Toward More Family-Centered Family Sciences: Love, Sacrifice, and Transcendence

by Howard M. Bahr, Kathleen S. Bahr

Overview

Much academic writing on families reflects the ideal of non-involvement and distanced subject matter. Toward More Family-Centered Family Sciences suggests that the family sciences, in their effort to be scientific, have perpetuated this distance between researcher and subject, to the detriment of both. The authors argue that family and kinship ties are transcendent ties, boundary-crossing in numerous ways. They place an emphasis on family love, in contrast and in addition to romantic love, and criticize current approaches for neglecting the importance of transcendent concepts such as love, commitment, respect, and sacrifice in the development and well being of family structures. Drawing from insights both inside and outside of academia, the authors seek to reincorporate transcendent concepts into the study of the family as a unit of society. They argue for a more collaborative, family-centered family science and offer recommendations for how family researchers might work to change the scientific monologue about families to a systemic dialogue with families.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780739126745
Publisher:	Lexington Books
Publication date:	10/21/2010
Pages:	406
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Howard M. Bahr is professor in the department of sociology at Brigham Young University. Kathleen S. Bahr is associate professor (ret.) in the department of marriage, family, and human development at Brigham Young University

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction xi

Chapter 1 Families and Self-Sacrifice 1

Chapter 2 Family Transcendence 33

Chapter 3 Love 67

Chapter 4 Family Spirituality 127

Chapter 5 Family Work 173

Chapter 6 Emotion Work in Families 211

Chapter 7 Family Work as Ritual 259

Chapter 8 Close, Warm, and Particular 297

References 317

Index 363

About the Authors 373

Editorial Reviews

An in-depth look at love, sacrifice, transcendence, and commitment as family processes frequently neglected in scholarly literature....Convincing and well developed....Recommended.

Choice

Howard and Kathleen Bahr have given us new and exciting ways to think about critically important but often neglected issues in the family. With an intellectual depth and rigor rarely found in the social sciences, they have challenged the ways scholars too often have viewed family relationships. In addition, they have plowed rich new ground in the understudied and underappreciated domains of love, sacrifice, and transcendence. This book is beautifully and carefully written and deserves wide readership by scholars and students in the social and behavioral sciences.--David C. Dollahite, Professor of Family Life, Brigham Young University

The Bahrs have produced something remarkable. They argue that our study of humans is losing its humanity--that physics envy in the family sciences frequently blinds us to the meaning of family life, relationships, and work for real folks in the real world. "Mainstream family scholarship is not wrong; it is incomplete," the Bahrs argue. "We would enlarge the circle of illumination, not reduce it" ...and enlarge it they have. Drawing on an expansive range of sources from sociology, psychology, anthropology, philosophy, literature, poetry, history, ethnography, and quantitative and qualitative family studies...the authors offer a heart and soul to family science without removing the head. In the end, this is a book that emphasizes meaning over medians, transcendence over T-tests, and potential over pathology. Advanced undergraduate and graduate students will be challenged and broadened. Faculty may be reminded why they fell in love with family studies in the first place.--Loren Marks, Assistant Professor in the School of Human Ecology, Louisiana State University

An in-depth look at love, sacrifice, transcendence, and commitment as family processes frequently neglected in scholarly literature....Convincing and well developed....Recommended.--CHOICE, January 2010

From the Publisher

Howard and Kathleen Bahr have given us new and exciting ways to think about critically important but often neglected issues in the family. With an intellectual depth and rigor rarely found in the social sciences, they have challenged the ways scholars too often have viewed family relationships. In addition, they have plowed rich new ground in the understudied and underappreciated domains of love, sacrifice, and transcendence. This book is beautifully and carefully written and deserves wide readership by scholars and students in the social and behavioral sciences.

David C. Dollahite

The Bahrs have produced something remarkable. They argue that our study of humans is losing its humanity—that physics envy in the family sciences frequently blinds us to the meaning of family life, relationships, and work for real folks in the real world. “Mainstream family scholarship is not wrong; it is incomplete,” the Bahrs argue. “We would enlarge the circle of illumination, not reduce it” …and enlarge it they have. Drawing on an expansive range of sources from sociology, psychology, anthropology, philosophy, literature, poetry, history, ethnography, and quantitative and qualitative family studies…the authors offer a heart and soul to family science without removing the head. In the end, this is a book that emphasizes meaning over medians, transcendence over T-tests, and potential over pathology. Advanced undergraduate and graduate students will be challenged and broadened. Faculty may be reminded why they fell in love with family studies in the first place.

Loren Marks

An in-depth look at love, sacrifice, transcendence, and commitment as family processes frequently neglected in scholarly literature....Convincing and well developed....Recommended.

January 2010 CHOICE

An in-depth look at love, sacrifice, transcendence, and commitment as family processes frequently neglected in scholarly literature....Convincing and well developed....Recommended.

Choice Reviews

An in-depth look at love, sacrifice, transcendence, and commitment as family processes frequently neglected in scholarly literature....Convincing and well developed....Recommended.

January 2010 Choice Reviews