WHEN FAMILY VALUES MEET REALITY
Des Moines Sunday Regiser, May 18, 1997
Reviewed by Paul Rosenburg
In three successive books, family historian Stephanie Coontz has gone from prize-winning academic history in The Social Origins of Private Life: A History of American Families, 1600 - 1900, to debunking common myths in The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap, to providing guidance for families and public policy in her latest book, The Way We Really Are: Coming to Terms With America's Changing Families...
Review of: The Way We Never Were
Kirkus Reviews, 3/1/97
A historian of the American family debunks the myth that a return to the so-called traditional two-parent nuclear family can provide us with an unassailable refuge from the social, economic, and psychological malaise Americans seem to feel so acutely these days...
Domestic Solutions
The New york times Book Review, September 24, 1997By Eden Ross Lipson
The publication of The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap, Stephanie Coontz's previous book, came in time for that book to serve as fodder in the "family values" debate that dominated the 1992 election. What might have been merely a well-received, clearly written book by an academic, became fuel in the sound-bite fires and set the author, a historian at Evergreen State College in [Washington], on the road. The reception of that book perhaps contributed to the accessible tone of Coontz's follow-up, a look at the contemporary American family called The Way We Really Are: Coming to Terms With America's Changing Families...
Review of: The Way We Never Were
Kirkus Reviews, 8/15/92Placing the American family in its historical, cultural, economic, and philosophic context Coontz (co-ed., Women's Work, Men's Property, 1986) identifies the myths and their sources, functions, and fallacies that Americans generate around family life, as well as the terrible burden these illusions create...
Review of: The Way We Really Are
Contemporary SociologyJudy Root Aulette, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
Stephanie Coontz is a scholar activist. A historian, author, and teacher, she has also jumped into the fray of public debate on families, using her considerable skills to examine contemporary families as well as historical patterns. She now brings her ideas to the most popular of the popular media, being quoted, misquoted, and interviewed by the likes of Oprah, the National Enquirer, the New York Times, CNN, and Crossfire. A founding member of the Council on Contemporary Families, Coontz offers an alternative point of view to the politically conservative "family values" advocates...
Review of: The Way We Really Are
Publisher’s Weekly, February 17, 1997
Family historian Coontz is up in arms over misconceptions in the media about what have been termed "traditional" families. The author of The Way We Never Were, which tried to debunk some of the myths about the American family through history, here turns her attention to family life today. Against the backdrop of the war over "family values," Coontz set out to meet people from every type of background...
Ozzie and Hariet Lied
The New York Times Book Review, November 4, 1992By Donald Katz
Two models of the American family have been on view in this political season. The family Clinton has presented itself as an up-to-date survivormodel, replete with storytelling about family trouble - the beaming young couple who have worked past their problems, the working mother of the candidate, the once drug-addicted and imprisoned brother. The family Bush has appeared as a more traditional survivor family with a similar persistence of love and loyalty in the face of loss and pain, and yet, being "traditional," accoutered with all sorts of Little-League and car-pool nostalgia...
Whole Truth Behind Dream '50s
Newsdayby Vickie Erv
Oh, we families had a jolly time in the '50s, living and breathing, family values, whatever those are. Such happy, moral days: babies booming, divorce and illegitimacy half of what they are today, home ownership skyrocketing, daddy venturing out to win bread, and mommy staying home to express her femininity through intricate housework maneuvers. This was not just Leave It To Beaver. This was the real thing. Of course, in order to play this American Family Dream Game, you really did have to be white and middle class...
Facts of Life for a Whole Nation
Those who say, "Here's what's wrong with families" in front of Stephanie Coontz had better be able to pull out the numbers.
The News Tribune, Wednesday May 28, 1997By Kathleen Merryman
Stephanie Coontz can't thank Dan Quayle enough. She had just published The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap when Quayle blasted television character Murphy Brown for choosing to become a single mother. There was Quayle, conjuring up a nostalgic vision of "traditional" American values sustained by "traditional" families that looked very much like 1950s sitcom icons. And there was Coontz, the Evergreen State College professor of history and family studies, using history to demonstrate that Quayle's vision was a seductive myth...
