"This new book takes as its starting point the long cultural shadow that the nuclear ideal has cast over how the family has been mediated in popular film, television, literature and social policy over the last 50 years. The book explores the ways in which struggles over sexuality, identity, gender and power have informed the conceptualization and representation of the family as an institution and as a site of discursive complexity." "Mediating the Family: Gender, Culture and Representation is an important intervention in debates about family relationships and will be essential reading for scholars and students of cultural, film and media studies, sociology and cultural history."--BOOK JACKET.