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Sociology

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Marriages and Families: Changes, Choices and Constraints, 6/E
Nijole V. Benokraitis, University of Baltimore

ISBN-10: 0132431734
ISBN-13: 9780132431736

Publisher: Prentice Hall
Copyright: 2008
Format: Cloth; 672 pp
Published: 03/05/2007

Suggested retail price: $126.67
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For one semester/quarter courses on Marriage and Families, Sociology of the Family, Human Development or Family Studies.

 

By introducing the themes of “Changes, Choices and Constraints” when presenting the basic concepts, theory, research and statistics about marriages and families, Benokraitis discusses how contemporary changes in families and their structure impact the choices student’s actually have, and how society can constrain their marriages, families and relationships.  Through this approach, students are better able to understand what the research and statistics mean for themselves!

 

Seeing that there was a need for a text that reflected the issues- like race and ethnicity, remarriage and stepfamilies, and sexuality, that face students and their families, Professor Benokraitis wrote Marriage and Families as a way to show students both the choices and constraints that families face in modern society. 

 

Marriages and Families is a text designed to unveil the implications of how changes in families and their structure, as well as in society, impact the choices student’s make and their personal relationships.

 

 

 Hallmark Features of Marriage and Families include:

  

Thought-Provoking Box Series:

Reflecting and reinforcing the books primary themes, three groups of boxes focus on changes, choices, and constraints that confront today’s families.  A fourth category discusses cultural differences.

 

  • Choices feature addresses the choices brought on by recent societal changes (e.g., postponing sex and marriage, cohabiting, raising children as single or adoptive parents, and forming interracial, multigenerational, or lesbian and gay households).
    • Offers students the wide spectrum of families and encourages them to become informed about the choices they can make.
  • Constraints feature explores the macro-level constraints that limit our choices, with discussions on topics like government policies, demographic changes,  and technology, as well as the constraints that exist on the individual level–including gender, age, race, and social class.
    •  Brings the reality of everyday life to students by showing them how social policy impacts the choices they will make throughout their lives.
  • Changes feature–Examines how recent profound structural and attitudinal changes affect family forms, interpersonal relationships, and raising children. Reaches beyond the traditional discussions to explore racial-ethnic families, single-parent families and gay families as well as the recent scholarship by and about men, fathers, and grandfathers.
    • Shows students how families have changed over time and gives a glimpse of where they may be headed in the future.
  • Cross-Cultural/Multicultural boxes showcase the growing diversity of contemporary marriages and families, encouraging students to consider the many different forms that families take.

 

Critical Thinking Questions:

These boxes are applied to help students evaluate their own knowledge and acquire insights about family life.

  • “Stop and Think” critical thinking questions follow important issues in boxes throughout the textbook. These questions encourage students' reflective thought about current topics, both personally and across other cultures.
  • Making Connections” questions  ask students to connect the material to their own lives by relating it to a personal experience, integrating it with scholarly studies discussed in the chapter, or “connecting” with classmates who might be sitting next to them.

 

New to This Edition:

These two new series of boxes are applied to help students evaluate their own knowledge and acquire insights about family life.

  • NEW- Since You Asked feature is located at the beginning of each chapter provide an engaging introduction to the subject matter addressed in each chapter. It gives students a preview of the material and helps them organize their thinking.
  • NEW- “Applying What You’ve Learned” boxes emphasize the connection between research findings and students’ own feelings and experiences. The material asks students to apply what they’re reading to their own personal situations and to consider how to improve their decisions and current relationships.

Technology for Marriages and Families:

 

MyFamilyLab is an easy-to-use online resource that allows instructors to assess student progress and adapt course material to meet the specific needs of the class.  MyFamilyLab enables students to diagnose their progress by completing an online diagnostic test.  Based on the results of this test, each student is provided with a customized study plan, including a variety of tools to help them fully master the course material.

 

MyFamilyLab then reports the diagnostic test results to the instructor, as individual stuent grades as well as an aggregate report of class progress.  Based on these reports, the instructor can adapt course material to suit the needs of indivudual students or the class as a whole, without investing a lot of additioiional time.

 

Additionally, MyFamilyLab offers the major resources for Marriages & Families, 6e--including Lecture Outline PowerPoint Slides with Classroom Response System Questions, Chapter Graphics in PowerPoint Slides and the Instructor's Resource Manual with Test Item File--in one convenient location. 

 

The following resources are available in for each chapter of the text in MyFamilyLab:

--ebook

--diagnostic test

--Custom Study Plan

--Research Navigator

--Crossword Puzzles

--Flashcards

--Self Assessments

--Chapter Pretest Quizzes

--Chapter Exams

--Learning Activities

--Video Activities

--Chapter Summary and Review

 

 

How do you get your students to think about the choices they have with respect to their families and relationships?

  • NEW- “Applying What You’ve Learned” boxes emphasize the connection between research findings and students’ own feelings and experiences. The material asks students to apply what they’re reading to their own personal situations and to consider how to improve their decisions and current relationships.
  • NEW- Since You Asked feature is located at the beginning of each chapter provide an engaging introduction to the subject matter addressed in each chapter. It gives students a preview of the material and helps them organize their thinking.

CHAPTER BY CHAPTER CHANGES:

  • Chapter 1, “The Changing Family,” updates the demographic changes that characterize U.S. families, the promarriage movement, and the growing importance of understanding families and marriages from cross-cultural perspectives. There is new material on polygamy both in the United States, Europe, and some developing countries.
  • Chapter 2, “Studying Marriage and the Family,” updates recent studies on family self-help books, focus groups, and evaluation research. There is new material on random sampling and the politics of sex research.
  • Chapter 3, “The Family in Historical Perspective,” expandsthe section on “The Family Sincethe 1960s,” updates information on common misconceptions about the “modern family,” and offers a new box (“How Colonial is Your Family?”).
  • Chapter 4, “Racial and Ethnic Families: Strengths and Stresses,” updates material on family income and recent research on Mexican day laborers. There is new material on undocumented immigrants, infant deaths among minority families, the effect of bilingualism on children’s academic performance, and three new boxes (“Somalis in Maine,” “Is Bill Cosby Right about Black Families?” and “Am I Privileged?”).
  • Chapter 5, “Socialization and Gender Roles,” updates the discussion of the effect of nature and nurture on gender roles, the racial diversity of prime-time characters on television, and the recent backlash against women’s progress, especially in higher education. There is new material on people who are transgendered, reality TV and family processes, how religion affects gender role socialization, and a new box (“Are Children’s Toys Becoming More Sexist?”).
  • Chapter 6, “Love and Loving Relationships,” updates the material on love, jealousy, stalking, Cyberstalking, long-term love, and biological perspectives on love. There is new material on passionate love.
  • Chapter 7, “Sexuality and Sexual Expression Throughout Life,” updates material on a number of topics: homosexuals in non-Western cultures, sexual scripts, female genital mutilation/cutting, sexual activity of adolescents, sex content of television and movies, effectiveness of abstinence-only sex education programs, virginity pledges, forced sexual intercourse, and sexually transmitted infections. Some of the new material examines asexuals, being “on the down low,” sexual activity of college students, myths about sex, cheating in close relationships, and hate crimes. There is also a new box (“If She Says ‘No,’ Just Kidnap Her”).
  • Chapter 8, “Choosing Others: Dating and Mate Selection,” updates material on the quinceañera, “hookin’ up,” cyberdating, interdating, same-sex dating, mate selection in other countries, mail-order brides, professional matchmakers, and dating violence. There is new material on speed dating among American Muslims, online dating, and mate selection across cultures.
  • Chapter 9, “Singlehood, Cohabitation, Civil Unions, and Other Options,” updates material on singlehood, living alone, postponing marriage, the marriage squeeze in other countries, racial-ethnic singles, cohabitation, the benefits and costs of cohabitation, and the effect of cohabitation on children. New material includes inertia theory in cohabitation, recent state laws on same-sex marriage in the United States and globally and a new box (“Does Living Together Make More Sense Than Marriage?”).
  • Chapter 10, “Marriage and Communication in Committed Relationships,” updates material on happily-married couples, how marriage affects health, domestic work and gender roles, what couples fight about, and marriage and relationship education. There is new material on living apart together (LAT) marriages, men’s “emotional work” in marriage, and a new box (“Forced to Marry Before Puberty”).
  • Chapter 11, “To Be or Not to Be a Parent: More Choices, More Constraints,” updates information on U.S. fertility patterns, the characteristics of older parents, domestic international adoptions, artificial insemination, nonmarital childbearing, and recent laws and policies on abortion. There is new material on spacing pregnancies; education, ethnicity, and birth rates; family sizes worldwide; infant mortality rates and causes in the United States and globally; using overseas surrogates, how never-married teens feel about getting pregnant; and contraception and abortion in other countries.
  • Chapter 12, “Raising Children: Promises and Pitfalls,” updates material on egalitarian parenting, corporal punishment (including other countries), birth order of siblings, parents not talking to their teens about drugs, young adults who move back with their parents, parenting in gay and lesbian families, teens and using new drugs (such as painkillers), latchkey kids, child care arrangements, watching TV and lower academic achievement, and foster care. There is new material on the “new momism,” mommy myths and idealized motherhood roles, uninvolved parenting, parents who track their teens, overweight adolescents, the impact of electronic media on child rearing, and a new box (“Should Parents Track Their Teens?”).
  • Chapter 13, “Balancing Work and Family Life,” updates the discussion of why middle classes are shrinking, the working poor, why families are homeless, who works shifts and why, unemployment, stay-at-home dads, two-income couples, trailing spouses, wives who earn more than their husbands, the division of household labor, sexual harassment, and family and work policies. There is new material on the concepts of wealth versus income, corporate welfare, offshoring/outsourcing, whether it pays for women to work outside the home, the two person single career, family and stress, comparable worth, the gender wage gap, and a new box (“How Much Do You Know about Poverty?”).
  • Chapter 14, “Family Violence and Other Health Issues,” updates the statistics on intimate partner violence, marital rape, child maltreatment, sibling and adolescent abuse, elder abuse and neglect, violence in cross-cultural families globally, drug abuse, and combating domestic violence. There is new material on the concept of learned helplessness in intimate partner violence, status compatibility and intimate partner violence, immigrants and domestic violence, ecological system theory in explaining domestic violence, symptoms of depression, and the relationship between eating disorders, genes, and brain chemistry.
  • Chapter 15, “Separation and Divorce,” updates the statistics on U.S. divorce trends, divorce around the world (especially in developing countries), how divorce affects adults and children, custody among gay parents, child support, what hurts children after a divorce, the positive outcomes of separation and divorce, and effectiveness of counseling and marital therapy. This chapter introduces two  new concepts—intergenerational transmission of divorce and co-custody—and  provides new material on divorce among midlife and older couples, why many women’s attitudes about divorce are becoming more conservative, why divorce depletes family wealth, how people adjust to divorce, and a new box (“Why Are African American Divorce Rates High?”).
  • Chapter 16, “Remarriages and Stepfamilies,” updates the material on forming stepfamilies through cohabitation, remarriage rates, redivorce, the “evil stepmother” myth, naming in stepfamilies, having a baby to “cement” a stepfamily, and the effects of stepfamily living on children. This chapter introduces the concept of de facto stepfamilies, and provides new information on the percentage of remarriages, how the presence of children affects remarriages rates, and the relationship between marital roles and power in stepfamilies.
  • Chapter 17, “Families in Later Life,” updates statistics on life expectancy, depression and dementia (including Alzheimer’s), retirement, grandparenting, death and grief, being widowed, caregiving, and support systems outside of the family. This chapter introduces the concept intergenerational ambivalence, and offers new material  on the sex ratio of older women and men, the growing racial and ethnic diversity of our older population, how to live longer, suicide and elderly people, variations in retirement income, sibling relationships and being single in later life, family caregiving by children, recent data on the characteristics of caregiving recipients, and two new boxes (“”The Retired Husband Syndrome in Japan” and “Death and Funeral Traditions among Racial-Ethnic Families”).
  • Chapter 18, “The Family in the Twenty-First Century,” updates material on the world’s aging population, racial-ethnic diversity, child poverty, parental leave in the United States compared with other Western countries, Canada’s health care system, global aging, and the right-to-die Supreme Court decision in 2006. This chapter introduces the concept of the older support ratio, and offers new material on the major reasons for death since 1950, unequal health care, health differences between native-born and immigrant blacks, the new welfare rules implemented in 2006, how welfare reform has worked, and Americans' reactions to physician-assisted suicide.

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Chapter 1: The Changing Family

 

Chapter 2: Studying Marriage and the Family

 

Chapter 3: The Family in Historical Perspective

 

Chapter 4: Racial and Ethnic Families: Strengths and Stresses

 

Chapter 5: Socialization and Gender Roles

 

Chapter 6: Love and Loving Relationships

 

Chapter 7: Sexuality and Sexual Expression Throughout Life

 

Chapter 8: Choosing Others: Dating and Mate Selection

 

Chapter 9: Singlehood, Cohabitation, Civil Unions, and Other Options

 

Chapter 10: Marriage and Communication in Committed Relationships

 

Chapter 11: To Be or Not to Be a Parent: More Choices, More Constraints

 

Chapter 12: Raising Children: Promises and Pitfalls

 

Chapter 13: Balancing Work and Family Life

 

Chapter 14: Family Violence and Other Health Issues

 

Chapter 15: Separation and Divorce   

 

Chapter 16: Remarriages and Stepfamilies

 

Chapter 17: Families in Later Life

 

Chapter 18: The Family in the Twenty-First Century

Nijole V. Benokraitis, professor of sociology at the University of Baltimore, has taught the marriage and family course for almost 25 years. It’s her favorite class but her courses in racial and ethnic relations and gender roles run a close second. Professor Benokraitis received a B.A. in sociology and English from Emmanuel College, an M.A. in sociology from the University of Illinois at Urbana, and a doctorate in sociology from the University of Texas at Austin.

 

She is a strong proponent of applied sociology and requires her students to enhance their study through interviews, direct observation, and other hands-on learning methods. She also enlists her students in community service activities such as tutoring and mentoring inner-city high school students, writing to government officials and other decision makers about specific social problems, and volunteering research services to nonprofit organizations.

 

Professor Benokraitis, who immigrated to the United States from Lithuania with her family when she was 6 years old, is bilingual and bicultural and is very empathetic of students who try to balance several cultural worlds. She has authored, co-authored, edited, or coedited eight books, including Contemporary Ethnic Families in the United States: Characteristics, Variations, and Dynamics; Feuds about Families: Conservative, Centrist, Liberal, and Feminist Perspectives; Modern Sexism: Blatant, Subtle, and Covert Discrimination; and Seeing Ourselves: Classic, Contemporary, and Cross-Cultural Readings in Sociology.

 

Dr. Benokraitis has published numerous articles and book chapters on such topics as institutional racism, discrimination against women in government and higher education, fathers in two-earner families, displaced homemakers, and family policy. She has served as both chair and graduate program director of the University of Baltimore’s Department of Sociology and has chaired numerous university committees.

She has received grants and fellowships from many institutions, including the National Institute of Mental Health, the Ford Foundation, the American Educational Research Association, the Administration on Aging, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She has for some time served as a consultant in the areas of sex and race discrimination to women’s commissions, business groups, colleges and universities, and federal government programs. She has also made several appearances on radio and television on gender communication differences and single-sex educational institutions. She currently serves on the editorial board of Women & Criminal Justice and reviews manuscripts for several academic journals.

 

Professor Benokraitis lives in Maryland with her husband, Dr. Vitalius Benokraitis, associate chair and director of graduate studies in computer science, Loyola College in Maryland. They have two adult children, Gema and Andrius.

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