The Marriage and Family Experience,
14th Edition

1. The Meaning of Marriage and the Family.
2. Studying Marriages and Families.
3. Variations in American Family Life.
4. Gender and Family.
5. Intimacy, Friendship, and Love.
6. Understanding Sex and Sexualities.
7. Communication, Power, and Conflict.
8. Marriages in Societal and Individual Perspective.
9. Unmarried Lives: Singlehood and Cohabitation.
10. Becoming and Being Parents.
11. Marriage, Work, and Economics.
12. Intimate Violence and Sexual Abuse.
13. Coming Apart: Separation and Divorce.
14. New Beginnings: Single-Parent Families, Remarriages, and Blended Families.

• Theodore F. Cohen

  Theodore Cohen is professor emeritus at Ohio Wesleyan University, where he was the Ella Fulton Dunham Professor of Sociology in the department of Sociology and Anthropology until 2019. He also has taught at a variety of public and private universities, including Boston University, Northeastern University, Clark University, Rowan University and most recently, The College of New Jersey. Throughout these different educational contexts, he has found that enthusiasm, humor and determination to engage students to apply sociological concepts to their own lives has worked with equal effectiveness in classes of nine or 90. He brings those same objectives to his writing. In 1990, Dr. Cohen received Ohio Wesleyan’s Sherwood Dodge Shankland Award for the Encouragement of Teachers, one of two awards Ohio Wesleyan gives for teaching excellence. In addition to being the co-author of THE MARRIAGE AND FAMILY EXPERIENCE since its eighth edition, he is the editor of MEN & MASCULINITY: A TEXT READER (Wadsworth 2001). He has published articles and book chapters on aspects of men's lives, especially their transitions to marriage and fatherhood, and on the family and work lives of a sample of nontraditional couples. Dr. Cohen's own family experiences include many of the issues covered and addressed in this text. He has been married, widowed, in a long distance relationship, remarried, separated, and divorced. He and his second wife are now once again happily married and living in New Jersey. He also is a father and stepfather. He earned his B.A. in sociology from Brooklyn College and his M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from Boston University.

• Bryan Strong

• Thoroughly updated, The Marriage and Family Experience: Intimate Relationships in a Changing Society, 14th edition, combines the latest data and research with current, inclusive coverage in every chapter.

• Learning Objectives are introduced at the beginning of each chapter and highlighted within the appropriate portions of chapter content. These are intended to make it easier for both instructors and student readers to see how and where material fits into the bigger educational picture. Ideally they will also guide readers through their efforts at reviewing and mastering material.

• Content-related changes include the impact of technology – especially communications technology – on numerous aspects of family and intimate relationships.

• Diversity remains a substantial and sustained theme of the book. Therefore, there is repeated attention paid to how our experiences of intimate relationships, marriage, parenthood, work and family, divorce, remarriage, abuse, and so on are differently experienced across lines of class, gender, race, ethnicity, and sexuality. The material on gender and sexuality has been updated and expanded to reflect still-continuing changes in the wider culture surrounding both gender and sexuality.

• Cohen/Strong is one of the few marriage and family books that offers a true balance between the two main branches of the market -- sociology and family science. It takes a liberal approach both to detailing recent trends (in marriage, divorce, cohabitation and singlehood) and to describing diverse lifestyles -- especially regarding gender and sexuality -- while remaining firmly rooted in the positive, pro-family corner.

• What Do You Think? Self-quiz chapter openers enable students to assess their existing knowledge of chapter topics. These quizzes engage students, drawing them into the material and stimulating greater interaction with the course.

• Public Policies, Private Lives features focus on legal issues and public policies that affect how we think about and/or experience family life. Among them are features on sexting, adoptions that dissolve, the lack of legal policies about stepfamilies, the meaning of legal marriage, the Family and Medical Leave Act and legal advice for cohabiting couples.

• Exploring Diversity boxes help students see family circumstances from the vantage point of other cultures, eras or different lifestyles in the contemporary United States. New topics in this edition include cohabitation in Japan, arranged marriage in the United Arab Emirates and "father school" in South Korea. Coverage also includes divorce in India, the phenomenon of posthumous marriage and a cross-national survey on dating violence.

• Issues and Insights features focus on current, high-interest topics such as virginity loss; gender, sexuality and bullying; "living apart together"; and whether or not to spank children. Several of these features also highlight uses and abuses of technology in families and relationships.

• Popular Culture boxes discuss the ways family issues are portrayed through various forms of popular culture. New topics include the way media portrayals of gay couples (e.g., "Modern Family") may have contributed to rising acceptance of same-sex marriage and the increasing visibility of the transgender experience.

• Real Families features give "up close" accounts of issues raised in the text as they are experienced by people in their everyday lives. Vignettes in this edition discuss blending and unblending families, co-parenting by gay men and lesbians, family caregivers and recent stories that question the assumption of gender as binary.

• Popular Culture boxes discuss the ways family issues are portrayed through various forms of popular culture. New topics include the way media portrayals of gay couples (e.g., "Modern Family") may have contributed to rising acceptance of same-sex marriage and the increasing visibility of the transgender experience.

• Real Families features give "up close" accounts of issues raised in the text as they are experienced by people in their everyday lives. Vignettes in this edition discuss blending and unblending families, co-parenting by gay men and lesbians, family caregivers and recent stories that question the assumption of gender as binary.

Cengage provides a range of supplements that are updated in coordination with the main title selection. For more information about these supplements, contact your Learning Consultant.

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Cengage eBook: The Marriage and Family Experience 12 Months
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