Marriages, Families, and Relationships: Making Choices in a Diverse Society

by Mary Ann Lamanna, Agnes Riedmann

This bestselling text on marriages, families, and relationships combines a rigorous scholarly and applied approach with a unique theme especially relevant to today's dynamic global environment: "Making choices in a diverse society." The text achieves an excellent balance between the sociological, or ecological and family systems theoretical perspectives, while including extensive coverage of family dynamics and interpersonal relationships. The authors use warmth, humor, and an engaging presentation to create a highly readable text that offers insightful perspectives on the diversity of our modern society, including different ethnic traditions and family forms.

Genres: Textbooks, School, Psychology, Sociology

656 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

Reviews

[Kendra · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was really good for class. But I wish they used more stories of people living through it.

[Megan Redlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a good textbook. It had a lot of statistics so it's good if that's the goal. It didn't really elaborate much on how to have a good marriage/relationship. But I suppose it's not a counseling book.

[Niya Emmons · Rating 2 out of 5]

Had good information but one of the worst textbooks I’ve ever had to go through.

[Ellie · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book, Chapter 15, has me hopping mad. The authors go to extensive research, only to depict step families, in my opinion, in a dim and hopeless light. It was offensive, to say the least. I would have preferred further positive research on this topic instead of what's in this print. The author's of this text start off by stating that the text has three main goals: 1. Appreciate the variety and diversity among families today, 2. Understand your past and present family situations and anticipate future possibilities and 3. Be more conscious of the personal decisions you make throughout your life and of the societal influences that affect those decisions. While this is true for most of this text, I feel they failed to navigate to any of these three points in this chapter. I would have rated this book, not to include chapter 15 at about 3.5 or 4. Very disappointing.

[Aimee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Textbook I use while teaching Family Studies.

[Joy · Rating 1 out of 5]

So boring.

[Lori]

Purchased for daughter's college class.

[Alex Chiang · Rating 2 out of 5]

I came back and lowered my rating to 2*. I never thought I would have strong opinions about textbooks, but I read some good ones in the last few months so here I am I guess.