SOC 320 Chapter 9 Notes

Health and Parenting

A growing number of parents are struggling with opioid addiction. The opioid epidemic has contributed to an increase of children entering the foster care system. Children's health, especially for those with "invisible" disabilities, introduces financial costs, time demands, and emotional stress. Protecting children from racism or violence is a daunting task, especially for the parents of Black children.

Abortion

Approximately 900,000 abortions were performed in the United States in 2017. Of these abortions, 92 percent take place in the first trimester of pregnancy. Reasons for abortion range from medical reasons to time and resource constraints. Despite the Supreme Court's 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade, abortion remains a divisive issue in American politics.

Living without Children

Are people without children "childless" or "childfree"? For those experiencing infertility, the answer is probably "childless." But for those who deliberately postpone or avoid having children, the answer is probably "childfree." Around 15 percent of American adults live without children. This trend is strong among women with higher education and professional careers, but it has spread beyond that group as well.

Consumer Culture

Consumer culture sells parenting advice and seemingly infinite opportunities to buy a perfect childhood.

Chapter 9

Families and Children

Transitions

Family transitions can have long-lasting effects on children. Transitions involving the romantic relationships of the adults are important. Children have to see their relationships with adults change or end. Children may have to adjust to new parenting standards and practices. Children's lives become intertwined with those of other children. Such transitions always have an economic component. Family transitions generally add stress to children's lives.

Fertility

Fertility: the number of children born in a society or among a particular group Total fertility rate: the number of children born to the average woman in her lifetime The total fertility rate is useful for thinking about populations as a whole. If a country has a total fertility rate of more than 2.1 or so, the population will usually grow; if the rate is lower than that, it will eventually start to shrink.

Infertility Throughout History

Historically, failure to produce children cast shame on the wife. Today, we know that male or female medical conditions are equally likely to cause infertility. With medical advances, infertility has come to be a more treatable problem. But because most treatments are more invasive to the woman than to the man, the burden that women historically felt in some ways persists.

Intention and Education

If we only count those women who had children when they fully intended to, the education differences in the number of children mostly disappear. The high frequency of unintended births, especially among women or couples with less education or economic resources, partly results from their lack of access to good quality medical care.

Gay and Lesbian Parents

In 2019, the Census Bureau estimated there were about 200,000 children living with same-sex couple parents. Same-sex couples are much less likely to have children than different-sex couples because they may still face legal obstacles to becoming parents. Gay and lesbian couples are increasingly pursuing adoption, foster care, or assisted reproduction together as couples.

Intensive Parenting

Intensive motherhood: cultural pressure on women to devote more time, energy, and money to raising their children. Mothers pressed for time compensated by doing less of other things, especially leisure and adult recreational activities, and by sleeping less. For some high-income parents, the goal seems to be "snowplow parenting," or clearing any obstacles in their child's path to success.

Statistics about American Childbearing

Most American families have one to three children. More children now are born to parents who are not married. The majority of women who aren't married when they have their first child are cohabiting with a male partner. Many children are involved with more than two parents, because a growing number of families include stepparents. There are more adults spending much of their lives without children.

Competition and Insecurity

Parental insecurity around raising children has grown in the last few decades. Parents have fewer children, so their investment in each one has grown. Growing fears of economic insecurity, and the increasing necessity of advanced education, make parenting stakes seem very high. Other fears about crime, terrorism, and accidents are irrationally prominent in the minds of many parents.

Families and Children

The phrase "start a family" is often used to refer to couples that are having a first child. The unspoken assumption of this phrase is that childless couples somehow add up to less than a family. The persistence of this phrase shows that children are a vital part of the cultural image of family life.

Review Question 7 Reed and May are young children who live with their mother. Recently, due to the financial strain of single parenthood, all three of them moved in with a grandparent. This change is referred to as a family transition. a social change. intensive motherhood. an opportunity cost.

a family transition.

Review Question 6 As described by sociologist Viviana Zelizer, the transformation of American childhood during modern times can be understood as children losing their ______ value and instead achieving a newfound ______ value. material; labor emotional; economic labor; material economic; emotional

economic; emotional

Review Question 5 If a country has a total fertility rate of more than 2.1, the population will usually ______ , but if the total fertility rate is lower than 2.1, the population will instead ______. shrink; grow grow; stay the same grow; shrink stay the same; shrink

grow; shrink

Review Question 2 The increase in women's employment and the increased diversity of family structure changed the cultural view of fathers from the ______ to the ______ ideal, which emphasizes providing both material support and emotional bonding. male provider; involved father working father; intensive fatherhood absent father; involved father single father; involved father

male provider; involved father

Review Question 1 One skill or resource that parents provide (or try to provide) for their children is ______, which helps prepare them for future social situations so they will feel less confusion and stress. the social bond socialization intensive motherhood social networking

socialization

Unmarried Parents

40 percent of all children born in the United States are born to parents who aren't married. Single parenthood takes many different forms: Young adults have children, either alone or with a partner they are not ready or willing to marry. Older women who are single decide to have children as single parents even though they might have preferred to be married first. Divorced people have children but don't remarry.

Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART)

ART has made it possible for older people to have a baby, provided they are medically and financially eligible to access this technology. ART results in more diverse family arrangements: same-sex parents, surrogate parents, and sperm-donor embryos ART has enabled people to have children who might otherwise not have been able to for health reasons. ART allows for possible genetic selection to produce a child with traits the parents choose.

Adoption

Adoption has become much less common since the 1960s, but it is so much more open and acceptable that we probably discuss it more. Almost all adopted children now know that they live in an adoptive family. Most adoptions include an agreement to put the children in touch with their birth family at some point. Adoption today can be divided into three categories: private services, public agencies, and international adoptions.

Race and Ethnicity

Among American Indian, Black, and Puerto Rican families, half of all children are born to parents who are not married. There also are differences in how many children members of the major racial and ethnic groups have. Total fertility rates indicate that Latina women on average have just under 2 children, African Americans have 1.9, whereas Whites, Asians, and American Indians have the fewest.

Children's Living Arrangements

Changes in family structure and marriage patterns over the last half-century are reflected in the lives of children today. Living arrangements have become more diverse. The scale of the family transformation is marked by inequality, with African American children seeing a much greater shift toward single-mother families. Social and economic change has increased cultural acceptance of family structures beyond the breadwinner-homemaker form.

Economic Trends

Childbearing patterns do show people responding to their economic conditions. Clear evidence of conscious birth planning emerged during the recession of the late 2000s. As millions faced profound economic uncertainty, it appears many younger people deliberately postponed having children. However, hard economic conditions don't always lead to lower birth rates. Even as the economy improved, birth rates continued to fall.

Infertility

Infertility: the failure of a couple to have a successful pregnancy despite deliberately having sex without contraception Infertility can have many potential causes, including old age, poorer overall health, smoking, obesity, and a history of sexually transmitted infections. U.S. patterns of infertility are consistent with other kinds of inequality: Black women are the most likely to experience infertility. Women with the lowest levels of education have the highest rates of infertility.

Fatherhood

Male provider ideal: the father as an economic provider and authority figure for his children Involved father ideal: the father as an emotional, nurturing companion who bonds with his children as well as providing for them The involved father ideal is now nearly universally accepted, and most new fathers embrace it completely. Shifting attitudes seem to have translated to measurable changes in parenting, with fathers spending more time with children than before.

Transitions to Multigenerational Households

Many families experience changes in household composition that include extended family members. This is especially the case during economically challenging times, in the face of a shifting balance between needs and resources. For a growing number of children, living in the home of a grandparent is part of their experience growing up.

Reasons for High Fertility Rates Among Latinos

Most Latinos are descended from relatively recent immigrants who came from countries with higher fertility rates. Groups with lower levels of education, such as Latinos, usually have higher fertility rates. The immigrant Latino population includes many young, healthy adults who also tend to have large families.

The Meaning of Childhood

Over the course of history, American children have become fewer and more precious—losing their economic value as laborers while achieving a newfound emotional value that was considered "priceless." The paradox of priceless childhood is how expensive it is. The parents of a typical family with two children today can expect to spend between $175,000 and $370,000 to raise each child up to age 17, depending on how rich the family is.

Parents

Parent: an adult intimately responsible for the care and rearing of a child Biological parents: the adults whose bodies—including the father's sperm and the mother's egg—produce a child Adoptive parents: parents to a child they did not produce biologically. Parents are not limited to a mother-father couple, as there is no "correct" number of or gender specified for parents.

Parenting

Parenting: the activity of raising a child. Parents try to provide three broad categories of skills or resources to their children: Socialization. Successful socialization prepares children for what they will encounter in social interactions. Social bonds. Stable bonds are a foundation of learning and development. Social networks. Parents usually facilitate an entire web of friends and neighbors, relatives, potential mentors, teachers, and peers that shapes the social environment of their children.

Education

The long-standing pattern worldwide is that women with lower levels of education have more children. This is partly because some women stop their education after they have children or postpone childbearing until they have finished school. Women with higher education also risk giving up higher incomes and career status if they have children, known as the opportunity cost, or the price one pays for choosing the less lucrative of the available options.

Good Parenting

When it comes to children's success in being happy and well adjusted, doing well in school, and staying out of serious trouble, some aspects of parenting have proved beneficial. Supportiveness. Spending time with children and being accessible Monitoring. Useful rule setting creates an environment for healthy development, especially for adolescents. Discipline. When used in a consistent and proportional way, discipline helps develop a sense of security in children.

Review Question 4 Kayla decides to leave her lucrative job as a financial analyst to have and raise a second child. The income she will be giving up to raise her child can be referred to as the motherhood penalty. an opportunity cost. the parenting cost. the fertility cost.

an opportunity cost.

Review Question 3 Public opinion regarding spanking children can be understood as being shaped by traditional beliefs and by ______, which are influenced by the advice of experts such as doctors, teachers, and social scientists. opportunity costs contemporary attitudes religious beliefs stigmas

contemporary attitudes