Not-so-nuclear families: class, gender, and networks of care

vivid portraits drawn from the top and bottom of the social-class ladder, Hansen shows the profound effect social class has on care. Well observed, beautifully written, this book is a must read. --Arlie Hochschild, author of The Commercialization of Intimate Lives: Notes from Home and Work Families explains the often painful choices that parents have to make for their children's--and their own--well-being. --Barbara Schnieder, professor of sociology and human development, director of the Data Research and Development Center, and codirector of the Alfred P. Sloan Center on Parents, Children, and Work at the University of Chicago In recent years, U.S. public policy has focused on strengthening the nuclear family as a primary strategy for improving the lives of America's youth. It is often assumed that this normative type of family is an independent, self-sufficient unit adequate for raising children. But half of all households in the United States with young children have two employed parents. How do working parents provide and mobilize the help that they need? In Not-So-Nuclear Families, Karen V. Hansen investigates the lives of working parents and the informal networks they construct to help for their children. She chronicles the conflicts, hardships, and triumphs of four families of various social classes. Each must navigate the ideology that mandates that parents, mothers in particular, rear their own children, in the face of an economic reality that requires that parents rely on the help of others. In vivid family stories, parents detail how they and their network of friends, paid caregivers, and extended kin collectively close the care gap for their school-aged children. Hansen not only debunks the myth that families in the United States are independent, isolated, and self-reliant units, she breaks new theoretical ground by asserting that informal networks of can potentially provide unique and valuable bonds that nuclear families cannot. Karen V. Hansen is an associate professor of sociology and women's studies at Brandeis University and is the coeditor of Families in the U.S.: Kinship and Domestic Politics.