Allan Carlson’s The "American Way": Family and Community in the Shaping of American Identity is published by ISI Books. See also his The Family in America: Searching for Social Harmony in the Industrial Age* (Transaction, 2003).

On Family & Marriage as Public Institutions

Nancy Cott, Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation* (Harvard, 2002)

Bryce J. Christensen, Utopia against the Family: The Problems and Politics of the American Family* (Ignatius, 1990)

Mary Ann Glendon, The Transformation of Family Law: State, Law, and Family in the United States and Western Europe* (Chicago, 1989)

Christopher Lasch, Women and the Common Life: Love, Marriage, and Feminism* (W. W. Norton, 1997).

On the Breakdown of Marriage in Modern Society

Don S. Browning, Marriage and Modernization* (Eerdmans, 2003)

James Q. Wilson, The Marriage Problem: How Our Culture Has Weakened Families* (HarperCollins, 2002).

On the Role of Divorce in the Breakdown of Marriage

Margaret Gallagher, The Abolition of Marriage: How We Destroy Lasting Love (Regnery, 1996)

Judith S. Wallerstein, The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: The 25 Year Landmark Study* (Hyperion, 2001)

Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, The Divorce Culture* (Knopf, 1996).

On the Trends in Modern Society That Lead to the Breakdown of Marriage

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Women and the Future of the Family (Baker Books, 2000)

Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work* (Metropolitan Books, 1997)

Brian C. Robertson, There’s No Place Like Work: How Business, Government, and Our Obsession with Work Have Driven Parents from Home*(Spence, 2000)

Kenneth D. Whitehead, Marriage and the Common Good* (St. Augustine’s Press, 2001).

On the Absence of Fathers

David Blankenhorn, Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem* (HarperCollins, 1996)

David Popenoe, Life Without Father: Compelling New Evidence That Fatherhood and Marriage Are Indispensable for the Good of Children and Society* (Harvard, 1999)

W. Bradford Wilcox, Soft Patriarchs, New Men (Chicago, 2004).

On the Importance of Maintaining Families & Marriage

Linda Waite and Margaret Gallagher, The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better off Financially* (Broadway Books, 2001)

William May, Marriage: The Rock on Which the Family Is Built* (Ignatius, 1995)

Richard T. Gill, Posterity Lost: Progress, Ideology, and the Decline of the American Family* (Rowman & Littlefield, 1997)

Jennifer Roback Morse, Love & Economics: Why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn’t Work* (Spence, 2001).

An asterisk* means that the book is in print, and may be purchased from our friends at Splintered Light Books. Call 1.800.979.3310.