The Modern American Family Discussion

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Please use the specific examples from the materials attached below.

Before beginning this activity, be sure to read the Module Notes and the assigned readings and viewings. Use as much detail from the readings and other learning materials in the module as possible to answer the following questions.

  1. Pick one of the theories that you learned in this module and summarize the arguments that it makes about the function of the family.
  2. Apply this theory’s arguments to the modern American family. Use specific examples of how the modern family meets or does not meet the theory’s definition of family function.
  3. Based on this theoretical analysis, discuss whether the modern family is in a state of breakdown. Tie this discussion back to your specific examples.
  4. Your initial post should be at least 500 words and must substantively integrate the assigned readings with proper APA (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. style formatting.

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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 357 06/13/2019 - RS0000000000000000000001966595 - The Real World: An Introduction to Sociology (Fifth Edition) 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 CHAPTER 12 Life at Home: Families and Relationships 06/13/2019 - RS0000000000000000000001966595 - The Real World: An Introduction to Sociology (Fifth Edition) 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 Breaking Up 359 06/13/2019 - RS0000000000000000000001966595 - The Real World: An Introduction to Sociology (Fifth Edition) 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 360 CHAPTER 12 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 Life at Home: Families and Relationships 06/13/2019 - RS0000000000000000000001966595 - The Real World: An Introduction to Sociology (Fifth Edition) 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 361 06/13/2019 - RS0000000000000000000001966595 - The Real World: An Introduction to Sociology (Fifth Edition) 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 362 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 Life at Home: Families and Relationships 06/13/2019 - RS0000000000000000000001966595 - The Real World: An Introduction to Sociology (Fifth Edition) 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. Family and the Life Course 363 06/13/2019 - RS0000000000000000000001966595 - The Real World: An Introduction to Sociology (Fifth Edition) 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. 364 CHAPTER 12 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 Life at Home: Families and Relationships 06/13/2019 - RS0000000000000000000001966595 - The Real World: An Introduction to Sociology (Fifth Edition) 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 Trouble in Families 365 06/13/2019 - RS0000000000000000000001966595 - The Real World: An Introduction to Sociology (Fifth Edition) 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. 366 CHAPTER 12 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 Life at Home: Families and Relationships 06/13/2019 - RS0000000000000000000001966595 - The Real World: An Introduction to Sociology (Fifth Edition) 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. Trouble in Families 367 06/13/2019 - RS0000000000000000000001966595 - The Real World: An Introduction to Sociology (Fifth Edition) 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. 368 CHAPTER 12 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 Life at Home: Families and Relationships 06/13/2019 - RS0000000000000000000001966595 - The Real World: An Introduction to Sociology (Fifth Edition) (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 369 06/13/2019 - RS0000000000000000000001966595 - The Real World: An Introduction to Sociology (Fifth Edition) 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? “ 370 06/13/2019 - RS0000000000000000000001966595 - The Real World: An Introduction to Sociology (Fifth Edition) 06/13/2019 - RS0000000000000000000001966595 - The Real World: An Introduction to Sociology (Fifth Edition) 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 351 06/13/2019 - RS0000000000000000000001966595 - The Real World: An Introduction to Sociology (Fifth Edition) 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 352 CHAPTER 12 Life at Home: Families and Relationships 06/13/2019 - RS0000000000000000000001966595 - The Real World: An Introduction to Sociology (Fifth Edition) 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. Sociological Perspectives on Families 353 06/13/2019 - RS0000000000000000000001966595 - The Real World: An Introduction to Sociology (Fifth Edition) 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). CHAPTER 12 Life at Home: Families and Relationships 06/13/2019 - RS0000000000000000000001966595 - The Real World: An Introduction to Sociology (Fifth Edition) 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. Mate Selection 355 06/13/2019 - RS0000000000000000000001966595 - The Real World: An Introduction to Sociology (Fifth Edition) 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 356 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). Life at Home: Families and Relationships 06/13/2019 - RS0000000000000000000001966595 - The Real World: An Introduction to Sociology (Fifth Edition) 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 357 06/13/2019 - RS0000000000000000000001966595 - The Real World: An Introduction to Sociology (Fifth Edition) Chapter 12: Life at Home: Families and Relationships LECTURE SLIDES © 2016 W. W. Norton & Co., Inc. What Is ...
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Running head: THE FAMILY

1

The Family

Name

Institution

THE FAMILY

2
The Family

A family is comprised of individuals related by blood, adoption, or marriage. The modern
family is deemed to be formed by interaction and the relationship between the individuals in a
family. For instance, a family is comprised of sociological perspectives whereby the members of
the family are defined by the interaction processes. Also, different theories explain a family as a
social institution that goes beyond the interrelation by blood or legal factors. Symbolic
interactionism takes the definition of a social group by first describing a family as families based
on the involvement of a chain of individuals interacting at different perspectives. Symbolic
interactionism describes the relationship between families. For exampl...


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