chapter 9 Families

Fictive kin

People to whom one is not related by blood, marriage, or adoption but on whom one nonetheless depends

What Is a Family?

•According to the U.S. Census Bureau -Family: two or more people who are related to each other by birth, marriage, or adoption and who share living quarters. -Household: people related or not who share living quarters

Attitudes Toward Marriage

•Among the never married: -53% say they wish to marry -32% say they do not wish to marry -13% unsure •Yet in 2011, almost 4 in 10 Americans said they felt marriage was becoming obsolete

Fragile Families Study

•Children of unmarried parents are less advantaged than children of married parent -Mothers are more likely to use harsher parenting techniques and less likely to participate in literacy activities -Children have lower cognitive test scores and more aggression

Number of Divorces per 1,000 Married Women, 1960-2009

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Culture wars

Disputes over the state of US society, including the presumed decline of the family as well as "family values"

Delayed marriage

Adults marrying at later ages than they did in decades past

Household

All the related and unrelated people who share living quarters

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA):

An executive order signed by President Obama to allow children who were born outside of the United States, but whose parents illegally brought them into the United States when they were very young, to join the US military or attend college

Family

By census definition, a family is any two or more people, residing together, and related by birth, marriage, or adoption, but today families can exist across multiple households and include more than two parents, fictive kin, and pets; there is no singular way to accurately describe the diversity of families

9.3 Describe family problems related to paid work and criminal justice.

Every institution in society has a stake in the family, and the family has a stake in other institutions as well. In this section, we examined the ways in which family concerns are connected to what is happening in two other major institutions: paid work and criminal justice. First, we focused on work-family balance, which is one of the biggest challenges facing families in the United States today. Both work and family vie for all of an adult's time and energy, and parents try to achieve some balance between the two. Second, we discussed how mass incarceration within the criminal justice system has many negative economic and emotional impacts on families.

Infertility

Infertility

9.1 Demonstrate how social and historical factors shape the experiences and structure of families.

Social and historical factors shape the experiences of diverse families, and families also have varied responses to those factors. The guiding premise of this chapter is that families are not social problems in and of themselves, but rather, social problems are often filtered through families or left for families to deal with. Families face, handle, and respond to social problems in a variety of ways depending on their access to different resources. By census definition, a family is two or more people who are related to each other by birth, marriage, or adoption and who share living quarters. However, today, families can exist across multiple households and include more than two parents, nonrelatives like fictive kin, and pets. No one definition can accurately describe the diversity of families today.

Marriage movement

Social movement that advocates for traditional marriage and warns against the sexual revolution, teenage pregnancy, and marriage equality for LGBT people

9.4 Apply structural functionalist, conflict, and symbolic interactionist perspectives to the concept of family.

Structural functionalists view the family as one of the primary institutions that needs to be structured in a specific way in order to "function" properly, which then enables society to remain stable and healthy. In other words, the family serves to maintain equilibrium in society. Conflict theorists, on the other hand, see society as organized around scarce and unequally distributed resources. Families struggle to maintain themselves in relationship to their access to resources such as work, education, and health care. Inequalities among families exist because some families have greater access to scarce resources. Symbolic interactionists are particularly interested in how we learn the rules and values of society through interactions with others, and how we are influenced by the world around us. Thus, our ideas about partners and families are shaped by the interactions we have with others.

Obergefell v. Hodges

The 2015 US Supreme Court decision that legalized gay marriage nationwide

Fertility

The ability to conceive a biological child

Fecundity

The ability to produce a biological child

Marriage dearth

The decline in the proportion of adult Americans who are married

Greedy institutions

The idea that both family and paid work vie for 100 percent of adults' time and energy, making work-family balance almost impossible

Work-family balance

The idea that individuals can achieve equilibrium between work and family roles and handle these dueling responsibilities in an equitable way

Marriage squeeze

The imbalanced sex ratio experienced by Black women, and also older women, as they seek potential marriage partners

Mass incarceration

The increased imprisonment of a large proportion of a population, especially Black and Latino men

Family structure

The individuals who comprise a family and their relationships to one another

Refined divorce rate

The number of divorces per 1,000 married women

Pool of eligibles

The supply of potential partners for marriage

Marriage gradient

The tendency for women to "marry up"—that is, to marry older men

9.6 Identify social change efforts to address social problems that impact families.

There are many contemporary efforts to bring about social change for families. We discussed a few examples of social change efforts to support families, including reproductive justice efforts and efforts to alleviate work-family problems due to COVID-19.

9.5 Apply specialized theories to the family.

This section briefly described two additional theories and applied them to family problems: life course theory and feminist intersectional theory. Employing a life course perspective enables researchers to not only observe how individuals navigate a particular experience within one single life stage but also, in other cases, watch individuals go through sequential life stages and navigate a particular family experience over time. Feminist intersectionality theorists believe that social structures based on inequalities create very different experiences for different families, and they advance the notion that family experiences and opportunities are directly shaped by families' connections to paid work and other social institutions.

Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)

US federal law, enacted in 1996, that defines marriage as the legal union of one man and one woman for federal and interstate purposes

Cohabitation

Unrelated, unmarried adults in an intimate relationship sharing living quarters

9.2 Discuss patterns and trends in family structure.

We may hold on to ideas about a "traditional" family structure that presumably includes two married individuals providing care and stability for their biological offspring. In reality, diverse family structures have always existed and family structures change over time. In this section, we explored patterns and trends in heterosexual marriage, same-sex marriage, cohabitation, divorce, and the ways people become parents. We also examined how these patterns and trends diversify family structures.

Marriage equality

What people often refer to as "same-sex marriage"; the right for same-sex couples to enter into the same legal arrangement of marriage as heterosexual couples

Family separation

When family members are separated through a conscious decision as a matter of survival or an unintended consequence of volatile circumstances

Immigration

When people come to live in a new country

Emigration

When people leave their home country

Cohabitation and Selection Effects

•Cohabitors may have characteristics that predispose them to marital instability •Couples who cohabitated prior to engagement may be more likely to have problems and be less happy in marriage •But: Cohabitation after engagement is not associated with higher probability of divorce •Women who cohabit after engagement have lower probability of divorce than those who do not cohabit

Divorce

•Crude divorce rate: the number of divorces per 1,000 people •Refined divorce rate: the number of divorces per 1,000 married women -A more stable indicator

Divorce Rates in the 1960s-1980s

•Dramatic rise in divorce rates coincide with time of remarkable social/cultural change -Higher levels of education and greater labor force participation for women -California's Family Law Act of 1969 and the rise of "no-fault" divorce

Struggles of the Middle Class

•Great Recession of 2008 •Economic hardship can reduce the chance that a couple will marry or stay married -Taxes a family's resilience, the ability not just to bounce back from change or troubles

Family Ecology Theory

•Helps us understand how families function/adapt in broader natural and human-built environments

Religion, Spirituality, and Family Resilience

•Individuals who identify with a religion tend to form traditional marriages •Families with religious/spiritual foundations exhibit greater resilience •Marital satisfaction associated with shared religion, prayer for spouse, and forgiveness

Social Exchange Theory

•Individuals will draw on their personal resources to maximize their rewards and minimize their costs -We commit to and continue in long-term intimate relationships to the extent that we trust we will be treated fairly in the long run

Symbolic Interactionism

•Interested in the meanings that interaction creates and the way language and other symbolic systems maintain social relationships and society -Example: civil union versus marriage

Cohabitation

•Number of unmarried-partner households more than doubled in the last 20 years •Today a majority of adults report having cohabitated at some point

Decline of the Family

•Part of broader culture wars •1960s brought cohabitation •In response, marriage movement advocates traditional marriage •Debates around "family values"

Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)

•Passed by Congress in 1996 -Defined marriage as the legal union of one man and one woman for federal and interstate purposes •Despite Supreme Court ruling, still debated at the local, state, national levels

Marriage Dearth

•People less likely to be living in matrimony than in the past -Percentage of U.S. adults 18+ who are married dropped over the last half century -Percentage who are divorced has tripled -Percentage of never marrieds has doubled

Marriage Dearth and "Supply" Factors

•Pool of eligibles -Supply of potential marriageable partners •Marriage gradient -Women tend to marry slightly older men -The older a woman is, the less likely she is to find a potential husband

Functionalism

•Primary institution for economic support, emotional security, and especially childhood socialization •Family serves to maintain equilibrium in society

Family Life-Course Development Theory

•Seeks to understand developmental processes outcomes as families move through stages across the life course

Critical Theory

•Sees social relationships in society as being replicated in the family -Including injustices related to the intersections of social class, race and ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation

Marriage Squeeze

•The imbalanced sex ratio experienced by Black women •Gender ratio more imbalanced for Blacks than for any other racial or ethnic group -90 men for every 100 women Contributing factors to marriage squeeze: Death, imprisonment, and military enlistment rates Higher rates of unemployment Black men are more likely than Black women to marry someone of another race

Government on Behalf of Families

•United States lacks a comprehensive family policy •Invests less in government programs for families than other countries, but increasing -Key legislation: ACA and VAWA

Fragile Families Study (McLanahan, 2011)

•Unmarried parents are disadvantaged -Less likely to have grown up with both parents -More likely to be poor and Black or Hispanic -More likely to begin parenting in their teens -More likely to suffer from depression, report substance abuse, and spend time in jail -More likely to be on welfare

Cohabitation Demographics

•Unmarried partners more likely to: -be young -have lower levels of education and income -be less religious -have been divorced or to have divorced parents -have lived without a father in the home

Family Systems Theory

•Views the family as a series of subsystems •A change in any part of the family system will have consequences for the other parts •Families strive to maintain equilibrium

Divorce in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries

•What factors helped to keep divorce rates low historically? -Rtigma attached to divorce -Restrictive laws -Limited economic opportunities for women Restrictive laws: Often divorce granted only when the plaintiff could prove adultery, abuse, or abandonment.