Judith Stacey has added a new preface to her classic study of how the traditional nuclear family has been supplanted by a variety of new relationships that are not defined by blood ties and traditional gender roles.

Judith Stacey is Streisand Professor of Contemporary Gender Studies and Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California. She is the author of Patriarchy and the Socialist Revolution in China (California, 1983).

"Riveting . . . provides a final laying-to-rest of sociological shibboleths about the 'normal' nuclear family."—Nancy J. Chodorow