The classic reader on family life that reflects current trends, places them in historical context, and balances cutting-edge scholarship with time-honored pieces.

With every edition, this best-selling reader has chronicled changes in the contemporary American family. The popularity of this text speaks to the authors' ability to find articles that are timely and germane to the subject on one hand, and accessible to undergraduate students on the other. While the selections vary from one edition to the next, they all demonstrate in various ways how family life is bound up with the social, economic, and ideological circumstances of particular times and places.