The Natural Family Where it Belongs

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Allan C. Carlson argues that agrarianism is alive and well in twenty-first-century America. He emphasizes the evident bond between the healthy, natural family and an agrarian-like household, where the sexual and the economic merge through marriage and child-bearing and where the family is defined in considerable measure by its material efforts. Carlson notes that natural households see parents as the educators of their young, they celebrate homes engaged in the care of young, aged, and infirm family members. Such a worldview points to the recreation of a family-centered economy and portends a renewal of the true democracy dreamed of by Washington, Adams, and Jefferson. This book has four parts. In the first, "The Natural Family at Home, " Carlson provides an overview of this type of household as it existed in the past. The second part examines twentieth-century "displacements" from this normative order, examining the effects of capitalism, gender ideology, and war. Representative "dissents" from this transformation find expression in the third part. The voices identified here vary in discipline: some write in the language of literature and poetry, others use the constructs of economics. In the fourth and final part, Carlson describes "movements home" the rebirth of family-centered habitation, the reassertion of a "gendered" order, and the remarkable return of family-scale agriculture. Written by one of the most prestigious and respected scholars in the area, The Natural Family Where It Belongs will influence how today's family life is viewed in America and abroad. This volume is the latest in Transaction's Marriage and Family Studies series.