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

by Stephanie Coontz

Overview

The definitive edition of the classic, myth-shattering history of the American family

Leave It to Beaver was not a documentary, a man's home has never been his castle, the "male breadwinner marriage" is the least traditional family in history, and rape and sexual assault were far higher in the 1970s than they are today. In The Way We Never Were, acclaimed historian Stephanie Coontz examines two centuries of the American family, sweeping away misconceptions about the past that cloud current debates about domestic life. The 1950s do not present a workable model of how to conduct our personal lives today, Coontz argues, and neither does any other era from our cultural past. This revised edition includes a new introduction and epilogue, exploring how the clash between growing gender equality and rising economic inequality is reshaping family life, marriage, and male-female relationships in our modern era.

More relevant than ever, The Way We Never Were is a potent corrective to dangerous nostalgia for an American tradition that never really existed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465098835
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	03/29/2016
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	576
Sales rank:	163,491
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Stephanie Coontz is a member of the faculty of Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, and the director of research and public education at the Council on Contemporary Families.

Table of Contents

Introduction to the 2016 Edition
1. The Way We Wish We Were: Defining the Family Crisis
2. “Leave It to Beaver” and “Ozzie and Harriet”: American Families in the 1950s
3. “My Mother Was a Saint”: Individualism, Gender Myths, and the Problem of Love
4. We Always Stood on Our Own Two Feet: Self-Reliance and the American Family
5. Strong Families, the Foundation of a Virtuous Society: Family Values and Civic Responsibility
6. A Man’s Home Is His Castle: The Family and Outside Intervention
7. Bra-Burners and Family Bashers: Feminism, Working Women, Consumerism, and the Family
8. “First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage, Then Comes Mary with a Baby Carriage”: Marriage, Sex, and Reproduction
9. Toxic Parents, Supermoms, and Absent Fathers: Putting Parenting in Perspective
10. Pregnant Girls, Wilding Boys, Crack Babies, and the Underclass: The Myth of Black
Family Collapse
11. The Crisis Reconsidered
Epilogue to the 2016 Edition: For Better AND Worse: Family Trends in the Twenty-first Century

What People are Saying About This

Jonathan Yardley

"Coontz approaches the subject of what we now insist upon calling 'family values' with what is, in the current atmosphere, a refreshing lack of partisan cant."

William H. Chafe

"Provocative, challenging, and persuasively argued."

Karen Sacks

"If you've been wondering why your family is not 'right,' read this book."

Editorial Reviews

"[Coontz] approaches the subject of what we now insist up on calling 'family values' with what is, in the current atmosphere, a refreshing lack of partisan cant."—Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World

"Stephanie Coontz has her finger on the pulse of contemporary families like no one else in America."—Paula England, 2015-15 President, American Sociological Association

"Coontz presents fascinating facts and figures that explode the cherished myths about self-sufficient, happy, moral families."—Newsday

"Historically rich, and loaded with anecdotal evidence, The Way We Never Were effectively demolishes the normal, traditional nuclear family as neither normal nor traditional, and not even nuclear."—Nation

"A wonderfully perceptive, myth-debunking report.... An important contribution to the current debate on family values."—Publishers Weekly

"Clear, incisive, and distinguished by Coontz's personal conviction and by its vast range of cogent examples, including capsule histories of women in the labor force and of black families. Fascinating, persuasive, politically relevant."—Kirkus Reviews

"Coontz's strength is in the way she shows that families of every era have been blamed for conditions beyond their control."—San Francisco Chronicle

"[Coontz] persuasively dispels the myths and stereotypes of 'traditional' family values as the product of the postwar era."—Library Journal

From the Publisher

Often brilliant and invariably provocative...Pick a favorite presumption about American families during better times...and Ms. Coontz proceeds to unravel the mythical conceit.

New York Times Book Review

The golden age of the American family never existed, asserts Coontz ( The Social Origns of Private Life ) in a wonderfully perceptive, myth-debunking report. The ``Leave It to Beaver'' ideal of breadwinner father, full-time homemaker mother and dependent children was a fiction of the 1950s, she shows. Real families of that period were rife with conflict, repression and anxiety, frequently poor and much less idyllic than many assume; teen pregnancy rates in the '50s were higher than today. Further, Coontz contends, the nuclear family was elevated to a central source of personal satisfaction only in the late 19th century, thereby weakening people's community ties and sense of civic obligation. Coontz disputes the idea that children can be raised properly only in traditional families. Viewing modern domestic problems as symptoms of a much larger socioeconomic crisis, she demonstrates that no single type of household has ever protected Americans from social disruption or poverty. An important contribution to the current debate on family values. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Arguing that ``Americans have tended to discover a crisis in family structure and standards whenever they are in the midst of major changes in socioeconomic structure and standards,'' Coontz puts contemporary challenges facing the family into accessible historical perspective. The author of The Social Origins of Private Life: A History of American Families, 1600-1900 ( LJ 2/1/89) persuasively dispels the myths and stereotypes of ``traditional'' family values as the product of the postwar era (including 1950s sitcoms). Focusing on gender roles, parenting, self-reliance, privacy, and sexual relations, the historian provocatively explores the effects of changes made by women, blacks, and homosexuals on the institution of the family. For academic and larger public library social science collections.--James E. Van Buskirk, San Francisco P.L.

Library Journal