Making and Breaking Families By Jill Curtis

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Review by Allison Martin

In Making and Breaking Families, author Jill Curtis provides an psychological overview of issues facing nontraditional families, especially those families affected by divorce or remarriage. A psychoanalytic psychotherapist in London, Jill Curtis describes England as the "divorce capitol of Europe," where two out of three marriages fail. Consequently, many families are now headed by single mothers. She postulates that we are losing touch as a society with the understanding that an important function of families is nurturing children.

Jill Curtis interviews a variety of nontraditional families in Making and Breaking Families - stepfamilies, grandparent headed families and gay and lesbian families. Some of the family groups she examines are more uncommon in the United States - double families (that is the father heads two families, with a mistress), and families where grandparents can not contact the grandchildren. Jill Curtis makes extensive use of quotes throughout the book, using the voices of the participants to illustrate the situations encountered by each type of non traditional family. Making and Breaking Families provides a description of the stresses on families today, with a discussion of the emotional toil on the participants and their attempts to alleviate the problems.

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