We Are Family: The Modern Transformation of Parents and Children

by Susan Golombok Narrated by Linda Henning

Overview

From one of the world's leading experts, this absorbing narrative history of the changing structure of modern families shows how children can flourish in any kind of loving home.

The past few decades have seen extraordinary change in the idea of a family. The unit once understood to include two straight parents and their biological children has expanded vastly-same-sex marriage, adoption, IVF, sperm donation, and other forces have enabled new forms to take shape. This has resulted in enormous upheaval and controversy, but as Susan Golombok shows in this compelling and important book, it has also meant the health and happiness of parents and children alike.

Golombok's stories, drawn from decades of research, are compelling and dramatic: family secrets kept for years and then inadvertently revealed; children reunited with their biological parents or half siblings they never knew existed; and painful legal battles to determine who is worthy of parenting their own children. Golombok explores the novel moral questions that changing families create, and ultimately makes a powerful argument that the bond between family members, rather than any biological or cultural factor, is what ensures a safe and happy future.

We Are Family is unique, authoritative, and deeply humane. It makes an important case for all families-old, new, and yet unimagined.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"In this important and compelling book, Professor Susan Golombok gives evidence that the expansion of domestic structures represents not the downfall of family, but the expansion of it to include previously unfathomed, rich possibilities. She explains the new ways people find to reproduce and to be parents, examines how the changes evolved over the last forty years or so, and illuminates the workings of previously undocumented kinds of households. In doing so, she supplies fresh and exquisite narratives of intimacy; this is, at heart, a book about love."—Andrew Solomon, author of Far from the Tree

"This inspiring book by Professor Susan Golombok is a rebuff to people who reject diverse families with unfounded claims that they harm children. She tells the personal stories of children brought up by lesbian mothers, gay fathers, single parents, co-parents and trans parents; showing that they are equally well-adjusted, happy and emotionally stable as children from traditional mum and dad families. Golombok refutes fear and prejudice with evidence and facts. Bravo!"—Peter Tatchell

"In We Are Family, Susan Golombok, a world leader in studying and understanding these new types of families, vividly draws on decades of experience to convey their lives and the dilemmas they face. This moving and timely book will surely benefit many people, wonderfully illustrating how these diverse types of parents are creating healthy and loving families/"—Robert Klitzman, MD, Professor of Psychiatry, Columbia University, and author of Designing Babies

Library Journal

★ 10/01/2020

Research driven and wide ranging in scope, this newest book by Golombok (Centre for Family Research, Univ. of Cambridge; Modern Families) details nontraditional family structures and explores why transforming our collective understanding of families matters for us all. In many ways, the book proposes something much like what historians argue related to the rise of the family in early modern England: that structures are social constructions, without meaning until we create that meaning. Golombok reworks domestic narratives to show the family as a structure with plasticity enough to encompass relationships divested from rigid or fixed categories of gender and sexuality and that "children can flourish in all kinds of new family forms." Using firsthand interviews, the author shows the evolution of the modern family in the United States and the UK. From IVF and donor relationships to lesbian, gay, trans, and single-parent households, the narrative spotlights broad data sets and specific case studies. Especially insightful are interviews with sperm donors, some of whom have maintained contact with biological children and others who long to but are unable, for various reasons. VERDICT An essential, thought-provoking work that will serve as the foundation for future studies.—Emily Bowles, Lawrence Univ., WI

Product Details

BN ID:	2940177679846
Publisher:	Hachette Audio
Publication date:	10/06/2020
Edition description:	Unabridged

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