Family Flashcards
Families
relationships in which ppl live together with commitment, form an economic unit + care for any young + consider their identity to be significantly attached to the group
•Means different things to different ppl
•Extends beyond biological relationships
•Diff expectations from family members
Contemporary families are responsible for
- Regulating sexual activity
* Socializing children
Contemporary families are responsible for
•Providing affection + companionship to family members
-Provision of social status
Decline of Traditional Nuclear Family
- Historically family equated solely with nuclear family - 1/2 parents + dependent children, live apart from other relatives
- Male breadwinner + wife works without pay in home
Decline of Traditional Nuclear Family
Has been decrease in traditional nuclear families since 1940s and increasing prevalence of new family forms
•Slow expansion to broader arrays of diff configurations
•Expectations are still there
•W still more likely to stay home and take care of children
CONTEMPORARY TRENDS: MARRIAGE
- Married-couple families, although declining, remain the most common family form in Canada
- Increasing delay of first marriage (30 for men, 28 for women)
- Results from pursuit of educational and career goals—especially women attaining economic security, which allows them to live alone
- Married couple families still popular
- W economic independence – marriage is a choice entered for diff choices than for economic reasons
- Still stigma around single ppl in 40s/50s, but diminished
CONTEMPORARY TRENDS: MARRIAGE
•Canadians increasingly deciding to remain single + live alone
Live apart in commuter marriages to pursue jobs in diff cities
Marry someone of the same sex Pursue single-parent households
Marriage
legally recognized +/or socially approved arrangement betw 2/more individuals that carries certain rights + obligations + usually involves sexual activity (Monogamy only legally sanctioned form in Canada)
Cohabitation
couple’s living together not legally married (common-law) •varies by province
•increase in common law has been relatively recent
•1/3 in quebec families – rapid secularization
Power and Families: Love and Mate Selection
•mistaken assumption that love historical basis of marriage
Historically arranged wished to maximize family’s prestige, economic benefits + political advantages
Power and Families: Love and Mate Selection
- Love important factor in 18th-century England with rise of liberalism + individualism
- emergence of popular culture
- right to choose who to marry
Marital Satisfaction
- Marital stability rooted in marital satisfaction
- more likely to last if ppl are happy
- freer to leave marriage
- money issues puts a strain on couples
- being more easily able to get a divorce
- if passion disappears
Increase in importance of marital satisfaction connected to autonomy of women increased because of
i. Legalization of birth control measures
ii. Increased presence in paid labour force
Social Roots of Marital Satisfaction: social forces underlying marital satisfaction
- Economic factors: Poverty + financial stresses
2. Divorce laws: ppl free to end unhappy marriages + remarry, avg level of happiness increases
Social Roots of Marital Satisfaction: social forces underlying marital satisfaction
- Family life cycle: Presence of children + emotional + financial strain
- Housework + childcare: Inequitable distribution of domestic responsibilities reduces marital satisfaction
Social Roots of Marital Satisfaction: social forces underlying marital satisfaction
5.Sex: Sexually compatible partners increase marital satisfaction
Family Types, 1901-2006
- Married couples without children went up
- Common law went up
- Married with children decrease
Social Construction of Family
families neither static, universal/biologically determined
Erosion of Support for institution of marriage + traditional gender roles
- Increasing secularism
- Women’s movement
- Expansion of postsecondary institutions + service sector employment
Average Age at First Marriage
- 28 for W
- 31 for M
- increased delay
Marriage
still very popular in spite of divorce
•majority of Canadians will marry at some point
•majority of marriages still do last a life-time
same-sex marriage
- 2005: Canada legislates
- Predated by same-sex partners raising children
- legal in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada, South Africa, Norway, Iceland, Sweden, and Argentina
Marriage
- Most ppl in Canada tend to choose marriage partners who are similar to themselves
- don’t take choice away from us, but shape us
- make certain choices more likely
Homogamy
pattern of individuals marrying those who have similar characteristics - race/ethnicity, religious background, age + education/social class
Social Movement and Divorce
Prior to 1968: Only grounds for divorce was adultery
•Divorce Act of 1968: Expanded grounds for divorce
Social Movement and Divorce
•1985: Divorce Act allowed for divorce if:
i. Spouses had lived apart for one year
ii. One spouse had committed act of adultery
iii. One spouse had treated other with mental/physical cruelty
Social Movement and Divorce
•Today: No grounds needed to obtain divorce
Impact: Approximately 38% of marriages can now be expected to end in divorce
Remarriage
- Most divorced get remarried.
* divorce before age 35, about half remarry within 3 years of first divorce
Remarriage
- complex family relationships created.
- stepfamilies/blended families
- marriage still holds a special significance
- ppl work hard to protect insitution of marriage
- worried that specialness of marriage is threatened by expanding definition
Total Fertility Rate, Canada, 1950–2008
- having children is personal choice
* 1.5 children per family
Social Movement and Reproductive Choice and Abortion
- 1892: Abortion declared criminal offence
- 1969: if life threatening then you can
- 1988: Abortion law struck down on grounds it violated woman’s right to control her reproductive life
Social Movement and Reproductive Choice and Abortion
- 1989: ruled fetus not person in law + father has no legal right over decision
- 1993: abortion clinics are allowed
- 1995: spread of clinics
Social Movement and Reproductive Choice and Abortion
•Attitudes vary by age + influenced by circumstances
•Canadians remain divided on abortion issues
Social Movement and Reproductive Choice and Abortion
clash betw right-to-life + pro-choice activists
concern that if abortion criminalized, poor women + unwanted children would suffer most
Reproductive choice: also about contraception
Assisted Reproductive Technologies
- reproductive choice means facilitating pregnancy + birth
* ppl don’t wanna fund cloning
Assisted Reproductive Technologies
- Positives: Possible to screen for a number of life-threatening conditions
- Enables infertile couples to become parents
- Negatives of new technologies: May lead to unnatural selection
Assisted Reproductive Technologies
- legislation regulates uses of this tech
- Federal legislation specifies what practices are forbidden:
- human cloning, sex selection, buying/selling human embryos
Housework, Child Care, and Senior Care - Conflict + Feminist
- Housework, child care + senior care resistant to change
* women who work full-time usually experience “second shift” of housework, child care + senior care
Housework, Child Care, and Senior Care
Tasks M low-stress + can often wait
Women repetitive, higher stress chores that cannot wait, still hardest + crucial housework
Gender Gap in Housework, Child Care, and Senior Care: i. Difference between husband’s and wife’s earnings
- Smaller difference more equitable division of household labour
- More they agree that there should be equality, the more equality there is
- Age: this generation much more likely to have egalitarian perspective
- More education
Gender Gap in Housework, Child Care, and Senior Care: ii. Attitude
•more agree there should be equality= more equality
Factor affecting agreement: Postsecondary education
Canadians in their 20s Living with Parents
•More years living in their parents’ homes
CONTEMPORARY TRENDS: Transnational families
Families geographically separated for extended periods, international migration + travel + communications tech
•Working abroad + sending money back
•Following jobs, moving further away
CONTEMPORARY TRENDS: Multi-family households
more than one nuclear family
CONTEMPORARY TRENDS: Intergenerational households
-Include multiple generations living together
•Common among immigrants based on financial pressure/desire to preserve cultural heritage, language, religion
Family Violence: Spousal abuse - Feminist
violence of intimate partner against other.
•physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse + economic/financial abuse.
•Child abuse: criminalize, abuse/neglect unacceptable
•We need a clear definition of what constitutes as abuse
•Rely on victimization report
Family Violence: Spousal abuse
•higher level of gender inequality in couple & in society = greater frequency
Family Violence: Child abuse
•physical/sexual abuse +/or neglect of child by parent, step-parent/other caregivers
Family Diversity: Same-Sex Parents
Children equally likely to be well adjusted + display little difference in orientation than children raised in hetero families
Partners of lesbian mothers spend more time caring for children than husbands of hetero mothers
Homo couples tend to be more egalitarian
Family Diversity: Same-Sex Parents
no apparent negative consequences for children
•Fringe benefits: from earlier age, understand that their family type is different
•Seem to have a broader acceptance + embracing of different family arrangements
•Small amounts of research
Lone-Parent Families and Poverty: Single-Mother Families
marital dissolution, child custody typically granted to mothers
•Strong pattern to child poverty
•Continuum of family policies: canada to the right of individual
Lone-Parent Families and Poverty: Single-Mother Families
low levels of social support, family dysfunction + parental depression characteristic of low-income households
Lone-Parent Families and Poverty: Single-Mother Families
Child poverty related to school failure, negative involvement with parents, stunted growth, reduced cognitive abilities, limited emotional development + high likelihood of dropping out of school
SOCIAL POLICY: INCOME SUPPORT POLICIES
- Income support payments
* cash transfers to families - direct payments + tax deductions, maternity + parental leave benefits + child support
SOCIAL POLICY: INCOME SUPPORT POLICIES
- Benefit levels in Canada lower
- Canadian policy uses stricter eligibility criteria, difficult for families to qualify for support
- Universal Child Care Benefit taxable income
- Money per week per child
SOCIAL POLICY: Child Care
- Canada lacks system of universally accessible, affordable, high-quality, regulated daycare
- Parents often wait a year/2 spot in a daycare centre
- most children are cared for in informal, unregulated settings—by relatives, friends/nannies/in-home daycares
SOCIAL POLICY: Child Care
•In Quebec, child care is a political priority • Parents access regulated, licensed child care for $7/day
• In the absence of a universal child care system, the Temporary Live-In Caregiver program was
instituted in Canada
Family Matters
family remains the central institution in the lives of most Canadians
•More than three-quarters of Canadians regard the family as the most important thing in their lives.
•Today individuals in families are now freer to establish the kinds of family arrangements that best suit them
Functionalist Perspectives
- Husband/father fulfills instrumental role (economic needs, important decisions, leadership)
- Wife/mother fulfills expressive role (running household, caring for children, meeting emotional needs
Symbolic Interactionist Perspectives
- Interaction betw marital partners contributes to shared reality
- Partners redefine past identities to be consistent with new realities
- W + M experience marriage differently
Postmodern Perspectives
- permeable: capable of being diffused/invaded in a way than originial purpose is modified/changed
- consensual love: agree to have sex with others + no intention of marrying
