Was there really a golden age of the family in the 1950s -- or ever? This important book probes and challenges our assumptions about the past, present, and future of the family.

"As Arlene Skolnick shows in her lucid synthesis of wide-ranging research that is at the core of Embattled Paradise, any sensible account of the family must be about much more than the family. For several decades, Skolnick has worked long and hard to create what amounts virtually to a canon for the sociology of families." -- Contemporary Sociology

"An enlightening and essentially optimistic look at American...