their children properly. At once a devastating critique of our muddled status quo and also a clear blueprint for change, this book is bound to have a powerful effect on anyone who is concerned about the fate of the family in contemporary American life.