Ch. 9. Family Flashcards
Missing Class
MISSING CLASS – the 50 million who earn between $20,000 and $40,000 per year and live just above poverty yet well below the middle class.
- Economic hardship makes family formation and marital stability difficult.
- People across social classes are marrying less and living in NONtraditional arrangements.
Culture Wars and Family
CULTURE WARS – Disputes over the state of American society, including the presumed decline of the family as well as “family values.” anad Cohabitation:
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FAMILY VALUES – A traditional, conservative frame for how families should be constructed.
- Rails against things such as abortion and gay marriage, which are NOT considered family values in this frame.
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COHABIATION – UNmarried, unrelated people living together.
- United States does NOT appear to appreciate family values as much as other developed countries.
Conservative Family Movements : Structural Functionalist
- MARRIAGE MOVEMENT – Social movement that advocates traditional marriage and warns against the sexual revolution, teenage pregnancy, and same-sex marriage.
- JAMES DOBSON founded FOCUS ON THE FAMILY, a Christian ministry whose mission is “nurturing and defending the God-ordained institution of the family and promoting biblical truths worldwide”
- DAVID POPENOE founder and codirector of the NATIONAL MARRIAGE PROJECT, has argued that the modern family is failing in its primary social functions: sexual regulation, procreation, and socialization of children in a stable, economically productive, and emotionally supportive unit formed by the lifelong union of a man and a woman.
Defining the Family
FAMILY – Two or more people related by birth, marriage, or adoption who share living quarters (U.S. Census Bureau definition).
- Definition of family is not only highly contested but also socially constructed
- Our definition of precisely what is family is shifting.
- A more liberal definition of FAMILY – members of a social group who are in an intimate, long-term, committed relationship and who share mutual expectations of rights and responsibilities.
- Each of us lives not just in one family but in a series of families over a lifetime. Thus, we derive a definition of family not just from biology and law but also from experience with kin, friends, and others.
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STRATEGIC LIVING COMMUNITY – all members of a social group who are in an intimate, long-term, committed relationship.
- family members share expectations of rights and responsibilities to one another and to the family as a whole.
HOUSEHOLD – All the related and unrelated people who share living quarters.
FICTIVE KIN – People to whom one is NOT related by blood, marriage, or adoption but on whom one nonetheless depends.
Feminist Perspective
FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE – A theoretical approach that emphasizes the extent to which patriarchy and sexism undermine women (and men), relationships, and families.
Marriage
MARRIAGE DECLINE– people are far less likely to be married now than were 50 years ago.
- Median age at marriage has never been higher.
- Only among the college educated do we find a majority currently married.
- Only among whites do we see a majority currently married.
MARRIAGE GRADIENT – the tendency for women to marry men who are slightly older.
- The older a woman is, the LESS likely she is to find a potential husband.
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MARRIAGE SQUEEZE – Black women in particular face a severely imbalanced sex ratio – affected by the number of potential marriage partners due to:
- Death—including unarmed men shot by police.
- Imprisonment and Military Enlistment – reduce the number of black men available as potential husbands.
- Higher rates of unemployment among black men.
- Black men are more likely than black women to marry someone of another race.
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POOL OF ELIGIBLES – The quantity and quality of potential partners for marriage.
- The gender ratio is more imbalanced for blacks than for any other racial or ethnic group in the United States
- Whites are much more likely to live in husband-wife households than are blacks.
- Women living in poverty are UNLIKELY to marry the fathers of their babies unless the men were employed.
- Public attitudes about the institution of marriage are mixed.
- 40% of the adult US population think Marriage is obsolete.
- Older, college-educated, white people, however, still think marriage is an important institution.
- The economic benefits of marriage are considerable, primarily because costs are shared most in this type of arrangement – even more than simple cohabitation..
- Spouses serve as insurance for one another in the case of illness and job loss.
- Married couples also receive more employment-based benefits (such as prorated health insurance).
- Often receive help from two sets of extended families and friends.
- Married people, especially husbands, enjoy better health and live longer than the unmarried.
- Better psychological well-being, health, and social ties
- Married-couple households have higher median income.
- What matters may not be the form of a partnership—whether the couple are married or not—but rather the duration and stability of the relationship.
Cohabitation
COHABITATION – Unrelated, unmarried adults in an intimate relationship sharing living quarters.
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More common among those with lower levels of education
- Living together can be an economic strategy because you get to share expenses.
- Those with college educations (a correlate of social class) also fare better economically when they cohabit.
- As the number of people choosing to marry declines, the rate of cohabitation has increased.
- Today, a majority of adults report having cohabited at some point in their lives
- Unmarried partners are more likely to be:
- young
- lower income
- lower education
- less religious
- divorced or have parents who were divorced.
- grown up without a father
- grown up in a household wiwth high levels of marital conflict
- Unmarried partners are more likely to be:
- Today, more than 60% first marriages begin with the couple living together.
- 50 years ago, almost none did
SELECTION EFFECT – individuals who choose to cohabit may have some attitudes and characteristics that predispose them to marital instability.
- Premarital cohabitation is NOT associated with later divorce.
- AGE at marriage IS predictor of divorce.
Divorce
DIVORCE:
- % of US adults who have been married has dropped
- % of US adults who have divorced has TRIPLED over the same period.
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Compared to other developed countries, the United States has:
- Higher rates of marriage
- Higher rates of civorce
- More short-term cohabiting relationships.
CRUDE DIVORCE RATE – the number of divorces per 1,000 population
- increased very slowly but steadily from 1867
REFINED DIVORCE RATE – the number of divorces per 1,000 married women.
- More stable indicator because it includes only members of the population who are actually at risk of divorce (married women).
RISK FACTORS for DIVORCE:
- Economic Hardship
- Poverty
- Age (getting married to young is a predictor of future divorce)
- Religion often encourages marriage between adults who are too young to handle the situation.
- Premarital childbirth (marriage would be forced to care for the child rather than because the adults actually wanted to get married)
Parents and Children
PARENTS and CHILDREN:
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VISITING UNION – Parents live apart but are romantically involved at the time of their child’s birth.
- Less than one-third of unmarried parent couples are still together 5 years after their child’s birth.
- Fathers in these unmarried couples tend to become less engaged with their offspring over time.
- “FRAGILE FAMILIES” – Families that are more likely to break up and to live in poverty than are other families.
- Fragile Families Study (2012) has found that children born to unmarried parents are less advantaged than children whose parents are married.
- Unmarried parents are much more disadvantaged than married parents.
- Unmarried parents are themselves less likely to have grown up with both biological parents and are more likely to be poor and black or Hispanic.
- They have often begun parenting in their teens and have had children with more than one partner.
- They are also more likely to suffer from depression, report substance abuse, and spend time in jail.
- Their families are much more likely to be welfare dependent.
Great Recession (Economic Hardship) on Families
EFFECTS OF THE GREAT RECESSION (ECONOMIC HARDSHIP) on FAMILIES:
GREAT RECESSION (2007-2009) – was the worst economic downturn in US History next to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Known as the “the lost decade of the middle class,”
- Economic hardship can REDUCE the chance that a couple will marry or stay married, and that a child will grow up in a two-parent family.
- Massive drops in Median Family NET WORTH (meaning the value of a families assets)
- Middle-income families lost more wealth than either the wealthiest or the poorest families
- Poverty grew in middle class suburbs
- marriage, cohabitation, and divorce rates have changed very little during the period since the economic downturn began.
- Middle-income families lost more wealth than either the wealthiest or the poorest families
- Highly educated got divorced when their homes were foreclosed on. Likely due to the stress of the economic hardship.
- % of young adults living with their parents has increased.
- Fertility rates fell (People were having fewer babies) in states most affected by the recession.
FAMILY”S RESILIENCE – ability not just to bounce back from change or troubles but to spring forward into the future.
- Since the Great RECESSION serious psychological distress has increased.
- Among black children, asthma rates have risen.
- Among adults, more have gone without medical care.
Children and the Changing Family
CHILDREN AND CHANGING FAMILY – The gap in the quality of life between children living in two-parent families and those in single-parent families is much greater in some countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, Austria)
- The difference? Germany, Italy, and Sweden all provide a universal child benefit structure that guarantees a minimum income to every child, regardless of parental situation; the United States does not.
- People around the world are increasingly choosing to forgo marriage and childbearing.
- Reasons for this global shift:
- Economic (raising kids is expensive)
- Movement away from traditional values
- Urbanization (less living space and no need for kids to work the farm)
- In pursuit of economic advantage, individuals are often forced to choose between family formation and career advancement.
- Movement away from traditional religious values.
- Reasons for this global shift:
Religion, Spirituality, and Family Resilience
RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY, AND FAMILY RESILIENCE –
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RELIGION has often been cited as a source of strength during times of economic and other hardships.
- Individuals who identify with a religion tend to form traditional marriages
- 51% of all U.S. adults do not adhere to a particular faith tradition
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SPIRITUALITY – an underlying moral or value system.
- Families with religious or, more broadly, spiritual foundations express a sense of meaning and purpose on which they can draw during hard times.
- They also exhibit greater resilience than do families without such foundations
- For Example, marital satisfaction has been found to be associated with a couple’s shared religion, prayer for one’s spouse, and forgiveness
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Émile Durkheim – religion can serve as a kind of “social glue,” binding society together
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Catholic nuns have partnered with educational, government, philanthropic, and religious institutions to ensure that the city’s disadvantaged families receive the social and cultural support they need.
- The sisters’ efforts to create a “GOOD SOCIETY”
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Catholic nuns have partnered with educational, government, philanthropic, and religious institutions to ensure that the city’s disadvantaged families receive the social and cultural support they need.
- Government efforts on behalf of families took a new “FAITH-BASED” turn in the 21st century
Still, for all their controversy (and potential promise), partnerships between faith-based groups and government that aim to address family social problems appear to be here to stay.
Government on Behalf of Families
GOVERNMENT ON BEHALF OF FAMILIES:
- Families appear to have fewer problems and fare best in societies that value them and make them a priority.
- Unlike most other developed nations around the world, the United States lacks a comprehensive family policy.
- The United States also invests less in government programs for families than does any other developed nation
- U.S. family policy is a product of the high value American society has traditionally placed on individual responsibility, limited government, and the marketplace as a way to solve social problems
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (widely known as Obamacare) – Affordable health insurance.
Functionalism and Family Problems
FUNCTIONALISM AND FAMILY PROBLEMS – Structural sees family as the primary institution for economic support, emotional security, and childhood socialization. In this view, the family serves to maintain equilibrium in society.
- Families are best organized around the traditional nuclear family of the Instrumental breadwinning father, who is married to the Expressive mother socializing their offspring.
Conflict Theory and Family Problems
CONFLICT THEORY – sees society as organized around competing vested interests. With regard to families, the idea of a “Nuclear” traditional family automatically diminishes and creates inequalities for all members of society who do not fit that definition. Gay and lesbian parents, unmarried cohabiting couples, adoptees – all become disadvantaged.
POLICY IMPLICATIONS:
- A ban on same-sex marriage would oppress people while maintaining a status quo that benefits others.
- Support for same-sex marriage has been steadily increasing.
- For children growing up with lesbian or gay parents, research has not found any negative developmental outcomes and may actually favor the children of lesbian mothers.
- Research does NOT support the contention that same-sex marriage is dysfunctional in terms of the socialization of children.
- Same-sex couples with children are disadvantaged in that they are less likely than other couples to have family health insurance through their employers.
Symbolic Interactionism and Family Problems
SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM AND FAMILY PROBLEMS – shows how social policy might play out in the daily lives of families and their members. It is interested in the meanings that interaction creates and the ways symbols (including language) are interpreted with regard to family.
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EX: Some people interpret the term “CIVIL UNION” as a way to allow the legal bonding of gay couples without using the term “Marriage”.
- But other advocates of same-sex marriage rights oppose the use of the term, arguing that it connotes more limited rights and responsibilities than the more widely accepted concept of “marriage”.
- These interpretations create a debate on the meaning of marriage in society.
Reminder –
- FUNCTIONALISM –structure and function of society
- CONFLICT – oppression and freedom of disadvantaged groups.
