Family relations exam 4

"Whats stopping me?" Barriers to Divorce:

- Children, religion and lack of financial resources, are barriers to divorce.

Legal Aspects of Divorce:

-family law establishes policies and regulations to ensure that married or divorced couples fulfill their obligations to each other and to their children -specific family laws vary from state to state, these laws were enacted to protect the rights and well-being of all family members, as well as both spouses 2 aspects of legal divorce that make marital breakup painful: -Divorce, creates the need to grieve. -Adversary system; lawyers advocate (supports) for their client's interests only and are eager to get the most for their clients and protect their rights.

Why do victims continue to to live with it?

-intimate terrorist's behavior in phase 2 of the cycle of violence makes it difficult for a victim to distinguish a partner's genuine change from manipulative conduct. "She wants him to mean what he says-this time." other reasons why victims take too long to leave: 1. Fear- losing child, situation outcome, negative professional consequences, discrimmination 2. Cultural norms and gender socialization: wives are convinced that their emotional support may lead husbands to reform (make changes) 3. Economic hardships: Economic uncertainty and concerns about future financial troubles can discourage victims from leaving. Leaving or pressing charges could mean loss of a husband income or damage to his professional reputation. 4. Low self-esteem: fear, depression, confusion, anxiety, feelings of self blame, and loss of a sense of personal control to create a battered woman syndrome- in which a wife cannot see a way out of her situation.

Families would benefit from necessary structural or societal changes:

1. Adequate Wages: Minimum wage should be higher. 2. Quality, Affordable Elder and Childcare: Sandwich generation- sandwiched between elder and childcare responsibilities. - Tag-team handoffs: when two earner couples exchange childcare and work roles daily or even more often than that. -Childcare by relatives, especially grandparents -paid, nonrelative childcare arrangements: -paid childcare costs and concerns -self care: without adult supervision. 3. Family leave: employees being able to take extended periods of time from work, either paid or unpaid, for the purpose of caring for their own health needs or for newborns, newly adopted or seriously ill children- with a gurantee of a job returning. 4. Fair and flexible scheduling: -job sharing: two ppl sharing one position. -working at home Flextime: flexible starting and ending times, with requires core hours.

Power basis:

1. Coercive power: based on the dominant person's ability and willingness to punish the partner with psychological-emotional abuse or physical violence or more subtly, by with holding favors or affection. Ex: Slapping a mate, spanking a child, silent treatment. 2. Reward power: based on an individual's ability to give material or non material gifts and favors, ranging from emotional support ex: eye contact, a smile, a gentle hand on a shoulder, listening, and attention to financial support or recreational travel. 3. Expert power: stems from the dominant person's superior judgement, knowledge, or ability. Ex: men's expertise in finance. women attributed in special knowledge of children. 4. Informational power: based on the persuasive content of what the dominant person tells the other individual. Ex: A partner may be persuaded to charge less on a credit card when the other shares information on the card's high interest rate. 5. Referent power: based on a person's emotional identification with the partner. Ex: A person who attends a social function when he or she would rather not "because my loved one wanted to go, so i wanted to go" -can enhance couple commitment. Legitimate power: stems from the dominant individual's ability to claim authority or the right to request compliance. in traditional marriages: involves acceptance from both partners of the husband's role as head of the family.

Current research on couple power:

1. Decision making: women can gain power from greater knowledge of the household. They can use informational power to shape decisions about purchases and household arrangements. 2. Division of household labor: Who provides income? Who does household labor? Women do more housework than men. men work more hours. 3. Money allocation: who controls household spending? who has personal spending money? -Money allocation systems: whether they pool their money and who controls pooled or separate money-is fairly recent. 4. Ability to influence the other partner and feeling comfortable in raising complaints about the relationship.

Other solutions to Martial Distress:

1. Martial separation- Virtually, no marriages were resumed after 8 months of separation. only 1/3 resulted in a continued marriage. 2. Stable unhappy marriages: Divorced married singles, and divorced couples who got remarried have greater level of life satisfaction.

alternative hypotheses for why women do more unpaid household labor:

1. Partner's relative earnings influence their division of household labor- on average, wives contribute less than half of the family incomes. Women who outearn their partners have mates who contribute more in unpaid family labor. 2. Gender roles influence partners' division of household labor- tends to split household tasks according to traditional gender expectations. 3. The partner with more power in the relationship can escape undesirable household labor- 4. The relative time available to each partner influences the division of household labor- more hours men work, the less housework they do.

Reasons for Negative Effects of Divorce on children:

1. life stress perspective- assumes that divorce is stressful for children just as much as it is for adults. 2. parental loss perspective: assumes that a family with both parents living in the same household is the optimal environment for children's development. the absence of a parent from the household is problematic for children's socialization. 3. parental adjustment perspective: notes the importance of the custodial parent's psychological adjustment and the quality of parenting. 4. Economic hardship perspective: assumes that economic hardship brought about martial dissolution is primarily responsible for the problems faced by children whose parents divorce. having fewer financial resources. 5. Interparental conflict perspective: conflict between parents is responsible for the lowered well-being of children of divorce. negative results of children behavior could result from exposure to parental conflict prior to, during the divorce. 6. Selection perspective; says that at least some of the child's problems after the divorce were present before the marriage 7. Family instability perspective: stresses that the number of transitions in and out of various family settings is the key to children's adjustment. Family fluidity: the frequency and rate of changes in family related experiences and outcomes.

Diversity and martial power:

3 general types of conjugal power from more to least equal: egalitarian unions, gender-modified egalitarian unions, neotraditional unions. Egalitarian unions: share all 4 components. Equally dependent on one another's earnings. Neotraditional unions: Family that values traditional gender roles and organizes its life in these terms as far as practicable. Formal male dominance is softened by an egalitarian. Gender-modified egalitarian unions: absolute equality is diminished (made smaller or less) by the symbolic importance of maintaining fairly traditional, comfortable, and familiar gender roles.

"Would I be happier?" Alternatives to the marriage

A british study found people to be less happy one year after separation, but by one year after divorce, both me and women were happier than they had been while married.

Women still average more household-labor hours than men do

A good deal of women's unpaid family labor goes unnoted and unmeasured. for instance- health behavior work- promoting family member's healthy behaviors such as making family member's dental appointments or monitoring their eating habits- is a virtually invisible aspect of caregiving that is usually assigned to women. kin keeping: maintaining contact, remembering anniversaries and birthdays, sending cards and shopping for gifts.

Styles of parental relationships after divorce:

Binuclear family: the child is the "nucleus" in two households within one family. Cooperative parenting: 2 styles- 1. Perfect pals; friends who call each other often and brought their common children and new families together on holidays or for outings. 2. Cooperative colleagues: worked well together but did not attempt to share holidays or be in constant touch. Parallel parents: parents who parented alongside each other but with minimal contact or communication or conflict. this is associated with worse child outcomes.

Two career partnerships:

Career men and women working a job that requires beyond a bachelor's degree. Two earner partnerships would not be classified as two career because one or both partners do not have the features of a career.

Violence Against Children- Child Maltreatment:

Child maltreatment: the "physical or mental injury, sexual abuse or negligent treatment of a child under the age of 18 by a person who is responsible for the child's welfare under circumstances that indicate that the child's health or welfare is harmed or threatened.

Neglect and Abuse:

Child neglect: most common form of child maltreatment and involves failing to provide adequate physical or emotional care. Willful neglect: purposeful failure to provide care even when resources are available. Emotional neglect: parents being overly harsh and critical, failing to provide guidance, or being uninterested in a child's needs. -educational neglect: failure to see that a school-age child gets to school reguarlary. -medical neglect: failure to obtain necessary medical care for a child. Child abuse: overt acts of agression- excessive verbal derogation (emotional abuse) or physical abuse such as beating, whipping punching, kicking etc. decline in sexual abuse. double increase in emotional neglect.

Child Support:

Child support: money paid by the noncustodial to the custodial parent to support the children of a now-ended marital, cohabiting or sexual relationship. Bc mothers retain custody, 89% ordered to pay child support are fathers.

Challenges to developing a stepfamily identity:

Cultural script: a set of socially prescribed and understood guidelines for defining responsibilities and obligations and hence for relating to each other. Incomplete institution: referred to remarried family. Remarriages lack social norms to guide behavior and therefore remarried couples do not have the tools to solve problems and "get along".

IPV Data sources:

Data on physical intimate partner violence comes from 4 types of sources: 1. violent crime reports filed in police departments and then reported to the FBI. 2. National surveys of the general population 3. smaller research studies, often qualitative, that relate persons experience with family violence. 4. reports from social workers, counselors, or volunteers at hospital emergency rooms.

Why did the divorce rate rise throughout the twentieth century?

Demographic factors: -remarriage. -young age at first marriage -heterogamous marriage (marrying someone of a different race, ethnicity) -cohabitation -premartial sex premartial pregnancy, premartial childbearing -having parents and grandparents who divorces increases one's own liklihood of divorce. -race/ethnicity -military service Economic factors: -independence effect: occurs when an increase in a married women's income lead to martial dissolution because she is better able to afford to live separately.

Separating Victim from Perpetrator

Escaping to shelters for IPV victims, and removing an abused child from the home in the case of child abuse. Family preservation: a child protective services work is able to "leave the child with (the offending) family and provide support in the form of housekeeping help or drug treatment and then visit frequently to monitor progress"

Who will provide whats needed to meet the challenges?

Family-friendly workplace policies: supportive of employee efforts to combine family and work comittments.

Men's share of house work is greater than in the past.

Fathers are doing more household labor than they did in the past, mothers continue to do more of it than fathers do.

Good providers vs. involved fathers

Good providers: traditional fathers; emphasize the provider role as defining their merit, and work more hours than men with no children. Involved fathers: work fewer hours than do childless men so they can participate more at home. Being an involved father is not easy.

Grandparenting after divorce:

Grandchildren are more likely to remain close to their maternal than to their paternal grandparents bc children reside with their mothers

Doing paid work at home:

Historically. home based work involved piecework- sewing or making artificial flowers. but this has decline due to competition from low wage workers overseas. Now, home based workers are educated and are engaged in professional services such as law, accounting, computer programming, consulting, marketing, financing, etc. also, selling cosmetics, or other products. or- work from home for employer by connecting to the office, clients, etc. via the internet- that is, telecommuting. Telecommuting does help parents coordinate work and family obligations, but it may not be a panacea. Parents employed at home may simultaneously be expected to do unpaid family work.

Spill over:

How pleasures or stresses associated with work situtations into family life.

"Can this marriage be saved?" Rewards of the current marriage

If a couple decides to divorce, they may engage in what has been referred to by relationship therapist Rachel, as "conscious uncoupling" which "takes place when both couples believes that they both have tried to work through their problems in their relationship or marriage in a way that causes the least possible damage to themselves, their integrity and their children."

Family violence:

Intimate partner violence (IPV)- the physical or emotional abuse of spouses of either gender, cohabiting or non cohabiting heterosexual or same sex relationship partners.

Intimate Terrorism, or Coercive Controlling Violence:

Intimate terrorism: aka coercive controlling violence, refers to abuse that is decisivley oriented to controlling one's partner through fear and intimidation. -follows the cycle of violence-consisting 3 consecutive phases: Phase 1: Acute Battering- the violent episode itself, including physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, and typically growing more violent over the course of the relationship. Phase 2: Honeymoon phase: abuser may ignore or deny the violence; blame the episode on the victim or act genuinely sorry, sending cards and flowers. Asks for forgiveness and promises not to happen again. Phase 3: Tension building: Victim feels increasingly disappointed and intimidated while the abuser's behavior is unpredictable and threatening. Anger, blaming and arguing occur.

2 forms of IPV:

Intimate terrorism: formally termed patriarchal terrorism. also called coercive controlling violence. Situational couple violence.

Economic losses for men:

Killewald found that men outside of traditional family structures are paid significantly less than married men. Child support is a major source of tension between men and women after divorce.

Getting the divorce: The "Black box" of divorce-

Learn a new language of petitioners and respondents, of financial disclosures and waiting periods, of parenting plans and spousal support, Consult an attorny who has expertise in divorce law.

Lesbians, gay men and household labor

Lesbian couples division of labor was more egalitarian (equal) than that of gay male couples.

Thinking about divorce: weighing out the alternatives

Levinger's model of divorce decisions: Spouses assess (estimate) their marriage in terms of the barriers to divorce, alternatives to marriage, and rewards of marriage

Triadic communication:

Linked triad: a child's interaction is connected with the stepparent through the child's biological parent. Outsider triad: the child and the biological parent maintain interaction but the stepparent remains an outsider and pretty much irrelevent to the child's life. Adult-coalition triad: the child views the biological parent and stepparent as maintaining couple relationship that ignores the child's concern. Complete triad: communication flows freely, involving all stepfamily members equally.

Stay-at-home Moms

Majority of stay at home mothers have no more than a high school diploma and have relatively low household incomes. Neotraditional families: For upper-middle-class nonHispanic white women. That is families reminiscent of 1950s norms and value, but with the new (neo) aspect that the model is consciously selected from several options-options that the bast majority of wives in the 1950s did not have.

Men's work and family roles

Male provider role: Men are expected to supply resources (shelter and food, for instance)

Martial Rape and Reproductive Coercion:

Martial rape: A husband's forcing a wife to submit sexual contact that she does not want or that she finds offensive. Reproductive coercion: behavior related to reproductive health that is used to maintain power and control in a relationship.

Gender and the work-family interface

Men show instrumental character traits; self reliance and ambition Women show expressive trait; supportive help mates and family oriented. Individuals who play roles in both institution experience Role Conflict: meeting the demands of one institution conflicts with meeting the simultaneous but different demands of another institution. Ex: An employed partner needs to be 1. home to monitor a teenager's afterschool home behavior. 2. and at work.

Women's occupation:

Occupational segregation: The tendency for men and women to be employed in different job types.

Clinical problems vs. Psychological pain

Parentification: has been linked to worse child outcomes. means, forced to take on adult responsibilities before they were developmentally mature enough to handle them.

Power politics versus freely cooperative relationships:

Power politics: Supportive partners avoid this. Power struggles between spouses in which each seeks to gain a power advantage over the other; the opposite of a no-power relationship.

What is power?

Power: ability to exercise one's will. Personal power: power over oneself or autonomy. Social power: the ability to exercise one's will over others. Relationship power: 1. Objective measures of power: Who makes more, or more important, decisions, or who does more house work 2. Subjective measures of fairness: whether each partner feels their arrangement is fair or equitable Equity: whether the rewards of the relationship feel subjectively proportional to each other's partner's contributions, which may not be necessarily be equal.

Whats needed to address the issue?

Proposed individual remedies: inadequate resources solution- might be addressed by better budgetting, parents stop buying name brand clothes, toys. just say "no" as an individual solution. -parental stress due to work-family conflict solution: scheduling fewer family activities. -persistent gender inequality solution: encouraging women to speak up and let know what you want.

Situational couple violence:

Refers to symmetrical (mutual perpetrated by woman as well as by men) violence between partners that occurs in conjunction with a specific argument, tends to be less severe in terms of injuries, and is not likely to escalate as the relationship progresses. EX: Fighting about dishes, about accidents, the past, someone did something wrong. - less severe injuries on average

Ch. 14 Divorce and relationship dissolution: Today's divorce rate:

Refined divorce rate: the rise in number of divorces per 1000 married women, more than doubled in 1960 and 1980. Crude divorce rate: the number of divorces per 1000 population. Children and the unmarried- who are not at risk for divorce. The divorce divide: the large disparity in divorce rates between those with and without a college degree.

The resource hypothesis: A classical perspective on martial power

Resource hypothesis posits that the partner with more resources can exchange them for greater power in the relationship. In Blood & Wolfe's research, the resource hypothesis was supported by the finding that the spouse with higher earnings and educational attainment made more decisions. Egalitarian relationships: couples toward

Stepfamily roles:

Role ambiguity: few clear guidelines regarding what responsibilities, behaviors, and emotions stepfamily members are expected to exhibit. lower role ambiguity has been associated with higher remarital satisfaction, especially for wives and with greater parenting satisfaction. Paternal claiming: the extent to which to stepfathers seeing their stepchildren as biological children.

Abuse among Same-Gender, Bisexual, and Transgender couple:

Same-sex intimate partner violence (SSIPV): The abusive partner can threaten to "out" them to employers, family members, and friends. Hate crimes, discrimination, internalized homophobia, and fear of being "outed" are all stressors that can impact homosexual and bisexual relationships and lead to to SSIPV.

Child Sexual Abuse:

Sexual abuse: child is forced, tricked, or coerced by an older person into sexual behavior- exposure, unwanted kissing, fondling of sexual organs, intercourse, rape, incest, prostitution and pornography- for purposes of sexual gratification or financial gain.

Shift work and variations:

Shift work: before 8am or after 4pm. Just in time scheduling: timing shifts exactly when employees are needed, sometimes in very small time segments, even at the last minute. Clopening scheduling: requiring a worker to close a store late at night and then open it early the next morning. Shift work decreases martial stability and less positive parent hood.

Two earner couple's relationship:

Stalled revolution: Attitudes and behaviors became increasingly egalitarian since the 1970s, then the trend toward more egalitarian behavior slowed during the 1990's.

Starter marriages and silver divorces:

Start marriages: first marriage that ends in divorce within the first few years, typically before the couple has children. Silver or grey divorce: proportion of divorces among older couples and those in long term marriages has recently increased.

Stepmother role:

Stepmother trap: the conflict between 2 views: society sentimentalizes the step mother's role and expects her to be unnaturally loving toward her stepchildren but at the same time views her as a wicked witch.

Perceptions of stepfamilies: Sterotypes and stigmas

Stigmatization: refers to the subjection (domination) of people to negative labels, sterotypes and cultural myths that portray them as deviant and harmful simply because they have certain social characteristics. Stepfamilies are stigmatizes in that they are perceived as being less functional and desirable than original two-parent families. Nuclear-family model monopoly: the first marriage family is perceived as the "real" standard for family living, with all other family forms seen as deficient alternatives.

Stopping family violence:

Stopping this involves policy action on both the micro (relationship or personal) and the macro (structural) levels.

Ch. 12 Power and violence in families: Conjugal power:

The ability to exercise one's will or autonomy in a marital relationship.

The female-male wage gap

The difference in earnings between men and women varies considerably, depending on occupation, and tends to be greater in more elite, higher paying positions. Motherhood penalty: describes the fact that motherhood has a significant negative lifetime impact on female income- a situation that creates a long term gender-earnings gap.

workplace obstacles to being an involved father

The resistance men encounter may be partly a self-imposed perception that they will be viewed as less committed employees if they access options such as paternity leave.

Gender and intimate partner violence (IPV):

These conflicting findings have set off an unresolved dispute about whether IPV is ASYMMETRICAL- with women primarily the victims of male aggression or whether couple violence is SYMMETRICAL- with men and women perpetrating IPV at about the same rate.

Two-earner partnerships and work family options:

Two earner partnerships: both partners work are the majority. Partners display considerable flexibility in how they design their two earner unions.

Weakening Social, Moral, and Legal Constraints

Unilateral divorce: No fault divorce. One partner can secure the divorce even if the other wants to continue the marriage.

Immigrants and Intimate Terrorism:

Violence Against Women Act: allows immigrant victims to file independently for legal status if victimized by domestic violence.

Social policy, work and family

What are the issues? 1. undesirable financial conditions for many Americans. 2. parental stress due to work-family conflict 3. persistent although lessening gender inequality in today's work-family division of labor. -Inadequate economic resources -parental stress due to work family conflict -persistent gender inequality

casual feedback loop

When the workplace impacts within-family interactions and decision making—and within-family interactions and decision-making affect the workplace.

Why do women do more household labor?

Wives with husbands who earn more and work more hours, do more housework.

Boundary Ambiguity in Stepfamilies:

a "state when family members are uncertain in their perception of who is in or out of the family or who is performing what roles and tasks within the family system" higher among couples with nonresident stepchildren than with resident stepchildren, especially when they were have biological children of the wife. -also more common with cohabitors.

Child to parent violence:

a form of family violence involving a child's physical and emotional abuse of a parent -especially single mothers or mothers of youth are victims. Can be caused by neglecting and abusing the child.

Conflict Tactics Scale:

a scale developed by sociologist Murray Straus to assess how couples handle conflict. Includes detailed items on various forms of physical violence

divorce mediation

an alternative, non adversarial means of dispute resolution by which a couple, with the assistance of a mediator or mediators, negotiate the settlement of their custody, support, property, and visitation issues It is less costly, and generally less time consuming than litigation.

Diversity and household labor

asians- housework shared, or done by other family household members other than the child's mother. african americans- adult children, extended kin. and non resident fathers share house work.

Less Housework is being done now than in the past:

assisted by microwaves, fast food, sometimes by paid services, and perhaps "living with a little more dust".

Unpaid family work:

caring for dependent family members, such as the elderly or children, as well as maintaining the family domicile

Divorce and stress related growth:

crisis related pathway results when coping with a traumatic event makes the person stronger. stress relief pathway results when the end of a marriage and its problems brings relief to one or both of the partners.

The social and emotional consequences of divorce:

for women and men: more health problems, anxiety, depression, greater overrall mortality. divorce is thought to be tougher on men than on women.

Emotional abuse:

frequent verbal threats and routine comments that damage a partner's self esteem.

Household labor:

generally refers to the unpaid work done to maintain family members and/or a home. Technology raised standards even as it made some housework less time consuming. With automatic washers, we began to change clothes daily, for example, a practice that creates lots more laundry to do.

Male Victims of Heterosexual Terrorism:

if male victims do call police, they may themselves be arrested as suspected perpetrators. Domestic violence is not a male or female problem, but rather a human problem, and that a lasting solution must address the cruelty--and suffering- of both sexes.

Why do intimate terrorists (coercive controllers) do it?

in terms of relative status, a women's risk of experiencing severe violence is greatest when she is employed and her husband is not.

Initiating a divorce:

initiating and non-initiating partners talk about their reasons in different terms

The therapeutic approach:

involves establishing counseling and educational programs designed to define and treat offenders as needing educational and psychological guidance rather than as criminals.

Juggling Employment and Family Work

juggling- implies hectic and stressful situations. upper income families may purchase services of immigrant and working class people for cleaning, childcare and, to a lesser extent, cooking. second shift: forfeiting leisure time and sleep to accomplish unpaid family work.

Child-custody issues:

legal custody: refers to who has the right to make decisions with respect to a child's upbringing. physical custody: refers to where a child will live. join custody: both divorced partners continue to take equal responsibilities for important decisions regarding to the child's general upbringing. may be legal, physical or both. children in father custody are more likely to "drift" to their other parents' home.

Serial marriage:

marrying, divorcing, and marrying again; a series of legal marriages

Stay at home dads:

men who stay home to care for the house and family while their wives work.

Macro or structural approaches:

notes that the social, cultural, and economic context of family violence and then provides programs and services to help reduce or otherwise address it. Ex: housing assistance and subsidized child care might dissuade a low income or socially isolated parent from neglectfully leaving children alone while working. After school programs. crisis nursery: where parents may take their children when they need to get away for a few hours.

Divorce "Fallout"

ruptures of relationships and changes in social networks that come about as a result of divorce -involves financial fallout or the economic consequences of divorce.

Why do some parents not pay their child support obligations?

sometimes father withhold child support from the mother as a "power play" to see their children more often. another problem; mothers and fathers often go on to have more children with a new spouse, a situation associated with lower child support payments to "first families" 2 solutions to the problem of nonpayment of child support: -government guaranteed child support -children's allowance

Resources in cultural context:

stresses that society-wide gender structures influence conjugal power, tempering the impact of relative individual resources. Individual resources fully influence conjugal power only when there is no cultural norm for conjugal power- either an egalitarian norm or a patriarchal norm.

The criminal justice response:

the punitive approach for perpetrators of child maltreatment; advocates believe that one or both parents should be held legally responsible for child abuse this is the therapeutic approach.

The Divorce-Extended family:

this is when parents divorce and remarry meaning the children have more relatives who they see regularly.

Dripolator & percolator effects:

two parent families be thought of opperating as "top down" (from parents to children)= percolator stepfamillies mighy be thought to operate "bottom up" (from children to parent) = dripolator

Sibling Violence:

violent acts perpetrated by one sibling against another

Kin no more?

when a couple divorces, relationships with family members can be "reinterpreted" in the following ways: 1. kin promotion, redefinition of a distance relative to a close relative. 2. kin exchange, reclassifying a family relationship 3. Nonkin conversion, turning friends and colleagues into family members.

Economic losses for women-

wives income declined after divorce, while husbands' disposable incomes increased. income-to-needs ratio: how well income meets financial needs.