Family Textbooks Research Articles

Analysis of the Contents of Hanbok in the「 Home Life and Safety」 section of the High School Technical Family Textbook: Content Analysis and Text Mining Techniques are utilized

This study is not just a meaning of costume but a function of culture and includes addresses the associated emotions. As the interest of youths has increased recently, the importance of traditional costume education has been growing. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the contents of Hanbok in the 2015 revised high school technology and home textbooks using content analysis techniques and text mining techniques. As a result of the study, first, the symbolic meaning and characteristics of Hanbok and the beauty of Hanbok were practiced in daily life, and the value was found through the excellence of Hanbok and the modernization of Hanbok was dealt with Second, most of the illustrations related to traditional costumes were presented in various ways, but there were some regrets due to lack of quantity and quality. Third, the words used to explain traditional costumes were used in the form of culture, excellence, tradition, modernity, harmony, succession, etc. except for the types of clothing. Therefore, the results and discussions derived from this study are expected to help the textbooks to be efficiently selected and used in the field of the front line school along with the correct understanding of traditional culture in the process of selecting traditional culture contents and illustrations.

(Re)Searching culture in foreign language textbooks, or the politics of hide and seek

ABSTRACTTextbooks are curriculum artefacts that embody particular ideologies and legitimise specific types of knowledge [Apple, M. W. (1982). Education and power. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul; Apple, M. W., & Christian-Smith, L. K. (1991). The politics of the textbook. In M. W. Apple & L. K. Christian-Smith (Eds.), The politics of the textbook (pp. 1–21). London, NY: Routledge]. As the general public tends to associate them with truth rather than opinion [Meyer, C. J., & Rosenblatt, P. C. (1987). Feminist analysis of family textbooks. Journal of Family Issues, 8(2), 247–252. Retrieved from: http://jfi.sagepub.com/], textbooks can contribute to the circulation of particular representations and stereotypes. In the past decades, there has been an increasing interest in analysing the ways in which textbooks (re)produce representations of history, ethnic groups, minorities and gender differences, to name a few. Foreign language research has focused on the representation of foreign and native culture(s), given that this term has been central in debates in the areas of second and foreign language theories [Weninger, C., & Kiss, T. (2013). Culture in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) textbooks: A semiotic approach. TESOL Quarterly, 47(4), 694–716. Retrieved from http://www.tesol.org/read-and-publish/journals/tesol-quarterly]. Using a qualitative synthesis research approach, this paper analyses a pool of studies on the representation of culture in foreign language textbooks to answer a main question: How do language textbooks represent foreign culture? Findings will contribute to understanding how textbook discourse favours some representations of culture and why it does so. In turn, they may also inform teaching and learning practices, such as the actual use of language textbooks in the classroom, in which teachers’ and students’ agency is undeniable.

A Critical Discourse Analysis of Family and Friends Textbooks: Representation of Genderism

The present study employed a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) approach to investigate the linguistic representation of male and female social actors in Family and Friends 4, 5 and 6 . To this end, van Leeuwen’s (1996) representational framework and Halliday and Matthiessen’s (2004) Transitivity Theory Model were adopted to reveal the ideology behind the constructions. The findings indicated a “sexist attitude” in favor of male social actors in which males were portrayed more than females and also had high activity. In addition, it was revealed that there was attempt to avoid traditional stereotypes of females in most parts of textbooks and women were not portrayed at home as housewives engaged in child care, however, it can be claimed that they suffered most obviously from low visibility. The findings may help EFL teachers, material developers and policy makers to be aware of equality/inequality issues in textbooks in order to make an equality perspective to learners.

Voluntary Childlessness in Marriage and Family Textbooks, 1950—2000

We perform a content analysis of twenty marriage and family textbooks published between 1950 and 2000 to study how the voluntarily childless are presented in undergraduate courses. Throughout the time period studied, independence, pursuit of a career, and romance were prominent themes in the representation of voluntary childlessness. Other themes emerged specific to each decade - the 1950s portrayed parenthood as a challenge, while the 1990s concentrated on alleviating negative stereotypes of the voluntarily childless.

Family Textbooks Twelve Years Later

Family Textbooks Twelve Years Later

LEEDER, Elaine. THE FAMILY IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE: A GENDERED JOURNEY

LEEDER, Elaine. THE FAMILY IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE: A GENDERED JOURNEY. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2004. 305pages, soft cover $43.95.Introductory family textbooks often seem to have been written with the goal of being as much as possible like most other introductory family textbooks. The Leeder book, although it deals with standard topics for introductory family courses, offers a gendered, global perspective that provides much that is fresh, new, and stimulating. It is interesting and teachable and opens up many valuable pedagogical possibilities.The book is rich in discussions of gender intersecting with family. One can read in it about patriarchy, violence against women, gender selective abortion and infanticide, gender differences in domestic workload, gender differences in pay, women as victims in war, rape, gender in old age, gender and sibling relationships, and much more. The book advocates a critical consciousness and provides basic ideas of standpoint theory, feminist theory, and conflict theory in order to illuminate gender, class, race, ethnicity, and other diversity issues in relationship to families.The book offers much information about global diversity in family experience. It is a great strength of the book that students can read about divorce, adolescence, domestic violence, intergenerational relationships, weddings, marriage, parenting, and many other issues in the context of other cultures and countries. The book provides a healthy sense of how diverse humankind is and yet also how there is a core that humankind has in common. Also, the book provides an excellent explanation of cultural relativism, so readers are helped to appreciate global differences in families in the context of global differences in meanings and morality.Another strength of the book is that it explores the powerful forces for globalization that impact families everywhere. This is an introductory family textbook that explores how international corporations, global capitalism, power differentials within societies, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and global changes in trade regulations have an enormous impact on families around the world. As part of this, Leeder develops and applies Wallerstein's global systems theory, showing how for several centuries, through warfare, colonization, imposed trade systems, the application of economic power differentials, and post-colonial institutions and alliances, the world is organized to benefit the richest nations and what this means for families. …

Nurturing Graduate Students: Integrative Scholarship through Textbook Projects

TEXTBOOKS ARE CONTROVERSIAL in sociology. Some professors refuse to use textbooks in their courses, believing that they are too simplistic. Others view textbooks as effective conduits of sociological knowledge. As an example of this latter position, a recent critique of current family textbooks created a furor in sociology and the national media because of their alleged bias (Glenn 1997; Footnotes 1998). Implicit in Glenn's critique was that textbooks impart learning. Further evidence of the importance of textbooks in the learning process is found in the Teaching Sociology special issue devoted to textbooks (1988; see also Agger 1989; and Kendall 1999). The corporatization of textbooks is yet another area of concern. With the increased frequency of mergers among publishing companies, there are not only fewer publishing outlets but also increasing pressures on authors to clone successful books, thereby squelching creativity. An additional controversy involving textbooks is whether they are limited only to transmitting existing knowledge (Tischler 1988). From this position, textbook writing is neither scholarly nor creative. We argue, to the contrary, that textbooks are not limited to the synthesis of existing materials in marketable ways, but that they are capable of actually shaping the

Portrayal of Women in Sexuality and Marriage and Family Textbooks: A Content Analysis of Photographs from the 1970s to the 1990s

Previous research into gender role stereotypesin the mass media has focused on television, radio andmagazines. The present study sought to determine whethersimilar patterns can be found in photographic images of women in college-level HumanSexuality and Marriage and Family textbooks. Over 1000photographs of women were content analyzed. Resultsindicated that in the 1970s, photographs were devotedprimarily to traditional images of women. In the 1990s,while there were more photographs of women devoted tofeminist messages, photographs with traditional messagesstill dominated. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for studies ofgender role development.

Closed hearts, closed minds: The textbook story of marriage

W hat are we teaching the next generation about marriage? Judging from a careful review of twenty recently published undergraduate marriage and family textbooks, the answer is: not very much. Moreover, what these students are being taught by these textbooks is probably doing them more harm than good. First, current textbooks convey a determinedly pessimistic view of marriage. Both by what they say and, sometimes even more importantly, by the information they omit, these books repeatedly suggest that marriage is more a problem than a solution. The potential costs of marriage to adults, particularly women, often receive exaggerated treatment, while the benefits of marriage, both to individuals and society, are frequently downplayed or ignored. Second, almost all of these textbooks shortchange children, devoting far more pages to adult problems and adult relationships than to issues concerning child well-being. Third, these books are typically riddled with glaring errors, distortions of research, omissions of important data, and misattributions of scholarship. Indeed, if these books reflect the quality of marriage and family courses currently offered in American colleges and universities, then the quality of these courses is no better than fair to poor. Given the nature and extent of the deficiencies of these textbooks, many students are likely to emerge from college courses even less well-equipped than they were before to make wise personal decisions and to participate intelligently in public debates on family issues. Just as importantly, students who use the information in these textbooks as a basis for their future decis i ons a s social workers, counselors, teachers, nurses, family lawyers, psychologists, and other professional custodians of the family--will have been consistently misled on important topics, from the risks of divorce to the correlates of child abuse, from the benefits of marriage to the costs of voluntary single motherhood. In sum, these textbooks are a national embarrassment. They are both a cause and a result of a society in which marriage as an institution is growing steadily weaker. As a nation, we can surely do better. This essay concludes with some recommendations for change.

Responses to Special Section on Family Textbooks (FR July 1997)

Responses to Special Section on Family Textbooks (FR July 1997)

A Critique of Twenty Family and Marriage and the Family Textbooks

A Critique of Twenty Family and Marriage and the Family Textbooks* Norval D. Glenn** Twenty recent family and marriage and family textbooks are evaluated in terms of their adequacy for preparing students to make decisions about their family relations and to participate in public debates about family issues. No book is rated excellent, two are judged unacceptable, and most are considered poor or mediocre in balanced treatment of controversial issues, coverage of crucial topics, and/or scholarship and interpretation of evidence. Reasons for the less than desirable quality of the books are discussed and strategies for improvement are suggested. The quality of college-level education about marriages and families depends heavily on the textbooks available for adoption. The typical instructor of either a functional marriage and family course or an institutional sociology of the family course is not a family researcher, teaches courses on other subjects, lacks time to keep up with the research and theoretical literature on families, and thus depends largely on textbooks for knowledge of the subject matter. Instructors often adopt one textbook and use others as sources for lecture materials. The content of the courses tends to reflect that of the textbooks, and thus students are unlikely to be exposed to theories, data, and interpretations of evidence not discussed in the books. It is ironic, therefore, that there is no reliable quality control over textbooks from outside the marketplace, in which the effective demand comes from persons whose knowledge of the field is highly dependent on the books. Most adoption decisions are made by individual instructors or committees of persons who teach different sections of the same course. The only others who exercise much influence over the books are students, who are even less well-qualified to do so than instructors. Many (probably most) colleges and universities now require student evaluation of courses and use the results in decisions about salary increases and promotions; thus, student desires strongly affect course content and the characteristics of textbooks. Most other publications by college and university faculty members are evaluated by colleagues, department chairs, deans, promotion committees, and so forth, but textbooks are largely outside the academic reward system. Research universities rarely reward textbook writing, regardless of how well it is done, and even teaching-oriented institutions tend to consider royalties and visibility to be sufficient rewards. The academic rewards of authors of poor textbooks are not necessarily jeopardized, because the books are not systematically scrutinized by those who evaluate faculty performance. Publishers do have textbook manuscripts reviewed, but the review is not comparable to the peer review of articles by academic journals or monographs by university presses. Most of the reviewers are undergraduate teachers rather than researchers and scholars, and while such persons can judge the appeal of books to students, they often are not very able to detect factual errors, misrepresentations of the literature, misinterpretations of data, and similar flaws. These reviewers are drawn from the persons who provide the effective demand for the books; thus, the reviewing is not likely to counteract any perverse influences of the marketplace. Academic journals rarely review textbooks, and professional associations such as the American Psychological Association, the American Sociological Association, and the National Council on Family Relations exercise little or no oversight of textbook production. To my knowledge, no professional association interested in family-related textbooks has standards or guidelines to be used by textbook authors. The fact that publishers and authors are, for the most part, accountable only to the marketplace does not augur well for the scientific and intellectual quality of the textbooks. …

A Response to Cherlin, Scanzoni, and Skolnick: Further Discussion of Balance, Accuracy, Fairness, Coverage, and Bias in Family Textbooks

I enjoyed reading all of the responses to my article, each being interesting for a different reason. Andrew Cherlin and I have little to debate. I downgraded his book (Cherlin, 1996) only on the criterion of coverage of crucial topics-the most subjective of the standards I used-and I agree with almost everything in his commentary. I was disappointed that his book ignores or treats lightly some of the family policy issues and child-related topics that I consider very important, but I may in some small way be responsible for his de-emphasis of some of those matters. When I reviewed the outline and sample chapters for McGraw-Hill, I said that active researchers and scholars such as Cherlin to have rather specialized interests and in a general textbook may tend to give short shrift to topics outside their areas of interest. . I doubt that this comment influenced Cherlin very much, but I regret writing it. His book would be stronger, in my opinion, if it were tilted more than it is toward his specialized interests, which include stepfamilies, the children of divorce, and similar topics. (I should have pointed out that his book does show more concern about problems in stepfamilies than any other textbook I reviewed.) One of Cherlin's statements needs to be corrected. To foster and strengthen a renewed `culture of marriage' is only one of several objectives of the Council on Families in America, and the report on marriage that Cherlin cites (Council on Families in America, 1996) is only one of a series of reports that will be issued by the Council. That this is my most important disagreement with Cherlin illustrates how closely I generally agree with his commentary. I heartily agree with Cherlin that what matters most in a textbook is whether or not it stimulates critical thought. Cherlin's book fares well in this respect, even though the reader is left with no doubt about the author's views, which are distinctly liberal. Most of the other books are much less balanced, being, intentionally or not, to a large extent arguments for orthodox liberal points of view on major family issues. Other perspectives generally fail to get a fair hearing. I appreciate Cherlin's discussion of the textbooks' treatment of differences between women's and men's behaviors-a topic I considered covering in my article but did not because of space limitations. The one-sided treatment of this topic in most of the sociology of the family textbooks is an embarrassment to the discipline of sociology. These and other unbalanced treatments of the topic in sociological publications contribute to a false image of sociologists that is widespread in the scientific community, namely, that we are dogmatic ideologues who use the mantle of science to further ideological and political agendas. The extreme social contructionist view of sex differences embraced by some sociologists and social psychologists deserves a fair hearing in the textbooks, but not to the exclusion of competing views. Whatever their personal beliefs may be, textbook authors should acknowledge the evidence that points toward an important contribution of nature to male-female differences. They should acknowledge and accurately summarize the dominant views among developmental psychologists who study sex differences, even though those views diverge substantially from the ones that prevail in sociology. However, even the books by authors who are not sociologists generally demonstrate no more than a superficial knowledge of the large literature on the psychology of sex differences. This deficiency illustrates one of the major problems with the way family textbooks are produced. Family social science is so broad that no one author can have in-depth knowledge of all of the topics that need to be covered. Although most of the best of the books I reviewed were written by one person, teams of authors from different disciplines, or at least with diverse specialized interests, might be able to produce textbooks superior to any of those now available. …

A Response to Glenn: The Battle of the Textbooks: Bringing in the Culture War

Norval Glenn's review raises provocative issues about the enterprise of writing textbooks, about the purpose of courses in marriage and the family, as well as about how research evidence should be interpreted. These are important questions that are seldom discussed. I agree with Glenn on number of points--especially on the relative lack of attention to children in family textbooks, and the need to be wary of one's own biases is writing and teaching in this highly contested and emotionally charged field. Yet I find the review deeply troubling. It is not only that I am an author singled out for criticism. What disturbs me is the blurring of the line between social science and cultural politics. Glenn seems to assume that any author whose coverage of specific topics, or whose interpretations of social research differ from his own, must be acting out of bias. In the name of rooting out ideology from family textbooks, Glenn has created series of litmus tests of his own making. Consider, for example, what he has to say about why children receive little coverage in family texts. Glenn acknowledges that this may result from the division of subject matter among disciplines. I agree. I hold Ph.D. in psychology (Yale, 1962) and have written textbook in child development (Skolnick, 1988) as well as sociology of the family texts. When I shifted to research on the family, it was clear these were different disciplines--with different theories, research questions, and methodologies. Glenn, however, prefers more insidious explanation, A major reason that the books give short shrift to child-related topics is likely to be ideological bias; persons who positively evaluate recent trends in family structure tend to be reluctant to admit that these trends may negatively affect the well-being and socialization of children and adolescents (p. 202). Glenn makes many other charges against family textbook writers, publishers, and those who teach from them. The core complaint is that the liberal or radical ideology of these writers leads them to undervalue marriage and to understate the harm done by divorce and single-parenthood to children and society. Before responding to Glenn's specific criticisms, I find it necessary to discuss the ideological framework in which they are embedded. As Hunter (1991) observed, the family is the central battleground of the culture wars that have raged across the American political and intellectual landscape in recent years. Cutting across the usual class, religious, and political cleavages, the culture war is essentially conflict between opposing assumptions, world views, and moral visions. And at the heart of the debate, Hunter argues, is the issue of defining the family. What form or forms of the family should be acknowledged by society? Shall the traditional two-parent married couple with children be the only pattern recognized by legal and public policy? Recent debates over divorce, single-parent families, and gay marriage are only the latest eruptions of the definition issue. These passionate public arguments serve as the crucial backdrop to Glenn's critique, but he does not say nearly enough about the range of views on these matters, or make his own biases clear. He does acknowledge that the review was first written as report to the Council on Families in America, which he identifies as group of about 20 professors, journalists, and public figures, himself included, concerned with family issues. But then he minimizes the possibility of bias because he claims, the Council is centrist, its members ranging from liberal to conservative; he is at a good vantage point from which to detect bias in the arguments of both the left and the right. More should be said, however, about The Council on Families in America. Headed by David Popenoe and Jean Bethke Elshtain, it is an offshoot of, and is sponsored by, the Institute for American Values (IAV) headed by David Blankenhorn and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead. …

A Reply to Glenn: What's Most Important in a Family Textbook?

It is hard know how respond being named arguably the best book overall among 20 textbooks, none of which is rated excellent. It is like being named the best student in a class for slow learners. Still, I thank Professor Glenn for complimenting my textbook, Public and Private Families: An Introduction (Cherlin, 1996), as displaying excellent scholarship and treatment of the evidence and being very well written and edited. Since he did not criticize the book specifically, I can not determine what its supposed limitations are; but I will respond briefly what I think his criticisms might have been. However, I do not think it is productive devote this response mainly the issue of how many pages I wrote about issues x or y. Rather, I want comment more generally on what I think is the most important function of textbooks on the familyor on any other social scientific topic. And that is increase students' capacities for independent, critical thinking. I would imagine that Glenn agrees on the importance of this function; it is similar one of his key goals for family textbooks, to develop in the students the ability participate intelligently in the public debates about family issues. But Glenn seems focus nearly all his attention on the textbooks' treatments of marriage, both as a relationship and as a context for raising children. His implicit defense of as an institution is consistent with the goals of the centrist Council on Families in America, an organization of academics, writers, and family-oriented professionals of which he is member (Glenn, 1996). The Council's objective is foster and strengthen a renewed culture of marriage (Council on Families in America, 1996). Glenn is correct in maintaining that most members of this group, including David Popenoe and Jean Bethke Elshtain, are not right-wing in their family politics, although I think they are the right of the majority of family social scientists. Glenn's reaction the 20 textbooks, which he clearly sees as, at best, lukewarm toward marriage, can be understood in this context. Without disputing the continuing importance of marriage, I wish direct my comments topics he did not cover. First, however, a mea culpa and a quibble: since Glenn writes that Public and Private Families is relatively free of errors (his version of high praise) and commends its treatment of evidence, I assume it passed muster on his criterion of bias. By process of elimination, then, I conclude that I did not make it out of the slow learners class either because I did not write enough about the benefits of or because the book gives insufficient attention issues involving children. The former charge has some validity; the latter, assuming Glenn made it, I would dispute. As for marriage, the book does have broad coverage of the topic, including historical variation, assortative mating patterns, demographic trends, the division of labor, husbands' and wives' power, marital violence, racial and ethnic variation, etc. Still, I did not include an explicit discussion of the benefits of marriage. I think Glenn is right assert that this topic should be presented, such as through a discussion of Linda Waite's 1995 Presidential Address the Population Association of America (Waite, 1995) or other similar articles. The presentation should also include a brief discussion of the difficulty of distinguishing the extent which makes people happy from the extent which happier people are more likely marry and remain married. Furthermore, it should mention that the benefits appear be greater for men than for women. As for children's issues, the first chapter of my book, as well as its very title, is meant convey students that families have a public dimension as well as a private one. The public dimension involves the important tasks that families do for society, particularly raising children and caring for the frail elderly. …

Paradigm Shifts in Family Sociology? Evidence From Three Decades of Family Textbooks

This article explores paradigm shifts in family sociology from the 1960s to the 1990s using a thematic content analysis of 7 multiple-edition texts. Two competing views on theoretical developments are examined. David Cheal claims that challenges posed to structural functionalist hegemony resulted in theoretical pluralism and an end to this hegemony. Dorothy Smith argues that Parson's theoretical assumptions are so deeply embedded in the discourse of family sociology that they continue to govern major issues and debates. As late as the 1990s, we found that structural functionalism continued to frame many topics and debates in the majority of texts even when new concepts and more critical literature were added. Notable exceptions were textbook treatments of African American families and gender issues. This suggests that the relative success of social movements in institutionalizing their goals may be an important factor in determining paradigm shifts.

Remarriage as an Incomplete Institution

Cherlin (1978) argued that remarriages are less successful than first marriages because remarriage is an incomplete institution. Cherlin's views have been very influential in the 1990s. These views have been incorporated into over 20 recent works on marriage and the family, they have been incorporated into three therapeutic programs for remarriages, and they are frequently cited in marriage and the family textbooks. This paper demonstrates that there is no sound empirical basis for the acceptance of Cherlin's influential views. Specifically, it demonstrates that there is no convincing empirical evidence that: (a) remarriages are less successful than first marriages, (b) remarriage is an incomplete institution, or (c) incompletely institutionalized family roles are a source of problems in remarriages. This paper also discusses the most important implications of the lack of empirical support for Cherlin's views and offers suggestions for future research.

A Historical Analysis of the Presentation of Abortion and Adoption in Marriage and Family Textbooks: 1950-1987

Findings from the content analysis of the depiction of abortion and adoption in 62 marriage and family textbooks published from 1951 through 1987 are presented. Abortion and adoption are presented differently over time during the period of study in terms of the amount of coverage the major themes addressed and the kind of social actors deemed relevant. In terms of both the number of citations in the index and the amount of unique page space more attention is consistently given to abortion than to adoption in the textbooks. Major themes and social actors are discussed. In addition to devoting more attention to abortion than to adoption the books treat abortion overwhelmingly as a public issue while addressing adoption as a private matter of choice. Thematic analysis suggests the influence of societal events such as the legalization of abortion and of a structural-functional theoretical orientation in family studies. Implications for teaching and future research are discussed.

The Presentation of Minorities in Marriage and Family Textbooks

This study updates and extends Bryant and Coleman's analysis of the portrayal of the black family in marriage and family textbooks. Twenty of the best-selling marriage and family textbooks published between 1986 and 1990 were examined for their descriptions of four minority groups: African Americans, Asian Americans, Latino Americans, and Native Americans. The results showed that marriage and family textbooks still devote very little attention to minorities. Overall, 2. 1 percent of the space was devoted to racial-ethnic families, even though people of color constitute more than 25 percent of the population. Some groups, such as Native Americans, received almost no coverage at all. Finally, although much of the material was presented from a culturally equivalent approach, textbook authors discussed minority families from a culturally deviant perspective.

The Presentation of Stepfamilies in Marriage and Family Textbooks: A Reexamination

In recent years, stepfamilies have been one of the most rapidly growing family forms in the United States and throughout the world. Although Census Bureau data are not available regarding the exact number of stepfamilies in the United States, and estimates vary widely, even the most conservative estimates indicate that stepfamilies make up a sizable minority of the population. Nearly a decade ago, Cherlin and McCarthy (1985) calculated that there were nearly 2.5 million postdivorce stepfamily households with residential children in the United States. This number obviously would be larger if remarriages formed following the death of a spouse and de facto stepfamilies in which adults do not legally remarry were included. According to demographer Glick (1989), 19% of married couple families with children are stepfamilies, and one third of Americans are now a stepparent, a stepchild, a stepsibling, or some other member of a stepfamily. At any one time, about 10% of American children live with a stepfather and mother (Bumpass, 1984; Glick, 1984) and about 2% with a stepmother and father (Bachrach, 1983). If current rates of divorce and remarriage continue, as many as 35% of the children in the United States will be part of a stepfamily before they are 18 years old (Glick, 1989). It is likely, therefore, that a sizable percentage of college students have experienced membership in a stepfamily, or they will have such experiences sometime during their adult years. Because so many students are affected by remarriage, the topics of remarriage, stepparenting, and stepfamilies are relevant subjects that should be an integral part of introductory courses on marriage and family relationships. One indication of what is taught in introductory marriage and family courses is the presentation of material in textbooks. Of course, textbooks are not the only source of information; instructors usually supplement textbook materials with additional readings, lectures, films, and videos. Nonetheless, textbooks provide a relatively reliable view of course content. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the presentation of information on stepfamilies in marriage and family textbooks. This study is a partial replication of a review of 26 widely used introductory marriage and family textbooks that was conducted a decade ago (Nolan, Coleman, & Ganong, 1984). That review was inspired by an earlier assertion made by Rallings (1976) that stepparenting was either ignored or treated briefly and superficially in marriage and family textbooks. The following conclusions were drawn from that 1984 review: 1. In general, marriage and family textbooks contain limited information about stepfamilies. 2. Much of the information presented about stepfamilies is based on clinical work or popular, self-help sources. 3. A handful of empirical studies, many somewhat dated, provide the meager data base for these textbooks. 4. The topic of stepfamily relations is treated as secondary to remarriage. An examination of chapter titles indicates that Ralling's (1976) earlier assertion regarding this remains true. 5. There is a subtle, deficit-family model applied to stepfamilies as indicated by little discussion of successful functioning, a predilection toward discussing stresses, and a greater than usual incidence of giving recommendations. (p. 565) In the years since this review, there has been an explosion of remarriage and stepfamily research (Coleman & Ganong, 1990). Considering that some conclusions from the 1984 investigation were due, in part, to a dearth of empirical studies on stepfamilies, the substantial increase in theoretical and empirical work on remarriage and steprelationships available to text authors in recent years should have resulted in more thorough coverage of these topics. Has the coverage of remarriage and stepfamilies in textbooks changed in the past decade? Does the coverage reflect the vastly expanded body of empirical and theoretical work? …

Response to Stolley and Hall

For several reasons, we are pleased to be asked to respond to the article, The Presentation of Abortion and Adoption in Marriage and Family Textbooks by Stolley and Hall (1994). First, the request comes as we are revising the chapters in our marriage and family textbook on pregnancy and parenting, so the topics have been in our thoughts and we feel we are up-to-date on the research. Second, we are always interested in reading critiques of textbooks in order to modify or expand our presentation of material. Third, we ourselves are an adoptive family, both in terms of stepfamily adoption and international adoption of an older child. Finally, we have friends who relinquished their infants during the 1950s and 1960s or who themselves were relinquished for adoption during the same time period.