Constructing Early Christian Families explores the complex picture of family relations and the manifold attitudes to the family in the early Christian world.

David Reiss presents a new model of family interaction grounded in the subtle and complex way in which a family constructs its inner life and deals with the outside world. Based upon fifteen years of research, the book offers a new understanding of the covert processes that hold a family together and, with distressing frequency, pull it apart.

In this rich, surprising portrait of the world of lesbian and gay relationships, Christopher Carrington unveils the complex and artful ways that gay people create and maintain both homes and "chosen" families for themselves. "Carefully separating stereotype from reality, Carrington investigates family in the gay and lesbian community. Relying upon interviews and observation, the author analyzes the loves and routings of 52 diverse lesbian, gay, and bisexual couples in the Bay area. . . . [He] closes the work with a discussion of the raging same-sex marriage debate and posits an enlightened solution to this dilemma." —Library Journal