Exploring Marriages and Families, 4th edition

Published by Pearson (May 2, 2024) © 2025
Karen Seccombe

Title overview

For courses in Marriage and Family.

An overview of the historical, cultural, social and political influences upon marriages and families

Exploring Marriages and Families helps students gain a thorough understanding of the social context in which we live and the relevance of social science to our lives. Capturing the compelling issues of our time, author Karen Seccombe places individual relationships in proper social context so that students can better understand why they make the choices they do.

The 4th Edition offers updated coverage of contemporary issues that are relevant to today’s readers. These include changing attitudes toward marriage and violence in same-sex relationships.

Hallmark features of this title

  • Tying It All Together features highlight societal influences on marriages, families and close relationships.
  • Policy and You: From Macro to Micro features focus on how social structure creates specific needs within families, and how social policy can address those needs.
  • My Family boxes help students see the effect of social structure on families and the diversity of family experience.
  • Diversity in Families features illustrate a variety of family experiences, revealing that families are not static, but ever-changing.
  • Why Do Research? features help students evaluate research findings and show how research can challenge common stereotypes.
  • Getting to Know Yourself self-tests enable students to identify their own opinions and to compare themselves to others.

New and updated features of this title

  • UPDATED: The 4th Edition includes coverage of recent events to emphasize the relevance of course material to students’ lives. Highlights include:
    • Discussions of the effects of COVID-19 on families where relevant throughout the text
    • Updated coverage of the ways in which video games and television shows teach gendered roles in Chapter 2
    • Expanded material on controlling behavior, including stalking, in Chapter 4
    • New information about the increase of young adults living with their parents in Chapter 14
  • UPDATED: The text has been updated with 2022 and 2023 statistics wherever possible.

Key features

Features of Pearson+ eTextbook for the 4th Edition

  • Chapter-opening vignettes and video clips engage students and immediately draw them into the chapter. Each chapter begins with a compelling personal narrative and accompanying video clip that chronicles an individual’s or a couple’s experience that is relevant to the chapter. Examples include a young couple discussing their decision to cohabit, how one family juggles work and family responsibilities, and a young woman’s painful remembrance of her parents’ divorce.
  • Chapter-ending Bringing It Full Circle sections offer students opportunities to review chapter material, reinforcing what they’ve learned. Each chapter’s concluding section revisits the opening narrative and video clip, and prompts students to think critically about it in the context of what they have learned in the chapter.

Table of contents

Part 1: Families and Intimate Relationships Key Concepts

  1. Why Study Families and Other Close Relationships?
  2. Social Status: Sex, Gender, Race, Ethnicity and Social Class

Part 2: The Foundations of Relationships

  1. Building Relationships
  2. Love and Loving Relationships
  3. Sexual Identity, Behavior and Relationships
  4. Communication, Conflict and Power in Our Relationships
  5. Marriage

Part 3: Parents and Their Children

  1. Thinking about Parenthood
  2. Raising Children
  3. Families and the Work They Do

Part 4: Family Strengths, Challenges and Reorganization

  1. Family Stress and Crisis: Violence among Intimates
  2. The Process of Divorce
  3. Family Life, Partnering and Remarriage after Divorce
  4. Families in Middle and Later Life
  5. Looking Ahead: Helping Families Flourish

Author bios

About our authors

Karen Seccombe (Meenan) is a proud community college graduate (Go Citrus!) and a first-generation college student. She has taught in both Sociology and Public Health programs, from the University of Alaska, to the University of Florida, and most recently, Portland State University in Oregon.

She received her B.A. in sociology at California State University, Chico; her M.S.W. in health and social welfare policy from the University of Washington; and her Ph.D. in sociology from Washington State University. Karen is the author of Social Problems, with W. Kornblum and J. Julian; “So You Think I Drive a Cadillac?”: Welfare Recipients’ Perspectives on the System and Its Reform; Families and Their Social Worlds; Just Don’t Get Sick: Access to Healthcare in the Aftermath of Welfare Reform, with K. A. Hoffman; and Families in Poverty. She is a fellow of the National Council on Family Relations, and a member of the American Sociological Association and the Pacific Sociological Association, where she has held elective offices.

Karen lives in the San Juan Islands, located off the northwest coast of Washington with her husband Richard, a health economist, and her cats Winnie and Zoey. In her spare time, she enjoys playing pickleball, hiking, biking, international travel and hanging out with her pack. Her daughter, Natalie just graduated from college with a degree in Geology and landed an actual job with real benefits! Olivia attends the University of Oregon and studies Art. Go Ducks!

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