The Way We Never Were: American Families and

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.

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.

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

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

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials