Written by an international team of experts, this comprehensive volume investigates modern-day family relationships, partnering, and parenting set against a backdrop of rapid social, economic, cultural, and technological change.

• Covers a broad range of topics, including social inequality, parenting practices, children’s work, changing patterns of citizenship, multi-cultural families, and changes in welfare state protection for families
• Includes many European, North American and Asian examples written by a team of experts from across five continents
• Features coverage of previously neglected groups, including immigrant and transnational families as well as families of gays and lesbians
• Demonstrates how studying social change in families is fundamental for understanding the transformations in individual and social life across the globe
• Extensively reworked from the original Companion published over a decade ago: three-quarters of the material is completely new, and the remainder has been comprehensively updated

New feature

"The editors incorporate some of the biggest names in family sociology alongside those of newer scholars. Notably, the book focuses on trends and changes in families globally, allowing the authors to explore the ways in which forces such as globalization and the global recession impact all aspects of family life, from marriage to fertility. . . Appropriate for advanced family scholars while also accessible for students. . . Summing Up: Highly recommended."

Choice

Unprecedented social changes are taking place that pose new challenges for families. The Wiley Blackwell Companion to The Sociology of Families brings together a collection of original essays that investigate partnering, parenting, and families against the backdrop of rapid social change brought about by globalization, contested cultural values, severe economic shocks, new technologies, and widespread rethinking of welfare state protection for families today.

Written by a team of leading researchers from five continents, these newly commissioned essays maintain a focus on family inequality and diversity over the life course while offering fresh insights into new family forms and intimate relationships. Extensively reworked since its publication over a decade ago, the volume spans a broad range of topics including changes to partnering and parenting in North American, European, Asian, and Latin American families; intergenerational relationships; immigrant and transnational families; cohabitation and divorce; same-sex families; and much more. Authoritative and timely, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to The Sociology of Families offers illuminating insights into the complex processes that are transforming family life in our globalized world.

Notes of Contributors viii

Preface xvi

PART I GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES ON FAMILIES

1 Family Systems of the World: Are They Converging? 3
Göran Therborn

2 Changing European Families 20
Trude Lappegård

3 American Families: Demographic Trends and Social Class 43
Wendy D. Manning and Susan L. Brown

4 Family Change in East Asia 61
Yen-Chun Cheryl Chen and Jui-Chung Allen Li

5 Changes and Inequalities in Latin American Families 83
Irma Arriagada

PART II DIVERSITY, INEQUALITY, AND IMMIGRATION

6 Same-Sex Families 109
Timothy J. Biblarz, Megan Carroll and Nathaniel Burke

7 Family Poverty 132
Rys Farthing

8 Transnational Families 155
Loretta Baldassar, Majella Kilkey, Laura Merla and Raelene Wilding

9 Ethnic Diversity in the United Kingdom: Family Forms and Conjugality 176
Alison Shaw

10 Immigrant Families and the Shifting Color Line in the United States 194
Karen D. Pyke

PART III FAMILY FORMS AND FAMILY INFLUENCES

11 Cohabitation: Recent Research and Implications 217
Rhiannon A. Kroeger and Pamela J. Smock

12 Partnerships, Family, and Personal Configurations 236
Eric D. Widmer

13 Health and Families 255
Deborah Carr, Kristen W. Springer and Kristi Williams

14 Religion and Families 277
Christopher G. Ellison and Xiaohe Xu

PART IV FAMILY PROCESSES

15 Divorce: Trends, Patterns, Causes, and Consequences 303
Juho Härkönen

16 Partner Violence in World Perspective 323
Emily M. Douglas, Denise A. Hines and Murray A. Straus

17 Money Management, Gender, and Households 344
Sean R. Lauer and Carrie Yodanis

18 Family Transmission of Social and Cultural Capital 361
Toby L. Parcel and Joshua A. Hendrix

PART V LIFE COURSE PERSPECTIVES

19 Adult Intergenerational Relationships 385
Matthijs Kalmijn

20 Children’s Families: A Child-Centered Perspective 404
Jacqueline Scott

21 Fathers and Fatherhood 424
Kevin M. Roy

22 Aging Families and the Gendered Life Course 444
Phyllis Moen, Jack Lam and Melanie N.G. Jackson

PART VI FAMILIES IN CONTEXT

23 Public Policy and Families 467
Pernilla Tunberger and Wendy Sigle-Rushton

24 Family Policy and Wives’ Economic Independence 485
Hadas Mandel

25 Assisted Reproduction, Genetic and Genomic Technologies, and Family Life 508
Martin Richards

26 Sex, Family, and Social Change 527
Judith Treas and Thomas Alan Elliott

27 The Global Chaos of Love: Toward a Cosmopolitan Turn in the Sociology of Love and Families 547
Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim

Index 560