Families in America: A Reference Handbook is an in-depth and multifaceted examination of the contemporary American family. The volume is designed for a wide range of readers in college, high school, and public library settings. It supplies a solid conceptual foundation of basic terms, concepts, and policies related to the topic as well as detailed coverage of important issues and controversies facing the modern family. The manual offers readers a useful combination of accumulated family studies knowledge as well as new research frontiers. Throughout the book, a particular emphasis is placed on exposing readers to historical, multicultural, and international perspectives. The result is a reference manual that is current, complete, and thorough in its coverage of the topic. The volume is especially valuable to students seeking information in such areas as marriage and family, intimate relationships, human sexuality, family planning, gender issues, parenthood, education, human development, psychology, and sociology.

This reference handbook offers readers an opportunity to explore and better understand the diverse, fluctuating needs of the contemporary family. As our family structures shift seemingly at the speed of technology, we must embrace our past in order to live through our present and prepare for our future. The new century brings challenging and complex issues to the forefront: soaring divorce rates, blended families of all races and religions, single-parent households, caring for aging parents, and reproductive technologies, to name but a few. 

There is little doubt that the American family has changed from colonial times to the present. But what have those changes been? How have family dynamics shifted to deal with the countless new looks of the American Family? In Families in America, author Jeffrey Scott Turner has written a current and complete work that will be of great interest to general audiences as well as students of psychology and sociology.

This work sheds light on everything from multicultural family variations and reproductive technologies to families of divorce and blended families. The book is bolstered by chapters that cite recent and important books on family life, as well as a listing of educational videotapes on family life in America.