However, as a reader one might notice just little discrepancy in her dispute and statistics, which may remind that all of these socio-cultural examinations have been basically constructions that tell the story in a better way or worse than each other, but not flawless (Kim, 2000).
Thus, this is just too big an issue to get the whole thing completely balanced and organized. However, her logic has been well-developed and with given facts and statistics, it derived some very outstanding conclusions. For example, in the last two chapters, she tied up the analysis and pointed it toward the future, which as a reader seemed to be with reasons and somewhat inspiring (Kim, 2000). As she stated:
For, despite all the difficulty of making generalizations about past families, the historical evidence does suggest that families have been most successful wherever they have built meaningful, solid networks and communities beyond their own boundaries. We may discover that the best thing we will ever do for our own families, however we define them, is to get involved in community or political action to help others." (p. 287-288)
However, there were times when Coontz revealed her age by supporting greater "activism," but her adaptable definition of what constitutes action makes this phrase less annoying to others in authority (Kim, 2000). She also has a good grasp on the changing times, where all families continue to get used to the shifting gender and social roles. According to her (Kim, 2000):
argued in the last chapter that the so-called "crisis of the family" is a subset of a much larger crisis of social obligation that requires us to look beyond private family relations and rebuild larger social ties" (Pg. 283).
It is not wise to think that all problems today are due to the "people's rotten values," nor it can be considered historically correct. Families have always been challenged by the times, and so the book offers an interesting and wide-ranging viewpoint of our past.
Thus, Stephanie Coontz very carefully examined myths and misinformation about marriage and family in America with a winning argument that looking behind at marriage in a regretful way can worry today's married couples and families (Kim, 2000). Though none will question her stance as liberal and feminist in general, yet she didn't leave the Democrats and the Women's Movement for their own discrepancy and shameless propagation of myths (Kim, 2000).
She made efforts not to exaggerate any of the problems in order to expose the fundamental complexity of family issues in modern America. According to her, families cannot be comprehended without careful examination of both the smaller units of the men and women who make up families along with the broader units of the economy, the societal environment, and the existing laws of the times (Kim, 2000). She opined that:
The family arrangements we sometimes mistakenly think of as traditional that became standard for a majority of Americans and a realistic goal for others, only in the postwar era" (Pg. 262).
She further argued that:
The bold truth of history after all is that "there is no one family form that has ever protected people from poverty or social disruption, and no traditional arrangement that provides a workable model for how we might organize family relations in the modern world."
Prescriptions:
Coontz's prescriptions for transforming "larger social ties" and "solid networks and communities" remind you of Native American prescriptions for growing more virtuous tribalism.
The book in other words is myth-shattering assessment of two centuries of American family life that remove the fallacy about the past that blur today's dispute about "family values" (Kim, 2000). As she pointed out "Leave it to Beaver" was not a documentary, neither the 1950s nor any other instant from past offer workable models of...
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