Extended Family In Black Societies

Misunderstood and stereotyped, the black family in America has been viewed by some as pathologically weak while others have acclaimed its resilience and strength. Those who have drawn these conflicting conclusions have gnerally focused on the nuclear family—husband, wife, and dependent children. But as Elmer and Joanne Martin point out in this revealing book, a unit of this kind often is not the center of black family life. What appear to be fatherless, broken homes in our cities may really be vital parts of strong and flexible extended families based hundreds of miles away—usually in a rural area. Through their eight-year study of some thirty extended families, the Martins find that economic pressures, including federal tax and welfare laws, have begun to make the extended family's flexibility into a liability that threatens its future.

Nuclear Family Values, Extended Family Lives shows how the current emphasis on the nuclear family – with its exclusion of the extended family – is narrow, even deleterious, and misses much of family life. This omission is tied to gender, race, and class. This book is broken down into six chapters. Chapter one discusses how, when promoting "family values" and talking about "family as the basic unit of American society," social commentators, politicians, and social scientists alike typically ignore extended kin ties and focus only on the nuclear family. Chapters two and three show that the focus on marriage and the nuclear family is a narrow view that ignores the familial practices and experiences of many Americans – particularly those of women who do much of the work of maintaining kin ties and racial/ethnic minorities for whom extended kin are centrally important. Chapter four focuses on class and economic inequality and explores how an emphasis on the nuclear family may actually promulgate a vision of family life that dismisses the very social resources and community ties that are critical to the survival strategies of those in need. In chapter five, the authors argue that marriage actually detracts from social integration and ties to broader communities. Finally, in chapter six, the authors suggest that the focus on marriage and the nuclear family and the inattention to the extended family distort and reduce the power of social policy in the United States.

Following the success of its best-selling predecessors, the Fourth Edition of Black Families retains several now classic contributions while including updated versions of earlier chapters and many entirely new chapters. Editor Harriette Pipes McAdoo has once again compiled the most complete assessment of Black families available in both depth and breadth of coverage. Key Features: Includes new and updated material: The superseding goal for each revision of this core text has been to focus on positive dimensions of African American families. Most authors have updated their chapters, and this Fourth Edition also includes new chapters on topics such as religious dimensions, the role of funerals in Black communities, breast cancer prevention, and much more. Offers cross-disciplinary coverage: The book boasts contributions from such fields as family studies, anthropology, education, psychology, social work, and public policy. Chapters are grouped into seven parts covering history, theoretical conceptions, religion, family patterns, socialization, gender relations, and public policy. Numerous references guide readers to more in-depth discussion of specific topics. Provides respected authorship: Authorship includes such leaders and esteemed elders as John Hope Franklin, William Pipes, Wade Nobles, John Ogbu, Marie Peters, Marian Wright Edelman, and Robert Staples, among others. In addition, the Fourth Edition features new chapters by Maulana Karenga and Tiamoyo Karenga, Darlene Clark Hine, Pamela Martin, LaTrese Adkins, Karen Williams, and Monica Mouton Sanders. Book jacket.

In the fifteen chapters that comprise this comprehensive look at the Black family today, each of the contributors deals with an aspect of family life that pertains especially to the Black community. The topics include the extended family, single female parenting, teenagers, male-female relationships, the role of the church, pastoral counseling, marital counseling, sexuality, money management, sexual abuse, drug abuse, and evangelizing the Black male.

Social and political attention often is focused on urban issues, neglecting the still-rural character of much of the United States. This volume of original papers provides a clear picture of present-day rural society, with special emphasis on the changing role and structure of the family. It describes demographic trends, discusses the family aspects of the new wave of inmigrants to small towns and rural communities, reviews the diversity of patterns and forms adopted by rural families, considers the plight of the rural aged, and explores the dynamics of intrafamily personal relationships. The book ends with speculations on future prospects and challenges facing rural families.

Returning to his innovative work of twenty-five years ago, Robert Hill once more offers an incisive analysis of five key cultural strengths of African-American families. With compassion and eloquence, he argues that these existing strengths provide a solid foundation upon which to develop the kind of public policies and self-help initiatives that will truly promote the interests, not only of the African American community, but of our diverse nation as a whole.