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Sociology: Understanding and Changing the Social World

Chapter 11The Family

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Learning Objectives

• Describe the different family arrangements that have existed throughout history

• Understand how the family has changed in the United States since the colonial period

• Describe why the typical family in the United States during the 1950s was historically atypical

• Summarize understandings of the family as presented by functional, conflict, and social interactionist theories

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Learning Objectives

• Describe the major marriage and family arrangements in the United States today

• Discuss racial and ethnic differences in marriage and family arrangements

• Discuss why the U.S. divorce rate rose during the 1960s and 1970s and summarize the major individual-level factors accounting for divorce today

• Describe the effects of divorce for spouses and children• Summarize the evidence on how children fare when

their mothers work outside the home

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Learning Objectives

• Discuss how children of same-sex couples fare compared to children of heterosexual couples

• Discuss evidence concerning the continuing debate over the absence of fathers in many African American families

• Define the four major styles of parental discipline and summarize the differences among them

• Explain why spanking may ironically promote antisocial behavior by children

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Learning Objectives

• Understanding how parenting style may differ by social class• Describe the extent of violence against intimates and explain

why it occurs• Describe the extent of child abuse and explain why it occurs

Types of Families and Family Arrangements

• Family: A group of two or more people who are related by blood, marriage, adoption, or a mutual commitment and who care for one another

• Nuclear family: A family composed of two parents and their children living in the same household

• Extended family: A family in which parents, children, and other relatives live in the same household

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Figure 11.1 - Types of Families in Preindustrial Societies

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Types of Families and Family Arrangements

• One-parent family - Nuclear family that dissolves upon divorce/ separation or the death of one of the parents

• Monogamy - One man and one woman are married only to each other

• Polygamy - The marriage of one person to two or more people at a time– Polygyny - One man having many wives– Polyandry - One woman having many husbands

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Types of Families and Family Arrangements

• Endogamy: Marriage within a social category or group, including race, ethnicity, social class, and religion

• Exogamy: Marriage between social categories or groups

• Bilateral descent – Considering ourselves related to people on both parents’ sides of the family, and parents pass along their wealth to their children

• Patrilineal: Inheritance through the male line• Matrilineal: Inheritance through the female line

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Types of Families and Family Arrangements

• Patriarchal family: A family where the husband and father holds the main authority in the household

• Matriarchal family: A family where the wife and mother holds the main authority in the household

• Egalitarian family: A family where both spouses share authority equally

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The Family in the U.S. Colonial Period

• Different family types abounded in the colonial period– Nomadic Native American groups had relatively small

nuclear families– Nonnomadic groups had larger extended families– African Americans slaves had extended families because

nuclear families were very difficult to achieve– Stepfamilies emerged due to the deaths of European

parents of colonial children

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American Families in the 1950s

• Less than 60% of American children during the 1950s lived in breadwinner-homemaker nuclear families

• The poverty and teenage pregnancy rate was almost twice as high as it is today

• Alcoholism and violence in families were common

• According to historians, many women were unhappy with their homemaker roles

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Table 11.1 Theory Snapshot

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Family Patterns in the United States Today

• 117 million (approx) households exist in the United States– 67% (approx) are family households– 33% (approx) are nonfamily household

• Most of the nonfamily households consist of only one person

• About half of all households involve a married couple, and half do not involve a married couple

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Figure 11.4 - Marital Status of the U.S. Population, 2008, Persons 18 Years of Age or Older

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Family Patterns in the United States Today

• According to the census reports, 7 million (approx)

opposite-sex couples are currently cohabiting– 55% (approx) of cohabiting couples have no biological children– 45% (approx) live with a biological child of one of the partners– 21% (approx) live with their own biological child

• 96.1% of marriages are intraracial

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Figure 11.6 - Median Age at First Marriage for Men and Women, 1890–2009

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Figure 11.7 - Family Households With Children Under 18 Years of Age, 2008

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Figure 11.8 - Race, Ethnicity, and Percentage of Family Groups With Only One Parent, 2008

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Changes and Issues Affecting AmericanFamilies

• Cohabitation– Married couples who have cohabited with each other before

getting married are more likely to divorce than married couples who did not cohabit

– Cohabitation may change the relationship between a couple and increase the chance they will divorce if they get married

– Individuals who are willing to live together without being married may not be very committed to the idea of marriage

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Divorce and Single-Parent Households

• The U.S. divorce rate has risen since the early 1900s, and is now the highest in the industrial world– It rose sharply during the Great Depression and World War

II, probably because of the economic distress of the former and the family disruption caused by the latter

– It fell sharply after the war as the economy thrived and as marriage and family were proclaimed as patriotic ideals

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Figure 11.9 - Number of Divorces per 1,000 Married Women Age 15 or Older, 1960–2008

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Reasons for Increase in Divorce Rate during the 1960s and 1970s

• Increasing economic independence of women

• Divorces became legally easy and less expensive to obtain

• The establishment of no-fault laws

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Effects of Divorce and Single-Parent Households

• Divorce immerses many women into poverty or near poverty

• Psychological consequences depends on the contentiousness of the marriage– Individuals seem to fare better psychologically after ending a

very contentious marriage but fare worse after ending a less contentious marriage

• Children fare better if their parents end a highly contentious marriage– They fare worse if their parents end a marriage that has not

been highly contentious

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Figure 11.11 - Race, Ethnicity, and Percentage of Children Below Poverty Level, 2008

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Working Mothers and Day Care

• According to studies conducted by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, day-care children:– Exhibit better cognitive skills than stay-at-home children – Are more likely to engage in aggressive behavior

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Working Mothers and Day Care

• Factor such as the quality of parenting and parent’s education and income matter much more for children’s cognitive and social development than whether or not they are in day care

• To the extent that day care is beneficial for children:– It is high-quality day care that is beneficial– Low-quality day care can be harmful

Marriage and Well-Being

• According to contemporary research:– Married people are happier than unmarried people– Married people score better on measures of psychological

well-being, are physically healthier, have better sex lives, and have lower death rates

– Marriage helps keep men from committing crime• Marriage has these benefits for several reasons:

– The emotional and practical support spouses give each other– Their greater financial resources compared to those of

unmarried people– The sense of obligation that spouses have toward each other

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Marriage and Well-Being

• It would be more accurate to say that good marriages are beneficial, because bad marriages certainly are not

• Marriage benefits seem greater for:– Older adults than for younger adults– Whites than for African Americans– Individuals who were psychologically depressed before

marriage than for those who were not • Psychologically happy and healthy people may be

the ones who get married in the first place and are less apt to get divorced

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Gay and Lesbian Couples and Marriages

• According to the opponents of same-sex marriages :– Same-sex marriages threaten the stability of the institution of

marriage– Children of same-sex couples fare worse than those raised by

both their biological parents• The social science evidence fails to support either of

these two arguments

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Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Marriages and Families

• Children are more likely to live with only one parent among Latino and African American families than among white and Asian American families

• African American, Latino, and Native American children and their families are especially likely to live in poverty

• According to studies, Latino and Asian American families have strong family bonds and loyalty

• Extended families are common among Latinos, Asian Americans, and Native Americans

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Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Marriages and Families

• Among African Americans, 40% of all births are to unmarried women

• The high number of fatherless families among African Americans can be attributed to:– The forcible separation of families during slavery – The fact that so many young black males are

unemployed, in prison or jail, or facing other problems • The problems African Americans face stem to a

large degree from:– Their experience of racism, segregated neighborhoods,

lack of job opportunities, and other structural difficulties

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Children and Parental discipline

• Four major styles of parental discipline– Authoritative - Parents set clear rules for their children’s

behavior but also let their kids exercise independent judgment

– Authoritarian - Parents set firm but overly restrictive rules for their children’s behavior and are generally not very warm toward them

– Lax or permissive – Parents set few rules for their children’s behavior and don’t discipline them when they misbehave

– Uninvolved – Parents provide their children little emotional support and fail to set rules for their behavior

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Children and Parental discipline

• Authoritative discipline is better than authoritarian discipline – It avoids spanking in favor of “reasoning” types of discipline

and punishment• Spanking teaches children:

– That they should behave to avoid being punished – That it is acceptable to hit someone to solve an interpersonal

dispute• Children who are spanked may resent their parents

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Figure 11.17 - Percentage Agreeing That “It Is Sometimes Necessary to Discipline a Child With a Good, Hard Spanking”

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Violence Against Intimates

• Intimates commit violence against each other in many ways– They can hit with their fists, slap with an open hand, throw an

object, push or shove, or use or threaten to use a weapon• According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, almost

600,000 acts of violence are committed annually by one intimate against another

• Women also commit violence against husbands and boyfriends, but their violence is less serious and usually in self-defense

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Violence Against Intimates

• Intimate violence is more common in poor families and economic inequality

• Cultural myths help explain why men hit their wives and girlfriends:– Many men continue to believe that their wives should not

only love and honor them but also obey them• The belief that battering cannot be that bad if women

hit by their husbands do not leave home is a myth that reinforces spousal violence against women

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Child Abuse

• It can be both, physical and sexual in nature• Children can suffer from emotional abuse and

practical neglect• It is difficult to know how much child abuse occurs

– Infants cannot talk– Toddlers and older children do not tell anyone about

the abuse• They might not define it as abuse• They might be scared to tell on their parents• They might blame themselves for being abused• They might not know whom they could talk to about their

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Child Abuse

• Why does child abuse occur? – Children being powerless, are easy targets of violence

• Evidence indicates that child abuse is more common in poorer families

• Cultural values and practices also play a role

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