3. Learning Objectives
15.1 Explain the myths versus realities of family life in
the United States.
15.2 Explain how societal economic transformations
affect family life.
15.3 Describe the effects of social class on families in
the United States.
15.4 Explain the difficulties of managing work and
family with little support from the system.
15.5 Understand the divorce rate and the
consequences of divorce.
15.6 Examine the causes and consequences of
violence in families.
4. 15.1 - The Mythical Family in the
United States
• Myth of a stable and harmonious family of the
past
• Myth of separate worlds
• Myth of the monolithic family form
• Myth of a unified family experience
• Myth of family decline as the cause of social
problems
5. LO 15.1
Rather than being a unified experience,
family life is actually organized around
__________ roles.
A. gender
B. class
C. race
D. monolithic
6. LO 15.1
Rather than being a unified experience,
family life is actually organized around
__________ roles.
A. gender
B. class
C. race
D. monolithic
7. LO 15.1
The family from the Industrial Revolution to
World War II was more stable than the
family today.
A. True
B. False
8. LO 15.1
The family from the Industrial Revolution to
World War II was more stable than the
family today.
A. True
B. False
9. 15.2 - U.S. Families in Historical Perspective:
The Family in Capitalism
• Family arrangements are closely related to
economic developments:
– Industrialization and family arrangements
– The breadwinner/homemaker pattern
10. LO 15.2
The “breadwinner–homemaker” pattern does not apply to
people who lack the opportunities to earn a family wage.
11. LO 15.2
Family life became private in industrialized
capitalist societies because __________.
A. immigrant kinship networks
declined
B. employers paid men enough to
support their family
C. suburban development forced
families inside
D. of underlying structural roots
12. LO 15.2
Family life became private in industrialized
capitalist societies because __________.
A. immigrant kinship networks
declined
B. employers paid men enough to
support their family
C. suburban development forced
families inside
D. of underlying structural roots
13. LO 15.2
Racial-ethnic immigrants took on the
breadwinner/homemaker roles in
industrialized America.
A. True
B. False
14. LO 15.2
Racial-ethnic immigrants took on the
breadwinner/homemaker roles in
industrialized America.
A. True
B. False
15. 15.3 - Stratification and Family Life:
Unequal Life Chances
• Families are imbedded in a class
hierarchy.
– Middle-class families
– Upper-class families
– Lower- and working-class families
17. LO 15.3
The middle-class family operates more
__________ than upper- and lower-class
families who rely on kinship networks.
A. openly
B. socially
C. independently
D. connectedly
18. LO 15.3
The middle-class family operates more
__________ than the upper- and lower-class
families who rely on kinship networks.
A. openly
B. socially
C. independently
D. connected
19. LO 15.3
A family’s location in the class system is the
single most important determinant of family
life.
A. True
B. False
20. LO 15.3
A family’s location in the class system is the
single most important determinant of family
life.
A. True
B. False
21. 15.4 - Changing Families in a
Changing World
• Economic Transformation and Family Life
• Today’s Diverse Family Forms
• Balancing Work and Family with Few
Social Supports
• Single Parents and Their Children
• Societal Response to Disadvantaged
Children
22. LO 15.4 - Economic Transformation and
Family Life
• The Great Recession
– Shrinking and downwardly mobile middle
class
– Most profound for blue-collar workers
• Modern Families
– Fewer than 10 percent of all families
• Postmodern Families
– Increasing due to economic difficulties
23. LO 15.4 - Explorer Activity: The Changing
Family: Family Diversity: Who Takes Care of
Whom?
http://www.socialexplorer.com/pearson/plink.aspx?Please log into MySocLab with your
username and password before accessing
this link.
28. LO 15.4 -Balancing Work and Family with
Few Social Supports
• Increased participation of women in the
labor force
– Dual-worker families
– Inadequate childcare system
29. LO 15.4
Availability of quality daycare is often the biggest problem
facing working parents.
30. LO 15.4 - Single Parents and Their
Children
• About ¼ of all U.S. children live with one parent
• More than ¾ of out-of-wedlock births are to
women over age 20
• The economic plight of single-parent families is
much worse for families of color
31. LO 15.4 - Video: ABC Nightline: Single
Mothers
http://abavtooldev.pearsoncmg.com/sbx_videoplayer_
32. LO 15.4 - Societal Response to
Disadvantaged Children
• In 2010, 22 percent of children under age 18
lived in poverty
• Childhood poverty is acute for racial
minorities
• Federal benefits to the elderly have risen,
while programs to benefit children have been
reduced
34. LO 15.4
Minority women have typically worked
outside of the home, in effect they were
__________ before White families.
A. industrial
B. educated
C. familial
D. postmodern
35. LO 15.4
Minority women have typically worked
outside of the home, in effect they were
__________ before White families.
A. industrial
B. educated
C. familial
D. postmodern
36. LO 15.4
Poverty rates among the elderly and
children have increased at the same pace.
A. True
B. False
37. LO 15.4
Poverty rates among the elderly and
children have increased at the same pace.
A. True
B. False
38. 15.5 - Divorce
• Statistics
• Consequences of Divorce
• Children of Divorce
39. LO 15.5 - Statistics
• One in five marriages ends in divorce
within 5 years
• One in three marriages dissolves within 10
years
• The divorce rate of African Americans is
twice as high as the rate of Whites
40. LO 15.5 - Consequences of Divorce
• “His” and “Her” Divorce
• “His” Divorce
• “Her” Divorce
41. LO 15.5 - Children of Divorce
• 65 percent of all divorces involve children
• One-third of White and two-thirds of Black
children will experience the divorce of their
parents by age 16
• The large majority of children of divorce do
not experience severe or long-term
problems
42. LO 15.5
The experience of divorce differs for men
and women because of __________ and
gender inequality.
A. familial experience
B. cultural manifestation
C. social structure
D. divorce laws
43. LO 15.5
The experience of divorce differs for men
and women because of __________ and
gender inequality.
A. familial experience
B. cultural manifestation
C. social structure
D. divorce laws
44. LO 15.5
Most children have prolonged negative
effects from divorce.
A. True
B. False
45. LO 15.5
Most children have prolonged negative
effects from divorce.
A. True
B. False
46. 15.6 – Violence in U.S. Families
• Violence and the Social Organization of
the Family
• Intimate Partner Violence
• Child Abuse and Neglect
47. LO 15.6 - Violence and the Social
Organization of the Family
• Families are based on love, but the
organization encourages conflict
– The family is a power system
• Private nature of the family contributes to
abuse
48. LO 15.6 - Intimate Partner Violence
• Incidence of Intimate Partner Abuse
– Studies vary in their focus and definitions
– Gender differences
• Class, Race, and Intimate Violence
49. LO 15.6 - Child Abuse and Neglect
• Definition
– Incidence of child abuse, context
• Consequences
– Health outcomes
– Cognitive and behavioral outcomes
– Social and emotional outcomes
50. LO 15.6
The family is a __________ system that
spends a great deal of time together
resulting in increased conflict.
A. social structural
B. personal network
C. closed complicated
D. private power
51. LO 15.6
The family is a __________ system that
spends a great deal of time together
resulting in increased conflict.
A. social structural
B. personal network
C. closed complicated
D. private power
52. LO 15.6
Women of color are more susceptible to
domestic violence.
A. True
B. False
53. LO 15.6
Women of color are more susceptible to
domestic violence.
A. True
B. False
54. LO 15.6
Question for Discussion
Discuss the changing nature of the family.
What changes are happening and what are
the causes?
Editor's Notes
Family changes over the last few decades have led some critics to believe the family is in decline and we have lost family values.
The family is an easy target for those who blame social problems on bad people doing bad things. They assume that when the family fails, the rest of society fails.
This view of the world is flawed in two fundamental respects.
It reverses the relationship between family and society by treating families as the building blocks of society rather than as a product of social conditions.
It ignores the structural reasons for family breakdown and the profound changes occurring throughout the world.
Myths of the family are part of the nostalgia of a past that may not have actually existed.
No golden age of the family. Many children were raised by single parents or stepparents, just as now. Divorce rates were lower because of strong religious prohibitions and community norms against divorce, but this does not mean that love was stronger in the past.
The view that family is “private” and the rest is “public” masks the inevitable problems that arise in intimate settings (tensions, anger, and even violence in some instances).
Contemporary family types represent a multitude of family forms, including single-parent households, stepparent families, extended multigenerational households, gay and straight cohabiting couples, child-free couples, transnational families, lone householders with ties to various families, and many other kinds of families.
Gender differences seen in decision making, in household division of labor, and in forms of intimacy and sexuality. Girls and boys experience their childhoods differently, as there are different expectations, different rules, and different punishments according to gender.
Partly because of the myths about the past, and partly because the family has changed so much in the past few decades, many conclude that the breakdown of the family is responsible for today’s social ills.
Industrialization moved the center of production from the domestic family unit to the workplace. Families became private domestic retreats. .
Employers assumed that most families included one main breadwinner—a male—and one adult working at home directing domestic work.
Racial-ethnic people did not have the opportunity to become part of the industrial labor force. Instead, they labored in nonindustrial sectors of the economy, which often required family arrangements that were different from those in the dominant society.
The breadwinner–homemaker pattern never applied to immigrants and racial minorities because they were denied the opportunities to earn a family wage.
Women took in boarders or did piecework; some worked as maids in middle-class and upper-class homes; some became wage workers in sweatshops, department stores, and offices.
For these families, the support of the community and extended family members was crucial.
Family history makes it clear that social forces have always created many different family types.
A better way of understanding how families are related to social institutions is to distinguish between families and households. Family refers to a set of social relationships, whereas household refers to residence or living arrangements.
Chapter 15, Activity 1
Family Contract
Break the class into groups of three. In each group (regardless of gender), one student will be the mother, one student will be the father, and one student will be the elementary-age child in the “family.” Have each family write out a binding contract that will indicate each family member’s needs and obligations for themselves and for others in the family. What should be in this contract? Exactly who is responsible for which household chores? Who takes care of the child? What are the spouse’s responsibilities towards each other?
Possible Questions for the Class to Consider:
A. What kind of division of labor is needed to satisfy everyone’s needs?
B. What kind of outside resources are needed (e.g., income, house, car, access to adequate schools or childcare, etc.) to satisfy everyone’s needs?
C. How hard is it to figure out what each family member wants or needs, and how to help them attain that?
D. Where do divorce, children leaving home, and elderly grandparents fit into this family arrangement?
Traditional roles in our capitalistic society have the woman at home and the man at work. This arrangement doesn’t work for families where both the man and woman need to work to make ends meet.
Families are embedded in a class hierarchy.
A family’s location in the class system is the single most important determinant of family life.
Middle-class families. A self-reliant unit composed of a breadwinning father, a homemaker mother, and their children has long been characteristic of middle-class and upper-middle-class families.
To maintain the same lifestyle, today’s middle-class families rely on income from the wife as well.
The family today is not like the idealized family in 1950s sitcoms.
Middle-class families with husbands and wives in careers have both economic resources and built-in ties with supportive institutions such as banks, credit unions, medical facilities, and voluntary associations.
Today’s middle-class is shrinking.
Upper-class families. Wealthy families are nationally connected by a web of institutions they control.
The vast economic holdings of these families allow them to have a high degree of control over the rewards and resources of society.
They enjoy freedoms and choices not available to other families in society.
These families maintain privileged access to life chances and lifestyles.
Kinship networks are strong to pass on inheritance.
Lower- and working-class families. Kinship networks matter to both the upper and lower classes.
The lower- and working-class families rely on kin to watch children and help care for the house.
They pool and exchange resources to ensure survival.
These stratification hierarchies—class, race, and gender—are changing and reshuffling families and individuals.
Social patterning of inequality occurs along many other dimensions, including age, family characteristics, and place of residence.
Chapter 15, Activity 2
The Division of Labor
Make a handout that lists every single household chore you can think of. For example: making beds, cleaning toilets, changing diapers, mowing the lawn, taking out the trash, cooking dinner, vacuuming, dusting, mopping, car maintenance, taking care of pets, etc. Also include things like sending Christmas/holiday cards, scheduling birthday parties, driving kids to sporting events/music practice, etc. Now ask your students to fill it out as to who in their family performs each task the majority of the time (mother, father, stepmother, stepfather, sibling, self, mixed).
If they were raised in a single-parent household, they can choose to fill it out using a friend’s family, or the household they live in now, or, they can even fill it out as what their “ideal” family division of labor would look like.
After, discuss with the class what their division of labor looked like, presenting information on Hochschild’s The Second Shift and other studies.
The economic decline has increased the numbers of individuals and families who are “food insecure” and homeless.
Tough economic conditions have caused couples to delay marriage and if married to delay childbearing.
But for many families, downward mobility adds tensions that make family life especially difficult. Family members experience stress, marital tension, and depression.
Blue-collar workers have been hardest hit by the economic transformation. Their jobs have been eliminated by the millions because of the new technologies and competition from other lower-wage (much lower) economies.
The modern family was destabilized by changes in the economy. The new postmodern family form emerged.
Interestingly, in lower-class and minority-group families, the postmodern form (women working outside the home) was the norm for survival.
For every five jobs lost in the Great Recession, four of them were men. In the postmodern family, men are trying to reconstruct their role in family life.
The change economy results in increased job insecurity and fewer benefits, such as health insurance, family leave, and retirement.
These changes create a shrinking middle class and downward social mobility for many.
The family changes as a result of other changes in society.
The most prominent change is in form and composition.
To understand the changes, it is necessary to distinguish households from families.
Households are all persons living in a housing unit
Families are household members who are related by blood, marriage, or adoption and reside together
All families comprise households, but not all households are families under the Census Bureau’s definition.
Nonfamily household are those who live alone or share a residence with individuals unrelated to the householder, such as college friends sharing an apartment.
Same-sex couples are called nonfamily households in the census.
Nonfamily households have increased dramatically
In addition to the increase in nonfamily households, there is a decrease in the number of children in family households.
This varies between groups, minorities are more likely than Whites to have households that include children.
Macrolevel changes produce a wide range of family structures, including one-parent families, cohabiting couples (both gay and straight) with children, dual-worker families, and many varieties of extended families such as divorce-extended families and multigenerational families.
Married couples with children are still the prominent form.
Grandparents raising children is just one of many family forms today.
The growth of the nonfamily household (that is, persons who live alone or with unrelated individuals) is one of the most dramatic changes to occur during the past four decades.
In 2010, 70 percent of women with children 17 and under were in the workforce.
Because both parents work in many homes, families have been able to keep their incomes from falling. But, that doesn’t mean the economy is working for families.
Two-thirds of parents say that they do not have enough time with their children and two-thirds of married workers say that they don’t have enough time with their spouse.
Nearly half of all employees with families report conflicts between their job and their family life, more so than a generation ago.
The traditional organization of work—an inflexible eight-hour workday—makes it difficult for parents to cope with family problems or the conflicting schedules of family members.
The United States has no comprehensive childcare system.
This lack of a system differentiates us from the other industrialized nations.
The government does allow tax write-offs for childcare, but that benefits the most affluent families.
When both parents work, high-quality daycare is essential.
Most of the single-parent families are headed by women because:
the relatively high divorce rate and the very strong tendency for divorced and separated women to have custody of the children
the relatively high rate of never-married mothers
Contrary to popular belief, the majority of the out-of-wedlock births are not to teen mothers.
Effects on children living in mother-only families:
Poorer academic achievement
More likely to drop out of school
More likely to divorce
More behavioral problems
Single parents must cope with responsibility overload, task overload, and emotional overload.
Single-mother households are more likely to be poor.
As the country aimed to get the elderly out of poverty, it put increasingly more children in poverty.
The sting of the decrease is especially hard on racial minorities.
Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) was eliminated in 1996 and food stamps and school nutrition programs for the poor were cut, but the government did not cut cash and food programs for poor senior citizens.
AFDC was utilized more by Blacks and Latinos.
Another racial discrepancy is Survivors Insurance (SI) (part of Social Security) has been raised over time. SI benefits are collected by more Whites.
Why have the elderly not been cut?
They can vote, the young cannot.
AARP is a strong lobbying group.
As a nation, the United States has taken deliberate actions to reduce poverty among the elderly while simultaneously allowing childhood poverty to increase.
Divorce is very common in the United States.
Most scholars agree that between 40 and 50 percent of all first marriages end in divorce.
Latino divorce rates are about the same as those of Whites.
“His” and “Her” Divorce
Each is affected, in the typical case, by feelings of loneliness, anger, remorse, guilt, low self-esteem, depression, and failure.
The divorce experience differs for husbands and wives in significant ways because of the structure of society and gender inequality.
“His” Divorce
Better off financially since they tended to be the primary income earner.
Greater freedom since they usually don’t have full custody of the children.
Difficulty in maintaining a household routine.
Loneliness and difficulty dating.
“Her” Divorce
2/3 of divorces are initiated by women.
Freed from abusive relationships.
Loss of identity associated with husband’s status for women with traditional views.
Social and personal isolation since they usually have the children and not much of a social life.
Dramatic decline in economic resources since the husbands tended to be the primary income source.
What are the consequences of divorce for children?
There is clearly the possibility of emotional scars from the period of family conflict and uncertainty prior to the breakup.
Children will be affected by the permanency of divorce and the enforced separation from one of the parents. Most commonly, this is separation from their father.
As a result of being raised in single-parent households with fewer resources:
Children may experience behavioral problems, decline in school performance, and other manifestations of maladjustment.
The long-term consequences are hard to measure.
Does the divorce cause problems or would the children have problems anyways because of parenting styles?
The intensity that characterizes intimate relationships can give way to conflict.
Some families resolve the inevitable tensions that arise in the course of daily living, but in other families conflict gives way to violence.
The family is a power system. In any power system, someone will be dominant and others will try to achieve dominance.
Men over women
Parents over children
The amount of time spent together in so many different activities makes the likelihood of conflict more common.
Privacy insulates the family members from the protection that society could provide if a family member becomes too abusive.
Privacy often prevents the victims of abuse from seeking outside help.
While studies vary in the focus and definitions of partners and abuse here are some stats we know:
33 million American have been victims of intimate partner violence.
More than 1 million women are stalked by intimate partners.
Around 1.3 million women and more than 800,000 men are physically assaulted by an intimate partner; many of these individuals are victimized repeatedly.
Abused women are assaulted more frequently and are more likely to be injured than are men.
Injuries inflicted by intimate partners are frequently severe enough to require medical care; approximately 550,000 female victims and 125,000 male victims require medical treatment every year
Men’s unemployment increases the risk for abuse.
25 percent of White women, 29 percent of African Americans, 23 percent of Hispanic women, 31 percent of Native American women, and 15 percent for Asian women are victims of abuse.
These data show that except for Asian Americans, people of color are more susceptible to domestic violence than Whites.
Minorities have high rates of poverty and must contend with the stresses that accompany poverty.
The Child Abuse Protection and Treatment Act set minimum guidelines for states in the definition of abuse.
Neglect
Physical abuse
Sexual abuse
Emotional abuse
The book uses this definition of abuse: “the distinctive acts of violence and nonviolence and acts of omission and commission that place children at risk.”
The incidence of child abuse is hard to determine because of the lack of consistency in definitions and the unwillingness to report.
The government does provide annual statistics.
In 2008, 772,000 substantiated cases of child abuse and neglect, including the deaths of 1,740 children.
The rate of child abuse and neglect in 2008 was 10.3 cases per 1,000 children. This represents a decline from a rate of 12.5 in 2001 .
Many people assume that abusers are mentally ill, yet research shows that only 10 percent of parents who abuse have psychoses or other disorders.
While the most common factor is substance abuse we need to watch out with a definition of people who abuse. This keeps us from looking at structural factors (poverty related stress, lack of resources) where abuse is more common.
Death, hospitalization, are obvious. The consequences of neglect are less obvious and include:
Brain injuries, physical development problems, mental retardation, depression and low self-esteem are a few of health outcomes from abuse and neglect.
Language deficits, attention deficit disorder, low grades, low standardized test scores.
Anti-social behavior and physical aggression. Abused children are more likely to get into trouble with the law.
Although the existence of family violence is strongly affected by social forces, individuals acting singly, or with others, can and do shape, resist, and challenge the forces affecting their lives.
