Today’s culture wars are framed largely around family values. Red families and blue families each hold true to their beliefs and admit little room for compromise. But what are the differences between the two sides and how are they expressed? Naomi Cahn and June Carbone investigate the question in their book ‘Red Families v. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture,’ published by Oxford University Press. The distinctions are revealed especially in the way each side views sex, marriage and divorce. Blue families have adapted to the post-industrial economy and its resulting social changes while red families tend to lag in the new economy and resist the reshaping of values. Cahn is a professor of law at George Washington University Law School, and Carbone holds the chair of law, the constitution and society at the University of Missouri at Kansas City.

— Steven E. Levingston

Blue families, in order to make it possible to invest in women as well as men, defer marriage and childbearing, and reap the advantages from older partners’ greater emotional maturity and financial independence. The ‘bluest