Unhitched

January 31, 2011
Stacey (In the Name of the Family), a professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University, spent over a decade interviewing and observing families in California, South Africa, and China for this scrupulously researched and moving portrait of family diversity across three continents and cultures. The first section is devoted to gay men living, loving, and parenting in tony West Hollywood. Stacey uses the experiences of her 50 subjects to examine both sides of the gay-marriage debate. The theory that legalizing gay marriage will lead to the legalization of polygamy takes Stacey to South Africa, where both same-sex and plural marriages are legal. She examines the history and modern interpretation of polygamy and asks if the practice might not offer some potential benefits to women and their children. Finally, Stacey turns her keen analysis on the Mosuo people of southwest China, who have rejected marriage for multigenerational households in which children are raised by their mothers and maternal family. Throughout her travels and exhaustive research, Stacey pokes and prods, and eagerly calls into question everything we think we know about love, marriage, and the baby in the baby carriage. Photos.

Starred review from April 15, 2011

A candid unearthing of veiled and inviolable topics related to relationships and marriage.

When considering the pros and cons of entering into a marital bond these days, one must recognize the progression and, in many cases, regression of society regarding relationships. For 10 years, Stacey has conducted research based on this rationale, and her captivating results form the basis of a book that unravels the mysteries behind marital—and nonmarital—relationships of all shapes, sizes and colors. With clear-cut, modern prose, the author infuses her commentary and details her investigation from all sides of the aisle with well-researched facts and figures. Stacey uses gay marriage and polyandrous relationships as a springboard for readers to reflect on the traditional marriage system of one man, one woman, and she turns controversial cultural issues into divisive conjectures. With powerful recognition of "Gay Parenthood and the End of Paternity as We Knew It," the author directly confronts the taboo subject that can be same-sex relationships and their take on parenthood, running the gamut from gay men desperate to adopt, to those who decline, whom she refers to as "refuseniks." Stacey provides a comprehensive look at the varying nature of family structures spanning from the United States to southwest China, and she suggests love and marriage are not necessarily blissfully united.

Clever and practical blend of research, history and anecdote.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

February 15, 2011

Stacey (sociology, New York Univ; In the Name of the Family: Rethinking Family Values in the Postmodern Age) presents three ethnographic portraits--gays in L.A., polygamists in South Africa, and the matrilineal, nonmarital Mosuo people of southwestern China--to demonstrate that the Ozzie and Harriet family ideal is not normal, natural, or universal. She criticizes that model's failures, gender and sexual disparities, and hypocrisy, provocatively urging us to "unhitch" ourselves from the unsubstantiated belief that the model's decline has caused our modern social ills. She advocates the acceptance of imaginative, diverse, flexible, equitable, and reasoned patterns of dedicated and responsible love, domesticity, and parenting, divorced from legal control. Extensively documented, the book consists of revisions of previous articles, now with interconnected arguments that are adequately woven together into a distinct and accessible work. The cultural examples highlighted are thought-provoking but fringe and disparate, and they somewhat force the argument. VERDICT The book will fuel the ongoing family values/marriage discourse by challenging conservatives, feminists, and proponents of same-sex marriage (about which Stacey has shifted her views). Recommended for academic and interested general readers.--Marge Kappanadze, Elmira Coll. Lib., NY

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