Understanding Families: A Global Introduction

This is a clearly written, well organized, and highly digestible overview of the sociology of the family. It covers major themes and issues, including important changes over time in behavior as well as the ideas used to understand patterns of behavior and structure. The authors manage to include a strong international perspective while highlighting many specific examples and trends in the UK and across Europe. What I appreciate so much about this book is that it is to the point and not overburdened by a tedious amount of detail or nuances of the type that can so easily mire and demoralize readers who are trying to capture the essential features in the study of the family. I highly recommend this book for serious students who want to efficiently capture the gist of this thing called family
Scott M. Stanley
Research Professor and Co Director of the Center for Marital and Family Studies, University of Denver, USA

I don′t know how often I′ve wished for an introductory text on family life which encompassed critical contemporary sociological thinking alongside the basic information students need, and have only found fossilised thinking on a stodgy subject. But now all that has changed. McKie and Callan have achieved what I thought was almost impossible in Understanding Families; this is a textbook which provides unrivalled foundations for a critical understanding of contemporary families and relationships
Carol Smart
Professor of Sociology, The Morgan Centre, University of Manchester