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Stephanie Coontz

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The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap, Stephanie Coontz (New York: Basic Books, 1992). vii + 288 pp. Reviewed by Isela Munoz, November 17 2015.

Stephanie Coontz is a professor at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington and there she teaches family studies and history. Coontz is also the director of Research and Public Education for the council on contemporary families. She is author of various award-winning books which include “A Strange Stirring,” and “The Social Origins of Private Life: A History of American Families.” Stephanie Coontz writings have been translated into many languages, French, Spanish, German, Russian and Turkish. Along with the award-winning books she has published numerous …show more content…
She then argues, “In past crises, as in this one, such imbalance caused pain and disruption in families, and families or individuals reacted to the changes in ways that sometimes made things worse, but neither then nor now could the larger crisis have been averted if only families had tried harder.” (257). Coontz idea is that families often have issues when there’s problems with the economic factor, and that looking back into the “good old days” will not help us solve the problems we face today. Stephanie Coontz offers us her opinions on how to deal with the issues today by studying the past. She ends her introduction with a …show more content…
It was filled with so much information at one point she would talk about a topic and try to get her point across and then she’ll stop midway to say she will further discuss it in another chapter. It would make me want to jump over to that chapter which would make me lose track of the whole concept she was trying to get across. For example, in chapter one she mentions family members having a voice when it came to childbearing decisions, “Indeed, the kind of family exemplified by the Cleavers, as we shall see in chapter 2, represented a conscious rejection of the Waltons’ model.” (10).
This book is an excellent resource for students, young adults, and recommended for people that are interested in the family structure and relationships. This book is also perfect for people seeking to learn about the history behind traditional families from the “good old days.” The book is not great for entertainment reading, although it will be a perfect fit for a young adult or student in a college course, preferably sociology or history because it contains numerous historical facts and after finishing the book it will provide you with a great life lesson that can be applied to the life of the

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