The way we never were: American families and the nostalgia trap

Abstract

* Introduction * The Way We Wish We Were: Defining the Family Crisis * Leave it to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet: American Families in the 1950s * My Mother Was a Saint: Individualism, Gender Myths, and the Problem of Love * We Always Stood on Our Own Two Feet: Self-reliance and the American Family * Strong Families, the Foundation of a Virtuous Society * Family Values and Civic Responsibility * A Mans Home Is His Castle: The Family and Outside Intervention * Bra-Burners and Family Bashers: Feminism, Working Women, Consumerism, and the Family * First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage, Then Comes Mary with a Baby Carriage: Marriage, Sex, and Reproduction * Toxic Parents, Supermoms, and Absent Fathers: Putting Parenting in Perspective * Pregnant Girls, Wilding Boys, Crack Babies, and the Underclass * The Myth of the Black Family Collapse * The Crisis Reconsidered * Epilogue: Inventing a New Tradition