New Family Values

By: Andrew Solomon

Narrated by: Andrew Solomon

Drawing on dozens of intimate audio interviews with families from all across the country, award-winning psychologist and writer Andrew Solomon redefines what it means to be an “ideal family” in America today. Solomon observes that America, led in large part by the women’s, civil rights, and gay rights movements, has undergone a radical social shift in the last few decades.

While three-quarters of American children lived in families with two (first-time) married, heterosexual parents in the 1960s, today less than half do. The conventional family, Solomon argues, has broken into a multitude of perfect families, including gay families, multiparent families, adoptive families, foster families, families built through assisted reproduction, single parent-headed families, and child-free families. Although the structure of family has changed, economic and legal structures lag behind and need to adapt to accommodate this explosive new reality.

©2018 Audible Originals, LLC (P)2018 Audible Originals, LLC.

What a terrific gift from audible!

Everyone should listen to this fascinating, realistic and unbiased view of contemporary family life. Clearly, there are many iterations of immutable connection and love.
The people interviewed were candid and uninhibited. Hats off to Andrew Solomon for eliciting such genuine participation.

Very eye opening for anyone regardless

of where you fall on the spectrum of family. Choose your family and win now.

Excellent and important.

Andrew Solomon is a treasure. Highly recommend all his books. Kudos to Audible for including this in their Originals catalog.

Different Families for Different Times

Those who believe the nuclear family to be the pinnacle of civilization will find themselves challenged by the stories told in this series. I know some people are so attached to the nuclear family as an ideal that they might themselves threatened. But the truth is we've always had alternatives to the mom-dad-kids structure. Some of the family structures here aren't really that new at all--they are similar to those from other societies in other times. Others truly are new, describing fertility treatments that just didn't exist until very recently. I really enjoyed hearing how different people navigate the challenges and jobs of "alternative" families.

Promoting diversity

I enjoyed how this was audio was laid out going through diverse family relationships and how each of them live. It was inspiring to hear stories from every kind of relationship and how they overcame or are working on overcoming society judging and persecuting them. I didn't feel the author left any family type out. Very good.