"In vivid portraits drawn from the top and bottom of the social-class ladder, Hansen shows the profound
effect social class has on care. Well observed, beautifully written, this book is a must read."--Arlie Hochschild,
author of The Commercialization of Intimate Life: Notes from Home and Work
"Not-So-Nuclear Families explains the often painful choices that parents have to make for their children's--and
their own--well-being."--Barbara Schneider, professor of sociology and human development, director of the Data
Research and Development Center, and codirector the Alfred P. Sloan Center on Parents, Children, and Work at the
University of Chicago
In recent years U.S. public policy has focused on strengthening the nuclear family as a primary strategy for improving
the lives of America's youth. It is often assumed that this normative type of family is an independent, self-sufficient
unit adequate for raising children. But half of all households in the United States with young children have two
employed parents. How do working parents provide care and mobilize the help that they need?
In Not-So-Nuclear Families: Class, Gender, and Networks of Care, Karen V. Hansen investigates the lives of working
parents and the informal networks they construct to help care for their children. She chronicles the conflicts,
hardships, and triumphs of four families of various social classes. Each must navigate the ideology that mandates
that parents, mothers in particular, rear their own children, in the face of an economic reality that requires
that parents rely on the help of others. In vivid family stories, parents detail how they and their networks of
friends, paid caregivers, and extended kin collectively close the "care gap" for their school-aged children.
Hansen not only debunks the myth that families in the United States are independent, isolated, and self-reliant
units, she breaks new theoretical ground by asserting that informal networks of care can potentially provide unique
and valuable bonds that nuclear families cannot.
