Shifting the Center is an anthology that explores the issues and diversity of contemporary families by presenting a balanced coverage of racial and ethnic variation, and integrating a diversity of family arrangements and processes.

Features

• Deconstruction of a universal family notion. By shifting the focus of inquiry away from traditional family structures, and thus revealing that numerous family structures co-exist, Shifting the Center helps students understand how the social structures are embedded in the larger society, and how these family structures change over time and across cultures.
• Integration of race-ethnicity, social class, gender, and sexuality. Scholarship on racial-ethnic families, gay and lesbian families, and working-class families is highlighted throughout the text.
• Cutting-edge scholarship. This anthology contains the most recent innovative work of family scholars, which highlights the concepts, theories, and research methodologies currently used to study families. Recent scholarship includes work by such authors as Judith Stacey, Scott Coltrane, Terry Arendell, Nazli Kibria, Kathleen Gerson, David Blankenhorn, Patricia Hill Collins, Andrew Cherlin, and Kristen Luker.
• Effective pedagogy. Brief introductions to each reading describe the article, identify emerging themes, and include biographical headnotes about the author of the selection.

Diana Gittins, The Family in Question: What Is the Family? Is it Universal? � Maxine Baca Zinn, Feminist Rethinking from Racial-Ethnic Families � Kath Weston, Exiles from Kinship � Arlene Skolnick, Embattled Paradise: The American Family in an Age of Uncertainty

PART II. HISTORICAL CHANGES AND FAMILY VARIATIONS

Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap � Niara Sudarkasa, Interpreting the African Heritage in Afro-American Family Organization � Richard Griswold del Castillo, La Familia: Family Cohesion Among Mexican American Families in the Urban Southwest, 1848�1900 � Esther Ngan-Ling Chow, Family, Economy, and the State: A Legacy of Struggle for Chinese American Women

PART III. STRUCTURAL DIVERSITY OF INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS

Xu Xiaohe and Martin King Whyte, Love Matches and Arranged Marriages: A Chinese Replication � Norval D. Glenn, Values, Attitudes, and the State of American Marriage � Larry Bumpass, James A. Sweet, and Andrew Cherlin, The Role of Cohabitation in Declining Rates of Marriage � Judith Stacey, Gay and Lesbian Families Are Here

PART IV. GENDER AND POWER IN INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS

Letitia Anne Peplau and Susan Miller Campbell, The Balance of Power in Dating � Carol J. S. Bruess and Judy C. Pearson, Gendered Patterns in Family Communication � Nazli Kibria, Power, Patriarchy, and Gender Conflict in the Vietnamese Immigrant Community � Pepper Schwartz, Peer Marriage

PART V. PARENTING AND INTERGENERATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS

David H. Demo, Parent-Child Relations: Assessing Recent Changes � Arthur L. Greil, A Secret Stigma: Interaction with the Fertile World � Kristin Luker, Dubious Conceptions: The Controversy over Teen Pregnancy � Sandra J. Boyd and Judith Treas, Family Care of the Frail Elderly: A New Look at �Women in the Middle�

PART VI. MOTHERHOOD

Michele Hoffnung, Motherhood: Contemporary Conflict for Women � Patricia Hill Collins, Shifting the Center: Race, Class, and Feminist Theorizing about Motherhood � Adrienne Rich, Anger and Tenderness � Ellen Lewin, Negotiating Lesbian Motherhood: The Dialectics of Resistance and Accommodation

PART VII. FATHERHOOD

David Blankenhorn, The Diminishment of American Fatherhood � Kathleen Gerson, Dilemmas of Involved Fatherhood � John Lewis McAdoo and Julia B. McAdoo, The African American Father�s Roles Within the Family � Kerry Daly, Reshaping Fatherhood: Finding the Models

PART VIII. DIVORCE, REMARRIAGE, AND BLENDED FAMILIES

Constance Ahrons, What Divorce Is and Is Not: Transcending the Myths � Paul R. Amato, The Impact of Divorce on Men and Women in India and the United States � Terry Arendell, The Social Self as Gendered: A Masculinist Discourse of Divorce � Andrew J. Cherlin and Frank Furstenberg, Jr., Stepfamilies in the United States: A Reconsideration

PART IX. FAMILIES AND VIOLENCE

Richard J. Gelles, Through a Sociological Lens: Social Structure and Family Violence � Deeana Jang, Debbie Lee, and Rachel Morello-Frosch, Domestic Violence in the Immigrant and Refugee Community: Responding to the Needs of Immigrant Women � Claire M. Renzetti, Toward a Better Understanding of Lesbian Battering � Murray A. Straus, The Conspiracy of Silence

PART X. FAMILIES AND WORK

Arlie Hochschild, The Emotional Geography of Work and Family Life � Lilllian B. Rubin, �When You Get Laid Off, It�s Like You Lose a Part of Yourself� � Scott Coltrane, Changing Patterns of Family Work: Chicano Men and Housework � Lynet Uttal, Custodial Care, Surrogate Care, and Coordinated Care: Employed Mothers and the Meaning of Child Care

PART XI. FAMILIES AND POVERTY

Robert Aponte, Hispanic Families in Poverty: Diversity, Context, and Interpretation � Robin L. Jarrett, Living Poor: Family Life Among Single Parent African American Women � Christopher Jencks and Kathryn Edin, Do Poor Women Have a Right to Bear Children? � Jonathan Kozol, Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America

PART XII. FAMILY POLICY AND SOCIAL CHANGE

James Garbarino, Mario T. Gaboury, and Maragaret C. Plantz, Social Policy, Children, and Their Families � Steven K. Wisensale and Kathlyn E. Heckart, Domestic Partnerships: A Concept Paper and Policy Discussion � Rose Brewer, Race, Class, Gender and U.S. State Welfare Policy: The Nexus of Inequality for African American Families � Joan Acker, Women, Families and Public Policy in Sweden