Chapter 7: Communication + Family Roles + Types

Providing for maintenance + management can also be referred to as...

"kinwork"

To what extent can children learn the act of nurturing from siblings?

(ex. brother just throws blanket onto bed, doesn't cover younger brother with it or really even make sure that it got there)

Struggles experienced by male caregivers

- 1965 families - fathers working 42 hrs, not much house or child care - mothers work 8hrs outside of home, the rest house/child care - 2011 families - fathers work 37, little more of other stuff - mothers work 21 hrs, and same amount ish with other stuff

Strengths and future directions of the concept of aunting

- flexibility and adaptability - for better and worse - like my mother (but not my mother) - role of choice - embedded in family system - most undervalued women in America - can connect w children, less focus on rules, more focus on relationships

behaviors and types of aunting

- gifts/treats - maintaining family connections - encouragement - nonengagement -types: - teacher - role model - confidante - savvy peer - second mother

gender socialization

-begins before birth -parents handle male/female infants differently -children use gender as a criteria for what is good and bad behavior

Significant factors that affect role enactment

-conflict avoidance -assertiveness -sharing -the ideology of traditionalism -the ideology of uncertainty and change -time regularity -undifferentiated space -autonomy

Providing for individual development results in...

-encouraging self-discovery -encouraging talent development -validating each member's ideas (your ideas matter) -grant opportunity for individual choice (never underestimate the value of children and their play with one another)

management of daily needs

-executive and administrative work -household labor -health management

fostering self-sufficiency

-helps avoid enmeshment -emphasis on independence varies from culture promote self discovery and talent development

McMaster family functions can be categorized as these

-instrumental (providing the resources for the family) -affective (support and nurturing, adult sexual needs) -mixed (life skill development and system upkeep)

Role negotiation

-involves managing interpersonal conflict when members attempt to work out roles -integration of work + family roles

Aunting

-less reliant on biological, legal, or affect-based relationship, more communicatively defined and negotiated relationships -"doing family", aunting as a choice -to describe: metaphors and smilies, adjectives, selffocus, unreflectiveness, family connections

providing basic resources

-most married mothers work outside the home -dual earner vs. dual career couples -spillover -single mothers

nurturing children

-mothers still primarily nurture, fathers have increased time spent nurturing benefits of father involvement: -positive sibling interaction -social skills -less gender role stereotypes

Role (definition)

-patterns of behavior developed through interaction that fam members use to fulfill family functions -expectation + performance -are inextricably bound to the communication process

Deconstructivism

-postmodernism=all truth is relative, there's no truth, you just have a perspective of something -deconstructivism is a challenge to the attempt to define any real/clear meaning -deconstructivism seeks to tear apart the ideological biases --deconstructivism is a counter-argument (ex. art that's totally abstract/completely out there)

role functions

-provide gender socialization -meeting adult sexual needs -provide nurturing support -provide basic resources

what are family roles

-repetitive patterns of behavior by which family members fulfill family functions -influenced by culture, tradition, heritage roles emerge through interactive and dynamic social interaction

Specific role functions provide

-sexual fulfillment + gender modeling -nurturing + emotional support -individual development -kinship maintenance + family management -basic resources

non traditional families

-single parent -multi generational -step families -gay/lesbian

Role expectations

-society provided norms and models of how certain fam roles should be Golden books, TV shows, etc. -Significant others + complimentary others -Entertainment narratives - deconstructivism

care work

-supervisory -indirect/direct women spend on average more time doing care work

Role enactment

-the actual interaction behavior that defines how the role is enacted -depends upon those in complementary or opposing roles (ex. successful careers + partners)

Role conflict

-trying to enact more than one role at a time -(are the roles age and relationship appropriate?)

Conformity Orientation

A typology of a family communication pattern. In a family with high conformity members express similar values and attitudes. In a family with low conformity members are more varied in values, attitudes, and patterns of interactions, this upholds individuality and unique personalities.

Independent types

Accept uncertainty and change; pay limited attention to schedules and traditional values, do considerable sharing and negotiates autonomy, more likely to conflict and to support an androgynous flexible sex role

Independent Types

Accepts uncertainty and change, they pay limited attention to schedules and tradition. The most autonomous

Conversation Orientation

Another type of typology of a family communication pattern. A family with high use of conversation has an open family system so that individuals can speak their mind easily. In a family with low use of conversation members speak out less frequently on fewer conflict issues.

How do we know that the process of learning what it means to be male or female begins at birth?

Because of... -everyday communication -toys -types of disclosure (more disclosure vs. more action/activity)

Spillover

Bidirectional, family demands can spill over into work life and work demands can spill over into family life

Family role types

Co-breadwinner, stay at home parent, noncustodial father, third mother in law

Role Negotiations

Communication and agreement among the roles discussed. Socially construct and structure their reality and give meaning to their lives. Reconstructing differences and exploring new ways to act regarding certain expectations. Example: before a husband and wife have kids they may agree that they are both the providers. after the wife has a child she may prefer to stay home with the child. this new life style needs to be negotiated and agreed to.

Fitzpatrick and Ritchie's 4 different kinds of families

Consensual, pluralistic, protective, laissez-faire

Traditional Types

Conventional belief system and resist change and uncertainty because it threatens their routines. High degree of interdependence and lower autonomy.

Fitzpatrick's Martial/Couple Types

Developed to classify types of couples to explore how roles develop through family interaction. There are three couple types: 1. Traditionals 2. Separates 3. Independents

Gender-legacy couples

Do not overtly recognize gender as the reason for their division of labor but use if by default to do so

Family Communication Patterns

Families can be understood and classified by their ways of communication particularly cohesion and adaptation. 2 dimensions of communication.

McMasters Model of Family Functioning

Focuses on discovering how a family allocates and manages family responsibilities. There are 5 essential family functions that serve as a basis for family roles. 1. Providing sexual fulfillment and children's gender socialization 2. Providing nurturing and emotional support 3. Providing individual development 4. Providing kinship maintenance and family management 5. Providing basic resources

Complementary Others

Fulfill reciprocal role functions. Example: I want my partner to be home with the children until they go to school, or I need a partner that will help parent my children from my first marriage.

Separate types

Greater conflict avoidance, more differentiated space needs, fairly regular schedules, less sharing, experience little sense of togetherness or autonomy, oppose an androgynous sexual orientation

Separate Types

Greater conflict avoidance, more differentiated space needs, less sharing, and regular schedules. Experience little togetherness or autonomy

Consensual families

High in both conversation and conformity strategies with their communication characterized by pressure for agreement, although children are encouraged to express ideas and feelings

Pluralistic families

High in conversation orientation and low in conformity, have open communication and emotional supportiveness

Role Enactment

Involves role performance or complementary interactive behavior. Expectations and performance reflects an individuals capacity for enacting a certain role. Enacting work roles and family roles may be different. A women's behavior may be different in her first marriage than in her second marriage.

Protective families

Low conversation and high on conformity; stress upholding family rules and avoiding conflict

Laissez-faire families

Low on both conformity and conversation, interact very little, children may look outside the family for influence and support

Is the role of the father less critical after divorce, separation, or out-of-marriage birth?

Neither, no matter what the situation is the role of the father is very important.

Gender organized couple types

Post-gender, gender-legacy, traditional types

Family Roles

Recurring patterns of behavior developed through the family member's interactions that family member's enact in order to fulfill family functions.

Traditional types

Resist change or uncertainty because it threatens their routines, high degree of interdependence and low autonomy, engages in conflict but would rather avid it, strong sex types roles

Role Expectations

Society provides models and norms for how certain family roles should be enacted. Different cultural groups provide different parenting and spousal role expectations. There are different gender role expectations.

Emotionally divorced

Term for separates, least likely to express their feelings to their partners

Post-gender couples

Those who have made a conscious effort to move past gender as a way to organize the relationship and tasks associated with it

Role appropriation

Three part overlapping process that involves role expectation, role enactment and role negotiation

Couple types (Fitzpatrick)

Traditional, separated and independents

Tradtional

Use gender as a conscious method of dividing labor in the relationship and see their roles though different as equal

Role Conflict

When complementary or significant others have different expectations of another's role performance and conflict results. Occurs when divorced parents remarries bringing in a step-parent and there is a lack of communication for the roles for the step-family members

Do husbands or wives perform the most household chores?

Wives

Recreation management-husbands or wives?

Wives

Who inspires more kinship maintenance with the extended family?

Woman

Do men or women do most of the communicating with relatives?

Women

A sense of uniqueness results in...

avoiding enmeshment

role enactment/ performance

behaviors and interactions that characterize the role you are playing -complementary others, our other roles

Androgyny

capacity to be masculine + feminine in one's behavior (Helen Reddy - I am Woman - 1973)

What's the difference between dual-career couple vs. dual-earner couple?

dual-career couple=what you do is part of your identity (advancing), more spillover

Struggles experienced by female breadwinners (Meisenbach article)

gender may well influence how publics view women in a traditionally male role. -FBWs are likely to be evaluated less favorably than males and can influence the experiences and identity negotiation - uncomfy to have power over hubby -have issues not because of how they feel about power but how other feel it should be male dominated and how society shapes that

consensual

high convo, high conform

pluralistic

high convo, low conform

protective

low convo, high conform

laissez faire

low convo, low conform

Husbands and kinship....

maintain fewer kinship contacts with their relatives + have more contacts with their wives' relatives

collective ambivalence

more room to not be as close, its socially okay if parents aren't physically or emotionally maybe close

Same sex couples generally tend to rely on....

negotiation to communicate roles

Women tend to nurture more via...

one-on-one communication -more to special needs children

role negotiation

ongoing process of constructing and modifying how we enact our roles -involves conversations with those related roles

role relinquishment

process of giving up a role when circumstances change

Family role definition

recurring patterns of behavior developed through the family members' interactions that family members enact in order to fulfill family functions

role conflict

stress resulting from incongruity between own or others role expectations/role performance

Roles and communication rules are

strongly interrelated (rules + roles are dynamically related)

role attachment

tendency to become caught up in the identity a role provides us

While the mom helps shop for the dress, what's the dad supposed to do?

there's cultural rituals associated with gender

Second shift

work is at work and then carries on at home w/childcare as child interaction increases over time