The family in various cultures (Preceptor)

by Stuart A. Queen

Book Overview

A survey of twelve family systems in twelve cultural and historical settings throughout the world. Different societies in different ages have worked out different ways of handling problems of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0007DJSX0
• Release Date: January 1961
• Publisher: Lippincott
• Length: 314 Pages

Customer Reviews

An extremely valuable perspective on marriage & family

I used this book as a supplement to my upper division course, The Psychology of Marriage & Family, which I taught for about 7 or so years. I assigned five chapters and encouraged reading the whole book.There is no other text that I know of like this and it gives a perspective which is extremely valuable for understanding functions and changes in marriage.There are so many forms to marriage and family historically and culturally that obviously no one book could survey them all. But this one does an excellent job of giving a taste of the complexity, especially concentrating on those antecedent influences on the American (and much of the Canadian) heritage. But it also gives some other examples for contrast, (e.g., the Chinese, etc.), that are not part of the usual heritage. The book has chapters on the families of the polyandrous Toda; matrilieal Hopi; traditional Chinese; the Kibbutz; ancient Hebrews; ancient and later Romans; early Christians;Anglo-Saxons; Medieval English; colonial American; modern American; contemporary Black; and Mexican-American to name all but three or four chapters.While written from a socioloigical point of view, anthropologists, psychologists, marriage and family therapists, and many other students of marriage and family will find it a rich treasure. Most chapters are heavily footnoted so there are ready references to other sources. I still look up things in my copy or reread chapters and it's a shame this book is no lonmger in print. Fortunately, there are a number of cheap used copies available and I sometimes order one or two to give as gifts to friends interested in the area. I'm sorry that I've not posted a review earlier. (If you do a Google on the title, you'll see this text is still being used in several upper division courses in the US and Canada.)I don't know what earlier editions are like (I think the first edition was published in 1952!) but I suggest anything from the fourth edition (1974; 460 pp.) on will be valuable. As I recall, the edition in which Jill Quadagno joined the original two authors resulted in a somewhat easier reading book; I'm not sure if the book was shortened at all with her addition.