"War over the Family / by Brigitte,Berger, Peter L

Part I of the book seeks to describe the contemporary ideological battleground. Part II gives our own social-scientific understanding of the family in the contemporary world, with special attention being given to modernization and its tensions. Part III develops what we consider to be a reasonable defense of the bourgeois family, in terms of the well-being of individuals and in terms of democratic values. We conclude with a general outline of the directions which, in our opinion, public policy should take in family matters. We do not pretend that any of this is exhaustive. We know that many questions are left unanswered, that many details remain to be filled in. This is unavoidable. We hope that the major contribution of the book will be to give heart to many individuals who have been dissatisfied with the strident rhetoric coming from various sides and who are striving to express a position on the family that is both intellectually and morally reasonable.

The nature of our collaboration should be specified. This book is, in the main, Brigitte Berger's. It was her idea, the design and the central argument of the book are hers, and family sociology has been of her areas of specialization for many years. Peter Berger has contributed various theoretical perspectives, especially in the area of modernization. He is also responsible for the four excursi in the book. The basic approach, both intellectually and in terms of partisanship, is common to the authors.

Brigitte Berger wishes to thank the Sarah Scaife Foundation for a grant allowing her to take a leave from her academic position for the purpose of working on this book, and to Wellesley College for granting this leave. She also wishes to thank Mary Strong for encouragement and advice.

We are very grateful to Loretta Barrett, our editor at Doubleday, for her unstinting support and encouragement. We know that she does not agree with everything we say here, which has made her supportive attitude even more valuable. We have found her to be one of those editors who understand their high responsibility as gatekeepers (or should one say ushers?) in the theater of ideas,

Both of us have learned much from our association with the Mediating Structures Project of the American Enterprise Institute, 1976-79, of which Peter Berger was co-director with Richard Neuhaus. We have also gained much from conversations with Michael Novak and Nathan Glazer. We are also very much indebted to Robert Woodson, to his National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, to Falaka Fatah, and to many other community leaders he has regularly assembled through his unique program. Through these contacts, we have learned to become more conscious of the middle-class bias inherent in much writing about the family, and we have learned how important the perspectives coming out of the black community are for a balanced understanding of the role of the family. Finally, we want to thank friends and neighbors in different cities, indeed in different societies, who have given us ever-new confidence in the common sense of ordinary people and in the resilience of human beings in all sorts of circumstances in facing up to the challenges of family life.