The Way we really are Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

The Way we really are - Essay Example the publication of her previous book coinciding with the 1992 United States presidential election campaign that publicised debates about traditional American family values and the alleged decline of those values with associated declines in public and private behavior standards. Coontz was concerned that the conservatives within the Republican Party were making untrue claims that the decline of traditional family values was detrimental to American society and has harmful social, economic, and political consequences.1 Stephanie Coontz seemed to echo the opinions of many that believed the myth of traditional American family values underpinning traditional nuclear families was generally an unfounded fiction. The primary theme of ‘The Way We Never were: American families and the Nostalgia Trap’ was the argument that the idea that the traditional nuclear family was the main form of social unit that was not as prevalent as some argued. The conservative politicians and fundament alist religious groups spread such myths, as they would like the American public to believe. The Way We Never Were was very successful in making that point as well as being another example of Coontz’s ability to examine and evaluate American social history besides making valid arguments about contemporary American society. This book brought Coontz critical acclaim as well as increased book sales.2 The Way we Really are is a book that Stephanie Coontz intended to use to describe and examine the reality of family life in contemporary American society rather than describing American social history as her previous books had done so well. The Way we Really are was a change of approach and perspective that had commenced with The Way We Never Were.3 Coontz’s changes in approach and perspective were mainly in response to intensified public and political debates concerning changes to family lives in American society in the past, the present, and indeed in the future.4 To classify it in