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Shifting the Center
Understanding Contemporary Families

Sixth Edition
Edited by:


November 2022 | 672 pages | SAGE Publications, Inc
Shifting the Center: Understanding Contemporary Families, Sixth Edition is a popular anthology of readings used in Sociology of Family and of Marriages/Families/Intimate Relationship courses. Editor Susan J. Ferguson brings together carefully selected pieces written by leading family researchers and drawn from a variety of scholarly sources, including articles from the leading family journals and excerpts from several classic book-length studies. She also provides background and context to help students connect the topics in the readings to the broader themes in the study of family sociology. The table of contents follows the same scope and sequence as the leading family survey texts. 

 
Preface
 
About the Editor
 
Part I. Introduction to the Study of Families
Maxine Baca Zinn
1. Feminist Rethinking from Racial-Ethnic Families
Nancy J. Mezey
2. LGBTQ Families
Karen D. Pyke
3. Immigrant Families and the Shifting Color Line in the United States
 
Part II. Historical Changes and Family Variations
Stephanie Coontz
4. Historical Perspectives on Family Diversity
Bonnie Thornton Dill
5. Fictive Kin, Paper Sons, and Compradazgo: Women of Color and the Struggle for Family Survival
Shirley A. Hill
6. The Politics of Theorizing African American Families: Old Debates, New Directions
 
Part III. Courtship, Dating, and Self Marriage
Laura Hamilton and Elizabeth A. Armstrong
7. Gendered Sexuality in Young Adulthood: Double Binds and Flawed Options
Ellen Lamont
8. We Can Write the Scripts Ourselves: Queer Challenges to Heteronormative Courtship Practices
Kinneret Lahad and Michal Kravel-Tovi
9. Happily-Ever After: Self-Marriage, the Claim of Wellness, and Temporal Ownership
 
Part IV. Marriage, Cohabitation, and Partnership
Philip N. Cohen
10. We Can’t Build Our Social System Around Marriage Anymore
Naomi Gerstel and Natalia Sarkisian
11. Marriage: The Good, the Bad, and the Greedy
Hui Liu and Lindsey Wilkinson
12. Marital Status and Perceived Discrimination Among Transgender People
Hung Cam Thai
13. Clashing Dreams: Highly Educated Overseas Brides and Low-Wage U.S. Husbands
Jacquelyn J. Benson and Marilyn Coleman
14. Older Adults Developing a Preference for Living Apart Together
Deb Umberson, Mieke Beth Thomeer, and Amy C. Lodge
15. Intimacy and Emotion Work in Lesbian, Gay, and Heterosexual Relationships
 
Part V. Motherhood and Fatherhood
Motherhood

 
Patricia Hill Collins
16. Shifting the Center: Race, Class, and Feminist Theorizing About Motherhood
Rhacel Salazar Parreñas
17. Mothering From a Distance: Emotions, Gender, and Intergenerational Relations in Filipino Transnational Families
Rosanna Hertz, Jane Mattes, and Alexandria Shook
18. When Paid Work Invades the Family: Single Mothers in the Covid-19 Pandemic
Fatherhood

 
Scott Coltrane
19. Fathering: Paradoxes, Contradictions, and Dilemmas
Brittany Pearl Battle
20. Stealing My Opportunity to Be a Father
Rosanna Hertz
21. The Father as an Idea
 
Part VI. Parenting, Children, and Intergenerational Relationships
Karen V. Hansen
22. Not-so-Nuclear Families: Class, Gender, and Networks of Care
Arlie Hochschild
23. Emotional Life on the Market Frontier
Katherin M. Flower Kim
24. Out of Sorts: Adoption and (Un)Desirable Children
Kate Henley Averett
25. The Gendered Buffet: LGBTQ Parents Resisting Heteronormativity
Annette Lareau
26. Invisible Inequality: Social Class and Childrearing in Black Families and White Families
Allison J. Pugh
27. Consumption as Care and Belonging: Economies of Dignity in Children's Daily Lives
Roberta L. Coles
28. Intergenerational Relationships in Later Life: The Elderly, Their Adult Children, and Their Grandchildren
 
Part VII. Divorce, Remarriage, and Blended Families
Megan M. Sweeney
29. Remarriage and Stepfamilies: Strategic Sites for Family Scholarship in the 21st Century
Susannah M. Brown and Jeremy Porter
30. The Effects of Religion on Remarriage among American Women: Evidence from the National Survey of Family Growth
David A. Jenkins
31. Boundary Ambiguity in Gay Stepfamilies: Perspectives of Gay Biological Fathers and Their Same-Sex Partners
 
Part VIII. Families and Violence
Kersti A. Yllö
32. Gender, Diversity, and Violence: Extending the Feminist Framework
Staya P. Krishnan and Malahat Baig-Amin et al.
33. Lifting the Veil of Secrecy: Domestic Violence Against South Asian Women in the United States
Adam M. Messinger
34. Making the Invisible Visible: LGBTQ Intimate Partner Violence
 
Part IX. Families, Work, and Carework
Kathleen Gerson
35. There's No Such Thing as Having it All: Gender, Work, and Care in an Age of Insecurity
Allison Dunatchik, Kathleen Gerson, Jennifer Glass, Jerry A. Jacobs, and Harley Stritzel
36. Gender, Parenting, and the Rise of Remote Work During the Pandemic: Implications for Domestic Inequality in the United States
Joanna Dreby
37. Negotiating Work and Parenting over the Life Course: Mexican Family Dynamics in a Binational Context
Amanda J. Miller and Daniel L. Carlson
38. Great Expectations? Working- and Middle-Class Cohabitors Expected and Actual Divisions of Housework
Christopher Carrington
39. No Place Like Home: The Division of Domestic Labor in Lesbigay Families
Evelyn Nakano Glenn
40. Creating a Caring Society
 
Part X. Families and Poverty
Matthew Desmond
41. Severe Deprivation in America: An Introduction
H. Luke Shaefer, Kathryn Edin, and Elizabeth Talbert
42. Understanding the Dynamics of a $2-a-Day Poverty in the United States
Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas
43. Unmarried with Children
Ali Safawi and Cindy Reyes
44. States Must Continue Recent Momentum to Further Improve TANF Benefit Levels: Benefit Increases Can Promote Racial Equity and Child Well-Being