Single and Solo Parenting
Although some people become single parents through divorce
or death, others choose to go solo and have children without
the support of a committed p
artner—through adoption, artificial insemination, or surrogacy. Attitudes about solo mothers
vary greatly and often depend on the mother’s age, education
level, occupation, income, and support network of friends
and extended family members. Women with more of these
resources, including solo celebrity moms like Sandra Bullock,
Charlize Theron, and Sheryl Crow, may be subject to less criticism for “going it alone” than women who are younger, earn
less money, and have less education or social support.
A prevailing middle-class assumption about single mothers
is that young women in the inner city become mothers to access
welfare benefits. Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas (2005) spent
five years doing i n-depth research with 162 l ow-income single
mothers to understand their attitudes about parenthood and
marriage. They dispelled the myth that these women become
mothers to cash in on welfare benefits and instead found that
for these young women, having a baby is a symbol of belonging
and being valued. While becoming a lawyer or a CEO may seem
like a pipedream, being a good mother is an accessible role that
can generate respect and admiration in the community.
Of the 11.2 million s ingle-parent households in the United
States, 2.6 million of them are headed by single men (Livingston 2013). Solo dads face dilemmas similar to those faced by
single moms, but with the added suspicion and stigma surrounding society’s notions of men who spend time with children. Even so, the number of single dads has increased almost
tenfold since 1960, and this increase seems likely to continue.
Regardless of the circumstances of single parenting, raising children without the help of a partner is challenging and
difficult. Financially, physically, and emotionally, single parents must perform a task that was traditionally shared by a
community rather than an individual.
Blended Families
Most divorced people will eventually marry someone else,
which means that four in ten Americans are members of stepfamilies or blended families (Pew Research Center 2011a).
However, statistics about stepfamilies are inconsistent and
often contradictory because quantifying and defining the
intricate relationships involved in a stepfamily are difficult.
The U.S. Census has not routinely accounted for them in its
data gathering. There are no traditional norms or models for
stepfamilies, and our firmly held notions of the “traditional”
family lead many in stepfamilies to find the transition to
a new family situation difficult. Stepfamilies face special
challenges, for example, when there are children in different
stages of the life cycle. The needs and concerns of teenagers
may be vastly different from those of their infant h
alf-sibling,
and it may take more work to adjust to the new living situation. With the added challenges of blending in-laws, finances,
and households, remarriages are even more likely to end in
divorce than first marriages. However, in successful remarriages, partners are usually older and have learned important
lessons about compatibility and relationship maintenance
from the failure of their first marriages.
Some partners in gay and lesbian couples have a heterosexual marriage (and divorce) in their past. While it is difficult
to estimate, one study hypothesized that approximately 4 percent of heterosexual marriages have one gay or bisexual partner (Laumann et al. 1994). While not all these marriages end
in divorce, when they do, the gay partner becomes free to form
a new family with the partner of his or her choice, just as the
heterosexual partner does. So while the majority of blended
families are heterosexual, some will be “mixed-orientation”
and include stepparents of more than one sexual orientation.
Childfree Living
Having children used to be seen as a mandate and being childless a tragedy—especially for women. We still cling to this
imperative: 90 percent of adults surveyed in a 2013 poll either
had children or wanted them (Reyes 2013). But because men
and women (gay and straight, married and unmarried) now
have more choice than ever about whether to have children, a
growing number are choosing to live “childfree” rather than
“childless.” Childfree adults field all sorts of exasperating
questions about their lives, from “Wait, don’t you like kids?”
to “Oh, that’s too bad you can’t get pregnant” to “Who is going
to take care of you when you get old?” and the classic, “Well,
that’s just selfish.” In fact, people who remain childfree may
love kids, be quite fertile, be generous with others, and have
a perfectly good plan in place for their retirement years; they
just don’t want to raise kids.
There are many reasons for this: children are expensive and
exhausting, and raising them takes energy away from other
things that individuals may value more, such as careers, avocations, and other relationships. But childfree p
eople—especially
women—are stigmatized for their choice and are often the
object of pity, suspicion, and discrimination, according to Laura
Scott (2009), primary researcher and author of the “Childless
by Choice” project. Scott describes our society as “pronatalist,” meaning that our cultural values support childbearing and
child rearing as the normative and preferred practice, and those
who choose to remain childfree must battle against the judgments others make about them based on their nonconformity.
Breaking Up
Although many people stay in bad marriages or other relationships, couples break up every day. In this section, we consider
the changing patterns of breakups, divorce, and remarriage
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ON THE JOB
Constructing Families through Adoption
358
f you’ve read this far in this chapter, you’ve probably already
gotten the sociological message: family doesn’t “just happen.” Family is the product of interactional work. Jennifer
Mitchell, an adoption social worker in Rockford, Illinois, does
some of that work herself, along with her colleagues at Children’s Home and Aid Society, an adoption and family welfare
agency based in Chicago.
Mitchell came to her career in a slightly roundabout way.
She majored in psychology and worked as an office manager
for several years, but after a series of life changes, she found
herself thinking about a career in social services and decided
to return to school to complete a master’s degree in counseling.
At Children’s Home and Aid, Mitchell is one of several
social workers who prepares prospective adoptive parents
and helps them navigate the process of adding to their families through adoption (a different team of social workers at the
agency counsels the birth parents, in order to avoid conflicts
of interest). She screens prospective parents and takes them
through the extensive state licensing procedures that will
qualify them to adopt a child. Mitchell interviews people about
their desire to be parents, their family life, and their hopes for
the future. She visits their homes to make sure they provide a
safe environment for a child. She collects all the information
required by the state, including first aid and CPR certification,
medical exams, letters of recommendation from friends and
employers, and even veterinary clearances on the family pets!
Mitchell also leads training sessions where families learn
about adoption and the important issues surrounding it—for
example, how to talk about adoption with children and other
family members, what to expect in cases of international or
interracial adoption, or how to maintain an open relationship
with an adopted child’s birth family. And when a parent or parents bring their adopted child home for the first time, Mitchell
I
monitors their first few months of family life, helping everyone adjust and making sure things are going well until all the
legal procedures are completed.
Even after an adoption is legally finalized, Mitchell and
her colleagues stay in the picture. The agency hosts parties
for adoptive families so that kids and parents can meet and
connect with one another. Mitchell and her colleagues also
offer post-adoption counseling as a way to help a doptive families who are facing tough times. In some ways, this is what
Mitchell likes most about her job—following the families she
has helped construct, seeing how they develop, and keeping in
touch with them as they make their futures together.
Mitchell has personal experiences that make her distinctively empathetic to the families she encounters in her line of
work. She and her husband have been waiting for more than
five years to adopt a baby from China. Because of changes
in Chinese adoption laws and procedures, they do not know
when—if ever—they will be matched with a Chinese child.
In the meantime, they have become licensed foster parents
and have welcomed two young brothers into their home. So
Mitchell is now a foster mom. She gets the boys up in the
morning, gets them fed and dressed and off to school, chauffeurs them to music lessons and sports practices, and makes
sure they do their homework at night. She stays up with them
when they’re sick, takes them on fun vacations, and fills their
stockings at Christmastime. She talks with them frankly about
the situation they are in and what the chances are of returning
to their family of origin. And if the court decides to make the
boys available for adoption, Mitchell and her husband plan to
become their legal parents. But if the court makes the opposite
decision, the boys will go back to their biological family, and
Mitchell and her husband will open their home to other foster
children who need their support.
as they affect children and adults. We also look at the resulting social problems of custody, visitation, and child support.
For 2014, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that more than
127 million persons were married while about 25 million were
divorced. Thus, in 2014 about 50 percent of the entire U.S. population were married while about 10 percent were divorced
(U.S. Census Bureau 2014l). The percentage of married people
who have divorced has greatly increased since 1950, but it is
not accurate to say that approximately 50 percent of all marriages now end in divorce, although that myth persists (Miller
2014).
About 40 percent of those who divorce will eventually
marry other people. Nearly a quarter (23 percent) of currently married adults have been married before. There is a
gender gap in remarriage patterns, with 64 percent of previously married men having remarried compared to 52 percent
of previously married women (Livingston 2014). Still, remarriage rates among younger Americans in the United States
are actually lower now than they were before the 1960s, a fact
attributable to the increase in cohabitation among unmarried
couples. Census data reveal that about 6 percent of all households are occupied by unmarried heterosexual couples, which
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Percentage of marriages ending in divorce
50%
45%
Married in 1980s
40%
Married in 1970s
35%
Married in 2000s
Married in 1990s
Married in 1960s
30%
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 23 25 26 27 28 29 30
Years of marriage
Figure 12.1 Share of Marriages Ending in Divorce by Decade of Marriage
SOURCE: Survey of Income and Program Participation
may reflect a certain caution about marriage as a result of high
rates of divorce (U.S. Census Bureau 2014a).
In the early 1970s, the children of divorced parents were
more than three times more likely to divorce than their peers
from intact families. But by the mid-1990s, this figure had
dropped to about one and a half times (Wolfinger 1999, 2000).
According to Wolfinger (2003), the decline of intergenerational divorce and marriage rates probably has three sources.
One is the growing acceptance of divorce. Children of divorced
parents no longer suffer the social stigma that was once the
by-product of divorce and are less likely to develop psychological problems as a r esult, which may have contributed to their
divorces in the past. Second, the age of marriage has changed.
Children of divorce are still more likely to marry as teenagers, but those not married by age twenty are more likely not
to marry at all than their peers from intact families. Third,
children of divorced parents are more likely to cohabitate with
their partners and are less likely to marry them than children
of nondivorced parents. Therefore, the decline in marriage
rates among children of divorced parents can be explained by
both increased rates of cohabitation and an increased propensity not to marry at all.
Legalization of same-sex marriage now presents the possibility of divorce for gay and lesbian couples as well. Since
all U.S. states and territories recognize such marriages
they should also allow for legal reciprocity when it comes to
divorce. Divorcing isn’t the only way to break up, of course.
And since not all couples opt to marry, their breakups will
not occur within the legal framework of divorce, either.
Divorce laws can help streamline the process for those who
are married, while those who are not married must cobble
together a package of separate legal contracts that meet
their—a nd their children’s—needs.
Custody, Visitation,
and Child Support
Reviewing the legal policies that address the consequences
of parental breakups for children, sociologists are concerned
with whether custody, visitation, and child support effectively replace the resources, both emotional and financial, of
an intact household. Do they help children?
Custody is the physical and legal responsibility for the
everyday life and routines of children. In previous decades it
was mothers who were disproportionately awarded sole custody of children. But more recently there has been a dramatic
shift toward shared custody
between both parents (Cancian CUSTODY the physical and
and Meyer 1998; Cancian et al. legal responsibility of caring for
2014). By 2008, mother sole- children; assigned by a court for
custody had declined from a high divorced or unmarried parents
of 80 percent to just 42 percent.
This decline reflects an increase in shared custody from 5 percent to 27 percent of all cases. There has been little change in
father sole-custody, which has remained at about 10 percent.
Courts award visitation to noncustodial parents to protect
parent-
child relationships. Generally, parents with regular
visitation patterns are better able to meet the psychological and
financial needs of their children. Fathers who visit regularly
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are more likely to maintain strong
relationships with their children
practical physical tasks necessary
and to pay child support (Seltto maintain family life
zer, Schaeffer, and Charng 1989).
EXPRESSIVE TASKS the
Despite increased vigilance of
emotional work necessary to
courts and lawmakers regarding
support family members
mandated child support policies,
noncustodial parents often fail to
make regular payments to custodial parents. Sociologists have
found that many parents make informal arrangements, or decisions without the mediation of the legal system, about child support schedules soon after the divorce (Peters et al. 1993) and the
stability of payments varies substantially, even among the most
reliable payers (Meyer and Bartfeld 1998).
As children are more likely to live in poverty after their
parents’ divorce, child support policies are important. Women
are more likely to suffer downward economic mobility after
divorce, especially if they retain custody of their children.
In 2011, the poverty rate for custodial-mother families was
32 percent, compared to 16 percent for custodial-father
families (U.S. Census Bureau 2013c). Furstenberg, Hoffman,
and Shrestha (1995) found that women experience on average a 25 percent decline in their economic well-being after a
divorce. Accompanying this post-divorce decline in financial
resources are often scholastic failure, disruptive conduct, and
troubled relationships in children of divorced families (Keith
and Finlay 1988; Morrison and Cherlin 1995). However, it is
not clear whether these behavior problems are the effect of the
divorce itself or of the problems that led up to the divorce. Jui-
Chung Allen Li (2007), a researcher for the RAND Corporation, found that if the behavior of children is compared before
and then after divorce, the divorce itself has very little impact
on their grades or conduct.
INSTRUMENTAL TASKS the
The Work of Family
When we think of work, we usually think of activities done
for a paycheck. But paid labor is not the only type of work that
sociologists are interested i n—especially in the study of family. Many types of work—both paid and unpaid—are necessary to keep a family operating: child care, housecleaning, car
maintenance, cooking, bill paying, helping with homework,
and doing laundry—the list seems endless, especially when
you are the one doing the work!
These tasks can be instrumental or expressive. Instrumental tasks generally achieve a tangible goal (washing
the dishes, fixing the gutters), whereas expressive tasks
generally achieve emotional or relational goals (remembering relatives’ birthdays, playing Chutes and Ladders with the
kids). In a r eal-world family, however, much of the work has
both instrumental and expressive elements. The expressive
work of remembering and celebrating birthdays, for example,
includes all sorts of instrumental tasks, such as buying
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presents, w
riting cards, and baking cakes (Di Leonardo 1987;
Pleck 2000).
Instrumental tasks, such as cooking dinner, include expressive elements as well. As a social scientist committed to making the invisible labor of family visible, Marjorie DeVault
(1991/1994) excavates all the knowledge, skills, and practices—
both instrumental and expressive—we take for granted when
we feed our families. Not only is the knowledge of cooking
needed, but there must be appropriate shopping to keep a
stocked kitchen; to make meals that account for family members’ likes, dislikes, and allergies; and to create a varied and
balanced menu. Producing meals that please, satisfy, and bring
individuals together is just one of the ways that family is created and sustained through interactional w
ork—both instrumental and expressive. We constitute family in and through
meals and every other mundane activity of everyday life.
DATA WORKSHOP
Analyzing
Everyday Life
Comparative Mealtime
Some of us carry a strong and positive
image of our family gathered around the
dining room table for dinner each evening.
While we were growing up, dinner may
have been the one time in the day when the whole family
was together and shared food, stories, lessons, and news.
For many of us, a great deal of socialization took place
around the dinner table; we learned about manners (“Sit
up straight,” “Don’t speak with your mouth full”) as well
as morality, politics, or anything else that seemed important to the adults raising us. Some of us, on the other hand,
may have different memories of family mealtimes. Perhaps they were a time of tension and arguments, or perhaps the family rarely ate a meal together.
In this Data Workshop, you will be doing participant
observation research and writing a short ethnography
on mealtime activity. See Chapter 2 for a review of this
research method. You will pick two different mealtime
setting or situations to examine. You can choose from
among a range of possibilities, including the following:
●
●
Which meal you study—breakfast, lunch, or dinner
Where the meal takes place—in your family home, at
a friend’s or a relative’s house, at your own apartment
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What’s for Dinner? Compare these two family meals. What do
our mealtime practices tell us about contemporary American
families?
or dormitory dining hall, or at a workplace lunch
room, picnic in the park, or restaurant
●
Who is eating the meal—family members, roommates, friends, co-workers, or strangers
After you do the participant observation at the two
mealtimes, write some field notes and answer the following questions in as much detail as you can. These
field notes will serve as data for your analysis:
✱✱ What are the prevailing rules, rituals, norms, and
values associated with the setting and situation?
For example, does everyone sit down to eat at the
same time? Do people leave after they finish even if
others are still eating? Do you need to get in line to
order or pay for food?
✱✱ What kinds of complementary roles are the various
participants engaged in? Who cooks the food, sets the
table, clears the table, does the dishes, and so forth?
Or are you served in a cafeteria or restaurant?
✱✱ What other types of activities (besides eating) are
taking place at mealtime? Are people watching TV,
listening to music or a ballgame, reading the newspaper or texting?
✱✱ What social purposes do the setting or situation
serve other than providing a mealtime environment
for the participants? For example, what do the participants talk about? If children are involved, do they
talk about school or their friends? Are family activities or problems discussed? What kinds of interactions do you see among co-workers or roommates?
Further analyze your field notes to identify patterns
within each setting and meal. What are the similarities
and differences between settings and meals? How do
participants make these mealtimes meaningful as
social events?
There are two options for completing this Data Workshop:
PREP-PAIR-SHARE Make the mealtime observations
and prepare some written notes about your preliminary
findings that you can refer to during class. Get together
with one or two other students and discuss your research.
Compare the analyses of the different meals observed by
the group members. What are the similarities and differences in your findings? What patterns emerge from the
data gathered by the entire group?
O-IT-YOURSELF Complete the research process.
D
Write a three-to four-page essay answering the questions
provided and reflecting on your own experience in conducting this study. What do you think your observations
tell us about contemporary Americans and the practices
and functions of mealtimes? Don’t forget to attach your
field notes to your essay.
The Work of Family
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Gender, Sexuality, and
Family Labor
Imagine working a labor-intensive forty to sixty hours waiting tables, making automobile parts, doing data entry, or
teaching second graders. You arrive home feeling tired, hungry, and worn out, but you cannot sit down to relax. You still
need to cook a meal, do some laundry and cleaning, and take
care of your children or perhaps your elderly parents.
Who is more likely to come home to this scenario? Among
heterosexual couples, women are more likely to have the dual
workload of paid labor outside the home and unpaid labor
inside the home. In this section, we will discuss the division of
labor within the household.
Men and women have always performed different roles to
ensure the survival of their families, but these roles were not
considered unequal until after the Industrial Revolution. At
that time, men began to leave their homes to earn wages working in factories. Women remained at home to take care of children and carry out other domestic responsibilities. As men’s
earned wages replaced subsistence f arming—in which women
had always participated—these wages became the primary
mechanism for providing food, clothing, and shelter for families, thus giving men economic power over women.
Despite women’s increasing participation in the paid workforce, they are still more likely to perform the bulk of household and caregiving labor. In a few cases, men share household
chores (Coltrane 1997), but women bear the brunt of unpaid
household labor. Arlie Hochschild and Anne Machung’s 1989
study of working couples and parents found that women were
indeed working two jobs: paid labor outside the home, or the
first shift, and unpaid labor inside the home, or the second
shift. Hochschild and Machung found that these women tried
numerous strategies to achieve balance between work and
home: hiring other women to clean their houses and care for
their children; relying on friends or family members for help;
refusing to do certain chores,
especially those considered to be
SECOND SHIFT the unpaid
generally “men’s work”; lowering
housework and child care often
their expectations for cleanliexpected of women after they
ness or quality of child care; or
their day’s paid labor
reducing the number of hours
they worked outside the home.
But some women accept their dual workloads without any help
to avoid conflicts with spouses and children. Hochschild and
Machung called these women “Supermoms” but also found that
these “Supermoms” often felt unhappy or emotionally numb.
Although Hochschild and Machung’s observations were
groundbreaking in their analysis of
post-
feminist families, their concept of the “Supermom” has been applicable to
working-class mothers all along. The stay-at-home parent
is possible only when one salary can support the entire family. Before c ollege-educated women were encouraged to work
in the paid labor force, w
orking-class women were there out
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CHAPTER 12
Supermom For many American women, “work” doesn’t end when
they leave the workplace. On returning home, many begin what
Arlie Hochschild calls “the second shift,” doing the unpaid work
of running a household, including doing the laundry, feeding the
children, and helping with homework.
of necessity. The strategies that middle-class women use to
negotiate their second shift are available only to wealthier
families. After all, a woman who cleans another family’s
house and takes care of their children rarely has the financial
resources to hire someone to do the same for her. And so the
second shift is present in w
orking-class homes as well (Miller
and Sassler 2012), with women rarely getting the privilege of
“downtime” that men enjoy.
In
same-
sex couples, the household chores can’t be
unequally distributed by gender, but they aren’t always divided
equally, either. Mignon Moore (2011) found that, in lesbian
families, the division of labor was a way of establishing power
relationships within the family, rather than a way of enacting
externally prescribed gender roles, as may seem to be the case
in heterosexual relationships. In other words, the partner who
does more household labor may be able to transform that role
into more influence over domestic decision making in general,
and decisions having to do with children in particular. This
is itself a type of relational power and may be more valuable
in such relationships than the power associated with higher
income from paid labor.
And while there is very little sociological research on
trans families, scholar Carla Pfeffer’s (2012, 2014) studies of
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cisgender women in partnership with transgender men complicate things even further: should we frame the question of
“who does what” along the lines of sex or gender at all? In these
queer families, the designations of gay/straight, male/female,
wife/husband, and mother/father are non-normative, making
it problematic to ask if the women/wives/mothers who take
on “second shift” work are doing so in fulfillment of traditionally female or feminine roles. How do we categorize the labor
of a child’s biological mother (childbearing, breastfeeding,
and other child-care activities, especially in the early months)
when the same person may also be the child’s legal father? Perhaps it is time to reframe the work of family using categories
other than sex and gender.
Family and the Life
Course
As an agent of socialization and the most basic of primary
groups, the family molds e veryone—young children, teenagers, adults, and senior c itizens—and its influences continue
throughout the life course.
When we are children, our families provide us with our
first lessons in how to be members of society. Children’s experiences are shaped by family size, birth order, presence or
absence of parents, socioeconomic status, and other sociological variables. Dalton Conley’s 2004 work The Pecking Order
maintains that inequality between siblings; things outside the
family’s control, such as the economy, war, illness, and death;
and marital discord affect each child at different stages in his
or her life, resulting in different experiences for each child.
Conley argues that family proves not to be the consistent
influence many people view it to be.
In addition, the presence of children shapes the lives of
parents. Relationship satisfaction tends to decline when there
are small children in the house, and heterosexual couples’
gendered division of labor becomes more traditional when
children are born, even if it has been nontraditional up to
that point. As children get older, they may exert other types
of influence on their parents—for example, children can pressure their parents to quit smoking or eat healthier food. And
of course, later in life, they may be called on to care for their
elderly parents as well as their own offspring—a phenomenon
known as “the sandwich generation” effect.
Aging in the Family
The American population is a ging. The number of A mericans
sixty-five or older is growing twice as fast as the population
as a whole (Werner 2011). This is because of the Baby Boom
generation (the large number of Americans born in the post–
World War II era) moving into middle age and beyond, concurrent with advances in medical technology. Average life
expectancy in the United States was approximately 79 (with
women living an average of five years longer than men) in
2013. More people are living longer, and that has an impact
on families and society.
Planning for an aging population means taking into
account both the basic and special needs of older individuals. Retirement income is an important part of this planning.
Social Security benefits are the major source of income for
about 65 percent of the elderly in the United States and the
only source of income for 24 percent of America’s retired
population. Without other sources of income, retired citizens
may find themselves with limited resources; in 2013, 9.5 percent of adults sixty-five and older lived below the poverty line
(U.S. Census Bureau 2014g). Some seniors solve the problems
by living with their adult children or with nonfamily members; even so, in 2013, 35 percent of women and 19 percent of
men age sixty-five and older lived alone. The proportion of
older adults living alone increases with age, with nearly half
(45 percent) of women age seventy-five and older doing so in
2013 (Administration on Aging 2014). Like other traditional
The New Senior Citizen Americans are living longer and leading vibrant, active lives. Marie W
ilcox-Little and Donald Goo, both age
seventy-three, still enjoy swimming and surfing.
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IN RELATIONSHIPS
From Boomerang Kids to the Sandwich Generation
W
hen people talk about the disappearance of the nuclear
family, they are usually referring to the divorce rate, but,
especially for the Baby Boom generation, families are changing in other ways as well. Traditionally, becoming m
iddle-aged
was associated with the “midlife crisis” but also with maturity,
wisdom, and increased professional skills. While this might
seem like a contradiction, changes in the nature of the family make these qualities seem more like a necessity! Increasing numbers of middle-aged people are becoming members
of a “sandwich generation,” adults who provide material and
emotional support for both young children and older living
parents (Lachman 2004, p. 322). This effect is magnified by
the increasing number of so-called boomerang kids, who leave
home at eighteen to attend college but often return home for at
least a short period of time afterward.
Both of these dynamics are being driven less by choice than
by demographic and economic necessity. In 1970, the average
age at first marriage was less than twenty-one for women and
a little over t wenty-three for men. In 2014, the median age at
first marriage for women was twenty-seven, and for men it
was a little over twenty-nine (U.S. Census Bureau 2015h). As a
result, people are having children later, increasing the chances
that c hild-rearing and elder care will overlap. Advances in life
expectancy also contribute to the sandwich effect, even as
functions of the family (such as educating children), care of
the elderly is no longer a primary duty of family and has been
taken over by other institutions: many senior citizens will
spend time in a nursing home, being housed and cared for by
people other than their family members. In 2012, approximately 1.5 million seniors ages sixty-five years and older, or
about 3.6 percent, lived in institutional settings such as nursing homes. Another 2.7 percent lived in senior housing where
various support services were provided to residents. These
numbers increase dramatically with age; approximately 11
percent of people ages eighty-five and older lived in such institutional settings (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2012).
Coping with the transitions of retirement, loss of one’s partner, declining health, and death are central tasks for seniors.
However, as the average lifespan extends, the elderly are also
taking on new roles in society. Many live healthy, vibrant,
active lives and are engaged with their families and communities in ways that are productive for both the individual and the
person’s groups.
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many of the medical advances that allow people to live longer
also increase their need for material support.
While there have always been adults caring for their
elderly parents, never before have there been this many
elderly. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of
the “oldest old,” those eighty-five and older, increased 30 percent between 2000 and 2010, while the total U.S. population
grew by only 10 percent during that time (Werner 2011).
Meanwhile, between tuition increases, student loans, and
the slow job market, students leaving college are more likely
to need help from their parents than ever before. In 1980, less
than 9 percent of all individuals between twenty-five and
thirty-four lived with their parents. By 2011, this number had
increased to almost 15 percent, still a small group but one that
has increased significantly during the past three decades.
Members of the sandwich generation have found themselves with more responsibilities than ever before. Not only
are their parents living longer, but medical costs associated
with old age are growing rapidly, and often they have children,
of all ages, still dependent on them as well. Never before has
there been a substantial cohort of Americans so directly burdened with such a wide range of family responsibilities. However, in some ways, the more the sandwich generation adults
and the boomerang kids change the family, the more they stay
Trouble in Families
While families are often a place of comfort, support, and
unconditional love, some are not a “haven in a heartless world”
(Lasch 1977). The family may be where we are at the greatest
risk—emotionally, socially, and physically. “People are more
likely to be killed, physically assaulted, sexually victimized . . .
in their own homes by other family members than anywhere
else, or by anyone else, in our society” (Gelles 1995, p. 450).
Because family is the site of unequal power relations and
intense feelings, and because of current social norms about
the privacy of family life, the circumstances for trouble and
violence are ripe. The concept of private nuclear families
did not emerge in the United States until the early 1900s. In
colonial times, child rearing was a collective effort in which
community leaders and neighbors often overruled parental
decisions about children. In the late 1800s, mothers looked to
other mothers for advice about their children (Coontz 2000).
Mothers’ journals at the time show that the opinions of other
women were often more important than the husband’s in
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the same, especially in the way that gender roles manifest
themselves. Even among eighteen- to twenty-four-year-olds,
boys are more likely to live at home than girls, and 60 percent
of the boomerang kids between the ages of twenty-five and
thirty-four are male. While men and women might be driven
by the same financial troubles, moving back in with her parents has different consequences for a woman. She is likely to
be asked to take on more domestic responsibilities, and typically she feels a greater loss of independence.
Gender functions in similar ways for the sandwich generation, as it is still mostly women who are called on to provide
the emotional and instrumental support for elderly parents,
even when those women also work. In fact, “working women
who do take on caregiving tasks may reduce their work hours”
(Velkoff and Lawson 1998, p. 2), finding themselves having to
prioritize family over career in ways men often don’t.
Despite the many costs associated with being a member of the sandwich generation, there is good news as well.
Although there are challenges associated with “dual responsibilities,” these are mostly experienced as “a ‘squeeze’ but not
stress,” and these relationships are also a source of happiness
and well-being (Lachman 2004, p. 322). And while there is
still a certain stigma associated with moving back in with your
family decisions. Not until the 1900s did the isolated nuclear
family become the ideal in the minds of Americans.
Domestic Abuse
Imagine that tomorrow’s newspapers ran front-page headlines about a newly discovered disease epidemic that could
potentially kill o
ne-quarter of all American women. Between
1 million and 4 million women would be afflicted in the next
year alone. What kind of public reaction would there be?
Let’s reframe the scenario: in the United States, one out
of every four women suffers physical violence at the hands of
an intimate partner at some point in her adult life (National
Coalition Against Domestic Violence 2007). In addition, millions of women suffer verbal, financial, and psychological
abuse from those who are supposed to love them. Despite these
statistics, such abuse is a silent epidemic, seldom reported.
Domestic abuse is an umbrella term for the behaviors
abusers use to gain and maintain control over their victims. These behaviors fall into five main categories: physical
The Sandwich Generation With four generations under one roof,
the LaRock and Bruno families are an extreme example of the
sandwich generation, where adults provide support for both
young children and aging parents.
parents, the fact that so many are willing to do so suggests that
today’s boomerang kids may enjoy closer relationships with
their parents than kids of previous generations did.
(slapping, punching, kicking, choking, shoving, restraining),
verbal (insults, taunts, threats, degrading statements), financial (insisting on complete control of all household finances,
including making decisions about who will work and when),
sexual (rape, molestation), and psychological or emotional
abuse (mind games, threats, stalking, intimidation). Although
not all abusers are physically violent toward their partners,
any one type of abuse increases the likelihood of the others.
In an abusive relationship, it is extremely rare to find only one
form of abuse.
Rates of domestic abuse vary somewhat across racial,
ethnic (Truman and Morgan 2014), and religious groups
(National Resource Center on Domestic Violence 2007);
LGBTQ partners experience up
to twice as much relationship
violence as heterosexual couples DOMESTIC ABUSE any
physical, verbal, financial, sexual,
(Stiles-Shields and Carroll 2014).
or psychological behaviors
Women are certainly not the only abusers use to gain and maintain
group to suffer from domestic power over their victims
abuse, but statistically, they are
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more likely than men to be victimized by an intimate partner:
behavior pattern in abusive
between 2003 and 2012, 76 perrelationships; the cycle begins
cent of domestic violence was comhappily, then the relationship
mitted against women (Bureau of
grows tense, and the tension
explodes in abuse, followed by a
Justice Statistics 2014b). Accordperiod of contrition that allows
ing to the U.S. Department of
the cycle to repeat
Justice, women between the ages
of twenty and twenty-
four are
victims of abuse at the hands of an intimate partner more frequently than women in any other age group (National Coalition
Against Domestic Violence 2007). Poor women are also more
likely to be abused than women with higher incomes (Bachman and Saltzman 1995). Age and economic security, however,
do not make someone immune to abuse.
Contrary to popular opinion, most abusive partners are not
“out of control,” nor do they have “anger management problems” in the traditional sense. They often seem charming and
calm to c o-workers, friends, and police officers; they deliberately decide to be violent with those least likely to report the
crime and over whom they maintain the most control: their
CYCLE OF VIOLENCE a common
family members. Domestic abuse results from the abuser’s
desire for power over the victim, and abusers often blame
their victims: I wouldn’t have beaten you if dinner had been on
time, or if you hadn’t been “flirting” with the sales associate
at the mall. One abuser is reported to have said to police officers, “Yes, I hit her five or six times, but it was only to calm her
down” (“Even in the Best of Homes” 2003).
A four-stage cycle of violence seems to occur in almost
every abusive relationship. In the first stage, the abusive
partner is charming, attentive, and thoughtful; disagreements are glossed over and the relationship looks stable and
healthy. However, tension is building to the second stage, often
described as “walking on eggshells.” Here, both parties sense
that something will happen no matter what the victim may do
to try to avoid it. During the third stage, acute abuse and violence occur, lasting for seconds, hours, or even days. Whatever
happens, the abuser will invariably blame the victim for the
incident. The fourth stage, often referred to as “loving contrition,” is the “honeymoon” phase and is one of the reasons victims remain in abusive relationships. After the violence, the
abuser will apologize profusely and promise that it will never
happen again. The abuser may buy the victim gifts, beg forgiveness, and talk about getting help or making a change. Most
abusers, however, have no interest in changing because they
don’t want to give up their control over their victims. Soon the
cycle starts again, with flowers and gifts giving way to tension,
uneasiness, and another battering.
Victims of domestic abuse stay with their abusers for many
reasons. After years of abuse, victims often believe what their
abusers tell them: that they can’t make it on their own and
are somehow responsible for the abuse. If they have not been
allowed to attend school or to work, they may not have employment skills. Often, children are involved, or abusers threaten
to harm other family members. Many victims have been isolated from friends and family and are afraid to speak of the
abuse to anyone, and they see no options but to remain where
they are. Survivors who do manage to leave may find that their
abusive partners present an even greater risk to their safety
after they have exited the relationship (Dunn 2002).
DATA WORKSHOP
Analyzing Media
and Pop Culture
Ray Rice Former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice was
caught on an Atlantic City surveillance camera as he coldcocked
his then-fiancée, now wife and dragged her out of an elevator.
This incident set in motion an investigation that effectively ended
Rice’s NFL career and shined a light on professional football as a
game that involves violence both on and off the field.
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Family Troubles in Film
Family relations have long been the basis
of good comic, tragic, and dramatic films.
This Data Workshop asks you to examine
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Family Troubles? What do films like The Kids Are All Right and Boyhood tell us about contemporary American families?
family dynamics and, more specifically, family troubles,
as depicted in a feature film. You will be using existing
sources and doing both a content analysis and a historical
comparative analysis of a film dealing with family troubles.
Return to Chapter 2 for a review of this research method.
The following films depict a variety of family troubles:
marital issues, divorce, domestic abuse, parental neglect, disabilities and illnesses, sex and dating, pregnancy,
death, delinquency, and financial difficulties. Other movies could certainly be added to this list; ask your instructor
if there is another you’d like to choose. Your movie should
be available on DVD or online so that you can view (and
review) it carefully. Please be aware of MPAA ratings and
watch only those movies that are appropriate for your age
and that you are comfortable viewing:
Affliction
American Beauty
Amreeka
August: Osage County
Boyhood
The Descendants
The Ice Storm
In America
In the Bedroom
The Joy Luck Club
The Kids Are All Right
Kramer vs. Kramer
Mi Familia (My Family)
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
Ordinary People
Precious
Rachel Getting Married
The Royal Tenenbaums
Saving Face
The Squid and the Whale
Stepmom
Still Alice
Terms of Endearment
We Don’t Live Here Anymore
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape
You Can Count on Me
Choose a movie that is primarily about contemporary
family relations and problems, then read through the
workshop prompts and keep them in mind while viewing.
Watch the film closely and pay attention to the plotlines,
scenes, characters, and dialogues in which family troubles are depicted. Take notes as you watch the movie; you
may need to review certain segments several times to do a
thorough content analysis. As part of the process, you will
also be doing an Internet search to gather more data about
the family problems and their incidence in contemporary
society. Be sure to note the source of your web references.
Respond to the following points and questions:
✱✱ Give some background information on the film and
why you chose it.
✱✱ Describe the family troubles that are the focus of the
film. How are these problems manifested in the lives
of the family members?
✱✱ How do the various characters deal with their prob-
lems? What solutions do they propose through their
talk or actions? How effective are these solutions in
addressing the family’s troubles?
✱✱ Put the family’s problems in a broader sociological
context. In what ways are the individual troubles of
family members linked to larger social patterns and
problems?
✱✱ Gather some recent data from the U.S. Census
Bureau, other government or private agencies, or
various news sources. How widespread are these
problems in the real world? How are they being discussed and dealt with at a public level?
✱✱ How accurately do you think the family’s troubles,
and their possible solutions, were depicted in the
film? What kind of a role, if any, do you think the
media can play in helping to improve family troubles and associated social problems?
There are two options for completing this Data Workshop:
PRE P- PA IR- SH A RE Complete the research activities
and develop some preliminary analyses. Prepare some
informal notes that you can refer to during in-class discussions. Pair up with one or more classmates and discuss your insights. Compare and contrast the analyses of
the films observed by participants in your group.
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IN THE FUTURE
Trends in Baby Making: Back to the Future?
T
he first successful progeny of in vitro fertilization, or
IVF (referred to disparagingly as a “test-tube baby”), was
born in 1978. Louise Brown Mullinder is now a parent herself,
and millions of “test-tube babies” have been conceived, born,
and raised all over the world. Assisted reproductive technology has come a long way since the experiment that resulted
in Louise’s birth. Now w
ould-be parents have many options:
fertility treatments, IVF, egg and sperm donations, and gestational surrogacy are all growing in popularity. And artificial
wombs are being developed that would allow the entire gestation process to occur “in vitro”—no actual human pregnancy
required (Mejia 2014). What do these developments mean for
the future of the family?
Some of the benefits are already clear: people who were
once unable to have biological children now can do so. Single people, LGBTQ people, infertile people, and postmenopausal women can access these ways of creating family—if
they have the necessary financial resources. A round of IVF
costs between $10,000 and $15,000, and a woman typically
has to go through two to three rounds before getting pregnant, while expenses for surrogate birth can reach $100,000
or more.
Advances in technology have also made a variety of genetic
screenings possible, allowing parents to determine whether
an embryo carries certain diseases or disorders or if it provides the genetic match necessary to be a “savior sibling” for
an older child in need of a transplant. Technologies like these
make it possible to imagine a future of “designer” children,
whose genetic characteristics, such as gender, intelligence,
or disease susceptibility, can be manipulated by parents and
doctors. The ethics of such a scenario are problematic to say
the least.
DO - IT-YOU RSE L F Complete the research activities
described and develop some preliminary answers to the
questions. Write a three- to four-page essay about the
film’s relevance. What do you think your observations tell
us about contemporary American families and the ways
in which family troubles are portrayed on film? Remember to include your notes and provide any references you
used.
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At the same time that b
aby-making technologies depart for
the future (while leaving cultural ethics struggling to catch
up), there is a c ounter-movement to return to practices of the
past when it comes to pregnancy and childbirth. A growing
number of mothers-to-be are employing “doulas”—birth support professionals who help pregnant women through labor
and delivery, providing assistance, encouragement, and care
that medical staff and co-parents can’t always provide. The
rise in popularity of doulas is linked to women wanting to have
a more pleasurable birth experience, along with growing criticism of hospital birth (Port 2014).
In the past, and in other cultures, women often labored and
gave birth at home, surrounded by experienced and supportive
female friends and family members. Hospital birthing practices
have made that rarer now, especially in the United States. While
most women still give birth in hospitals, attended by obstetrical
staff, a growing minority (3 percent in 2006) seek the service of
doulas (Declerq et al. 2007). And those who use doula services,
within or outside of hospitals, are almost unanimously satisfied with them, giving doulas higher ratings as birth attendants
than they give friends, family members, partners, doctors, or
nurses. Until recently, the practices of doulas have been predominately passed down within family/communal traditions;
now, more formal training is provided, with several organizations offering training and certification for doulas.
Despite the inevitable bureaucratization of even this traditional practice, the popularity of doulas indicates that the
future of childbirth is not all about c utting-edge technology.
Doulas take us “back to the future,” with t ime-honored practices that women have used for centuries. And indeed, there is
no reason why doulas can’t coexist with assisted reproductive
technologies. The past always has something to offer the future.
Child and Elder Abuse
Adult partners are not the only victims of domestic abuse.
Children and the elderly also suffer at the hands of abusive
family m
embers—and can suffer in distinctive ways that are
linked to their special status in the family. Child abuse and
elder abuse are likely to be underreported, partly because of
the relative powerlessness of the victims and the private settings of the abuse. Official statistics show that about 1 percent of children in the United States are abused in some way,
though given underreporting the number is likely much higher
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(U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2015). About
5 percent of all seniors in the United States have been subjected to elder abuse in some form (Acierno et al. 2010). Both
children and elders with chronic diseases or other sorts of
impairments are at an increased risk of abuse.
In addition to physical violence and verbal, emotional, and
sexual abuse, children may experience a distinctive type of
abuse known as neglect—inadequate nutrition, insufficient
clothing or shelter, and unhygienic or unsafe living conditions. Close to 80 percent of child abuse victims suffer from
neglect (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
2015). Because children depend on adults for their care and
well-being, they suffer when those adults abandon or corrupt
that responsibility. Incest is another form of child abuse that
exploits the trust that children must place in their caregivers.
Inappropriate sexual relationships between parents and children have devastating lifelong consequences for child victims,
which may include self-destructive behavior, such as eating disorders and substance abuse, and the inability to form
trusting relationships later in life. In addition, those who were
physically or sexually abused as children have a much higher
likelihood of becoming abusers themselves.
Elder abuse can also take distinctive forms. As well as
physical, verbal, emotional, and sexual abuse, there is financial exploitation or theft; relatives
or other caregivers may
steal or misuse the elder’s property or financial resources.
Another form is neglect and abandonment. Some elders are
dependent on others to care for them. Refusal to provide food,
shelter, health care, or protection can be as devastating to an
elder as it is to a child. Both elder and child abuse exploit the
special powerlessness of victims and are difficult to monitor
and control.
Postmodern Families:
The New Normal
In 1960, over t wo-thirds of families consisted of a married
couple with a male breadwinner, a s tay-at-home mom, and
their children. By 2012, less than one-quarter of families
looked like this, and there was no single arrangement that
could be used to describe the majority of families (Cohen
2014). Instead, we are looking at a growing diversity of family
forms, including unmarried parNEGLECT a form of child abuse
ents, blended families, multirain which the caregiver fails to
cial families, LGBTQ families, provide adequate nutrition,
and extended family households. sufficient clothing or shelter, or
This diversity is a result of a hygienic and safe living conditions
number of social changes over
INCEST sexual contact between
the past half-century, includ- family members; a form of child
ing technological innovations in abuse when it occurs between a
household labor, improved birth child and a caregiver
control, greater employment
opportunities and increasing educational attainment for
women, rising divorce rates, increasing acceptance of mixedrace and LGBTQ persons and households, and changes in
social welfare programs and laws. Families respond to these
social-structural changes in ways that best fit and meet their
needs. Indeed, diverse family forms are not especially new;
they are merely new to mainstream working-and middle-
class families. Minority families, those living in poverty, and
gays and lesbians have always had to improvise to fit into a
society that ignored or devalued their needs and activities
(Stack 1974; Weston 1991; Edin and Lein 1997; Stacey 1998).
Diverse, improvisational postmodern family forms will
become more and more familiar to the rest of society as we all
cope with the social and cultural changes of the twenty-first
century.
CLOSING COMMENTS
When sociologists study the dynamics of family, they must
define the subject of their interest. What exactly is family?
This process sometimes leads to definitions that lie outside
the traditional notions of biological or legal relations that
have historically defined family. Certainly, this is true if one
looks outside the United States at the astonishing variety of
customs and practices that define family around the world.
Here, too, the nature of the nuclear family is changing, while
new types of family groupings are becoming more commonplace. The emergence of these “brave new families” has led to
a sea change in the study of families, with an increasing recognition of the diversity and plurality that characterize family arrangements.
Closing Comments
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Everything You Need to Know about
Families
“ Sociology
doesn’t define
a family by who
its members
are but by what
they do, how
they relate to
one another,
and what their
relationship is
to the larger
society.
THEORIES OF THE
FAMILY
✱✱
✱✱
✱✱
Structural functionalism: the family is responsible for the reproduction
of society as it produces and socializes children
Conflict theory: conflict within the
family is about the competition for
scarce resources: time, energy, and
leisure; exploitation occurs through a
sexual rather than a class-based division of labor
Symbolic interactionism: family is
a social construction that is created,
changed, and maintained through
ongoing interaction
REVIEW
1. How does this chapter’s definition
of family differ from the one used by
the U.S. Census Bureau? Make a list
of everyone you consider a family
member. Is there anyone on this list
who wouldn’t qualify according to
the Census Bureau’s definition?
2. Conflict theorists believe that strife
within the family is fueled by competition for resources. What is the basis
for inequality within the family? In
families, who tends to receive fewer
resources?
3. Arlie Hochschild and Anne Machung
found that women who work outside
the home often face a “second shift”
of housework when they get home.
How do men avoid doing their share
of this work? Have you ever noticed
someone—perhaps yourself—adopting
these tactics?
“
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HOW TO READ THIS
CHAPTER
In this chapter, we examine society’s most basic social
g roup—the family. Yet, what makes a family is subject to
debate. Sociology doesn’t define a family by who its members
are but by what they do, how they relate to one another, and
what their relationship is to the larger society. We’ll look at
the dynamic diversity of family forms in the contemporary
United States, the functions of family for society, the hierarchies of inequality that shape family life, the work that gets
done by and in families, the kinds of troubles families experience, and the political and cultural controversies that affect
families. You will learn that when it comes to family life,
change is the only constant.
What Is the Family?
The U.S. Census Bureau defines “family” as two or more individuals related by blood, marriage, or adoption living in
the same household. This definition is a starting point, but
it’s too limited to encompass even the family arrangements
described in the opening vignette. Contemporary sociologists
use the word family to mean a social group whose members
are bound by some type of tie—legal, biological, emotional,
or a combination of all three. They may or may not share a
household, but family members are interdependent and have
a sense of mutual responsibility for one another’s care. We
don’t define family by specific types of people (parents or children) or specific types of ties (marriage or biology) because we
believe the definition should be broad enough to encompass a
variety of forms. However, this very variety is the source of
controversy both within and outside academia. Regardless
of the definition, most people recognize family as an integral
social institution found in every society.
The family as an institution has always changed in
response to its social, cultural, political, and economic milieu.
Before the Industrial Revolution, “family” tended to mean
extended family—a large group of kin, or relatives, which
could include grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins living
in one household. After the Industrial Revolution, this configuration was largely superseded by the nuclear family—a
heterosexual couple, usually married, living in their own
household and raising children. Along the way, the family
moved from a more public social institution to a private one,
as many functions formerly associated with the family were
transferred to other institutions. For example, work and production moved from the family to the factory, education moved
from the family to the school, and government took over a variety of social welfare and support services formerly taken care
of by the extended family.
Subsequent waves of social change, such as the
women’s liberation movement and the move toward
individual independence and
MARRIAGE a formally recognized
self-fulfillment, have begun to
bond between two spouses,
erode the dominance of the mar- establishing contractual rights
ried, heterosexual nuclear fam- and obligations between them
ily, as increased divorce rates,
ADOPTION the legal process of
working mothers, single parents,
acquiring parental responsibilities
same-sex marriage, LGBTQ for a child other than one’s
families, and other alternative biological offspring
family arrangements become
FAMILY a social group whose
more common. Many sociolomembers are bound by legal,
gists speak of the sociology not biological, or emotional ties, or a
of the family but rather of fami- combination of all three
lies. “Family situations in conEXTENDED FAMILY a large
temporary society are so varied
group of relatives, usually
and diverse that it simply makes including at least three
no sociological sense to speak of generations living either in one
a single ideal-type model of ‘the household or in close proximity
family’ at all” (Bernardes 1985,
KIN relatives or relations, usually
p. 209).
those related by common descent
Even
though
a
two-
h eterosexual- m arried- p arent NUCLEAR FAMILY a
heterosexual couple with one or
household with a stay-at-home
more children living in a single
mother, a breadwinning father, household
and their two biological children
is no longer the norm, this type
of family remains the model by which new forms of family are judged. However, there are exceptions, as commonsense definitions of family reflect the changes occurring in
the larger society at any given moment. Children seem to be
important in our customary definitions of family: one study
found that unmarried couples, both gay and heterosexual,
are more likely to be considered a family if children are
present ( Powell et al. 2010). And in an earlier study, Powell
(2003) found that unrelated roommates who are not romantically involved are significantly more likely to be considered
family by those over the age of s ixty-five.
As you will see as you read this chapter, what constitutes
the model or hypothetical family may be very different from
how families define themselves “on the ground.”
Sociological Perspectives
on Families
Among the sociological perspectives on the family, structural functionalists view it as a cultural universal and try
to identify its functions for society. Conflict theorists argue
that there are inherent inequalities both within and between
families. Symbolic interactionists focus on the family as
the product of interactional processes, while feminist and
queer theoretical perspectives question male dominance
and heteronormativity as yardsticks for determining what
is “normal” when it comes to family. Each of these theories
offers useful insights into our understanding of family units.
Sociological Perspectives on Families
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GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
Talking about Kin
I
n P. D. Eastman’s children’s book Are You My Mother? a
newly hatched bird wanders about asking e veryone—and
everything—she encounters, “Are you my mother?” Sadly for
the newborn, neither the construction crane, nor the cow, nor
the cat is the parent she is searching for. On the last page of the
book, however, the tiny bird is serendipitously returned to her
nest and reunited with a maternal-looking chickadee.
When reading something like Are You My Mother? most
people in the Western world would assume that the word
“mother” means “female parent.” However, in the Hawaiian
language, makuahine means both “mother” and “aunt” and
refers to any female relative in the generation of that person’s parents; makuakane is
the equivalent term for men
FICTIVE KIN close
(Stanton 1995; Schwimmer
relations with people we
2001). In Hawaiian, then, “Are
consider “like family” but
who are not related to
you my mother?” could just
us by blood or marriage
as easily mean “Are you my
father’s brother’s wife?” In
China, though, kinship terms are very precise. There are particular terms for a “father’s brother’s wife” that vary depending on whether the wife is married to the older brother or a
younger one (Levi-Strauss 1949/1969)!
One reason we name our kin is to delineate the relationships and obligations we share. In some cases, we use the term
fictive kin to refer to people who are not related to us through
blood or through marriage. Such kin are created through
closely knit friendships to the family. You may have a family
friend you call Auntie S
o-and-So. In other societies, fictive kin
may be culturally prescribed. In Jordan, it is perfectly normal
for adult strangers to address one another with the Arabic
equivalents of brother/sister, maternal aunt/uncle, and paternal aunt/uncle. In addition, an older Jordanian woman may
affectionately refer to a child (of either gender) as “mother”
(Farghal and Shakir 1994).
Sometimes fictive kinship ties are formalized through ceremony, as when a female in India ties a sacred thread around
the wrist of an unrelated close male friend to indicate that
she considers him a brother. In Latin America, godparents
(compadrazgo, a word that can be translated as “co-parent”
rather than “godparent”) are considered permanent members
of their godchildren’s family. Not surprisingly, the Spanish
words for “daughter” and “son” are very close to the words
for “goddaughter” and “godson” (Davila 1971; van den Berghe
1979).
Examining kinship terms is one way to understand the
diversity of families and how kin fulfill their social roles. As
you can see, aunts, elder brothers, godparents, and family
friends can all be important family members.
Structural Functionalism
that Durkheim believed people require to be happy. Durkheim
hypothesized that men who were married and had children
were less likely to kill themselves because of their obligations
to their families, while single men had less to tether them to
this mortal coil, and hence would be more likely to succumb
to suicidal impulses.
The structural functionalists who followed Durkheim
argued that society’s survival requires institutions that
can serve its essential functions: economic production, the
In Suicide, Émile Durkheim (1897/1951) argued that the
Industrial Revolution and the division of labor had undermined the older social institutions that formerly regulated
society, leaving some people suffering from anomie, or normlessness, that sometimes resulted in suicide. He found that
marriage and family, at least for men, decreased the chances
of suicide because they provide the structure and regulation
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socialization of children, instrumental and emotional support, and sexual control. Although the family is no longer
directly involved in economic production, it performs the
functions that allow production to happen. Talcott Parsons
(1955) argued that “the modern nuclear family was especially
complementary to the requirements of an industrial economy” because it freed individuals from onerous obligations to
extended family members and made possible the geographic
and social mobility demanded by the modern economy (Mann
et al. 1997). In the most basic sense, the family is responsible
for the reproduction of society as it produces and socializes
children who will in turn become future workers and produce
and socialize more new members of society. This is what Parsons referred to as “pattern maintenance,” whereby the values
and norms of a society are passed on to the next generation.
Family also, ideally, brings emotional support for its members
by providing us with significant others such as spouses, parents, and siblings, and regulates sexuality by helping define
with whom we can and cannot mate (in most societies, our
brothers, sisters, or parents). These patterns, according to
functionalists, help society run smoothly and maintain stability and order, and family as a social institution contributes to
social order as a result.
Conflict Theory
Conflict theorists recognize that the family produces and
socializes children to function efficiently in a capitalist
economy, but they see this function as problematic. The
nuclear family, a relatively recent historical invention, acts
as the primary economic unit in modern capitalist society, and since conflict theorists see capitalism as oppressive, they claim that this form of family contributes to
that oppression—and is often understood as an oppressive
institution in itself. Conflict theorists believe that society revolves around conflict over scarce resources and that
conflict within the family is also about the competition for
resources: time, energy, and the leisure to pursue more interesting recreational activities.
In this analysis, the family can allow exploitation through
a sexual rather than a c lass-based division of labor. Conflict
perspectives overlap with feminist perspectives on the family, as feminists assume that the family is a gendered social
institution and that men and women experience family differently. In patriarchal societies, men wield greater power
than women, both within and outside the family, and women’s contribution to family and society (such as household
labor, child rearing, and other traditionally female work) is
devalued and unpaid or underpaid (Thorne 1992). Considering men to be “heads of household” and providing them with
legal rights that women don’t have (which in some countries
include the right to inherit, or to seek a divorce) means that
families themselves are places in which women are discriminated against.
Gender is not the only system of stratification that shapes
our experience in families. Age and ability may be the basis
for inequality, conflict, and even violence within families, and
will be discussed in more detail later in the chapter.
Symbolic Interactionism
As Jim Holstein and Jay Gubrium point out in their book
What Is Family (1990), the family does not exist, only families. These symbolic interactionists consider it more effective
to look at how family relations are created and maintained in
interaction than how they are structured. Even though the
legal bond of marriage has the same technical meaning for
every couple, individual marriages may have very different
expectations and rules for behavior. One couple may require
sexual monogamy within their marriage, while their neighbors may not; one couple may pool their finances while their
neighbors may keep separate bank accounts. This approach
conceives of family as a fluid, adaptable set of concepts and
practices that people use “for constructing the meaning of
social bonds” (Holstein and Gubrium 1995), a set of vocabularies to describe particular relationships.
Consider the number of relatives, defined by blood or marriage, most people have who play no meaningful role in their
lives, who “aren’t really family.” When we describe people in
terms of family, we are making claims about the “rights, obligations, and sentiments” that exist within their relationships
(Gubrium and Buckholdt 1982). Consequently, we are constantly evaluating and reevaluating the attitudes and behaviors of those around us, assigning family status to new people
and dismissing others from our circle of meaningful family
relations. In All Our Kin, an ethnography of kinship relations
in an urban African American community, Carol Stack (1974)
found this dynamic at work in the way people talked about
family—including this woman, who explained,
Most people kin to me are in this neighborhood . . . b
ut
I got people in the South, in Chicago, and in Ohio too. I
couldn’t tell most of their names and most of them aren’t
really kinfolk to me. . . . Take my father, he’s no father to
me. I ain’t got but one daddy and that’s Jason. The one
who raised me. My kids’ daddies, that’s something else,
all their daddies’ people really take to them—they always
doing things and making a fuss about them. We help each
other out and that’s what kinfolks are all about. (p. 45)
A symbolic interactionist might say that “family members
do not merely passively conform to others’ expectations”
but rather “actively and creatively construct and modify
their roles through interactions” (Dupuis and Smale 2000,
p. 311)—that is, the people who help each other out, who care
for each other, and who express that care are family, whether
or not they are legally or biologically related. Sociologist
Philip Cohen (2014) has coined the term “personal family” to
describe some of these relationships.
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Feminist and Queer Theory
Feminist and queer theoretical perspectives on family
address what other sociological perspectives overlook: the
interplay of gender and sexuality in family and society. Feminist theorists question male dominance, both within and outside families. Why, for example, when heterosexual partners
share a home, do we refer to the male partner as the “head of
household”? This simple and often taken-for-granted designation bestows upon men the power to make decisions,
control financial and other resources, and expect domestic
labor and emotional support from the women in their families. This is just one of many elements of family and social
structure that tend to privilege men and exploit women, and
assumptions like this about gender in families affect us all. That
HOMOGAMY the tendency to
includes the authors of this textchoose romantic partners who
book. When Dr. Ferris married
are similar to us in terms of class,
her husband, she did not take his
race, religion, education, or other
last name, but they did want to
social group membership
share joint access to each other’s
ENDOGAMY marriage to
bank accounts. She arranged
someone within one’s social group
with her bank to add her husEXOGAMY marriage to someone
band’s name to her account,
from a different social group
giving them both the authority
PROPINQUITY the tendency
to sign checks. When the next
to partner with people who live
month’s bank statement arrived,
close by
it was addressed to her husband
alone! Dr. Ferris’s name had been
removed from her own financial life once she acquired a male
“head of household.” As you might imagine, the bank president got an earful about this error.
Queer theorists further critique traditional perspectives
on family by resisting heteronormativity as well as sexism
Table 12.1
Mate Selection
You may think that you are attracted to certain people because
of their unique individual characteristics or something intangible called “chemistry.” In reality, however, Cupid’s arrow is
largely aimed by society. Two time-tested concepts in social
science—homogamy and propinquity—tell us a lot about how
the mate-selection process works. Homogamy literally
means “like marries like”: we tend to choose mates who are
similar to us in class, race, ethnicity, age, religion, education,
and even levels of attractiveness. Indeed, some groups encourage and even enforce this practice by requiring that their
members choose mates from within the group (endogamy)
and punishing them if they choose mates from outside the
group (exogamy). You can certainly find examples of people
whose romantic relationships cross group and category
lines—interracial or interreligious couples, or “May/December” r omances—but these relationships are often viewed with
disapproval by others in the couples’ social circles. There are
considerable social pressures to adhere to homogamy.
Propinquity refers to geographical proximity: we tend to
choose people who live nearby. This is logical; we are likely to
Theory in Everyday Life
Perspective
Approach to Family
Case Study: Marriage
Structural
Functionalism
Family performs necessary functions, such as
the socialization of children, that help society
run smoothly and maintain social order.
Marriage regulates sexuality and forms the basis for
family, with all its other functions.
Conflict Theory
Family is a site of various forms of stratification
and can produce and reproduce inequalities
based on these statuses.
Marriage as a civil right was not extended to all
same-sex couples in the United States until 2015.
Nontraditional families are still marginalized in many
ways, while the nuclear family remains the standard.
Family is a social construction; it is created,
changed, and maintained in interaction.
Marriage is not made solely by completing a legal
contract but is also constructed through the
accretion of everyday interactions between partners
over the years.
Symbolic
Interactionism
354
in their analyses. The male head of household example works
here, too. If men are assumed to be “heads” of families, who,
then, heads nonheterosexual families? How would gay or lesbian couples determine who is the “head”? What about single
women—who heads their households? Neither masculinity
nor heterosexuality should be a requirement for individuals to
have power and autonomy within families (or outside them).
Feminist and queer theories help us see that more diverse
and egalitarian family structures are possible (Oswald et al.
2005).
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find possible mates among the people in our neighborhood, at
work, or at school. The Internet makes courtship and romance
possible across much greater geographical distances, as we
can now meet and converse with people in all parts of the
world, so our pool of potential mates moves beyond local
bounds. But this technology, while it can weaken the effects
of propinquity, can also intensify the effects of homogamy by
bringing together people with very specific interests and identities. Examples include online dating services such as Christian Mingle for Christian singles; OurTime.com for people
over age fifty; and Athletic Passions for people into fitness and
sports. Online dating giant eHarmony hosts special subsites
for black, Hispanic, Asian, and Jewish daters who wish to
meet people like themselves. There’s even a service for rural
daters called Farmersonly.com!
Courtship, romance, and intimacy are all influenced by the
larger culture—and are also historically specific. As an example of how family forms and definitions change over time,
marriage between people of different racial, ethnic, or national
backgrounds was actually prohibited for most of U.S. history.
From the time of slavery through the 1960s, mixed-race relationships were considered criminal and were also punished
outside the law. Fears of interracial relationships led to the
lynching of African American men and the creation of antimiscegenation laws in several states that prohibited the
mixing of racial groups through marriage, cohabitation, or
sexual interaction (Messerschmidt 1998). The most significant of these laws fell after the 1967 Supreme Court declared
that Virginia’s law banning marriage between persons of
different races was unconstitutional under the Fourteenth
Amendment (Loving v. Virginia 1967).
While once uncommon, m
ixed-race unions are increasing. In 1960, only 0.4 percent of all couples were interracial,
increasing to 2.2 percent by 1992 (U.S. Census Bureau 1994),
7.4 percent in 2000, and 9.5 percent in 2010 (U.S. Census
Bureau 2012g). Mixed-race couples still face discrimination;
in their analysis of a white supremacist Internet chatroom,
Glaser, Dixit, and Green (2002) found that respondents were
far more threatened by interracial marriage than by persons of color moving into white neighborhoods or competing
for jobs.
In addition, same-sex marriage has been one of the most
high-profile issues of the past decade. The United States was
deeply divided over the issue, with some states passing bans
on same-sex marriage and others making it legal. In 2015, the
Supreme Court ruled that such bans were unconstitutional,
effectively allowing gays and lesbians to marry nationwide.
Of course, not all gay and lesbian partners will want to marry.
And some queer couples were already able to marry without
any changes in the law—a cisgender woman and her transgender male partner, for example (Pfeffer 2012). Finally, neither
LGBTQ nor heterosexual persons need legal marriage to form
romantic relationships or establish families. So the notion
that marriage is the basis for f amily—as well as the traditional
Kimye and Mixed-Race Unions While once uncommon, mixedrace unions have increased from only 0.4 percent of all couples
in 1960 to nearly 10 percent in 2010.
definitions of marriage and f amily—are called into question by
modern family trends.
Monogamy, or marrying only one individual at a time,
is still considered the only legal form of marriage in modern
Western culture. Polygamy, or having multiple spouses, may
be practiced among some subcultures around the world but
is not widely acknowledged as a legitimate form of marriage.
The more commonly known form of polygamy is polygyny,
in which a man is married to multiple wives. Polyandry, in
which a woman has multiple
husbands, has been documented
in Tibet but is the rarer form of ANTIMISCEGENATION the
prohibition of interracial marriage,
polygamy. Polyamory is a type
cohabitation, or sexual interaction
of multiple-person partnership
in which each individual, regard- MONOGAMY the practice of
less of gender or sexual orienta- marrying (or being in a relationship
with) one person at a time
tion, is in a relationship with each
of the other individuals belong- POLYGAMY a system of marriage
that allows people to have more
ing to the group.
While we experience court- than one spouse at a time
ship at an individual, interac- POLYGYNY a system of marriage
tional level, it will always be that allows men to have multiple
shaped by macro-structural wives
forces in the larger society, such POLYANDRY a system of
as racial, ethnic, or religious prej- marriage that allows women to
udices and gendered role expec- have multiple husbands
tations. But courtship changes as POLYAMORY a system of
other aspects of the surrounding multiple-person partnership
culture change. As our society
becomes less racist, sexist, and
heterosexist, romantic options will expand as well. The development of intimate romantic relationships is not something
“natural”; it is socially constructed to appear natural.
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Relationship Trends
“There’s this pervasive idea in America that puts marriage and family at the center of everyone’s lives,” says
Bella M. DePaulo, visiting professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, “when in fact it’s becoming less and less so” (personal communication 2003). Many
people live outside such arrangements. In fact, the average
American now spends the majority of his or her life unmarried because people live longer, delay marriage, or choose a
single lifestyle (Kreider and Fields 2002).
Unmarried Life
The term “single” often implies a young heterosexual adult
who is actively seeking a partner for a relationship or marriage. But singles also include people of any sexual orientation who live together or are in a relationship without opting
to get married, people living alone who are in long-distance
relationships, people living in communes, widows and widowers, minors in group homes, and some clergy members as
well as those who are single as a result of divorce or who simply choose not to have a partner.
Married couples were the dominant model through the
1950s, but their numbers have slipped from nearly 80 percent of households in 1960 to 48 percent in 2014 (U.S. Census
Bureau 2014j). Married couples with children—the traditional
model of family—totaled less than 20 percent of households
in 2014, and that number is projected to drop. The remaining
households are single parents, cohabiting partners, or others.
A stunning 28 percent of all households in 2014 consisted of
people who lived alone, and unmarried people have been the
majority in the United States since 2005 (U.S. Census Bureau
2014k).
Some unmarried couples live together before or instead
of being married. Demographers call this cohabitation.
Between 1960 and 2010, the number of unmarried cohabiting couples in the United States increased significantly. More
than 8 million people are living with an unmarried partner,
including both same-sex and different-sex couples (U.S. Census Bureau 2013c; U.S. Census Bureau 2014a). In addition,
marriage is no longer the prerequisite for childbearing. In
2013, nearly 41 percent of all births were to unmarried couples,
58 percent of which were to cohabitating couples (Curtin, Ventura, and Martinez 2014). O
ne-quarter of all first births are
to cohabiting parents (National
Center for Health Statistics
COHABITATION living together
2012). Forty percent of opposite-
as a romantic couple without
being married
sex cohabiting couples have children, while about 14 percent of
INTENTIONAL COMMUNITY
same-sex male cohabiting coua group of people living together
ples and 26 percent of s ame-sex
pursuing a common goal
female cohabiting couples have
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CHAPTER 12
children (Krivickas and Lofquist 2011; U.S. Census Bureau
2012f). Most couples that choose to cohabit rather than marry
are t wenty-five to t hirty-four years of age. A possible reason
may be the growing economic independence of individuals
today, resulting in less financial motivation for marriage as
a legal contract. Also, changing attitudes about religion have
made sexual relationships outside marriage more socially
acceptable.
Because marriage has for so long been seen as the normative basis for families and households, unmarried people can
sometimes feel as if the world is organized specifically to
exclude them. Indeed, single people are usually charged more
for auto and health insurance than married people; some tax
breaks are only available to married couples, and even hotel
rooms and vacation packages are usually advertised with
“double occupancy” rates. Single people routinely grumble
about relatives who ask when they are going to “settle down
and get married.” Since those who live alone are more likely to
be older women (Klinenberg 2012b, p. 5), they may experience
multiple forms of discrimination at once.
But as the number of people who live alone increase, so
does their potential power to change a society in which they
are no longer a minority. Among the growing movement of
activists promoting the rights of unmarried people in the
United States is the nonprofit group Unmarried Equality.
They engage in research, education, and advocacy for unmarried and single adults of all types and are concerned about
discrimination that is built into the American social system,
especially at an economic and political level but also in terms
of culture and values. One of their efforts is to increase recognition of unmarrieds and singles as a constituency of voters,
workers, taxpayers, and consumers worthy of equal rights
and protection.
As an increasing number of people choose to remain or
become single, cohabit with others, or choose something else
altogether, they are creating alternative models to organize
their lives. Some join an intentional community, an inclusive term for a variety of groups who form communal living
arrangements that include cohousing, communes, monasteries and ashrams, farming collectives, student c o-ops, and
urban housing cooperatives. Though small in both size and
number, intentional communities are attractive to people for
a variety of reasons.
Members of an intentional community have chosen to live
together with a common purpose, working cooperatively to
create a lifestyle that reflects their shared core values. They
may live on rural land, in a suburban home, or in an urban
neighborhood, and they may share a single residence or live
in a cluster of dwellings. Although quite diverse in philosophy and lifestyle, each of these groups places a high priority
on fostering a sense of community—a feeling of belonging
and mutual support that is increasingly hard to find in mainstream Western society (Kozeny 1995).
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Single and Solo Parenting
Although some people become single parents through divorce
or death, others choose to go solo and have children without
the support of a committed p
artner—through adoption, artificial insemination, or surrogacy. Attitudes about solo mothers
vary greatly and often depend on the mother’s age, education
level, occupation, income, and support network of friends
and extended family members. Women with more of these
resources, including solo celebrity moms like Sandra Bullock,
Charlize Theron, and Sheryl Crow, may be subject to less criticism for “going it alone” than women who are younger, earn
less money, and have less education or social support.
A prevailing middle-class assumption about single mothers
is that young women in the inner city become mothers to access
welfare benefits. Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas (2005) spent
five years doing i n-depth research with 162 l ow-income single
mothers to understand their attitudes about parenthood and
marriage. They dispelled the myth that these women become
mothers to cash in on welfare benefits and instead found that
for these young women, having a baby is a symbol of belonging
and being valued. While becoming a lawyer or a CEO may seem
like a pipedream, being a good mother is an accessible role that
can generate respect and admiration in the community.
Of the 11.2 million s ingle-parent households in the United
States, 2.6 million of them are headed by single men (Livingston 2013). Solo dads face dilemmas similar to those faced by
single moms, but with the added suspicion and stigma surrounding society’s notions of men who spend time with children. Even so, the number of single dads has increased almost
tenfold since 1960, and this increase seems likely to continue.
Regardless of the circumstances of single parenting, raising children without the help of a partner is challenging and
difficult. Financially, physically, and emotionally, single parents must perform a task that was traditionally shared by a
community rather than an individual.
Blended Families
Most divorced people will eventually marry someone else,
which means that four in ten Americans are members of stepfamilies or blended families (Pew Research Center 2011a).
However, statistics about stepfamilies are inconsistent and
often contradictory because quantifying and defining the
intricate relationships involved in a stepfamily are difficult.
The U.S. Census has not routinely accounted for them in its
data gathering. There are no traditional norms or models for
stepfamilies, and our firmly held notions of the “traditional”
family lead many in stepfamilies to find the transition to
a new family situation difficult. Stepfamilies face special
challenges, for example, when there are children in different
stages of the life cycle. The needs and concerns of teenagers
may be vastly different from those of their infant h
alf-sibling,
and it may take more work to adjust to the new living situation. With the added challenges of blending in-laws, finances,
and households, remarriages are even more likely to end in
divorce than first marriages. However, in successful remarriages, partners are usually older and have learned important
lessons about compatibility and relationship maintenance
from the failure of their first marriages.
Some partners in gay and lesbian couples have a heterosexual marriage (and divorce) in their past. While it is difficult
to estimate, one study hypothesized that approximately 4 percent of heterosexual marriages have one gay or bisexual partner (Laumann et al. 1994). While not all these marriages end
in divorce, when they do, the gay partner becomes free to form
a new family with the partner of his or her choice, just as the
heterosexual partner does. So while the majority of blended
families are heterosexual, some will be “mixed-orientation”
and include stepparents of more than one sexual orientation.
Childfree Living
Having children used to be seen as a mandate and being childless a tragedy—especially for women. We still cling to this
imperative: 90 percent of adults surveyed in a 2013 poll either
had children or wanted them (Reyes 2013). But because men
and women (gay and straight, married and unmarried) now
have more choice than ever about whether to have children, a
growing number are choosing to live “childfree” rather than
“childless.” Childfree adults field all sorts of exasperating
questions about their lives, from “Wait, don’t you like kids?”
to “Oh, that’s too bad you can’t get pregnant” to “Who is going
to take care of you when you get old?” and the classic, “Well,
that’s just selfish.” In fact, people who remain childfree may
love kids, be quite fertile, be generous with others, and have
a perfectly good plan in place for their retirement years; they
just don’t want to raise kids.
There are many reasons for this: children are expensive and
exhausting, and raising them takes energy away from other
things that individuals may value more, such as careers, avocations, and other relationships. But childfree p
eople—especially
women—are stigmatized for their choice and are often the
object of pity, suspicion, and discrimination, according to Laura
Scott (2009), primary researcher and author of the “Childless
by Choice” project. Scott describes our society as “pronatalist,” meaning that our cultural values support childbearing and
child rearing as the normative and preferred practice, and those
who choose to remain childfree must battle against the judgments others make about them based on their nonconformity.
Breaking Up
Although many people stay in bad marriages or other relationships, couples break up every day. In this section, we consider
the changing patterns of breakups, divorce, and remarriage
Breaking Up
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