Emile Durkheim on the Family is intended to bring attention to this classical sociologist's work on the family. Durkheim's writings in this area are little known, but the family was nevertheless one of his primary interests, the subject of an intended book that was never written. Durkheim's ideas on the family appear only in scattered sources and a number of those sources have not been translated into English. Durkheim's Sociology of the family has not heretofore been presented and analyzed holistically.

1. Introduction
2. The Origins & Evolution of the Family
3. Studying the Family
4. The Family System: Kin, Conjugal Family, & the State
5. The Interior of the Family
6. Family Problems, Public Policy, & Social Justice
7. Women & Sex: Challenges to the Family Order
8. Conclusion

 Mary Ann Lamanna is Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where she has been on the faculty since 1977. Born in New Jersey, she grew up in St. Louis and received a bachelor's degree (Phi Beta Kappa) in political science from Washington University. She spent a post-baccalaureate year at the University of Strasbourg, France on a Fulbright Scholarship. Her M.A. in sociology is from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and her Ph.D. in sociology is from the University of Notre Dame. She is coauthor (with Agnes Riedmann) of Marriages and Families: Making Choices in A Diverse Society, now in its seventh edition. She has published articles on nineteenth century women, adolescent women's discourse on sexuality and reproduction, images of mothers in legal opinions, gender issues in the teaching of criminal law, the gift-exchange in organ and tissue donation, and the sociological framing of the abortion issue. She plans a future book on sociological themes in the writings of Marcel Proust.