The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap.

Mintz, Steven; Coontz, Stephanie

doi:10.2307/2167203

Cited by 22 publications

(29 citation statements)

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“…Today, the very nature and permanence of family is also under scrutiny, but for much of my career, I clung to a sense of the permanence of family that I can no longer sustain. So much has happened in my life that no longer resonates with my tried and true definitions of family, but instead, confounds me, offering key insights to shake up my worldview about families and the received wisdom promoted in traditional family scholarship, roundly critiqued by Coontz (2016), in addition to a growing number of intersectional, queer, and feminist scholars (Few-Demo & Allen, 2020). For example, I consider myself queer, even though I no longer live in a lesbian relationship.…”

Section: Continuity and Change Over The Life Course: Experiencing Res...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Feminist theory, method, and praxis: Toward a critical consciousness for family and close relationship scholars

Allen

2022

Journal of Social and Personal Relationships

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Feminism provides a worldview with innovative possibilities for scholarship and activism on behalf of families and intimate relationships. As a flexible framework capable of engaging with contentious theoretical ideas and the urgency of social change, feminism offers a simultaneous way to express an epistemology (knowledge), a methodology (the production of knowledge), an ontology (one’s subjective way of being in the world), and a praxis (the translation of knowledge into actions that produce beneficial social change). Feminist family science, in particular, advances critical, intersectional, and queer approaches to examine the uses and abuses of power and the multiple axes upon which individuals and families are privileged, marginalized, and oppressed in diverse social contexts. In this paper, I embrace feminism as a personal, professional (academic), and political project and use stories from my own life to illuminate broader social-historical structures, processes, and contexts associated with gender, race, class, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, nationality, and other systems of social stratification. I provide a brief history and reflections on contemporary feminist theory and activism, particularly from the perspective of my disciplinary affiliation of feminist family science. I address feminism as an intersectional perspective through three themes: (a) theory: defining a critical feminist approach, (b) method: critical feminist autoethnographic research, and (c) praxis: transforming feminist theory into action. I conclude with takeaway messages for incorporating reflexivity and critical consciousness raising to provoke thought and action in the areas of personal, professional, and political change.

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Section: Continuity and Change Over The Life Course: Experiencing Res...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Feminist theory, method, and praxis: Toward a critical consciousness for family and close relationship scholars

Allen

2022

Journal of Social and Personal Relationships

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“…Intensive mothering only makes sense for contemporary constructions of children as being innocent and in need of protection (Berstein, 2011; Zelizer, 1994). By contrast, European colonists viewed children as marked by original sin and in need of guidance to keep their sinful impulses in check (Bernstein, 2011; Coontz, 2016; Mintz, 2004) and throughout history children were often treated as adults in training who were valued for their economic potential (Bernstein, 2011; Mintz, 2004; Zelizer, 1994). Instead of cherishing and extending childhood, the focus was on hurrying children toward a state in which they could contribute economically by laboring on farms or by working in mills and factories (Mintz, 2004).…”

Section: Historical Foundations and Structural Challenges Of Intensiv...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Decentering intensive mothering: More fully accounting for race and class in motherhood norms

Minnotte

2023

Sociology Compass

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In 1996 Sharon Hays published The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood describing the ideology of intensive mothering calling upon mothers to engage in a time‐intensive, expensive, and expert‐informed style of mothering. In this article, I describe the historical circumstances giving rise to intensive mothering and how structural and historical realities diverge across race and class. I argue that enactments of motherhood are varied, forming a mosaic of motherhood enactments informed by mothers' social locations, including their positions in racialized and classed hierarchies. Mothers operating from marginalized locations innovate and resist intensive mothering, while also being judged by these norms, despite often lacking the resources to meet them. Privileged, primarily White mothers, have been able to harness their resources to achieve intensive mothering and redefine what constitutes good mothering to match the style of mothering they practice. Among some privileged, predominantly White mothers, I contend an even more intense version of intensive mothering is being practiced, with some moving beyond being “expert informed” to positioning themselves as the experts who possess specialized knowledge superior to that of medical and educational experts. All told, I argue that mothering enactments are more diverse than is often portrayed by the concept of intensive mothering.

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“…Individualism is central to this ideology, and the individuals it conjures up are willing to cope with adversity and accept responsibility for their situations (McGinnis, 2009) rather than depend on government aid or provisioning. It is also a crucial element of the middleclass bargain that government interventions for middle-class success are made invisible so middle-class Americans can believe they "made it on their own" (Coontz, 1992). In positive cases, the American Dream enables subjects to feel pride and effective agency when they can achieve upward mobility.…”

Section: Homeownership and The American Dreammentioning

confidence: 99%

Modifying the American Dream: An Ethnography of Foreclosure Prevention in the Great Recession

Jefferson

Perez

2023

Papeles

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The United States’ housing crisis and Great Recession of 2007-2009 ignited personal, political, and cultural reckoning with central facets of American identity, namely what it means to be middle class. Homeownership is historically a key symbol of having achieved the “American Dream” and entering an idealized middle class. As a cultural phenomenon, foreclosure is therefore a loaded symbol both of individual downward mobility and threats to a national myth of the American Dream. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Michigan in 2009-2011, this paper argues that the housing crisis created a liminal class status of “facing foreclosure”. From that vantage point, homeowners facing foreclosure and housing counselors assisting them critically re-examined the meanings of middle classness. The fieldwork reveals that they relied on material, moral, and political demands to obtain mortgage modifications to reassert their status as middle-class subjects. When these efforts failed, they turned to systemic critiques rather than the individualized blame the American Dream would predict.

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The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap.

Cited by 22 publications

References 0 publications

Feminist theory, method, and praxis: Toward a critical consciousness for family and close relationship scholars

Feminist theory, method, and praxis: Toward a critical consciousness for family and close relationship scholars

Decentering intensive mothering: More fully accounting for race and class in motherhood norms

Modifying the American Dream: An Ethnography of Foreclosure Prevention in the Great Recession

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