Thirty-three Families’ Stories and Portraits

Family Portraits in Changing Times profiles a cross-section of American families that reflect the significant changes taking place in the family structure. The stories and photos demonstrate how families grow, disintegrate, regroup, and transform over time. The families in this book represent a variety of interpersonal, interdependent relationships, including households in which parents or children may be multigenerational, divorced, single, step-family, physically disabled, gay or lesbian. Family Portraits in Changing Times includes families who were first photographed in the 1970s, and rephotographed more than a decade later.

Helen Nestor has worked as a photographer for more than thirty years. She began to photograph nontraditional families in 1978, a project that would span fourteen years and result in a book.

Judith Stacey, Ph.D., is a leading authority on the postmodern family. She is a professor of sociology and women’s studies at the University of California, Davis.