This award-winning text treats family diversity as the norm, while highlighting how race, class, gender, and sexuality produce varieties of familial relationships. Diversity in Families looks at families not as ";building blocks of societies"; but rather, as products of social forces within society. The authors undertake a critical examination of society, asking questions such as, ";How do families really work?"; and ";Who benefits under the existing arrangements, and who does not?"; Their goal is to demystify and demythologize the family by exposing existing myths, stereotypes, and dogmas. The seventh edition includes new research and extensive updates from government data and some of the best family studies resources such as the Handbook of Marriage and Family, 2/e, the Handbook of Family Diversity, and the Journal of Marriage and the Family. New Emergent Family Trends boxes investigate and analyze new family patterns and what they might mean for families in the future.