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The Way We Never Were: American Families And The Nostalgia Trap Paperback – October 6, 1993

by Stephanie Coontz (Author)

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The Way We Never Were examines two centuries of American family life and shatters a series of myths and half-truths that burden modern families. Placing current family dilemmas in the context of far-reaching economic, political, and demographic changes, Coontz sheds new light on such contemporary concerns as parenting, privacy, love, the division of labor along gender lines, the black family, feminism, and sexual practice.

Print length

432 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Basic Books
Publication date

October 6, 1993
Dimensions

5.5 x 0.75 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

0465090974
ISBN-13

978-0465090976
Lexile measure

1550L
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Popular Highlights in this book

What are popular highlights?

The most common purpose of marriage in history was not to ensure children had access to both their mother and father but to acquire advantageous in-laws and expand the family labor force.
Highlighted by 169 Kindle readers
The hybrid idea that a woman can be fully absorbed with her youngsters while simultaneously maintaining passionate sexual excitement with her husband was a 1950s invention that drove thousands of women to therapists, tranquilizers, or alcohol when they actually tried to live up to it.
Highlighted by 142 Kindle readers
Self-reliance and independence worked for men because women took care of dependence and obligation.
Highlighted by 110 Kindle readers

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Did you ever wonder about the historical accuracy of those "traditional family values" touted in the heated arguments that insist our cultural ills can be remedied by their return? Of course, myth is rooted in fact, and certain phenomena of the 1950s generated the Ozzie and Harriet icon. The decade proved profamily--the birthrate rose dramatically; social problems that nag--gangs, drugs, violence--weren't even on the horizon. Affluence had become almost a right; the middle class was growing. "In fact," writes Coontz, "the 'traditional' family of the 1950s was a qualitatively new phenomenon. At the end of the 1940s, all the trends characterizing the rest of the twentieth century suddenly reversed themselves." This clear-eyed, bracing, and exhaustively researched study of American families and the nostalgia trap proves--beyond the shadow of a doubt--that Leave It to Beaver was not a documentary.

Gender, too, is always on Coontz's mind. In the third chapter ("My Mother Was a Saint"), she offers an analysis of the contradictions and chasms inherent in the "traditional" division of labor. She reveals, next, how rarely the family exhibited economic and emotional self-reliance, suggesting that the shift from community to nuclear family was not healthy. Coontz combines a clear prose style with bold assertions, backed up by an astonishing fleet of researched, myth-skewing facts. The 88 pages of endnotes dramatize both her commitment to and deep knowledge of the subject. Brilliant, beautifully organized, iconoclastic, and (relentlessly) informative The Way We Never Were breathes fresh air into a too often suffocatingly "hot" and agenda-sullied subject. In the penultimate chapter, for example, a crisp reframing of the myth of black-family collapse leads to a reinterpretation of the "family crisis" in general, putting it in the larger context of social, economic, and political ills.

The book began in response to the urgent questions about the family crisis posed her by nonacademic audiences. Attempting neither to defend "tradition" in the era of family collapse, nor to liberate society from its constraints, Coontz instead cuts through the kind of sentimental, ahistorical thinking that has created unrealistic expectations of the ideal family. "I show how these myths distort the diverse experiences of other groups in America," Coontz writes, "and argue that they don't even describe most white, middle-class families accurately." The bold truth of history after all is that "there is no one family form that has ever protected people from poverty or social disruption, and no traditional arrangement that provides a workable model for how we might organize family relations in the modern world."

Some of America's most precious myths are not only precarious, but down right perverted, and we would be fools to ignore Stephanie Coontz's clarion call. --Hollis Giammatteo

Review

"Often brilliant and invariably provocative. Pick a favorite presumption about American families during better times...and Coontz proceeds to unravel the mythical conceit." -- New York Times Book Review

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Basic Books; Reprint edition (October 6, 1993)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 432 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0465090974
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0465090976
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1550L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.01 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.75 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #912,462 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #802 in Sociology of Marriage & Family (Books)
- #7,159 in Historical Study (Books)
- #43,933 in Social Sciences (Books)

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4.2 344 ratings

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4.2 out of 5

344 global ratings

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Not an Easy Read! This Is an Academic, Scholarly Book Despite the Whimsical Cover Design

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 29, 2021

Verified Purchase

What this book is: It is a scholarly, well-researched college-level sociology or history textbook that is grounded in statistics…lots and lots (and lots!) of statistics.

What this book is not: It is not easy to read.

Written by Stephanie Coontz, a college history professor, this book examines the history of the family from colonial times to today with a focus on how nostalgia for the "good old days" continually trips us up—because the "good old days" never really existed. Why? Our brains are really good at changing reality into a warm-fuzzy view of the past, remembering only the good and forgetting the bad.

This is particularly true of the mythical family of the 1950s, especially as portrayed on popular '50s TV shows, such as "Ozzie and Harriet" and "Father Knows Best." We have mythologized the 1950s as a golden age for families, the economy, and the country when the stark reality was very different in many important ways.

Find out:
• how the decade of the 1920s was one of sexual revolution that is second only to the 1960s.

• what the 1950s were really like and how the myths and misconceptions still affect us today.

• how the nuclear family became immortalized as essential to the wellbeing of society and the real effects—both good and bad—this has caused.

• why the American family has never been self-reliant and the many ways it has always benefited from government handouts. Exhibit A: The mortgage tax deduction.

• why women went to work in droves in the 1970s. In case your answer is the women's movement, think again.

I gave this book four stars because it is well written and expertly researched, but it is way too academic for me. (Had I known this in advance, I doubt I would have bought it.) Still, I read it to the end.

I know not to judge a book by its cover, but the whimsical and lighthearted cover design led me to believe the book would be more for the common reader than the scholar. I was wrong.

97 people found this helpful

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Mimi

The truth backed up with facts.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 28, 2022

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My children would have read this book had it been around when they were growing up. My husband and I felt it our duty as parents to educate our children beyond what their schools taught and the false narratives from relatives regarding American history. We kept an open dialogue with both of them regarding human sexuality, colonization throughout history, the Civil War, Dr. Martin Luther King’s murder, the lack of Civil Rights, necessary information to satisfy their questions and my questions. The Way We Never Were has been very informative. Thank you!

7 people found this helpful

Helpful

Jennifer Tressler

Interesting and Well-Researched, Mostly About The Class System

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 20, 2016

Verified Purchase

I've really enjoyed reading this book every night before I fall asleep. I can picture the information in the book, and feel like I'm really there. Another plus is that it's obvious that Coontz wants to be unbiased in a political sense---she tries to cover history in a way that neither blames nor overly sympathizes with any particular side. The focus of the book seems to be on economics--classes, particularly, which is interesting enough for me, but I found the book lacking in terms of day-to-day family life and examples that I was hoping for. There also seems to be a bit of repetition throughout the book and some references to events that I'm unfamiliar with. While I think that the book is exceptionally well-researched (there are tons of pages of notes in the back of the book), I don't feel like I've really come away with much information other than that we should accept life as it is now and not romanticize the past, since the past wasn't really what we think it was. Don't get me wrong--it's interesting to learn about the class systems of the times, but for family history, I'd look into a different book.

13 people found this helpful

Helpful

Curious

Referenced in Atlas of the Heart

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 26, 2022

Verified Purchase

Have only skimmed the book, but Brene Brown refers to the book in her TV special/series about her latest book Atlas of the Heart. I know I will learn something good when Brene is involved!

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Erik

Life was better for some than others

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 19, 2014

Verified Purchase

The title should be "The Way we Were." She describes (albeit with a rather left wing perspective) the first half of the 20th century much in accord with my Grandfather's diaries, and the second half much as I remember it growing up in a middle class environment. Life was better for some than others, better for the working class in the first part of the 20th century than today, in some important ways (access to college, safety in the streets, cost of houses). Strange that she leaves out the Vietnam War and the 1960s riots and their causes, management and mismanagement.
Her perspective gets in the way of noting that "government," (an undefined entity) got the money that it "used to subsidize the middle class families of the 1950s" mostly from those families.
Except for the excursions into liberal semi-outrage, the book is a fair exposition of the changes in family, working classes, and conditions for women and men, over the past century (the diaries don't go back much further). Those who haven't lived much of it may find it semi-informative, but they would be well advised to counter the bias by reviewing the Oakland Tribune and Time Magazine Archives.
After reading it, my assessment is "meh."

9 people found this helpful

Helpful

Ronald W Holman

An informative but difficult read

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 14, 2021

Verified Purchase

While it’s refreshing to have an informed book on the family, I found the writers style difficult to read and follow. If one persist through this book they are rewarded with much myth breaking about American families now and through the past. The book is at its best when it tries to analyze the myth of the 1950’s American family. I gave the book three stars because of its style not content. It’s worth the investment in time to read this book.

9 people found this helpful

Helpful

catchusifu

It dispels the "those were the good old days" mythology of America's recent past

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 4, 2016

Verified Purchase

This book is a must read history. It dispels the "those were the good old days" mythology of America's recent past. As such it would garner 5 stars were it not for a major flaw: Repetition. The case this book makes could easily have been made in a lecture presentation or a periodical article. It makes the same (or very similar) point over and over with a myriad of tidbits of documented American history. I have struggled to get through this book which, as I have said, is a must read because as I read I was never sure I wasn't rereading what I read the day before.

27 people found this helpful

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