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Shifting the Center
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Shifting the Center
Understanding Contemporary Families

Fifth Edition
Edited by:
July 2018 | 688 pages | SAGE Publications, Inc
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The author is a proud sponsor of the 2020 SAGE Keith Roberts Teaching Innovations Award—enabling graduate students and early career faculty to attend the annual ASA pre-conference teaching and learning workshop.

Now with SAGE Publishing!

The widely-popular anthology Shifting the Center: Understanding Contemporary Families is a carefully selected collection of the most important family scholars and topics in the study of the contemporary family today. In the new Fifth Edition, Susan J. Ferguson includes articles from the leading family journals and excerpts from a number of classic book-length studies. The readings address the intersectional nature of families, illustrate well how the institution of the family is changing, and push students’ critical reading and thinking skills.

New to this Edition

  • Added readings on LGBTQ families that challenge the heteronormative ideal of family in the United States.
  • An updated Families in Poverty section includes some of the most important scholarship in sociology right now such as Matthew Desmond's “Severe Deprivation in America: An Introduction” and H. Luke Shaefer, Kathryn Edin, and Elizabeth Talbert's “Understanding the Dynamics of $2-a-Day Poverty in the United States.”
  • Expanded coverage of Racial-Ethnic diversity deconstructs white, middle-class families as the norm.
  • Increased coverage of immigrant families.

 

 
About the Editor
 
Preface
 
Part I. INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF FAMILIES
1. The Family in Question: What is the Family? Is It Universal?

Diana Gittins
2. Feminist Rethinking from Racial-Ethnic Families

Maxine Baca Zinn
*3. LGBTQ Families

Nancy Mezey
*4. We Can’t Build Our Social System around Marriage Anymore

Philip N. Cohen
 
Part II. HISTORICAL CHANGES AND FAMILY VARIATIONS
5. Historical Perspectives on Family Diversity

Stephanie Coontz
6. Fictive Kin, Paper Sons, and Compradazgo

Bonnie Thornton Dill
7. The Politics of Theorizing Black Families: Old Debates, New Directions

Shirley Hill
*8. Immigrant Families and the Shifting Color Line in the United States

Karen D. Pyke
*9. Multigenerational Punishment: Shared Experiences of Undocumented Immigration Status within Mixed-Status Families

Laura E. Enriquez
 
Part III. COURTSHIP, DATING, AND POWER
10. Gendered Sexuality in Young Adulthood

Laura Hamilton and Elizabeth A. Armstrong
*11. “We Can Write the Scripts Ourselves”: Queer Challenges to Heteronormative Courtship Practices

Ellen Lamont
12. Arranged Marriages: What’s Love Got to Do with It?

Monisha Pasupathi
 
Part IV. MARRIAGE, COHABITATION, AND PARTNERSHIP
13. The Deinstitutionalization of American Marriage

Andrew J. Cherlin
14. Marriage: The Good, the Bad, and the Greedy

Naomi Gerstel and Natalia Sarkisian
*15. Marital Status and Perceived Discrimination among Transgender People

Hui Liu and Lindsey Wilkinson
16. Clashing Dreams: Highly Educated Overseas Brides and Low-Wage U.S. Husbands

Hung Cam Thai
17. Families Formed Outside of Marriage

Judith A. Seltzer
*18. Older Adults Developing a Preference for Living Apart Together

Jacquelyn J. Benson and Marilyn Coleman
*19. Intimacy and Emotion Work in Lesbian, Gay, and Heterosexual Relationships

Debra Umberson, Mieke Beth Thomeer and Amy C. Lodge
 
Part V. MOTHERHOOD AND FATHERHOOD
20. Shifting the Center: Race, Class, and Feminist Theorizing about Motherhood

Patricia Hill Collins
21. Mothering From a Distance: Emotions, Gender, and Intergenerational Relations in Filipino Transnational Families

Rhacel Salazar Parreñas
*22. Facets of Agency in Stories of Transforming from Childless by Choice to Mother

Julia Moore
23. Fathering: Paradoxes, Contradictions, and Dilemmas

Scott Coltrane
*24. Diversity and Meaning in the Study of Black Fatherhood: Toward a New Paradigm

Maria S. Johnson and Alford A. Young, Jr.
25. The Father as an Idea

Rosanna Hertz
 
Part VI. PARENTS AND PARENTING, CHILDREN AND CHILDREARING
26. Not-so-Nuclear Families: Class, Gender, and Networks of Care

Karen V. Hansen
*27. Emotional Life on the Market Frontier

Arlie Hochschild
28. Out of Sorts: Adoption and (Un)Desirable Children

Katherin M. Flower Kim
*29. The Gendered Buffet: LGBTQ Parents Resisting Heteronormativity

Kate Henley Averett
30. Invisible Inequality: Social Class and Childrearing in Black Families and White Families

Annette Lareau
31. Consumption as Care and Belonging: Economies of Dignity in Children’s Daily Lives

Allison J. Pugh
 
Part VII. INTERGENERATIONAL FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS
*32. Intergenerational Relationships in Late Life: The Elderly, Their Adult Children, and Their Grandchildren

Roberta L. Coles
*33. When the Nest Doesn’t Empty

Kathleen S. Newman
34. My Mother’s Hip: Lessons from the World of Eldercare

Luisa Margolies
 
Part VIII. DIVORCE, REMARRIAGE, AND BLENDED FAMILIES
*35. Remarriage and Stepfamilies: Strategic Sites for Family Scholarship in the 21st Century

Megan M. Sweeney
*36. The Stuff at Mom’s House and the Stuff at Dad’s House: The Material Consumption of Divorce for Adolescents

Caitlyn Collins and Michelle Janning
*37. The Effects of Religion on Remarriage Among American Women: Evidence from the National Survey of Family Growth

Susannah M. Brown and Jeremy Porter
*38. Boundary Ambiguity in Gay Stepfamilies: Perspectives of Gay Biological Fathers and Their Same-Sex Partners

David A. Jenkins
 
Part IX. FAMILIES AND VIOLENCE
39. Gender, Diversity, and Violence: Extending the Feminist Framework

Kersti A. Yllö
40. Lifting the Veil of Secrecy: Domestic Violence Against South Asian Women in the United States

Satya P. Krishnan, Malahat Baig-Amin, Louisa Gilbert, Nabila El-Bassel, and Anne Waters
*41. Making the Invisible Visible: LGBTQ Intimate Partner Violence

Adam M. Messinger
*42. Abuse Across the Life Course: Elder Abuse

Angela Hattery and Earl Smith
 
Part X. FAMILIES, WORK, AND CAREWORK
*43. There’s No Such Thing as Having It All: Gender, Work, and Care in an Age of Insecurity

Kathleen Gerson
44. Fast-Track Women and the “Choice” to Stay Home

Pamela Stone and Meg Lovejoy
45. Negotiating Work and Parenting over the Life Course: Mexican Family Dynamics in a Binational Context

Joanna Dreby
*46. Great Expectations? Working- and Middle-Class Cohabitors’ Expected and Actual Divisions Of Housework

Amanda J. Miller and Daniel L. Carlson
47. No Place Like Home: The Division of Domestic Labor in Lesbigay Families

Christopher Carrington
48. Creating a Caring Society

Evelyn Nakano Glenn
 
Part XI. FAMILIES AND POVERTY
*49. Severe Deprivation in America: An Introduction

Matthew Desmond
*50. Understanding The Dynamics of $2-A-Day Poverty in the United States

H. Luke Shaefer, Kathryn Edin, and Elizabeth Talbert
*51. Morality and Work-Family Conflict in the Lives of Poor and Low-Income Women

Judith Hennesey
52. Unmarried with Children

Kathyrn Edin and Maria Kefalas
 
* Denotes New Reading to 5th Edition

Supplements

Instructor Site

study.sagepub.com/fergusonshifting5e

 

Password-protected test banks provide a diverse range of pre-written options as well as the opportunity to edit any question and/or insert your own personalized questions to effectively assess students’ progress and understanding.

Excellent resource with current information for students.

Dr Kelly M Collins
Graduate School of Theology and Ministry, Oral Roberts University
October 3, 2021
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love the selection of readings

Dr Kaitlyn Root
Sociology Dept, University Of Wyoming
September 23, 2020
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Key features
NEW TO THIS EDITION:
  • Added readings on LGBTQ families that challenge the heteronormative ideal of family in the United States.
  • An updated Families in Poverty section includes some of the most important scholarship in sociology right now such as Matthew Desmond's “Severe Deprivation in America: An Introduction” and H. Luke Shaefer, Kathryn Edin, and Elizabeth Talbert's “Understanding the Dynamics of $2-a-Day Poverty in the United States.”
  • Expanded coverage of Racial-Ethnic diversity deconstructs white, middle-class families as the norm.
  • Increased coverage of immigrant families.
KEY FEATURES:
  • Historical and cross-cultural articles help shatter the idea that one universal family form is constant across cultures and time.
  • The readings reflect cutting-edge scholarship by well-known family scholars and innovative work that highlights concepts, theories, and research methodologies currently used to study family.
  • The research on families of color, gay and lesbian families, working-class families, and other diverse family forms is moved from the margins of analysis to the center of the analytical framework.
  • The book encourages students to think critically about what they are reading and helps them understand the difference between family concerns that are “public issues” and those that are “private troubles.”



Sample Materials & Chapters

Preface

For instructors

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