Author Description

"How Families Still Matter casts doubt on much conventional wisdom about family decline during the last decades of the twentieth century. The authors draw from one of the longest-running longitudinal studies of families in the world - the Longitudinal Study of Generations, conducted at the University of Southern California - to discover whether parents are really less critical in shaping the life orientations and achievements of youth than they were a generation ago. Using survey data collected from as early as 1971, they compare the influence of parents (on self-confidence, values, and levels of achievement) on the Baby Boomer generation with that of Baby Boomer parents on their own Generation X children. The findings will be surprising to many readers."--Jacket.