Canadian Journal of Sociology Online May-June 2006
Before modern social, political, and scholarly attention to gender tensions, perspectives on "the family" were often associated with the gender of the researcher. Structural-functional models predominated among male sociologists. In contrast, more fluid ethnographies emerged from female sociologists. One might argue that these reflected the "exterior" and "interior" perspectives on families — or perhaps even more, the front-stage vs. back-stage perspectives of men and women, in Goffman's terms. Elaborate modeling and quantitative analysis were more characteristic of male family sociologists. In contrast, feelings and emotions from ethnographic studies were more frequently incorporated in the work of female scholars. Interestingly, in recent decades female social scientists have become predominant in family studies, though both exterior and interior studies of the family still abound, though not usually in the same work.
Mitchell's work is certainly a departure from some of these earlier reductionist approaches. She traces the changing "schedules" of young adults leaving and returning to families of origin, starting and ending romantic relationships (both marriage and cohabitation) and families of procreation, and the intergenerational relationships between parents and young adult children. Her rich book runs the gamut from macro-structural to micro-structural analyses, with a fair amount of meso-structural theories in between (especially culture, national identity, and ethnicity). While at first, the manuscript seems primarily demographic, I found a wealth of complementary and competing sociological models in successive chapters.
As one who was initially trained in demography, I was pleased to see that this volume also reflects the theoretical and empirical contentiousness of "family studies". Years ago, when I taught undergraduate family courses, I slowly came to understand how "the family" is really a microcosmic representation of the larger society. I tried (rather unsuccessfully) to integrate both economic and human development perspectives on the emergent tensions and the attempts of families to manage them. The strongest role model I had for this was the work of Lillian Rubin, who integrated psychotherapeutic approaches with socio-economic frames in studying slices of family life.
Mitchell's book is different from Rubin's many works (which were trade books rather than simply academic ones). Yet she covers many of the dimensions of Rubin's work, and in a rather persuasive way. Her major data format is the presentation and discussion of quantitative family indicators across time and space. However, she incorporates far more than just a rehash of these statistics: she genuinely probes beyond the data, to construct alternative hypotheses for what factors have determined the variability of the 19-35 year old cohorts she has analyzed. Her central model is the "life course theory", which traces changing "schedules" of young adults, in their dealings with the shrinking labor and moderate housing markets. She examines both the external influences on young adults and their parents, and the internal structures of family types, and social capital of families.. Her range of related theoretical and empirical linkages is equally impressive, going back to Thomas and Znaniecki's studies of the Polish peasant, as well as Alva Myrdal's analysis of Sweden's family constraints and emergent "family policy".
At the center of each chapter is both the framework of the life course, and a presentation of a rich array of demographic and sociological studies in Canada and the U.S. She also offers some brief comparisons to western European experiences. From the standpoint of young scholars probing life-cycle transitions, this is a rich and complex fabric of analyses, supporting data, and judicious interpretations and policy suggestions.
Yet this very richness is probably one limitation for the book's suitability for teaching upper-division undergraduate courses. I think that it is far more appealing for teaching graduate students interested in a variety of family issues, in one or more advanced courses.
My experience with undergraduates, and their intolerance for complexity and contradiction, though, suggests to me that this is simply too scholarly a book. Although Mitchell structures her chapters around questions (as Stephanie Coontz did in her later works), these often extend into more analytic (e.g., the changing patterns of cohabitation) rather the issues popular among our students (e.g., why cohabitation is appealing).
But this is 'praising with faint damns': this is a wonderful synthetic analysis of young adulthood, and well worth the attention of our graduate students and ourselves.
Allan Schnaiberg
Department of Sociology
Northwestern University
http://www.cjsonline.ca/reviews/boomerang.html
May 2006
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