Understanding Families: Diversity, Continuity, and Change. 2nd ed. George E. Dickinson and Michael R. Leming, New York: Harcourt Brace. 1995, 576 pages.
Reviewed in TEACHING SOCIOLOGY, Volume 24, Number 3, July 1996 by Janice M. Saunders, Roanoke College
I am quite enthused about this text! As is mentioned in the preface, one-third of this edition of Understanding Families has been rewritten, statistics have been updated, and a chapter on public policy regarding families has been added in the sixth, and final section of the text. The topics of the other five sections are:
Understand Families is very readable. In fact, I began reviewing the book as a necessary professional chore but soon became so interested that is became an enjoyable activity. I even chuckled aloud and shared passages with my husband, such as the "creative" list of grounds for divorce on pp. 399-400 and the unusual reaction of a woman to an attempted rape, pp. 483-484. The authors' use of first person exposition and experience adds to the pleasure and insight in reading the text. However, I do not mean to convey the impression that the book is a light-weight pedagogical tool; it definitely is not.
Dickinson and Leming have authored a text that boasts many strengths. One that should receive wide support is the treatment of theoretical paradigms and research in studying the family. Theory and research are not only integrated with each other, but also with the material throughout the volume. For students who may not have taken any other sociology courses or who are unfamiliar with the social scientific method, the authors have provided a concise and clear introduction to the field. Especially helpful to students without a background in theory construction is the bridge analogy in Figure 1.1, in which concepts are related to "rivets," propositions to "girders," and the earth to the "ground of empirical support." There are also two excellent research examples in the appendix that walk students through the process of formulating a hypothesis and a research design, constructing a questionnaire, compiling and interpreting data, and then drawing conclusions from the data.
As one reads Understanding Families it becomes apparent that the authors have a great deal of teaching experience in the field of marriage and family. I was struck by how many times in this text I came across exercises, illustrations, and excerpts from articles I have collected from disparate sources over the years to use as teaching supplements in my marriage and family classes. How wonderful for my students and me to have everything compiled in one text! For a few examples of the kinds of supplements to which I am referring, there are: Steinem's piece "If Men Could Menstruate" in the chapter on gender roles, descriptions of diversity in marriage and family systems drawn from Queen and Habenstein's excellent texts, a delineation of the costs of a wedding, a true-false quiz on marriage, and the use of devices such as cartoons and poems to promote understanding and/or to illustrate concepts.
The beauty of this text is that it is comprehensive, yet deals in a succinct, intellectually stimulating manner with all the basic issues in the sociology of marriage and the family. The material is presented in a way sure to pique the interests of its intended readers, undergraduate students. Students will readily relate to references to Sesame Street, the Brady Bunch, Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger, "What's Love got to Do with It?" and the like, and to discussions of contemporary issues such as cohabitation, AIDS, and the abortion debate.
The breadth of Understanding Families makes it an excellent principle or single text for a family course. It could be used as a supplementary or reference text in a variety of other courses too, such as sociology of gender, stratification, social policy, or social problems.
It is probably fair to say that this book offers something for everyone. For instance, there is a chapter on "Death in Families" that could almost be used independently as a minicourse on death and dying. To some, this type of comprehensiveness may be viewed as a weakness instead of a strength.
Another criticism, so minute that it is perhaps hardly worth mentioning, is the authors' choice to illustrate what is meant by "a loaded question" in survey research. The text reads as follows:
[T]o ask a man "Have you already beat your wife today?" produces a no-win response. If one responds to this question in the affirmative, it implies that he beats his wife. If he answers negatively, it could imply that he simply has not had time to beat her today (p.27). Some feminists might object to this particular example. In all fairness to the authors, however, it needs to be said that feminist perspectives are interwoven through the text (as are cross-cultural perspectives).
This text is fairly lengthy and fairly expensive, but no more so than those of a similar genre in hardback. Accompanying the book is an instructor's manual that includes test items.
I, for one, am sold on Understanding Families!
Janice M. Saunders
Roanoke College
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