Assignment Intro: • • • • • Marriage has been the fundamental social arrangement throughout much of American history, providing structure and meaning in people’s lives. It has marked entry into adulthood – the point at which children gain economic independence from their parents, leave the family home to forge their own families, and engage in sexual activity. Traditional gender roles have provided scripts that guided and organized how work, both inside and outside the home, would be divided and how children are raised. Recent trends over the last 60 years have seen major shifts in the way marriage and family life are conceptualized, leaving many wondering what those changes will mean for the future of families. Are those changes working against families, or are they signs of increased diversity and a need to think more broadly about what family life means? For this assignment you will need to reflect on these issues and take a stand on one side of the argument: are families in decline or are they resilient? • • • • • There are two readings associated with this paper that YOU MUST READ BEFORE YOU BEGIN. The articles associated with this assignment are available electronically: • LeBey outlines the decline argument • Coontz outlines the resilience argument Read each article and determine which side of the debate you align yourself with. Then, find at least FOUR additional pieces of research/information from the textbook that further supports the position (beyond what is described in the articles themselves). Your position papers must be: • APA Format • Two to three pages in length • 12-point font • Times New Roman font • Double-spaced lines • Standard one-inch margins on all sides This paper must also include at least 4 references from the text to support your position – those references should be included in the body of your paper and on a reference page. *****Remember that APA formatting and citation style is a must. • Be sure to include the following: • Title page • Running head • Page numbers • • • Headings (optional) In-text citations of fact-based information Reference page (you need only reference the textbook and the two articles that are required reading) Points and Quality Markers Content (40 Points) Includes brief description of both of the topic positions Describes social and cultural characteristics used to rationalize the family resilience position Describes social and cultural characteristics used to rationalize the family decline position Evaluates strengths/weaknesses of both positions and takes a clear stand on one side of the debate Organization (10 points) Are the main ideas presented in a clear, concise manner? Does the content logically follow and work to develop ideas? Did they transition smoothly from one section to the next? Were paragraphs well-organized? Language (15 points) Is the writing free of grammatical & spelling mistakes? Have they correctly used APA citations and referencing? Poor The topic is poorly developed. Supporting details are absent. Trite ideas and/or unclear wording reflect a lack of understanding of topic and audience. 1 2 3 4 Acceptable Excellent The topic is evident with some supporting details, generally meeting requirements of the assignment. Topic is well developed, effectively supported and appropriate for the assignment. Effective, critical thinking is clearly and creatively expressed. 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Writing is rambling and unfocused. Main theme and supporting details are absent or unclear. 1 2 3 4 Writing lacks sentence variety. Significant deficiencies in wording, spelling, grammar, punctuation, or presentation. No citations used. 1 2 3 1 2 4 1 2 3 Writing demonstrates some grasp of organization with main theme, supporting details presented in a disorganized, unrelated way. 5 6 Needs more sentence variety. Deficiencies in wording, spelling, grammar, punctuation, or presentation. Too few citations used or used incorrectly. 5 6 Writing demonstrates adequate grasp of organization, with a discernible theme and supporting details 7 4 Minimal participation. Contributions lacked depth/detail or were entirely off topic. 5 6 Writing is clearly organized around a central theme. Each paragraph is clear and relates to the others in a well-planned framework. 8 9 Adequate sentence variety; adequate use of wording, grammar, and punctuation. Cited sources used with some errors. 7 3 Did not contribute to the debate or contributed in minor ways. Other (10 points) Participated in class debate about topic positions. Needs Improvement The topic is not fully evident. Supporting details are vague. Unclear ideas or unclear wording reflect need to improve understanding of topic and audience 5 6 8 4 Wide variety of sentence structures. Excellent word usage, spelling, grammar, punctuation. Sources correctly cited using APA. Effective integration of information. 9 10 5 Contribution reflected general understanding of the material 7 10 8 Participated multiple times; contributed valid points that reflected critical thinking and mastery of the readings 9 10 Overall Comments: Strengths and Areas to Improve: Total Points: ______________ 2 LIFE IN AMERICA AMERICAN FAMILIES Are Drifting Apart The sexual revolution, women's liberation, relaxation of divorce laws, and greater mobility are fracturing the traditional family structure. BY BARBARA LEBEY A VARIETY OF REASONS-from petty grievances to deep-seated prejudices, misunderstandings to all-out jealousies, sibling rivalry, inheritance feuds, family business disputes, and homo­ sexual outings-are cause for families to grow apart. Family estrangements are bemore numerous, more intense, and more hurtful. When I speak to groups on the subject, I always ask: Who has or had an estrangement or knows someone who does'? Almost every hand in the room goes up. Sisters aren't speaking to each other since one of them took the silver when Mom died. Two brothers rarely visit be­ cause their wives don't like each other. A son alienates himself from his family when he marries a woman who wants to believe that he sprung from the earth. Be­ cause Mom is the travel agent for trips, her daughter avoids contact with her. A family banishes a daughter for marrying outside her race or religion. A son eradi­ cates a divorced father when he reveals his homosexuality. And so it goes. The nation is facing a rapidly changing family relationship landscape. Every as­ sumption made about the family structure has been challenged, from the outer bound­ aries of single mothers raising out-of-wed­ lock children to gay couples having or adopting children to grandparents raising their grandchildren. If the so-called tradi­ tional family is having trouble maintaining imagine what problems can and do arise in less-conventional situations. Fault lines in Americans' family structure were widening throughout the last 40 years of the 20th century. The cracks became ev­ ident in the mid 1970s when the divorce rate doubled. According to a 1999 Rutgers University study, divorce has risen 30% since 1970; the marriage rate has fallen faster; and just 38% of Americans consider themselves happy in their married state, a drop from 53% 25 years ago. Today, 51 % of all marriages end in divorce. How Americans managed to alter their concept of marriage and family so produring those four decades is the subject of much scholarly investigation and academic debate. In a May, 2000, New York Times Magazine article titled "The Pursuit of Autonomy," the writer main­ tains that "the family is no longer a haven; all too often a center of dysfunction, it has become one with the heartless world that surrounds it." Unlike the past, the job that fits you in your 208 is not the job or career you 'II likely have in your 40s. This is now true of marriage as well-the spouse you had in your 20s may not be the one you will have after you've gone through your m idlife cri sis. In the 1960s, four main societal changes occurred that have had an enor­ mous impact on the traditional family structure. The sexual revolution, women's 7 liberation movement, states' relaxation of divorce laws, and mobility of American families have converged to foster family alienation, exacerbate old family rifts. and create new ones. It must he however, that many of these positive outcomes. The nation a strengthened social conscience. women's to war. and a constraints on tolerance for but society a price. 1960s perpetuated the notion that we are first and foremost entitled to ness and fulfillment. It's positively Ul1­ American not to seek it! This idea goes back to that early of our history when Thomas Jefferson dropped the final term from British philosopher John Locke's definition of human rights-"life, liberty, and ... property"-and replaced it with what would become the slogan of our new nation: "the pursuit of happiness." In the words of author Gail Sheehy, the 1960s generation "expressed their collective per­ sonality as idealistic, narcissistic, anti-es­ tablishment, hairy, horny and preferably Any relationship that was failing to de­ liver happiness was being tossed out like an empty beer can, including spousal ones. For at least 20 years, the pharmaceutical industry has learned how to cash in on the American obsession with feeling good hyping mood drugs to rewire the brain cir­ ANNUAL EDITIONS cui try for happiness through the elimina­ tion of sadness and depression. Young people fled from the confines of whose members were frantic, wor­ rying about exactly where their adult chil­ dren were and whatthey were doing. There were probably more estrangements be­ tween parents and adult children during the 1960s and early 19705 than ever before. In the wake of the civil rights move­ ment and Pres. Lyndon Johnson's Great Society came the women's liberation movement, and what a flashy role it played in changing perceptions about the structure. Women who graduated from college in the late 1960s and early 1970s were living in a time when they could es­ tablish and assert their independent identi­ ties. In Atlanta, Emory Law School's 1968 graduating class had six women in it, the largest number ever to that point, and all six were in the top 10%, including the number-one graduate. In that same period, many all-male colleges opened their doors to women for the first time. No one could doubt the message singer Helen Reddy proclaimed: "I am woman, hear me roar." For all the self-indulgence of the "hippie" generation, there was an intense awaken­ ing in young people of a recognition that civil rights must mean equal rights for ev­ eryone in our society, and that has to in­ clude women. Full equality was the battle cry of every . a status that women claimed de­ spite their majority position. As they had once marched for the right to vote, women began marching for sexual equality and the same broad range of career and job oppor­ tunities that were always available to men. Financial independence gave women the freedom to walk away from unhappy marThis was a dramatic departure from the puritanical sense of duty that had been woven into the American fabric since the birth of this nation. For all the good that came out of this movement, though, it also changed forever traditional notions of marriage, mother­ hood, and family unity, as well as that overwhelming sense of children first. Even in the most-conservative young wives were letting their husbands know that they were going back to work or back to school. Many women had to return to work either because there was a need for two incomes to maintain a moderate stan­ dard of living or because they were di­ vorced and forced to support their offspring on their own. "Don't ask, don't tell" day-care centers proliferated where overworked, undertrained staff, and two- income yuppie parents, ignored the chil­ dren's emotional needs~all in the name of equality and to enable women to reclaim their identifies. Some might say these were the parents who ran away from home. Many states began to approve legisla­ tion that allowed no-fault divorce, elimi­ nating the need to lay blame on spouses or stage adulterous scenes in sleazy motels to provide evidence for states that demanded such evidence for divorces. The legal sys­ tem established procedures for easily dis­ solving marriages, dividing property, and sharing responsibility for the children. There were even do-it-yourself divorce manuals on bookstore shelves. Marriage had become a choice rather than a neces­ sity, a one-dimensional status sustained al­ most exclusively by emotional satisfaction and not worth maintaining in its absence. Attitudes about divon.:e were becoming more lenient, so much so that the nation fi­ elected its first divorced president in I 980--Ronald Reagan. With divorced fathers always the risk of estrangement from their chil­ dren, this growing divorce statistic has had the predictable impact of increasing the number of those estrangements. Grandpar­ ents also experienced undeserved fallout from divorce, since, almost invariably, they are alienated from their grandchildren. The fourth change, and certainly one of the most pivotal, was the increased mobil­ ity of families that occurred during those four decades. Family members were no longer living in close proximity to one an­ other. The organization man moved to wherever he could advance more quickly up the corporate ladder. College graduates look the best job offer, even if it was 3,000 miles away from where they grew up and where their family still lived. Some were getting out of small towns for new vistas, new adventures, and new job opportunities. Others were fleeing the overcrowded dirty cities in search of cleaner air, a more reasonable cost of living, and retirement communities in snow-free, warmer, more-scenic locations. Moving from company to company had begun, reaching what is now a crescendo young people chose to marry someone who lived in a different location, so family tics were geographi­ cally severed for indeterminate periods of time, sometimes forever. According to Lynn H. Dennis' Corpo­ rate Relocation Takes Its Toll on Society. during the 10 years from 1989 to 1999, more than 5,000,000 families were relo­ cated one or more times bv their 8 ers. In addition to employer-directed moves, one out of five Americans relo­ cated at least once, not for exciting adven­ ture, but for economic advancement and/or a safer place to raise children. From March, 1996, to March, 1997, 42,000,000 Americans, or 16% of the population, packed up and moved from where were living to another location. That is a striking statistic. Six million of these peo­ ple moved from one region of the country 10 another, and young adults aged 20 to 29 were the most mobile, making up 32% of the moves during that year. This disburse­ ment of nuclear families throughout the country disconnected them from parents, brothers, sisters, grandparents, aunts, un­ cles, and cousins~the extended family and all its adhesive qualities. with cell phones, computers, faxes, and the Internet. the office can be anywhere, including in the home. There­ fore, we can live anywhere we want to. If that is the case, why aren't more people choosing to live in the cities or towns where they grew up? There's no definitive answer. Except for the praise heaped on values," staying close to family no longer plays a meaningful role in choosing where we reside. These relocations require individuals to invest an enormous amount of time to rees­ tablish their lives without help from family or old friends. Although nothing can com­ pare to the experience of immigrants who left their countries knowing they probably would never see their families again, the phenomenon of Americans continually re­ locating makes family relationships diffi­ cult to sustain. Our culture tends to focus on the indi­ viduaL or, at most, on the nuclear family, the benefits of extended fam­ ilies, though their role is vital in shaping our lives. The notion of "moving on" whenever problems arise has been a time­ honored American concept. Too many people would rather cast aside some family member than iron out the situation and keep the relationship alive. If we don't get along with our father or if our mother doesn't like our choice of mate or our way of life, we just move away and see the fam­ once or twice a year. After we're marwith children in school, and with both parents working, visits become even more difficult. If the family visits are that infre­ quent. why bother at all? Some children grow up barely knowing any of their rela­ tives. Contact ceases; rifts don't resolve; and divisiveness often germinates into a full-blown estrangement. r Article 2. American Families Are Drifting Apart In an odd sort of way, the more finan­ cially independent pcople become, the more families scatter and grow apart. It's not a cause, but it is a facilitator. Tolerance levels decrease as financial means increase. Just think how much more we tolerate from our fami lies when they are providing finan­ cial support. Look at the divorced wife who depends on her family for money to ment alimony and child support, the stu­ dent whose parents are paying all college expenscs, or the brother who borrows fam­ money to savc his business. Recently, a well-known actress being interviewed in a popular magazine was asked, if there was one thing she could change in her family, what would it be? Her answer was simple: "That we could all live in the same city." She understood the importance of heing near loved ones and how, even in a harmonious family, geo­ graphical distance often leads to emotional disconnectedness. When relatives arc reg­ ularly in each other's company, they will usually make a greater effort to get along. Even when there is dissension among fam­ members, they are more likely to work it out, either on their own or heeause an­ other relative has intervened to calm the troubled waters. When rifts occur, rela­ tives often need a real jolt to perform an act offorgiveness. Forgiving a family member can be the hardest thing to do, probably be­ cause the emotional bonds are so much deeper and usually go all the way back to childhood. Could it be that blood is a thicker medium in which to hold a grudge? With today's familics scattcred all over the country, the matriarch or patriarch of the extended family is far less able to keep his or her kin united, caring, and supportive of one another. In these disconnected nu­ clear families. certain trends-workahol­ ism, alcoholism, depression, severe stress, isolation, escapism, and a push toward con­ tinuous supervised activity [or children-­ are routinely observed. What happened to that family day of rest and togetherness? We should mourn its absence. For the widely dispersed baby boomers with more financial means than any prior generation, commitment, intimacy, and togetherness have never been high on their list of priorities. How many times have you heard of family members trying to maintain a relationship with a relative via e­ mail and answering machines? One young man now sends his Mother's Day greeting by leaving a message for his mom on his an­ swering machinc. When she calls to scold him for forgetting to call her, she'll get a few sweet words wishing her a happy Mother's Day and his apology for being too to eall or send a card! His sister can ex­ pect the same kind of greeting tiJr her bi11h­ but only if she bothers to call to find out why her brother hadn't contacted her. Right now, and probably for the foresec­ able future, we will be searching for an­ swers to the burgeoning problcms we created by these societal changes, but don't bc Those who have studied and understood the American psyche are far more ~ The 19th-century French historian and Alexis de Tocqucville once said of Americans, "No natural boundary seems to be set [0 the effort of Americans. and their eyes what is not yet done, is only what they have not yet attempted to do." Some day, I hope this mindset will apply not to political rhetoric on family values. but to families back together Ga.-based attorney andformer judge, is the author Family Estrangements-How They Begin, How to Mend Them, How to Cope with Them. rrom USA Today magazine. September 2001. © 2001 by the Society for the Advdncemenl of Education. Reprinted by permission. 9 COONTZ I The American family The American Family By Stephanie Coontz r ROM: Life, November 1999 CON T EXT: This piece was originally published in Life magazine in November 1999. Life magazine was founded in 1936 and is known for its blend of traditional values and excellent photography. According to its media kit, the magazine "delivers over 27 million affluent, educated, action-oriented decision makers" to its advertisers. The median age of the readership is 48.4. the average household income is $67,908, and its readers are split almost equally between men and women. Stephanie Coontz is a professor at The Evergreen College in Washington state. She also has taught at uni­ versities in Hawaii and Japan and is a former Woodrow Wilson Fellow. She is the director of research and public education for the Council on Contemporary Families, which awarded her the first Visionary Leadership Award in 2004. Her book Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage (2005) was selected as one of the best books of 2005 by the WaShington Post. She has testified before the House Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families; she speaks about family issues on national television - on CNN and on shows such as Oprah and the Today show. As you read this article, consider the data Coontz cites to argue that our contemporary families are in better shape than we think and how this is a particu­ larly appropriate focus for Life magazine. AS THE CENTURY COMES TO AN END, MANY OBSERVERS FEAR for the future of America's families. Our divorce rate is the highest in the world, and the percentage of unmarried women is significantly higher than in 1960. Educated women are having fewer babies, while immigrant children flood the schools, demanding to be taught in their native language. Harvard University reports that only 4 percent of its applicants can write a proper sentence. There's an epidemic of sexu­ ally transmitted diseases among men. Many streets in urban neigh­ borhoods are littered with cocaine vials. Youths call heroin "happy 94 dust: Even in small towns, people have easy access to addictive drugs, and drug abuse by middle-class wives is skyrocketing. Police see sixteen-year-old killers, twelve-year-old prostitutes, and gang mem­ bers as young as eleven. America at the end of the 1990s? No, Amer­ ica at the end of the 1890s. The litany of complaints may sound familiar, but the truth is that many things were worse at the start of this century than they are today. Then, thousands of children worked full-time in mines, mills, and sweatshops. Most workers labored ten hours a day; often six days a week, which left them little time or energy for family life. Race riots were more frequent and more deadly than those experienced by re­ cent generations. Women COUldn't vote, and their wages were so low that many turned to prostitution. In 1900 a white child had one chance in three of losing a brother or sister before age fifteen, and a black child had a fifty-fifty chance of seeing a sibling die. Children's­ aid groups reported widespread abuse and neglect by parents. Men who deserted or divorced their wives rarely paid child support. And only 6 percent of the children graduated from high school, compared with 88 percent today. Why do so many people think American families are facing worse problems now than in the past? Partly it's because we compare the complex and diverse families of the 1990s with the seemingly more standard-issue ones of the 1950s, a unique decade when every long­ term trend of the twentieth century was temporarily reversed. In the 1950s, for the first time in 100 years, the divorce rate fell while mar­ riage and fertility rates soared, creating a boom in nuclear-family liv­ ing. The percentage of foreign-born individuals in the country decreased. And the debates over social and cultural issues that had divided Americans for 150 years were silenced, suggesting a national consensus on family values and norms. Some nostalgia for the 1950s is understandable: Life looked pretty good in comparison with the hardships of the Great Depres­ sion and World War II. The GI Bill gave a generation of young fathers a college education and a subsidized mortgage on a new house. For the first time, a majority of men could support a family and buy a home without pooling their earnings with those of other family mem­ bers. Many Americans built a stable family life on these foundations. But much nostalgia for the 1950s is a result of selective amnesia the same process that makes childhood memories of summer va­ cations grow sunnier with each passing year. The superficial sameness of 1950s family life was achieved through censorship, coercion, and discrimination. People with unconventional beliefs faced governmen­ tal investigation and arbitrary firings. African Americans and Mexican Americans were prevented from voting in some states by literacy tests 5 95 CHAPTER 2 » THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE OF FAMILY that were not administered to whites. Individuals who didn't follow the rigid gender and sexual rules of the day were ostracized. Leave It to Beaver did not reflect the real-life experience of most American families. While many moved into the middle class during the 1950s, poverty remained more widespread than in the worst of our last three recessions. More children went hungry; and poverty rates for the elderly were more than twice as high as today's. Even in the white middle class, not every woman was as serenely happy with her lot as June Cleaver was on TV. Housewives of the 1950s may have been less rushed than today's working mothers, but they were more likely to suffer anxiety and depression. In many states, women couldn't serve on juries or get loans or credit cards in their own names. And not every kid was as wholesome as Beaver Cleaver, whose mischievous antics could be handled by Dad at the dinner table. In 1955 alone, Congress discussed 200 bills aimed at curbing juvenile delinquency. Three years later, Life reported that urban teachers were being terrorized by their students. The drugs that were so freely avail­ able in 1900 had been outlawed, but many children grew up in fami­ lies ravaged by alcohol and barbiturate abuse. Rates of unwed childbearing tripled between 1940 and 1958, but most Americans didn't notice because unwed mothers generally left town, gave their babies up for adoption, and returned home as if nothing had happened. Troubled youths were encouraged to drop out of high school. Mentally handicapped children were warehoused in institutions like the Home for Idiotic and Imbecilic Children in Kansas, where a woman whose sister had lived there for most of the 1950s once took me. Wives routinely told pollsters that being dispar­ aged or ignored by their husbands was a normal part of a happier­ than-average marriage. Denial extended to other areas of life as well. In the early 1900s doctors refused to believe that the cases of gonor­ rhea and syphilis they saw in young girls could have been caused sexual abuse. Instead, they reasoned, girls could get these diseases from toilet seats, a myth that terrified generations of mothers and daughters. In the 1950s, psychiatrists dismissed incest reports as Oedipal fantasies on the part of children. Spousal rape was legal throughout the period, and wife beating was not taken seriously by authorities. Much of what we now label child abuse was accepted as a normal part of parental discipline. Physicians saw no reason to question parents who claimed that their child's broken bones had been caused by a fall from a tree. Things were worse at the turn of the last century than they are today. Most workers labored ten hours a day. six days a week, leaving little time for family life. There are plenty of stresses in modern family life, but one reason they seem worse is that we no longer sweep them under the rug. 96 COONTZ I The American Family Another is that we have higher expectations of parenting and mar­ riage. That's a good thing. We're right to be concerned about inatten­ tive parents, conflicted marriages, antisocial values, teen violence, and child abuse. But we need to realize that many of our worries reflect how much better we want to be, not how much better we used to be. Fathers in intact families are spending more time with their children than at any other point in the past 100 years. Although the num­ ber of hours the average woman spends at home with her children has declined since the early 1900s, there has been a decrease in the number of children per family and an increase in individual attention to each child. As a result, mothers today. including working moms, spend almost twice as much time with each child as mothers did in the 1920s. People who raised children in the 1940s and 1950s typically report that their own adult children and grandchildren communicate far better with their kids and spend more time helping with home­ work than they did even as they complain that other parents today are doing a worse job than in the past. Despite the rise in youth violence from the 1960s to the early 1900s, America's children are also safer now than they've ever been. An infant was four times more likely to die in the 1950s than today. A parent then was three times more likely than a modern one to preside at the funeral of a child under the age of fifteen, and 27 percent more likely to lose an older teen to death. If we look back over the last millennium, we can see that families have always been diverse and in flux. In each period, families have solved one set of problems only to face a new array of challenges. What works for a family in one economic and cultural setting doesn't work for a family in another. What's helpful at one stage of a family's life may be destructive at the next stage. If there is one lesson to be drawn from the last millennium of family history; it's that families are always having to play catch-up with a changing world. Many of our worries today reflect how much better we want to be, not how much better we used to be. Take the issue of working mothers. Families in which mothers spend as much time earning a living as they do raising children are nothing new. They were the norm throughout most of the last two millennia. In the nineteenth century; married women in the United States began a withdrawal from the workforce, but for most families this was made possible only by sending their chil­ dren out to work instead. When child labor was abolished, married women began reentering the workforce in ever larger numbers. For a few decades, the decline in child labor was greater than the growth of women's employment. The result was an aberration: the male breadwinner family. In the 1920s, for the first time a bare ma­ jority of American children grew up in families where the husband 10 97 CHAPTER 2 » provided all the income, the wife stayed home full-time, and they and their siblings went to school instead of work. During the 1950s, almost two-thirds of children grew up in such families, an all-time high. Yet that same decade saw an acceleration of workforce participation wives and mothers that soon made the dual-earner family the norm, a trend not likely to be reversed in the next century. What's new is not that women make half their families' living, but that for the first time they have substantial control over their own in­ come, along with the social freedom to remain or to leave an unsatisfactory marriage. Also new is the declining proportion of their lives that people devote to rearing children, both because they have fewer kids and because they are living longer. Until about 1940, the typical marriage was broken the death of one partner within a few years after the last child left home. Today; couples can look forward to spending more than two decades together after the children leave. The growing length of time partners spend with only each other for company has made many in­ dividuals less willing to put up with an unhappy marriage, while women's economic independence makes it less essential for them to do so. It is no wonder that divorce has risen steadily since 1900. Dis­ regarding a spurt in 1946, a dip in the 1950s, and another peak around 1980, the divorce rate is just where you'd expect to find it based on the rate of increase from 1900 to 1950. Today; 40 percent of all mar­ riages will end in divorce before a couple's fortieth anniversary. Yet despite this high divorce rate, expanded life expectancies mean that more couples are reaching that anniversary than ever before. Fami­ lies and individuals in contemporary America have more life choices than in the past. That makes it easier for some to consider dangerous or unpopular options. But it also makes success easier for many fam­ ilies that never would have had a chance before interracial, gay or lesbian, and single-mother families, for example. And it expands hori­ zons for most families. Women's new options are good not for themselves but for their children. While some people say that women who choose to work are selfish, it turns out that maternal self-sacrifice is not good for children. Kids do better when their mothers are happy with their lives, whether their satisfaction comes from being a full-time home­ maker or from having a Largely because of women's new roles at work, men are doing more at home. Although most men still do less housework than their wives, the gap has been halved since the 1960s. Today; 49 percent of couples say they share childcare equally; compared with 25 percent in 1985. The biggest problem is not that our families have changed too much but that our institutions have changed too little. 98 COONTZ I The American Family THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE OF FAMILY 15 Men's greater involvement at home is good for their relationships with their partners and also good for their children. Hands-on fathers make better parents than men who let their wives do all the nurtur­ ing and childcare: They raise sons who are more expressive and daughters who are more likely to do well in school, especially in math and science. In 1900, life expectancy was forty-seven years, and only 4 percent of the population was sixty-five or older. Today; life expectancy is seventy-six years, and by 2025, about 20 percent of Americans will be sixty-five or older. For the first time, a generation of adults must plan for the needs of both their parents and their children. Most Ameri­ cans are responding with remarkable grace. One in four households gives the equivalent of a full day a week or more in unpaid care to an aging relative, and more than half say they expect to do so in the next ten years. Older people are less likely to be impoverished or Ul'L.U~JU'" itated by illness than in the past and they have more opportunity to develop a relationship with their grandchildren. Even some of the choices that worry us the most are turning out to be manageable. Divorce rates are likely to remain high, but more noncustodial parents are staying in touch with their children. Child­ support receipts are up. And a lower proportion of kids from divorced families are exhibiting problems than in earlier decades. Stepfamilies are learning to maximize children's access to supportive adults rather than cutting them off from one side of the family: Out-of-wedlock births are also high, however, and this will probably continue because the age of first marriage for women has risen to an all-time high of twenty-five, almost five years above what it was in the 1900s. Women who marry at an older age are less likely to divorce, but they have more years when they are at risk or at choice for a nonmarital birth. Nevertheless, births to teenagers have fallen from 50 percent of all nonmarital births to just 30 percent today: A growing proportion of women who have a nonmarital birth are in their twenties and thirties and usually have more economic and educational resources than unwed mothers of the While two involved parents are generally better than one, a mother's personal maturity; along with her educa­ tional and economic status, is a better predictor of how well her child will turn out than her marital status. We should no longer assume that children raised by single parents face debilitating disadvantages. As we begin to understand the range of sizes, shapes, and colors that today's families come in, we find that the differences within fam­ ily types are more important than the differences between them. No particular family form guarantees success, and no particular form is doomed to fail. How a family functions on the inside is more impor­ tant than how it looks from the outside. 99 CHAPTER 2 » THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE OF FAMILY The biggest problem facing most families as this century draws to a close is not that our families have changed too much but that our in­ stitutions have changed too little. America's work policies are fifty years out of date, designed for a time when most moms weren't in the workforce and most dads didn't understand the joys of being involved in childcare. Our school schedules are 150 years out of date, designed for a time when kids needed to be home to help with the milking and haying. And many political leaders feel they have to decide whether to help parents stay home longer with their kids or invest in better childcare, preschool, and afterschool programs, when most industri­ alized nations have long since learned it's possible to do both. So America's social institutions have some Y2K bugs to iron out. But for the most part, our families are ready for the next millennium. 100 25
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