The Unfinished Revolution
Coming of Age in a New Era of Gender, Work, and Family
Kathleen Gerson
Reviews and Awards
William J. Goode Best Book Length Contribution to Family Sociology Award, American Sociological Association
"Preachers, pundits, and politicians blather endlessly about family values, traditional marriage, and child-rearing, but no one with real authority has asked the kids themselves what works best-until now. The brilliant social scientist Kathleen Gerson revolutionizes a stale debate with her breakthrough research on how adult children view their upbringing and what that means for their futures-and ours. Gerson provides definitive evidence that families with flexible gender strategies meet social and economic challenges far better than those with rigid gender roles, who are often unable to sustain secure homes when confronted by financial or marital crises." --Leslie Bennetts, author of The Feminine Mistake
"Gerson's Unfinished Revolution is the most important book on issues of work and family balance since Hochschild's Second Shift. Vividly portraying how family change has impacted the hopes, dreams, and possibilities for future generations, this book effectively transforms the terms of the debate on the American family today." --Sharon Hays, Barbra Streisand Professor in Contemporary Gender Studies and Professor of Sociology, University of Southern California
"Kathleen Gerson's Unfinished Revolution is an elegant and powerful account of the gender and family revolution that has transformed our society and politics, viewed through the young adults who have lived through these transforming decades. While politics seeks to freeze and distort and polarize the change, Gerson shows a textured, flexible, uncertain and shifting reality that challenges all our assumptions. Her book helps us understand this Obama generation, tolerant of the diverse choices now facing men and women and families and hoping politics can transcend old formulas and lines." --Stanley Greenberg, author of The Two Americas
"A compassionate, insightful study of how young men and women struggle to reconcile their desires for partnered commitment and personal autonomy with the realities of today's work and family trends. Gerson shows us why most, despite ambivalence and stress, do not want to return to the family patterns of the past--and suggests how we can help them move forward." --Stephanie Coontz, author of Marriage, a History
"The third installment in a classic trilogy exploring the changing relations between work, family, and gender, The Unfinished Revolution vividly examines the interaction between social structure, biography, and history. Gerson's analysis is theoretically sophisticated and remarkably complex. Most significant, she finds that 'traditional' families do not necessarily provide children with a better environment than single-parent or dual-earner ones, and that the most important feature of successful families appears to be their ability to cope with change in a flexible manner."--Eviatar Zerubavel, Board of Governors Professor of Sociology, Rutgers University
"Following her earlier pathbreaking studies of gender, Kathleen Gerson now takes us into an illuminating exploration of the 'children of the gender revolution.' A virtuoso interviewer, Gerson discovers young women and men struggling to reconcile their ideals of flexible and egalitarian intimate relations with persistent structural and cultural constraints. With style and brio The Unfinished Revolution offers revealing and often surprising insights into the present and future of American families." --Viviana A. Zelizer, Lloyd Cotsen '50 Professor of Sociology, Princeton University
"This is not a battle that can be won with legal challenges or legislation. Yes, it would undoubtedly be greatly aided by the passage of major social policies such as universal child care. But at its core , this is a fight that plays out within homes and between partners. And as Gerson's research makes clear, the fight has not changed all that dramatically in the past 30 years." --The American Prospect
"A new powerful account of how children of the gender revolution are reshaping family, work and gender in America.... Gerson revolutionizes a stale debate looking at family changes in an unconventional way.... A very fascinating book."--Sociologica
"Kathleen Gerson's Unfinished Revolution marks a major conceptual advance by depicting families as pathways, rather than static structural forms."--Contemporary Sociology
"Carefully researched and lucidly written.... An important contribution to the intertwined research literatures on family, work, and gender. Written in an elegant and accessible style, with extensive use of interview quoations, the book is appropriate for both undergraduate and graduate courses."--Gender and Society