Shifting the Center

Understanding Contemporary Families

Susan J. Ferguson

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781071847602
• eBook ISBN: 9781071847633
• Edition: 6
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Marriage & Family Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

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. 

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Acknowledgements
• Publisher Note
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Brief Contents
• Detailed Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• About the Editor
• Part I Introduction to the Study of Families
• 1 Feminist Rethinking From Racial-Ethnic Families
• 2 LGBTQ Families
• 3 Immigrant Families and the Shifting Color Line in the United States
• Part II Historical Changes and Family Variations
• 4 Historical Perspectives on Family Diversity
• 5 Fictive Kin, Paper Sons, and Compadrazgo: Women of Color and the Struggle for Family Survival
• 6 The Politics of Theorizing African American Families: Old Debates, New Directions
• Part III Courtship, Dating, and Self Marriage
• 7 Gendered Sexuality in Young Adulthood: Double Binds and Flawed Options
• 8 We Can Write the Scripts Ourselves: Queer Challenges to Heteronormative Courtship Practices
• 9 Happily-ever after: Self-marriage, the claim of wellness, and temporal ownership
• Part IV Marriage, Cohabitation, and Partnership
• 10 We Can’t Build Our Social System Around Marriage Anymore
• 11 Marriage: The Good, the Bad, and the Greedy
• 12 Marital Status and Perceived Discrimination Among Transgender People
• 13 Clashing Dreams: Highly Educated Overseas Brides and Low-Wage US Husbands
• 14 Older Adults Developing a Preference for Living Apart Together
• 15 Intimacy and Emotion Work in Lesbian, Gay, and Heterosexual Relationships
• Part V Motherhood and Fatherhood
• 16 Shifting the Center: Race, Class, and Feminist Theorizing About Motherhood
• 17 Mothering From a Distance: Emotions, Gender, and Intergenerational Relations in Filipino Transnational Families
• 18 When Paid Work Invades the Family: Single Mothers in the COVID-19 Pandemic
• 19 Fathering: Paradoxes, Contradictions, and Dilemmas
• 20 Stealing My Opportunity to Be a Father
• 21 The Father as an Idea
• Part VI Parenting, Children, and Inter-generational Relationships
• 22 Not-So-Nuclear Families: Class, Gender, and Networks of Care
• 23 Emotional Life on the Market Frontier
• 24 Out of Sorts: Adoption and (Un)Desirable Children
• 25 The Gendered Buffet: LGBTQ Parents Resisting Heteronormativity
• 26 Invisible Inequality: Social Class and Childrearing in Black Families and White Families
• 27 Consumption as Care and Belonging: Economies of Dignity in Children’s Daily Lives
• 28 Intergenerational Relationships in Late Life: The Elderly, Their Adult Children, and Their Grandchildren
• Part VII Divorce, Remarriage, and Blended Families
• 29 Remarriage and Stepfamilies: Strategic Sites for Family Scholarship in the 21st Century
• 30 The Effects of Religion on Remarriage Among American Women: Evidence From the National Survey of Family Growth
• 31 Boundary Ambiguity in Gay Stepfamilies: Perspectives of Gay Biological Fathers and Their Same-Sex Partners
• Part VIII Families and Violence
• 32 Gender, Diversity, and Violence: Extending the Feminist Framework
• 33 Lifting the Veil of Secrecy: Domestic Violence Against South Asian Women in the United States
• 34 Making the Invisible Visible: LGBTQ Intimate Partner Violence
• Part IX Families, Work, and Carework
• 35 There’s No Such Thing as Having It All: Gender, Work, and Care in an Age of Insecurity
• 36 Gender, Parenting, and the Rise of Remote Work During the Pandemic: Implications for Domestic Inequality in the United States
• 37 Negotiating Work and Parenting Over the Life Course: Mexican Family Dynamics in a Binational Context
• 38 Great Expectations? Working- and Middle-Class Cohabitors’ Expected and Actual Divisions of Housework
• 39 No Place Like Home: The Division of Domestic Labor in Lesbigay Families
• 40 Creating a Caring Society
• Part X Families and Poverty
• 41 Severe Deprivation in America: An Introduction
• 42 Understanding the Dynamics of $2-a-Day Poverty in the United States
• 43 Unmarried With Children
• 44 States Must Continue Recent Momentum to Further Improve TANF Benefit Levels: Benefit Increases Can Promote Racial Equity and Child Well-Being
• References