The Second Edition of Families in Global and Multicultural Perspective travels across geographic, cultural, and historical boundaries to explore the diversity of the world′s families—in family structure, processes, history, and social and environmental contexts. Editors Bron B. Ingoldsby and Suzanna D. Smith examine a full range of topics including family origin and universality, family functions, marital structure, kinship rules, comparative research methods, family development, marriage adjustment, parenting, divorce, and aging. This comprehensive text increases students′ recognition of and respect for cultural diversity as it influences family life; meets educators′ needs for a comparative family text; and contributes to the development of new ways of thinking about families that highlights culture and context.  

"The editors, both qualified scholars with a comparative perspective, have been successful in finding well-known authors for the various chapters. Both theoretical and methodological issues are dealt with in a nuanced and qualified manner…. The book is to be highly recommended to students, faculty, and libraries."
—Jan Trost, Professor Emeritus, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden  

"The strength of this book is its comparative approach under several theoretic frameworks… This book appears to be the most comprehensive study of global families." —Heying Jenny Zhan, Georgia State University  

New to the Second Edition:





Includes new chapters focussing on the Middle East and Pacific regions to introduce students to the variations in family life across such diverse areas
Provides updated information about families around the world by expanding the contents to incorporate recent trends in family life
Discusses increasingly salient topics that are rarely found in comparative family texts, such as social inequality as manifested in gender stratification, oppression of certain ethnic and cultural groups, and poverty
Includes student exercises intended to increase student awareness and appreciation of diversity  

Families in Global and Multicultural Perspective is an excellent textbook for advanced undergraduate and graduate students studying Sociology and Family Studies in courses such as Families in Cross-Cultural Perspective, Comparative Family Organization, Global and Diverse Families, World Families, and Families in Comparative Perspective.