Family Ties: Patterns of Connectedness in One American Family

In this intimate family ethnography, Douglas MacDonald tells the story of the DiVolis and their relatives – three generations of Italian-Americans, together negotiating the changes and challenges of 20th-century life in a small Northeastern American town. Through interviews and participant observation, the author examines the structural and interactive nature of familial bonds that continue to “tie” the DiVolis, Pucillos, and other relatives together across geographic, generational, and historical space.In his inductive exploration of what “family ties” are and how they operate, MacDonald elaborates them as a three-fold typology: ties of shared experience, ties of attachment, and ties of obligation. This is the story of how those ties have changed and endured.