Polarized Families, Polarized Parties: Contesting Values and Economics in American Politics (American Governance: Politics, Policy, and Public Law)

Struggles to define the soul of America roil the nation's politics.Debates over the roles of gays, lesbians, women, immigrants, racial and religious minorities, and disputes over reproductive and abortion rights serve as rallying points for significant electoral groups and their representatives in government.Although the American family lies at the core of these fierce battles, the alignment of family with social or cultural issues is only a partial picture-a manifestation of the new right's late twentieth-century success in elevating "family values" over family economics. Gwendoline Alphonso makes a significant contribution to the prevailing understanding of party evolution, contemporary political polarization, and the role of the family in American political development by placing family at the center of political and cultural clashes.She demonstrates how regional ideas about family in the twentieth century have continually shaped not only Republican and Democratic policy and ideolog