The Changing Landscape of Work and Family in the American Middle Class explores the dynamics of the modern American family and how they have adapted to the changing economy and culture. Contributors from a variety of disciplines redefine the concept of the "model American family" and provide well-researched insight into what the new standards for judging family life and its functionality will be.

This collection explores the dynamics of the modern, middle-class American family and its near-constant state of transition. The editors introduce the book by situating it within the context of work, family, and ethnographic research on middle-class families in the United States. Emerging and established scholars contributed chapters based on their original field research, following each chapter with a personal reflection on doing field work. The volume concludes with an original essay by Kathryn Dudley, an anthropologist who has spent decades studying the intersections of work, family, and class in American culture. As a whole, the volume highlights how culture shapes family life amid shifting social and economic landscapes.

The authors, working in the fields of anthropology and sociology, observed daily life at workplaces and in homes, interviewing people about their work, their children, and their ideas about what makes a good family. They report on their fieldwork in essays rich with the detail of everyday life, revealing the fascinating diversity of American middle-class families through chapters about gay co-father families, African American stay-at-home mothers, first-time fathers, rural refugees from corporate America, well-off white mothers, Taiwanese immigrant churches, the fetal ultrasound, and more.

The Changing Landscape of Work and Family in the American Middle Class is an excellent text for classes in anthropology, sociology, American culture, family studies, work and family, and gender studies.

Chapter 1 Acknowledgements
Chapter 2 Foreword
Chapter 3 1 Changing Landscapes of Work and Family
Part 4 I Intersections of Work and Family
Chapter 5 2 Working Selves, Moral Selves: Crafting the Good Person in the Northern Plains
Chapter 6 3 Kitchen Conferences and Garage Cubicles: The Merger of Home and Work in a 24-7 Global Economy
Chapter 7 4 'We pass the Baby off at the Factory Gates': Work and Family in the Manufacturing Midwest
Chapter 8 5 The Work-Family Divide for Low-Income African Americans
Chapter 9 6 American Dreaming: Refugees from Corporate Work Seek the Good Life
Chapter 10 7 Patrolling the Boundaries of Childhood in Middle-Class "Ruburbia"
Part 11 II The (Not So) Standard North American Family
Chapter 12 8 Gay Family Values: Gay Co-Father Families in Straight Communities
Chapter 13 9 Black Women have Always Worked: Is There a Work-Family Conflict Among the Black Middle Class?
Chapter 14 10 'It's like Arming Them': African American Mothers' Views on Racial Socialization
Chapter 15 11 Seeing the Baby in the Belly: Family and Kinship at the Ultrasound Scan
Chapter 16 12 Stabilizing Influence: Cultural Expectations of Fatherhood
Chapter 17 13 Focused on the Chinese American Family: Chinese Immigrant Churches and Childrearing
Chapter 18 14 Choosing Chastity: Redefining the Sexual Double Standard in the Language of Choice
Chapter 19 Afterword: What is a Family?
Chapter 20 Contributors
Chapter 21 Credits for the Cover Photos