quotes from Stephanie Coontz's THE WAY WE NEVER WERE

In THE WAY WE NEVER WERE: AMERICAN FAMILIES AND THE NOSTALGIA TRAP (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), Stephanie Coontz writes:

description:

"The family arrangements we sometimes mistakenly think of as traditional became standard for a majority of Americans, and a realistic goal for others, only in the postwar era" (p. 262).

prescriptions:

"I argued in the last chapter that the so-called "crisis of the family" is a subset of a much larger crisis of social obligation that requires us to look beyond private family relations and rebuild larger social ties" (p. 283).

"For, despite all the difficlty of making generalizations about past families, the historical evidence does suggest that families have been most successful wherever they have built meaningful, solid networks and communities beyond their own boundaries. We may discover that the best thing we will ever do for our own families, however we define them, is to get involved in community or political action to help others." (p. 287-288)

Coontz's prescriptions for rebuilding "larger social ties" and "solid networks and communities" resemble Native American prescriptions for developing more righteous tribalisms.

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most recent update: 24 March 1997
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NOTICE OF COPYRIGHT: copyright 1997 Theodore Walker, Jr. This copyright covers all content and formatting (browser-visible and HTML text) in this and attached documents created by Theodore Walker, Jr. c@Theodore Walker, Jr.
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