Katherine R.
Allen Virginia Tech
Feminist Theory in Family Studies: History,
Reflection, and Critique
In this invited commentary, I address the history
and impact of feminist theory in family studies,
casting a critical perspective on theorizing in
both feminist studies and family studies. I assess
indicators of the impact of feminist theory on
the study of families, consider the enduring ten-
sions in feminist family theory, and trace 4 gen-
erations of feminist theorizing and activism as
a prelude to the ways that feminist theory cri-
tiques the patriarchal family. Through texts that
reflect some of my own educational experiences,
I discuss a selection of articles and books that
have been influential in establishing the body of
knowledge associated with feminist family stud-
ies. I conclude with a reflection on the life and
work of Alexis J. Walker, to whom this article is
dedicated.
In this article, I consider the history of feminist
ideas in family studies, beginning with when
they entered the family lexicon in the after-
math of the 1960s–1970s women’s liberation
movement (Bernard, 1972, 1973; Osmond &
Thorne, 1993; Walker & Thompson, 1984). I
examine a selection of influential texts from
feminist scholars more broadly, as well as texts
from feminist scholars writing particularly
for family studies audiences. The selection
Department of Human Development, Virginia Tech,
Blacksburg, VA 24061 (kallen@vt.edu).
To Alexis Joan Walker (1952–2012), for her lifelong
example of instigating personal, intellectual, and
institutional change
Key Words: Feminist family studies, feminist theory, gen-
der and family relationships, intersectionality, patriarchy,
reflexivity.
Journal of Family Theory & Review 8 (June 2016): 207–224
DOI:10.1111/jftr.12133
of theoretical ideas I discuss reflects a pro-
cess that infuses feminist scholarship: The
knowledge (epistemology), the production
of knowledge (methodology), the transla-
tion of knowledge into actions that produce
social change (praxis), and the subjectivity of
the knower (reflexivity) are mutually influential
(e.g., Allen, 2000; Baber & Allen, 1992; Collins,
1990; Hawkesworth, 1989; Hesse-Biber, 2007;
Thompson, 1992).
The ideas I present in this article reflect my
own standpoint as a feminist student, scholar,
and activist whose feminist perspective on fam-
ilies has been shaped by White, radical, lesbian,
and intersectional feminisms over the past 40
years. My feminist understandings and praxis
have also been informed by my lived experience
in many types of families, by my colleagues
who have brought racial/ethnic feminisms to
family studies (e.g., De Reus, Few, & Blume,
2005; Few, 2009; Few-Demo, 2014), and by the
self-scrutiny of my own challenges in devel-
oping a critical consciousness. Still, I echo the
words of Jessie Bernard (1987) in locating my
feminist perspective in the tension between
anger and hope:
My own feminist bias is, I think, clear. It empha-
sizes the positive. A social movement like fem-
inism, it seems to me, needs hope as well as
anger, so without denying the motivating force of
anger, my view emphasizes the motor of hope.
(pp. xv–xvi)
Indicators of the Impact of Feminist
Theory on the Study of Families
Feminist theory has had a profound impact on
the study of families. Feminist scholars have
207
208
problematized assumptions of equality, fairness,
and well-being in marriage and family relation-
ships, particularly as they disadvantage women
(e.g., Blaisure & Allen, 1995; Ferree, 1990;
Hochschild, 1983; Lloyd, Few, & Allen, 2009;
Okin, 1989; Thompson, 1991). By challeng-
ing the assumptions that reflect the status quo,
feminists have exposed the invisible burden of
women’s reproductive labor in caring for chil-
dren, kin, and households across diverse racial,
ethnic, and social classes (e.g., Collins, 1990; di
Leonardo, 1987; Dill, 1988; Uttal, 1999). Fem-
inists have found that even when women earn
more than male partners, they still are likely to
have lesser status (e.g., Atkinson, Greenstein,
& Lang, 2005). Feminists have problematized
men’s roles in families, leading to new insights
into how men engage in the private matters of
the home, particularly in the care of children, and
into deconstructing the ideology of male bread-
winning (e.g., Berkowitz & Marsiglio, 2007;
LaRossa, 1988; Risman, 1998).
Feminist theory has pushed forward the
need to study families from multiple vantage
points, incorporating intersectional and interna-
tional perspectives on how race, class, sexual
orientation, nation, and other structures of
social hierarchy differentially stratify and chal-
lenge gendered experiences in families (e.g.,
Bermudez, Abrams-Muruthi, & Jordan, 2016;
Bustelo, 2016; Collins, 2000; Few-Demo, 2014;
Hill, 2002; Mahler, Chaudhuri, & Patil, 2015;
Perry-Jenkins & Salamon, 2002). By making
gender visible and problematic across intimate
social contexts, feminists have changed the way
family scholars look at power, privilege, and
oppression in the micropolitics of diverse family
relationships and in the macropolitics of social
institutions (e.g., Baca Zinn, 2000; Ferree, 2010;
Knudson-Martin & Mahoney, 2009; Komter,
1989). They have provided words that acknowl-
edge feelings of restriction, ambivalence, and
despair, and they have inspired aspirations
to transform private troubles to the level of
social change. As Voydanoff (1988) observed,
Bernard described women as responsible for the
“stroking function” in the worlds of work and
family, “showing solidarity, raising the status
of others, giving help, rewarding, agreeing,
concurring, complying, understanding, and
passively accepting” (p. 272). Feminist schol-
arship has brought legitimacy to uncovering
the silence surrounding women’s experiences
as second-class citizens. In doing so, they
Journal of Family Theory & Review
have provided alternative ways of seeing the
contradictions, challenges, and strengths of
families.
One indicator of the impact of feminist theory
on family studies is the acknowledgment that
gender is not simply a variable to be ignored
or controlled. Gender is a critical social relation
about which theoretical decisions must be made
in accounting for the meaning of gender and its
intersections with race, class, sexual orientation,
and the like in research design and interpretation
(Ferree, 1990; Few-Demo, 2014; Sprague, 2005;
Thompson & Walker, 1995).
A second indicator is the reflexive project
undertaken by feminist family scholars to chart
and assess the impact of feminism on the study
of families (e.g., Allen, Lloyd, & Few, 2009;
Few, 2009; Osmond & Thorne, 1983; Sharp
& Weaver, 2015; Thompson & Walker, 1995;
Walker & Thompson, 1984; Wills & Risman,
2006). These reflexive, stocktaking efforts
reveal the commitment of feminist scholars to
documenting the results of feminist thinking
on family studies, even though the infusion
of feminist theory into studies of families is
perceived as slower and more marginal by some
scholars more than by others (Ferree, 2010;
Walker, 2009).
A third indicator is the critique by women
of color (e.g., Alexander & Mohanty, 1997;
Mohanty, 1988; Sandoval, 1991) of hegemonic
White feminism as not reflective of the expe-
rience of women beyond White, middle-class,
heterosexual experience in the United States. In
moving beyond a “one size fits all” perspec-
tive on women’s experience that was sparked by
challenges to a White, liberal, feminist perspec-
tive, feminist family science has made incur-
sions into a wide range of topics that have been
ignored in mainstream research on families.
Key areas of feminist influence in families
include physical, emotional, and sexual violence
(e.g., K. Anderson, 2010; Johnson & Leone,
2005; Lloyd & Emery, 2000; Yllö & Bograd,
1988); unequal power in families as a result
of age, generation, gender, and social class
(e.g., Perry-Jenkins & Salamon, 2002; Pyke
& Adams, 2010; Thompson & Walker, 1989;
Uttal, 2010); and global differentials in literacy,
employment, health care, voting rights, and
medical research (e.g., Bernard, 1987; Song,
2006). Feminists have extended local concerns
to transnational family contexts, where differ-
entials in the history of Western colonialization,
Feminist Theory in Family Studies
nationalism, religion, geography, and migration
have created not one static description and expla-
nation but many descriptions and explanations
of how patriarchy has been manifested and how
women have resisted it (e.g., Bhavnani, 2007;
Blume & De Reus, 2008; Fulu & Miedema,
2015; Patil, 2013). For example, feminist schol-
ars have uncovered the complexity of relations
for women from developing countries who
come to wealthier countries such as the United
States, Canada, and Israel to provide caregiving
and housekeeping to employers’ families, in
order to support their own families back home
(Mahalingam, Balan, & Molina, 2009). Thus,
feminist scholars and activists have shown that
one of the foundational themes of a feminist
perspective—that the patriarchal organization
of families and societies has oppressive origins
and consequences—continues to be relevant,
though variant, around the globe.
A fourth indicator is the renewed embracing
of feminist theory and activism in the 21st
century. A new generation of feminist schol-
ars are unapologetically engaging their own
experience in claiming a feminist perspec-
tive in theory, research, and activism (e.g.,
Allen & Henderson, 2017; Bermudez et al.,
2016; Christiensen, 2015; Hesford & Diedrich,
2014; Magalhaes & Cerqueira, 2015; Sharp &
Weaver, 2015). Although current generations
of feminist scholars have inherited a wealth of
radical and intersectional knowledge from ear-
lier generations, the technological, economic,
social-historical, political, and international
contexts in which they scrutinize patriarchy
are very different (Patil, 2013). The public and
private issues they confront require correspond-
ingly new lenses and methodological strategies.
Yet a hallmark of feminist theory, research,
and practice is the impetus to challenge and
change itself. Feminism is a critical way of
knowing, and no more critical than of itself
(Baber, 2009; Eichhorn, 2015; Few-Demo,
2014; Hawkesworth, 2007; Wise & Stanley,
2006). New ideas are necessary and welcome,
and they will, of course, be subject to new
forms of scrutiny. As M. Anderson (2005) cau-
tions, feminist scholars must be vigilant in not
allowing our scholarship to become entrenched
within “dominant institutions [so] that it loses
the critical edge that it must have to continue
locating feminist scholarship in complex inter-
relationships among gender, sexuality, race, and
209
class that are reflected in the daily and diverse
realities of women’s lives” (pp. 452–453).
Jessie Bernard, recognized as one of the
founders of feminist family studies, provided an
early example of describing the impact of new
ways of thinking on family scholarship. Bernard
retired from her university position in 1964 at
the age of 61 and continued her prolific “pub-
lic scholarship” until her death at the age of
93; thus, she directed her attention to having
an impact beyond the academy as a “sociolo-
gist at large” (Bannister, n.d.). Lipman-Blumen
(1988) states that as a public sociologist, Bernard
went her own way, defying familial, social,
and professional conventions, and criticizing the
“narrowing of the academic mind” (p. 272) in
the pursuit of value-free science. In the after-
ward of her immensely influential book, The
Future of Marriage, Bernard (1972; reviewed by
Jaramillo-Sierra in this issue) credited the ris-
ing generation of young feminist scholars for
her own conversion experience from a purely
objectivist academic to a radicalized feminist
perspective:
Any book is, in effect, an autobiographical record
of its author while it was being written. This one
is such an autobiography during the months I have
spent thinking, rethinking, writing, and rewriting
it. Early in 1968 I became exposed to the Women’s
Liberation Movement in the underground press.
My first reaction was purely academic; I saw it pri-
marily as something interesting to study, as some-
thing I had a professional obligation to observe.
When, after considerable effort on my part, I
received an invitation to a consciousness-raising
session, one of the young women there said that
I “threatened” her. Sitting quietly on the floor in
their midst, showing, so far as I knew, no disap-
proval at all, my academic objectivity, my lack
of involvement, my impersonality, was giving off
bad vibrations. This incident gave me something to
think about, including my stance vis-à-vis research
and also my discipline … that, despite our insis-
tence on objectivity and our awareness of cul-
tural relativity, we wrote and researched within a
straightjacket . . . . Radical young sociologists are
now forcing us to recognize that a value judgment
is implicit in the choice of any research topic, and
young women sociologists are applying this tenet
to research on marriage. (pp. 327–328)
Generations of Feminist Theorizing
and Activism
Feminism is often characterized in waves,
roughly akin to generations, both in feminist
210
studies in general (Eichhorn, 2015) and in family
studies in particular (Allen & Henderson, 2017;
De Reus et al., 2005). The concept of waves is
a metaphor for capturing the major transitions
in feminist thought from the mid-19th century
to the early 21st century. The wave metaphor
evokes the fluidity and change inherent in fem-
inism and suggests that the markers ushering
a new era of feminist thought and praxis are
not rigid. A brief overview will set the stage
for emergence of these iterations of feminist
movement toward social change. This overview,
though broader than feminist family studies
in particular, is relevant because each era has
produced new critiques and new infusions of
theorizing for feminist family studies.
First-Wave Feminism
The first wave of feminism was initiated with
White, middle-class women’s push for equal
rights with men, crystalizing around securing
women’s property rights and the right to vote.
First-wave feminism has been identified as
beginning with the watershed event of the first
US women’s rights convention held at Seneca
Falls, New York, in July 1848, yet it is also
important to note that there had been feminist
agitation for centuries before (Gordon, Buhle,
& Schrom, 1973; Kramarae & Treichler, 1992),
depending upon very divergent social, politi-
cal, and historical contexts (e.g., Alexander &
Mohanty, 1997).
Another major influence on the first wave
began in the abolitionist movement to free
enslaved persons in the United States. As
shown in later iterations of feminist activism,
the rights of Blacks and other racial/ethnic
minority groups and the rights of women in
general have been intertwined throughout US
history, but with much greater freedom and
advantage afforded to White women, given
their legal connection to the most powerful
individuals in society: White men of economic
means.
Tensions pitting race against gender were
evident in the first wave (McDaneld, 2015),
when the rights of African American women,
from slavery to reconstruction to Jim Crow
laws, were often considered impediments to
White women’s civil rights. The cause of
African American women was given a backseat,
at best, or renounced altogether (Few-Demo,
2014). Sojourner Truth’s speech, “And Ain’t I
Journal of Family Theory & Review
a Woman?” at the 1851 Women’s Rights Con-
vention in Akron, Ohio, became emblematic
of this struggle and was one of the inspirations
of the womanist feminism created by Black
women throughout the 20th century (Collins,
1990; Walker, 1976). Ultimately, after 70 years
of activism, with many successes and setbacks
along the way, the 19th amendment to the US
Constitution was passed in 1920, providing
women with the right to vote (D’Emilio &
Freedman, 1997; O’Neill, 1969).
Second-Wave Feminism
Following the 1920 watershed mark, the next 40
years were comparatively quiet about women’s
rights, owing to major events in the Western
world (e.g., the prosperity of the 1920s, the Great
Depression of the 1930s, World War II in the
1940s, and the postwar buildup of the military
industrial complex in the late 1940s–1950s). Yet
there were very influential texts that set the stage
for the emerging second wave of feminism. For
example, French philosopher Simone de Beau-
voir (1949/2011), in The Second Sex, provided
the now-classic analysis of women’s position as
“other” in the male-dominated world.
When civil rights for Black Americans
came on the national agenda in full force in
the mid-1950s and 1960s, more movements
for social change emerged, including protests
against US involvement in the Vietnam War,
the women’s liberation movement, the war on
poverty, and the gay liberation movement. The
second wave of feminism crystalized in the late
1960s and early 1970s in this context of major
social upheaval, again coming on the heels of the
Black civil rights movement. Bernice Johnson
Reagon (n.d., 1983), a Black feminist scholar,
activist, and songtalker with the group Sweet
Honey and the Rock, described the debt to the
civil rights movement in her call for moving into
the uncomfortable space of coalition building
among diverse minority groups:
I’m going to start with the Civil Rights movement
because of course I think that that was the first one
in the era we’re in. Black folks started it, Black
folks did it, so everything you’ve done politically
rests on the efforts of my people . . . . So once we
did what we did, then you’ve got women, you’ve
got Chicanos, you’ve got the Native Americans,
and you’ve got the homosexuals, and you got all of
these people who also got sick of somebody being
on their neck. And maybe if they come together,
Feminist Theory in Family Studies
they can do something about it . . . . You are in the
Civil Rights movement that we created that just
rolled up to your door. Some of you would not have
caught yourself dead near no Black folks walk-
ing around talking about freeing themselves from
racism and lynching. So by the time our movement
got to you it had to sound like something you knew
about. (p. 362)
But before coalition building was possible,
women activists initially organized around their
shared oppression, forming consciousness-
raising groups in which they expressed their
bitterness about women’s status as “other”
(Brownmiller, 1999; Smith, 1987; Snitow,
2015). Robin Morgan (1970; see book review
by McGuire in this issue), often referred to as
the voice of second-wave feminism, observed
that in the antiwar and student groups of the
1960s, women were making the coffee. Black
Panther Stokely Carmichael was quoted as
saying that “the only position for women in the
SNCC [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Com-
mittee] is prone” (D’Emilio & Freedman, 1997,
p. 311). In Life Magazine’s 1971 coverage of
the emerging gay liberation movement of “ho-
mosexuals,” lesbians were not even mentioned.
This near exclusive focus on male homosexuals
is evidence of the sexism pervading the early
gay liberation movement and the erasure of
lesbian women (Rupp, 1989). Indeed, there was
a significant lesbian movement characterized by
butch–femme subculture of the 1940s–1960s,
and yet the importance of this movement was
not recognized until feminist scholars docu-
mented it years later (Davis & Kennedy, 1986;
Faderman, 1991; see book review in this issue
by Lavender-Stott).
The radicalization of consciousness about
patriarchal gender oppression in families and
society was a watershed experience to be reck-
oned with. Feeling one’s own oppression can
be radicalizing. In her searing poem “Monster,”
which became a manifesto for the second-wave
women’s liberation movement, Morgan (1972)
confronted patriarchy, which she described as
the “power plays of maleness” and identified
its embodiment as “White. Male. American”
(p. 81). In the poem, she revealed the emergence
of a feminist consciousness in a male-dominated
world and captured the collective “aha” moment
of many women recognizing and naming their
oppression under patriarchy. As seen in the
excerpts here, the poem begins by naming
patriarchal control of women; likens the hope
211
for women’s liberation to a passionate desire;
explains how sexism and domination, not indi-
vidual men, are the culprits of oppression; and
concludes by reclaiming the image of monster
as necessary for creating radical social change:
Listen. I’m really slowing dying inside myself
tonight. And I’m not about to run down the list
of rapes and burnings and beatings and smiles and
sulks and rages and all the other crap you’ve laid
on women throughout your history. (p. 81)
I want a women’s revolution like a lover. I lust
for it. I want so much this freedom, this end to
struggle and fear and lies we all exhale, that I could
die just with the passionate uttering of that desire.
(p. 82)
I hate not men but what it is men do in this
culture, or how the system of sexism, power dom-
inance, and competition is the enemy. (p. 83)
May I learn how to survive until my part is
finished. May I realize that I am a monster. I am
a monster, I am a monster, And I am proud. (p. 86)
Betty Friedan was another major influence
in second-wave feminism. Unlike Morgan
(1972), who wrote about radical feminism,
Adrienne Rich, who wrote about motherhood
and lesbian experience (Rich, 1976, 1980), and
Alice Walker (1976), who wrote about Black
women’s experiences with oppression and sur-
vival, Friedan (1963) wrote, in The Feminine
Mystique, about “the problem that has no name.”
Friedan identified as a liberal feminist and spoke
primarily to the emptiness and despair of White,
middle-class women’s existence, relegated to the
roles of homemaker, wife, and mother. Friedan
critiqued the assumption that women’s discon-
tent was attributable to the inherent failings of
individual women, and she explained how the
effects of political injustice filtered down into
women’s experience writ large (Coontz, 2011).
Liberal feminism was often at odds with radical,
standpoint, and womanist feminism, criticized
for only trying to secure White, middle-class,
heterosexual women their fair share of the patri-
archal pie. Thus, tensions and contradictions
were evident in second-wave feminism from
the very beginning, just as they had been in
first-wave feminism.
Third-Wave Feminism
Although liberal, radical, and other feminisms
offered different solutions to the gender oppres-
sion observed by their advocates (e.g., liberal
212
feminism sought equality with men, whereas
radical feminism sought a revolutionary break
from patriarchy), they shared a generalized
focus on “women” as a universal category.
Women who were members of other minority
groups, including those who were not White,
not heterosexual, not middle class, not young,
not able-bodied, and not from the Global North,
challenged the universal category of “woman”
and argued for an acknowledgment of their
standpoints. The feminist movement, identi-
fied as primarily White, was highly criticized.
Women of color brought new feminist con-
ceptualizations that critiqued the colonialism
inherent in White feminism and instead empha-
sized intersectionality of multiple individual,
social, and political standpoints (e.g., Alexander
& Mohanty, 1997; Sandoval, 1991). If one of
the hallmarks of the origin of second-wave
feminism was a radical perspective, one of the
hallmarks of the third wave was intersectionality
(Collins, 1990) and the articulation of multicul-
tural and critical race feminisms (De Reus et al.,
2005; Few, 2007).
The seeds of third-wave feminism were
planted in the first and second waves, but new
forms of thinking about gender oppression and
women’s empowerment emerged from those
whose perspectives were still marginalized
(Freedman, 2002). Now, women who were
invisible in the category of the “universal
woman,” as well as “daughters” of feminists
from the second wave, placed renewed emphasis
on sexual diversities; the intersection of race,
class, and gender; and living in an era in which
some sexual, economic, and legal rights for
women and other minorities were increasing
(e.g., D’Emilio & Freedman, 1997). One of the
defining features of intersectionality is that the
individual identities of race, class, gender, and
sexual orientation, among others, have different
bases of social stratification and experience,
but the ways these various identities overlap,
intersect, and create tensions or conflict are also
inseparable (M. Anderson, 2005).
Audre Lorde’s (1984) essays were instrumen-
tal in defining the third wave. By utilizing her
own intersecting social locations, her work was
grounded in the second-wave feminist concept
“the personal is political,” but it went beyond this
idea to illustrate how all of her social identities
were integrated, not simply additive. In her essay
“Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining
Journal of Family Theory & Review
Difference,” Lorde (1984) wrote from her per-
spective “as a forty-nine-year-old Black, lesbian,
socialist, mother of two, including one boy, and a
member of an interracial relationship” (p. 114).
Lorde’s essays and speeches, written from
1976 to 1984 and collected in Sister Outsider
(reviewed in this issue by Garnier), provided one
of the original and most profound statements
on intersectionality. Her essays on the value
of anger in combatting racism, in transforming
silence into language and action, on learning
from the 1960s, and the power of the erotic have
inspired countless scholars and activists. Her
oft-quoted essay from a 1979 Women’s Studies
Conference in New York, “The Master’s Tools
Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” cri-
tiqued “the academic arrogance to assume any
discussion of feminist theory without examining
our many differences, and without a significant
input from poor women, Black and Third World
women, and lesbians” (p. 110). She challenged
the “theory behind racist feminism” in her
critique of the conference, in which she was the
only lesbian or Black woman invited speaker:
Poor women and women of Color know there is
a difference between the daily manifestations of
marital slavery and prostitution because it is our
daughters who line 42nd Street. If white american
[sic] feminist theory need not deal with the differ-
ences between us, and the resulting difference in
our oppressions, then how do you deal with the
fact that the women who clean your houses and
tend your children while you attend conferences on
feminist theory are, for the most part, poor women
and women of Color? (p. 112)
Lorde (1984) further challenged White fem-
inist scholars to educate themselves about the
complex oppressions of other women, calling
them out on their continued engagement to help
men understand women’s plight and needs. She
said, “This is an old and primary tool of all
oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with
the master’s concerns” (p. 113):
As women, we have been taught either to ignore
our differences, or to view them as causes for
separation and suspicion rather than as forces for
change. Without community there is no liberation,
only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice
between an individual and her oppression . . . .
Those of us who stand outside the circle of this
society’s definition of acceptable women; those
of us who have been forged in the crucibles of
difference—those of us who are poor, who are
Feminist Theory in Family Studies
lesbians, who are Black, who are older—know that
survival is not an academic skill . . . . It is learn-
ing how to take our differences and make them
strengths. For the master’s tools will never disman-
tle the master’s house … . In our world, divide
and conquer must become define and empower.
(p. 112)
Legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw (1991) was
among the first to theorize multiply marginal-
ized identities (e.g., race, class, and gender)
as intersectionality (Few-Demo, 2014). Cren-
shaw conceptualized three types of intersec-
tionality. Structural intersectionality addresses
how hierarchical social structures promote priv-
ilege for elite members of society and restrict
or oppress the rights of others. Political inter-
sectionality addresses the clash among different
political agendas confronted by members of at
least two oppressed groups (e.g., Black women;
third-world women) and the ways these iden-
tities can put women of color at risk. Repre-
sentational intersectionality reveals how cultural
images manifested in the media, language, and
the like “create unique and specific narratives
that shape and inform policies, laws, and insti-
tutions” (Few-Demo, 2014, p. 171).
Fourth-Wave Feminism
The current era is characterized as a fourth
wave of feminism, one in which feminist the-
ory and praxis again are being reinvented. From
the beginning, feminist scholars have accepted
the variability and contentious nature of feminist
theorizing and praxis, because feminist thinking
and feminist activism for social change is a liv-
ing, evolving process (Christian, 1985; Smith,
1987). Thus, despite the contentious nature of
feminist theorizing and the problems that con-
front the world inherited by young feminists, the
renewed interest in feminism makes the current
moment a very exciting time for scholars and
activists.
New problems have emerged, such as the
nature of academic feminism being fractured
by a plethora of disciplinary, political, and
methodological positions (Gray-Rosendale &
Harootunian, 2003; Wise & Stanley, 2006). But
old problems have not been eradicated and are
of particular concern to younger feminists. One
major issue is the persistence of sexual assault,
as the growing movement to address sexual
assault on college campuses attests (Sharp,
Weaver, & Zvonkovic, 2015). Further, there
213
is increasing concern about global problems
affecting women, such as the poverty of women
and children, threats to reproductive freedom,
and the entrenchment of patriarchy in diverse
geographic locations (Song, 2006).
Theoretical Tensions in Feminist Family
Studies
One of the enduring tensions feminist fam-
ily scholars face is defining and implementing
feminist theory in our work. Feminist historian
Estelle Freedman (2002) stated that an important
part of this problem is that “the term feminism
has never been widely popular” (p. 5). Freed-
man also explained that regardless of the con-
tentious nature of the word, “the political goals
of feminism have survived—despite continuing
discomfort with the term, a hostile political cli-
mate, and heated internal criticism” (p. 6).
The fact that there are many versions of
feminist theory reflects the epistemological,
methodological, ontological, ideological, and
disciplinary commitments of theorists and the
social-historical context in which they work
(Harding, 2004; Hawkesworth, 1989; Osmond
& Thorne, 1993; Thompson, 1992). Feminist
epistemology refers to new ways that feminist
scholars bring to understanding individuals,
families, and their worlds. One of the main
contributions by feminist family studies is that
“families are both a site of oppression and
conflict and a source of strength, solidarity, and
the collective ability to survive” (Osmond &
Thorne, 1983, p. 617). This assumption is in
stark contrast to the mainstream family theo-
ries with functionalist origins and assumptions
of universality and intrafamilial homogeneity
(Allen & Henderson, 2017; Bernard, 1973;
Thorne, 1982a; Walker & Thompson, 1984).
Feminist methodology refers to new ways
of researching the world from both qualitative
and quantitative perspectives. Early on, femi-
nist scholars in the social sciences advocated for
the increasing use of emancipatory qualitative
research as a way of challenging the prevail-
ing assumption that research is, and must be, an
objective search for the truth (Acker, Barry, &
Esseveld, 1983; Hawkesworth, 1989; Walker &
Thompson, 1984). At the same time, feminist
family scholars saw value in using a feminist per-
spective to quantify prevalence of new areas of
research, such as violence against women (Yllö
& Bograd, 1988; see book review by Crossman
in this issue). Over the years, as postmodern
214
and intersectional ways of thinking have taken
hold, it is clear that a feminist perspective can be
infused into quantitative research without rein-
forcing the status quo (Allen & Jaramillo-Sierra,
2015; McCall, 2005). Thus, just as there are mul-
tiple ways of viewing the world from a feminist
lens, there are multiple ways of researching the
world (Hesse-Biber, 2007).
Feminist ontology refers to ways of being
in the world. Being transparent about the
lived reality of the researcher is integral to a
feminist perspective in family studies (e.g.,
Allen, 2000; Few, Stephens, & Rouse-Arnett,
2003; Sharp & Weaver, 2015; Sollie & Leslie,
1994). Feminist scholars call upon themselves
to acknowledge and scrutinize how their own
experiences, biases, and commitments infiltrate
and change the traditional research process (e.g.,
Allen, 2000; Hesse-Biber, 2007, Krieger, 1991;
Stanley & Wise, 1993).
Bringing a feminist perspective into family
studies also requires an examination of how
feminist ideologies and practices confront dis-
ciplinary ideologies and practices. In studies of
families, a main goal has been to bring feminism
and family studies into conversation with one
another (Allen et al., 2009). In the first instance,
one of the major concerns for scholars who
study families is to understand ways individuals
and families suffer and survive so that they
can generate preventions and interventions, and
promote resilience. In the second instance, one
of the major concerns for feminist scholars is
to expose the ways that families, as a political
institution and an intimate arena, serve as agents
of the patriarchal state to regulate sexuality,
parenting, and partnership. Feminism takes as
a starting point a perspective of contradiction,
conflict, and constraint, which is a view at odds
with mainstream family studies. After all, fem-
inist family scholars seek to ask new questions
and to break through prevailing theories and
methods, in order to ensure that “knowledge has
a human face and a feeling heart” (Stanley &
Wise, 1993, p. 232).
With these caveats about the diversity of
conceptualizing feminism in mind, Acker et al.
(1983), echoing Bernard (1973), provided a def-
inition of feminism that has been widely influ-
ential in feminist family studies since Walker
and Thompson (1984) first used it in their early
feminist critique of family studies. Acker et al.
(1983) stated:
Journal of Family Theory & Review
The term feminist refers to diverse groups of peo-
ple who take varying positions on particular issues
and who identify with a range of political posi-
tions. In our usage here, feminist refers to a point of
view that (1) sees women as exploited, devalued,
and often oppressed, (2) is committed to changing
the condition of women, and (3) adopts a critical
perspective toward dominant intellectual traditions
that have ignored and/or justified women’s oppres-
sion. (p. 423)
Over time, the initial focus on women’s
oppression has given way to examining the
standpoints of multiple women and incorporat-
ing a feminist perspective on intersectionality
(De Reus et al., 2005; Patil, 2013). Yet as indi-
cated in the discussion of waves of feminist
thought, some of the earlier ideas about patri-
archy and the gendered category of “woman”
are again being reconsidered in the current era
of feminist theorizing (Risman, 2009).
Feminism Confronts the Patriarchal
Family
I now turn specifically to the infusion of feminist
theory into family studies. The critique of the
modern nuclear family is an explicit critique of
patriarchy, or male dominance (Coontz, 1992;
Smith, 1993). This view shines the light of
power differentials onto our understanding of
the intimate ties of the family and the struc-
tural relations of society. The feminist concept of
patriarchy is rooted in a radical feminist perspec-
tive, where women’s oppression stems from the
control of women’s bodies, through childbirth,
child care, marriage, and sexual relationships.
Of necessity, the critique of patriarchy is
stark and blunt, and it focuses on the pervasive
quality of men’s power, enacted through the threat
of violence and through control of sexuality and
reproduction. Radical feminists have helped call
attention to rape, wife battering, the sexual objec-
tification of women, enforced sterilization, and
men’s control of women’s access to birth control
and abortion. (Thorne, 1982a, pp. 13–14)
Feminist family studies is concerned with
how patriarchy as an institution manifests in the
productive and reproductive labor of families:
marriage, parenthood, housekeeping, kinship,
and breadwinning. Although some feminist
scholars have suggested that the concept of
patriarchy is outdated, especially if used as
an absolute, it is important to understand the
Feminist Theory in Family Studies
paradigmatic impact of the early critique of
patriarchy on the study of families. Further,
although feminism made another paradigmatic
shift with the recognition of the intersectionality
of social and political locations, there is a danger
in leaving gender behind as a primary system
of social stratification and having it be eclipsed
under the intersectional umbrella (Smith, 2009).
In the ensuing analysis, I give credit to early fem-
inist critiques of family as a patriarchal institu-
tion while also acknowledging that feminism has
moved forward to an intersectional perspective.
Imagine the time in family studies when
feminism was rarely, if ever, in print, and when
it was highly uncommon to question power
and the gendered division of labor in rela-
tionships and families (Thompson & Walker,
1989). Imagine a time when housework (Lopata,
1971; Oakley, 1974/1985; see book review by
Smit in this issue; Treas & Tai, 2013), emo-
tion work (Erickson, 2005), marital rape (Yllö
& Bograd, 1988), lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgender families (Biblarz & Savci, 2010;
Goldberg, 2010; Oswald, Blume, & Marks,
2005), bicultural socialization of children by
African American parents (McAdoo, 1988;
Peters & Massey, 1983), and interracial families
(Burton, Bonilla-Silva, Ray, Buckelew, & Free-
man, 2010) were not the well-established and
legitimate areas of study that they are today.
In the next section, I address some of the
key concepts of feminism that inspired feminist
theory and research in the early days of bring-
ing feminism to family studies. My review of
the following texts is by no means exhaustive.
Instead, I chose texts that were influential in my
own development as a feminist family scholar,
beginning in the early 1970s, when I took my
first women’s studies classes, for which there
were few academic books—only mimeographed
articles from newspapers, magazines, and the
obscure journal publication. I use each of these
texts as exemplars for the emergence of a femi-
nist critique of family studies—of the patriarchal
family, marriage, parenthood—and of sugges-
tions for change.
Inklings of a Feminist Perspective
One of the first inklings I had of a feminist per-
spective came before I knew the words with
which to name it or had the theory for how to
analyze it. In college, I was assigned to read a
provocative analysis of marriage, The Significant
215
Americans, by Cuber and Harroff (1965). In their
introduction, Cuber and Harroff explained their
intention to study members of the “leadership
echelon,” those who were self-directed, success-
ful, educated, and sophisticated (p. 4), in order to
understand the impact of public success on inti-
mate life.
From their total sample of 437 men and
women, between the ages of 35 and 55, they
selected interviews with 211 men and women
who had been married for more than 10 years to
the same spouse, had never considered divorce,
and reported being happy with their marriages.
Among this group of happily married indi-
viduals, the authors discovered five kinds of
long-term relationships.
The first three were labeled “utilitarian”:
The marriage was highly useful to mates for
reasons other than emotional intimacy. In the
conflict-habituated marriage, the couple was
discrete and polite, “but after a few drinks at
the cocktail party, the verbal barbs begin to fly”
(p. 44). In these marriages, the incompatibility
was pervasive, the conflict ever present, and
the atmosphere always tense. In the devitalized
marriage, couples were deeply in love in the
early years, but most of their time together in
the present was “duty time” (e.g., entertaining,
being with their children, community work)
(p. 47). Emotionally, their marriage had become
a void. This relationship was found to be very
common. In the passive-congenial marriage,
individuals wanted a calm relationship and
home life, and so chose a comfortable partner
by design. Their passivity about the marriage
had been there from the beginning.
The last two kinds of marriage, the least com-
mon of the five types, were labeled “intrinsic.”
The marital relationship was the top priority in
the partners’ lives. In the vital marriage, cou-
ples were genuinely close and did many of the
same things together. Their mate was an indis-
pensable part of their life satisfaction. When
conflict arose, they tried to settle disagreements
quickly. Finally, in the total marriage, couples
vitally shared nearly all of the important aspects
of their lives. Neither spouse had a truly private
existence.
As a young college student, reading an
assigned text explaining that not all marriages
were based on vitality or love was the beginning
of deconstructing patriarchy and “the romantic,
reactionary, reassertion of family as an ideal
model of authority and community” (Gordon &
216
Hunter, 1977/1978, p. 11). Cuber and Harroff’s
(1965) book was not explicitly feminist, but
reading it was a prelude to embracing a feminist
perspective that deconstructed the prevailing
wisdom of marital stability and satisfaction,
and exploded the fairy-tale myth of marriage
as living happily ever after. Years later, when
reading the collection of essays in Thorne’s
(1982b) Rethinking the Family: Some Feminist
Questions, I reflected back on Cuber and Har-
roff’s findings and found that by then I had a
feminist theory and the language to understand
both the various purposes that marriage could
serve and the pressure placed on individuals to
conform to the status quo.
Feminist Critiques of Marriage
I also read Bernard’s The Future of Marriage
(1972) during my undergraduate education. In
this classic text, Bernard examined historical
and statistical trends that predicted the objective
and subjective realities and future possibilities of
marriage, describing, “the way it really is, was,
and will be” (n.p., back cover). She addressed
the current lifestyle choices of young, White,
well-off Americans, to understand the history
and consequences of their choices to undermine
traditional marriage. She revealed the power pol-
itics of marriage, that there is a “his” marriage
and a “hers” marriage, and his “is better than
hers” (Bernard, 1972, p. 15).
Bernard (1972) also examined marriage
in a broader context of social class. She
asked whether the “unsanctioned liaisons,
female-headed families, and out of wedlock
births, regardless of race, that have character-
ized the slums” (p. ix) were making their way
into the middle and upper classes. Bernard
answered her question by saying that there
is only superficial similarity in these patterns
across classes. The reality is that the patterns in
the lower classes are more by necessity than by
choice. Bernard, like current feminist scholars,
was writing about the intersection of gender and
class in those earlier days. Prominent family
scholars have also pursued these issues over the
past 40 years. Judith Stacey (1990; see book
review by Potter in this issue) examined the
intersections of gender and class in researching
postmodern influences on marriage and family
relationships. Andrew Cherlin (2004) examined
the deinstitutionalization of American marriage
as it continues into the 21st century, addressing
Journal of Family Theory & Review
the barriers to marriage related to disadvantages
experienced by minority status of race, class,
and sexual orientation. Abbie Goldberg (2013)
extended the study of “his and hers marriage”
to “hers and hers” and “his and his,” finding
that although much less so than in heterosexual
relationships, power still matters in the social
construction and practice of housework in any
relationship.
Feminist Critiques of Caring Labor
In graduate school, I read another empower-
ing article, “Interaction: The Work That Women
Do,” by Pamela Fishman (1978), who brought
home how the concept of “the personal is polit-
ical” gets played out on the micro-level. Fish-
man used extensive tape-recorded conversations
of three different heterosexual couples in their
own apartments. The participants in these part-
nerships were well educated and sympathetic to
the feminist movement. Yet despite the feminist
sensibilities shared by the couples, Fishman con-
cluded:
There is a division of labor in conversation. The
people who do the routine maintenance work, the
women, are not the same people who either control
or benefit from the process. Women are the “shit-
workers” of routine interaction, and the “goods”
being made are not only interactions, but, through
them, realities. (p. 405)
The theoretical framing of this article was a
critique of one of the key texts students of fam-
ily studies also read: Berger and Kellner’s (1964)
“Marriage and the Construction of Reality: An
Exercise in the Microsociology of Knowledge.”
Fishman (1978) critiqued the views of Berger
and Kellner by saying that although they “an-
alyzed marriage as a reality-producing setting,
they have not analyzed the interaction of mar-
riage partners” (p. 398). Instead, she examined
how the socially structured power relationship
between males and females re-created the gen-
dered social hierarchy in daily life. She further
noted, “It is through this [everyday] work that
people produce their relationship to one another,
their relationship to the world, and those patterns
normally referred to as social structure” (p. 398).
Thus, Fishman (1978) studied a relatively
new question from a feminist perspective: Why
do women do the interaction work in relation-
ships? She boldly concluded that, empowered by
Feminist Theory in Family Studies
the gender hierarchy that privileged men, their
partners failed to respond to their attempts to ini-
tiate conversation or keep it going. Further, why
were women willing to keep doing this work?
Fishman explained that it is the price they pay
for being accorded full “female” status. This
dynamic of gendered hierarchical relationships
in how we “do gender in families” (West &
Zimmerman, 1983) continues to be central in
feminist scholarship today (Risman, 2009).
Feminist Critiques of Motherhood
Parenthood is one of the major substantive areas
in feminist family scholarship, yet for many
years the study of motherhood focused on “ap-
propriate mothers,” those who were White, mar-
ried, heterosexual, middle-class mothers, and
thus deemed the most acceptable women for
raising children (Baber & Allen, 1992; DiLapi,
1989). One of the contributions of feminism to
family studies has been the documentation of
minority women’s experiences in general and of
mothering in particular. Black feminist family
scholar Patricia Bell Scott and her colleagues
(Bell-Scott et al., 1991) addressed this omis-
sion in their edited collection Double Stitch:
Black Women Write About Mothers & Daugh-
ters. This volume followed a major critique
of Black women’s invisibility in both women’s
studies and Black studies, in the now-classic
collection But Some of Us Are Brave: All the
Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men: Black
Women’s Studies (Hull, Bell Scott, & Smith,
1982; see Few-Demo, this issue, for a review).
Double Stitch is organized around the
metaphor of a quilt, and poets, essayists,
and scholars wrote in myriad ways about the
rewards and tensions of diverse family roles
(e.g., mother–daughter ties, adolescent mothers,
lesbian mothers, stepmothers, grandmothers,
othermothers), across the life course for Black
women. Poems, fiction, essays, and research
presented in Double Stitch reveal the necessity
of demystifying and privileging, from a Black
womanist perspective, diverse voices that reveal
the development of the Black mother-daughter
bond and the range of experiences and tradi-
tions which have shaped it. Like quilting, it has
been advantaged or disadvantaged by the innate
ability, resourcefulness, and environment of the
women and girls who have created the patterns,
rhythms, order, and dissonance of the basic design.
(Bell-Scott & Guy-Sheftall, 1991, p. 2)
217
Concluding Thoughts and Reflections
In conclusion, I reiterate that the selection of
articles and books I chose to review in this article
was idiosyncratic, as was the way that I have nar-
rated this particular history of feminist thought
in family studies. The works and experiences I
examined reflect influences not only on feminist
theory and activism, as well as feminist family
studies, but also those ideas that I have continued
to contemplate throughout my life. The topics
and texts I addressed represent a small slice of
the stunning variety of feminist scholarship that
has amassed over the years. It is impossible to
fully characterize this field because it contin-
ually changes as it forges ahead. Two ideas,
however, permeate my own understanding: the
critical analysis of patriarchy as institution
and lived experience, and the bond forged by
collaboration with other feminist scholars and
activists.
Does Patriarchy Still Matter?
Socialist feminists Linda Gordon and Allen
Hunter (1977/1978) reflected upon a pamphlet
published by the highly conservative John Birch
Society describing the society’s idealization of
the universal woman:
A woman is like many stones: She is the hearth-
stone from which warmth and light are reflected
throughout the home; she is the decorative, exotic
stones hedging and protecting precious and beau-
tiful growth; she is graceful as marble, preserving
culture and tradition; and she is as hard as granite
with anything that threatens her home and chil-
dren. She is soapstone and pumice, ever-cleansing
and smoothing; she is a touchstone; a close com-
fort to her mate and little ones. And she some-
times feels like a well-worn cobblestone, over
which have passed the tribulations of all she holds
dear. Woman is at once like the sunny sand that
warms, and like the heart and sinew of the sand-
bags that keep the home secure from intruding tor-
rents in crisis. She can be ruby-lipped, onyx-eyed,
pearl-skinned, and topaz-tressed. But always she
shines like the symbol of her marriage, the perfect
diamond that will reflect her growth from bride to
grandmother. (p. 9)
The “woman as stone” passage sets the stage
for Gordon and Hunter’s (1977/1978) call to
arms about the backlash against feminism by the
“New Right”:
A mere five years ago, we probably would have
dismissed such a statement as representing a
218
defeated past, a man’s fantasy projected onto a
past that never really existed. But this kind of
anti-feminism is now propelling a strong and
growing New Right. The New Right cultural
politics of sex and family are not only a backlash
against women’s and gay liberation movements
… but are also a reassertion of patriarchal forms of
family structure and male dominance. (pp. 9–10)
The authors were addressing the fact that
the conservative right’s backlash was very well
organized, unlike the fragmentation of the “New
Left.” In Gordon and Hunter’s analysis, the
ranks of the New Right included the Nazis,
the Ku Klux Klan, the John Birch Society,
the Catholic Church, fundamentalist Protes-
tantism, and many others. One reason for the
effectiveness of the New Right in countering
feminism and other forms of liberation, as
stated by Gordon and Hunter, was that they
were mostly “unapologetically White” and
from middle-class, ethnically homogenous
communities.
Gordon and Hunter’s (1977/1978) comment,
some 40 years ago, that they thought the prob-
lem of patriarchy was dissolved by 1972, but
only 5 years later its roots were still strong,
is instructive for feminists today: Patriarchy
is a transhistorical system of male domina-
tion. In their view, patriarchy was not becom-
ing obsolete. Instead, the feminist attack on
patriarchy was engendering a massive backlash.
Gordon and Hunter listed several issues that still
needed continued activism: gay rights, repro-
ductive self-determination and sexual freedom,
violence against women, and affirmative action
for women and minorities. These issues are still
prevalent feminist concerns today.
The authors said that patriarchy would not
become undone unless we addressed the basic
recipe of oppression, including the politics of
sexual relationships, the politics of family, the
liberation of women, and the interwoven sys-
tems of domination that privilege male, White,
and heterosexual domination. As feminist fam-
ily scholars have also said, the problem of dis-
solving patriarchy is complicated by the fact
that there are many satisfactions that families
can provide, including emotional and sexual inti-
macy; child rearing by caring people; and coop-
eration, sharing, and stability (e.g., Baber &
Allen, 1992; Walker, 1999).
Further, in some areas, patriarchal control is
increasing. For example, in the Indian Ocean
island nation of Maldives, women, historically,
Journal of Family Theory & Review
have had equal status to men. Yet feminist
anthropologists Fulu and Miedema (2016) argue
that women’s rights there have recently taken
a backward slide because of the increasing
influence of Western media, the takeover by a
fundamentalist Islamic regime, and a changing
social-political environment that emphasizes
patriarchal control. In particular, both intimate
partner violence against women and women’s
confinement to the home have increased. Fulu
and Miedema provide a contemporary example
of the intersections of gender, nationality, and
religion, with gender at the center of women’s
oppression.
This global feminist analysis reiterates the
restrictions on women today. To lose sight of
gender as a key hierarchical system, particularly
in conceptions of family internationally, is to
obscure the impact of organized oppression on
real people’s lives. I conclude that the feminist
critique of patriarchy continues to deserve the
attention of feminist family scholars. As feminist
sociologist Ann Oakley (1974/1985) said in her
classic text The Sociology of Housework, “The
force of tradition should never be underestimat-
ed” (p. vii).
Reflections on Collaborating With Alexis
Walker
Finally, I offer a reflection about one of the
founders of feminist family studies, Alexis
Walker, to whom this article is dedicated and
in whose honor I received the Alexis J. Walker
Award for Lifetime Achievement in Feminist
Family Studies. Alexis and I began to work
together when we first met at the National
Council on Family Relations annual conference
in 1985. I often traveled to Oregon State to
collaborate with her as the qualitative method-
ologist for her study of older mother–adult
daughter relationships (Walker & Allen, 1991).
Alexis’s passion for this work on the lifelong
interdependence of mothers and daughters
spanned her entire career. We continued to mine
that data until the last years of her life, and as
our students know, we did not have a chance to
finish our final project.
In one of our earlier articles, we wrote about
Alexis’s data on adult daughters’ care for their
aging mothers. We used feminist philosopher
Sara Ruddick’s (1989) theory of maternal think-
ing to guide our analysis. Ruddick described the
work of the mother as like a scholar guided by a
Feminist Theory in Family Studies
discipline. To respond to the needs and demands
of the child, a mother does three things: (a) pro-
tects, by preserving the life of the child; (b) nur-
tures, by fostering the child’s growth; and (c)
ensures that the child will be acceptable as a pro-
ductive member of society.
In our article on attentive love (Allen &
Walker, 1992), we translated this theory to an
explanation of the caregiving of adult daughters
for their frail mothers. We quoted a middle-aged
daughter about how she worked to preserve
her mother’s independence: “I take my mother
grocery shopping. She pushes the cart and I
run up and down the aisles” (p. 287). This
is a story that reveals the reciprocity in this
quintessential intergenerational relationship; the
care exchanged by two women over the course
of a lifetime, and the mundane household task of
grocery shopping that most individuals complete
without much thought or acknowledgment.
Our study of mother–daughter relationships
in later life was grounded in a critique of the
patriarchal family. However, Alexis and I never
gave up on the family. We stayed commit-
ted to our feminist family studies worldview
and saw the family complexly—as a source of
care and of constraint. That remains one of
the most important messages of feminist fam-
ily studies: We cannot escape family—we are
produced, located, supported, and oppressed in
families—and we also understand that family,
however constructed, is the central way in which
human beings organize sexual, reproductive,
economic, and intimate life.
One of Alexis’s core beliefs was that “living
with ambivalence is no problem for feminists”
(Walker, 2009, p. 25). In her feminist critique of
family studies, Alexis considered whether one
can be a feminist and an editor of a traditional
family science journal. Her analysis was based
on her lifelong feminist perspective, as well as
the 6 years she edited Journal of Marriage and
Family. True to form, her work in that article is
a model of scholarship: She proposed the ques-
tions that guided her analysis. She explained how
she would start, pursue, and conclude her argu-
ment. She gave credit where credit was due: by
historically situating her work in the context of
the scholars whose ideas have influenced her
own. She supported her case with data. She con-
structively critiqued the literature she reviewed.
She revealed her personal commitments to the
analyses she offered. In so doing, Alexis Walker
219
demonstrated what it means to be a feminist fam-
ily scholar, leader, mentor, and force for social
and intellectual change—an uncomfortable yet
exhilarating place to be. Like the feminist schol-
ars described earlier, Alexis Walker braved the
way through the discomfort and ambiguity, and
inspired others to continue on this exciting and
authentic feminist journey. My hope is that we
continue to forge ahead, directing one eye to the
past and the other eye to the future.
Author Note
An earlier version of this article was presented as
the 2014 inaugural award address for the Alexis
J. Walker Award for Lifetime Achievement in
Feminist Family Studies at the annual meeting
of the National Council on Family Relations,
Baltimore, MD. I thank the founding editor,
Robert M. Milardo, and the current editor, Libby
Balter Blume, for the invitation to write this
article.
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