Haven in a heartless world : the family besieged

'Instead of asking how women can be liberated from the family, we should ask how work can be reorganized—humanized—so as to make it possible for women to compete economically with men without sacrificing their families or even the very hope of a family.'--Preface Front Cover ......Page 1 Short Title ......Page 3 Title Page ......Page 5 Printer's imprint ......Page 6 Dedication ......Page 7 CONTENTS ......Page 9 Acknowledgments ......Page 13 Preface to the Paperback Edition ......Page 15 Introduction ......Page 21 Short Title (2) ......Page 27 the making of the modern family ......Page 29 the crisis of the family at the end of the nineteenth century ......Page 34 the proletarianization of parenthood ......Page 38 the rise of social science ......Page 48 general theories of the family's origin and evolution ......Page 51 the overthrow of evolutionary theories and the emergence of an empirical sociology of urbanization ......Page 55 marriage as a refuge from modern society ......Page 63 carle zimmerman and the conservative critique of the "companionate" family ......Page 70 willard waller: sociology as satire ......Page 76 the rating and dating complex: waller's critique of pure pleasure ......Page 82 attempted refutations of waller ......Page 85 4. Culture and Personality ......Page 88 the concept of personality ......Page 89 psychoanalysis as a theory of family dynamics: malinowski's "refutation" of freud ......Page 93 anthropology in the service of psychosexual reform ......Page 96 culture against "biological determinism": the controversy about freud's psychology of women ......Page 102 the alliance of revisionism and feminism ......Page 106 the authoritarian personality: reich, fromm, and the frankfurt school ......Page 111 society as the patient ......Page 123 friendship, the "new religion" ......Page 126 the new gospel of marriage and parenthood ......Page 133 the triumph of "social relations" ......Page 137 the family as a small group ......Page 140 socialization as therapy ......Page 144 the "production of personality" ......Page 151 the ideology of "nonbinding commitments" ......Page 160 main currents of sociological revisionism ......Page 167 pathology of the "family drama" ......Page 176 black "matriarchy": the controversy over the moynihan report ......Page 183 the rise of bourgeois domesticity and the religion of health ......Page 193 therapeutic ideals of the family and their impact on parenthood ......Page 197 parents and children ......Page 200 the normalization of the abnormal ......Page 205 corruption as a form of social control ......Page 209 Notes ......Page 217 Index ......Page 249 Rear Cover ......Page 258 In the American political vocabulary, "family" and "family values" no longer simply evoke pictures of harmonious scenes; they also push our buttons (left and right) about what is wrong with society. One of the earliest and sharpest cultural commentators to investigate the twentieth-century American family, Christopher Lasch argues in this book that as social science "experts" intrude more and more into our lives, the family's vital role as the moral and social cornerstone of society disintegratesand, left unchecked, so does our political and personal freedom. Mr. Lasch combines an analytic overview of the psychological and sociological literature on the American family with his own trenchant analysis of where the problem lies. This work asserts that, as social science "experts" intrude more and more into our lives, the family's vital role as the moral and social cornerstone of society disintegrates - and, left unchecked, so will our political and personal freedom

In the American political vocabulary, "family" and "family values" no longer simply evoke pictures of harmonious scenes; they also push our buttons (left and right) about what is wrong with society.