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NYU Series in Social and Cultural Analysis
Unhitched: Love, Marriage, and Family Values from West Hollywood to Western China
Judith Stacey, 2012 winner of the Simon and Gagnon Lifetime Achievement Award presented by the American Sociological Association.
A leading expert on the family, Judith Stacey is known for her provocative research on mainstream issues. Finding herself impatient with increasingly calcified positions taken in the interminable wars over same-sex marriage, divorce, fatherlessness, marital fidelity, and the like, she struck out to profile unfamiliar cultures of contemporary love, marriage, and family values from around the world.
Built on bracing original research that spans gay men’s intimacies and parenting in this country to plural and non-marital forms of family in South Africa and China, Unhitched decouples the taken for granted relationships between love, marriage, and parenthood. Countering the one-size-fits-all vision of family values, Stacey offers readers a lively, in-person introduction to these less familiar varieties of intimacy and family and to the social, political, and economic conditions that buttress and batter them.
Through compelling stories of real families navigating inescapable personal and political trade-offs between desire and domesticity, the book undermines popular convictions about family, gender, and sexuality held on the left, right, and center. Taking on prejudices of both conservatives and feminists, Unhitched poses a powerful empirical challenge to the belief that the nuclear family—whether straight or gay—is the single, best way to meet our needs for intimacy and care. Stacey calls on citizens and policy-makers to make their peace with the fact that family diversity is here to stay.
A leading expert on the family, Judith Stacey is known for her provocative research on mainstream issues. Finding herself impatient with increasingly calcified positions taken in the interminable wars over same-sex marriage, divorce, fatherlessness, marital fidelity, and the like, she struck out to profile unfamiliar cultures of contemporary love, marriage, and family values from around the world.
Built on bracing original research that spans gay men’s intimacies and parenting in this country to plural and non-marital forms of family in South Africa and China, Unhitched decouples the taken for granted relationships between love, marriage, and parenthood. Countering the one-size-fits-all vision of family values, Stacey offers readers a lively, in-person introduction to these less familiar varieties of intimacy and family and to the social, political, and economic conditions that buttress and batter them.
Through compelling stories of real families navigating inescapable personal and political trade-offs between desire and domesticity, the book undermines popular convictions about family, gender, and sexuality held on the left, right, and center. Taking on prejudices of both conservatives and feminists, Unhitched poses a powerful empirical challenge to the belief that the nuclear family—whether straight or gay—is the single, best way to meet our needs for intimacy and care. Stacey calls on citizens and policy-makers to make their peace with the fact that family diversity is here to stay.
207 pages, Hardcover
First published May 2, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
April 18, 2011
This should be mandatory reading for all humans. The older I get the more I believe that the government has absolutely no business telling people who can or can't get married and that no one should be getting preferential treatment just because the "one man, one woman with 2.5 children" mode of family life works for them.
I once had a friend who saw fit to degrade my "family situation" in an argument because at the time my parents, sister and I were living with my grandmother and uncle. In that one year I became closer to my mother's family than I had the whole rest of my life, but it was not the traditional version of family that we are told is "normal" in this country.
I love that this author celebrates all forms of family life, and because of this she is not completely in favor of gay marriage. Her grounds are that legalizing gay marriage still makes it clear that two people in a monogamous relationship is the only "true" way to have responsible parents. She also rails against the myth of the "damaged child because of an absent father." Studies show that children in poverty are more likely to be living in a single-mother household and that these children grow up more likely to commit crimes, be on welfare, be unmarried parents, etc. Of course, it is far more likely that the root cause of all of this is not lack of paternity, but of poverty itself.
The only bad thing about reading this book is that it now makes me want to cancel my own wedding on the principle that I shouldn't have to be married at all and that I'm conforming to some religious ideal I don't believe in.
Food for thought.
I once had a friend who saw fit to degrade my "family situation" in an argument because at the time my parents, sister and I were living with my grandmother and uncle. In that one year I became closer to my mother's family than I had the whole rest of my life, but it was not the traditional version of family that we are told is "normal" in this country.
I love that this author celebrates all forms of family life, and because of this she is not completely in favor of gay marriage. Her grounds are that legalizing gay marriage still makes it clear that two people in a monogamous relationship is the only "true" way to have responsible parents. She also rails against the myth of the "damaged child because of an absent father." Studies show that children in poverty are more likely to be living in a single-mother household and that these children grow up more likely to commit crimes, be on welfare, be unmarried parents, etc. Of course, it is far more likely that the root cause of all of this is not lack of paternity, but of poverty itself.
The only bad thing about reading this book is that it now makes me want to cancel my own wedding on the principle that I shouldn't have to be married at all and that I'm conforming to some religious ideal I don't believe in.
Food for thought.
June 14, 2012
Great read. Describes several case studies of different groups--gay dads in Hollywood, polygamous families in South Africa, and matriarchal families without marriage or a real concept of fatherhood in China. The conclusion is that there is no such thing as "traditional" marriage, and what is often called that (i.e. monogamous hetereosexual couple) is actually a modern concept. There is no evidence that this model is particularly better for society, the people involved, or children. Each society and individual has to balance the demands of desire and domesticity, and each society and individual does so in a different way. So while it's ok to get married if you want, you don't have to. Creating laws that require marriage as such to get the benefits of society is hurtful and unnecessary.
August 29, 2014
I was so into this book, weaving tales of what family, love, intimacy, and sex can look like across cultures and around the world. What I wished for was more. Not that stories of gay men in LA, poly families in South Africa, and 'walking marriages' in China aren't enough - and the author certainly talks in depth about these small universes - but I feel like there must be other, diverse stories to tell. One thing that bummed me out was the author's patter. As an academic, the book does a lot of: here's what I'm going to tell you, here's what I'm going to say, now I'm saying it. I'm a fan of a more succinct route, but even this did not lessen my enjoyment of this great read.
April 26, 2021
** Read for my 2021 gender and sexuality comprehensive exams **
Not a book I would have picked up on my own. Some interesting perspectives, I enjoyed most of the interviews but it also felt like a bit of a tedious read though I think that's more on me than the author.
Not a book I would have picked up on my own. Some interesting perspectives, I enjoyed most of the interviews but it also felt like a bit of a tedious read though I think that's more on me than the author.
February 17, 2011
Good but not great. There's some interesting sociological data here, but very little serious discussion of single parenthood (hence, "unhitched") or even as broad a range of locations as the title suggests.
August 26, 2011
An interesting case against the traditional marriage and for legal protection of other consensual agreements.
It includes a chapter on the fascinating Mosuo ethnic minority of South-West China and their family traditions of non-marriage and separation of domesticity/parenthood and desire.
It includes a chapter on the fascinating Mosuo ethnic minority of South-West China and their family traditions of non-marriage and separation of domesticity/parenthood and desire.
November 2, 2011
This book is definitely worth reading if you question whether marriage is really necessary. I believe that different family structures are valid and acceptable. If children are involved, their well-being should be a priority no matter the family structure.
November 18, 2011
too much college case study, not enough reality tv.
May 31, 2012
Call no. HQ 75.27 S73 2011
Read
May 4, 2013306.8109 S7756 2011
December 11, 2013
Very heady....but very good. She writes about some eye opening perspectives.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews