Disturbing the Nest assesses the future of the family as an institution through an historical and comparative analysis of the nature, causes, and social implications of family change in advanced western societies such as the United States, New Zealand, and Switzerland by focusing on the one society in which family decline is found to be the greates

Preface -- Introduction -- Part I. Family Change in History and Theory -- Chapter 1. What Is Family Decline? -- Chapter 2. Family Decline: The Career of an Idea -- Chapter 3. The Global Family Trend -- Chapter 4. The Rise and Fall in the West of the Modern -- Nuclear Family -- Part II. The Case of Sweden -- Chapter 5. Historical Development of the Family in Sweden -- Chapter 6. The Family as a Public Issue: The Development of -- Swedish Family Policy, 1930-1950 -- Chapter 7. Cultural Transformation: Family and Society in Sweden After the Mid-Twentieth Century -- Chapter 8. Beyond the Nuclear Family: The Changing Family in Sweden Today -- Chapter 9. The Swedish Family in Institutional Decline -- Chapter 10. Swedish Family Decline: A Search for Explanations -- Part III. The Family in Other Advanced Societies -- Chapter 11. Outposts of the Traditional Family: Switzerland and New Zealand -- Chapter 12. Family and Society in the United States -- Part IV. Conclusions -- Chapter 13. A Postnuclear Family Trend -- Chapter 14. The Social Implications of Modern Family Decline -- Bibliography -- Index.

David Popenoe is professor of sociology and co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University. He is the author or editor of ten books and numerous articles, and as co-chair of the Council on Families in America, he was the primary author of its pioneering 1995 report Marriage in America: A Report to the Nation.