Coontz addresses the mythology that surrounds today’s family—the demonizing of “untraditional” family forms and marriage and parenting issues. She argues that while it’s not crazy to miss the more hopeful economic trends of the 1950s and 1960s, few would want to go back to the gender roles and race relations of those years. Mothers are going to remain in the workforce, family diversity is here to stay, and the nuclear family can no longer handle all the responsibilities of elder care and childrearing.
http://www.amazon.com/Way-We-Really-Are-Americas/dp/0465090923
WHY CARE?
If you feel like you were not in a "normal" family, get over it. There is a "new normal," and it is not two parents and two children, stable through everyone's life. The profile of families has changed a lot: single-parent, female-headed, unmarried with children, same-sex, blended after a divorce, and so on. Yet children are still feeling sorry for themselves for "not being normal." Another set of "myths about normal" that we need to revise.
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