Author Message to Instructors:

After teaching courses on contemporary families for many years, I felt that there was another way to structure a textbook that might be more compelling to students. Working with a foundational group of 13 students from a variety of disciplines who had taken the course, we organized the textbook around the needs of families and how social structures support or hinder getting those needs met. This group helped identify historical gaps and erasures of families that they had noticed in other textbooks and helped to fill in those gaps.

Using an intersectional lens and placing the diversity of families at its core, the text prepares students with a range of majors and career paths to use their sociological imaginations, identify privilege and oppression, practice inclusion and take part in increasing equity for families, whether at the professional level, the personal level or both.

Recognizing that this is a new organizational structure for many who would like to use this textbook, we have created an important resource that will help you to identify topics such as “gender,” “race,” “union formation,” “parenting,” and so on. Because this textbook strives for diversity and inclusion, we have not isolated populations, social characteristics, or family structures to one chapter. Rather, we have threaded examples and stories through the textbook. This crosswalk provides faculty and students with the ability to find important topics that occur across multiple chapters.

Using this textbook will provide opportunities for students to see themselves as agents of change. Contemporary Families: An Equity Lens began with an open pedagogy project, and current students continue to create final projects that are used in the textbook and in the accompanying Contemporary Families Open Pedagogy Portfolio. Open pedagogy assignments are included in the Instructor Course Bank.

If you are looking for ways to create assignments directly from the textbook, the “Going Deeper” section does just that. Designed as an optional part of each chapter, it includes reflective questions that could be used for in-class discussions, reflective papers, or other assignments. In addition, every chapter has at least one activity. Also in this chapter are additional videos, podcasts, and readings that you might like to use in class or as assignments.

This textbook emphasizes communication of data and concepts through images as well as text. There are many graphs and illustrations created with universal design principles, as well as a series of videos focused on social identities and the social construction of difference.

I hope you will find that this book is as meaningful to your students as it is to the students at Linn-Benton Community College. With this organizational structure, the opportunity to contribute, and the incorporated visual tools, students are highly engaged. And they are grappling with and mastering the very complex aspects of difference, privilege and oppression and its interactions with families in the U.S.

Integrated Openly Licensed Course Materials

This book includes openly licensed course materials that fully integrate with the open textbook. Anyone can retain, revise, remix, reuse, and redistribute them. Best of all, future instructors can build on existing learning pathways that are aligned with textbook and chapter learning outcomes.

You can access openly licensed course materials in two ways:

• Contemporary Families in the U.S. Instructor Course Packs: A collection of aligned and accessible course materials shared by pilot instructors teaching at multiple Oregon institutions. Instructors designed each course pack with an equity lens in consultation with an instructional designer. In most cases, each course pack was revised with feedback from Oregon students and an advisory board of workforce members. Each course pack includes a complete course map, an instructor guide, and ancillary materials including weekly assignment prompts, rubrics, and suggested activities.
• Contemporary Families in the U.S. OER Commons Group: An ongoing repository of instructor-created course materials that integrate with the open textbook. Materials may include syllabi, assessments and assignments, lesson plans, activities, and entire course shells. Please note: not all OERC resources are reviewed for digital accessibility.

You are welcome to contribute your own openly licensed course materials that align with this textbook to the OERCommons Group. Thank you for building a more inclusive future for students and future educators!

Last Update

The first edition of this text, with its nine original chapters, was published by Linn-Benton Community College on September 25, 2020. This second edition has a number of exciting additions including five additional chapters. In addition we have added chapter objectives, H5P activities, and a “Going Deeper” section for every chapter that includes reflective questions, activities, and additional learning resources for students and faculty.

Licenses and attributions for Instructor Resources

Contemporary Families: An Equity Lens by Elizabeth B. Pearce is licensed under CC BY 4.0, except when noted otherwise.

About Course Packs by Open Oregon Educational Resources is licensed under CC BY 4.0.