How do Americans view the family?

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© Digital Vision/PunchStock

 

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Chapter One

Public and Private Families

 

Looking Forward

 

What Is a Family?

 

The Public Family

 

The Private Family

 

Two Views, Same Family

 

How Do Family Sociologists Know What They Know?

 

Sociological Theory and Families

 

Four Widely Used Perspectives

 

The Exchange Perspective

 

The Symbolic Interaction Perspective

 

The Feminist Perspective

 

The Postmodern Perspective

 

Globalization and Families

 

Family Life and Individualism

 

A Sociological Viewpoint on Families

 

Looking Back

 

Study Questions

 

Key Terms

 

Thinking about Families

 

Boxed Feature

 

HOW DO SOCIOLOGISTS KNOW WHAT THEY KNOW?: The National Surveys

 

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Looking Forward

 

 

What do families do that is important for society? What do families do that is important for the individuals in them?

 

How do sociologists go about studying families?

 

What are the leading theoretical approaches to studying families?

 

How does individualism influence American family life?

 

How is globalization changing family life?

 

In August 2014, a group of friends consisting of two couples with children, a couple without children, and two other individuals bought a house together on Scarborough St. in Hartford, Connecticut. To drive down Scarborough is to pass mansion after mansion on what may be Hartford’s most elegant street. But the eight-bedroom home that they purchased had fallen into disrepair and had been on the market for four years. The Scarborough 11, as they came to be called, deemed it perfect. “We didn’t see the need to live in these isolated nuclear family units,” said one of the residents. “It’s sustainable for the earth, it makes economic sense, and it’s a better way to raise our children. We didn’t need a multifamily house with separate kitchens and separate living areas.”1 The group includes two school teachers, a college professor, employees of a clinic and of a cultural center, and a stay-at-home dad. They share the renovation costs, the monthly bills, and the household chores. Each pair of adults cooks dinner for everyone one night a week.

 

The problem is that Hartford’s zoning law prohibits three or more unrelated individuals from living together in a single-family home. The law defines a family as two or more people who are related by blood, marriage, civil union, or adoption—which is pretty much the definition that the U.S. Census Bureau still uses. Defenders of the zoning law argue that it is necessary to protect residential neighborhoods from the establishment of rooming houses or (worse yet!) fraternities. By this standard the Scarborough 11 comprised too many families: a Census-taker in the hallway might see one family consisting of parents and children to her left, a second family of parents and children to her right, a third family formed by the childless couple in the next room, and two other unrelated people making dinner in the kitchen. By her rules, which Hartford follows, none of the three families is related to each other, nor to the two singles. So there are more than two “unrelated” people in household, which violates the zoning law. Yet the Scarborough 11’s radical claim is that they are one family and should therefore be allowed to live in a single-family home. “We have systems in place to ensure that we are functioning not just as a house but as a collective relationship,” a resident told a reporter.

 

Shortly after the Scarborough 11 moved in, some neighbors complained to the Hartford Zoning Board that the group did not meet the zoning law and therefore did not have the right to occupy the home. The attorney for the Scarborough 11 page 5disagreed: “They may not look like your or my family but they are a family nevertheless and have a right to live there.” But the zoning board sided with the complainants and ordered the Scarborough 11 to vacate the property. The Scarborough 11 appealed the ruling and lost. When they did not give up their home, the City of Hartford sued them. In response, the Scarborough 11 sued the city in federal court, challenging its definition of a family. The case was still pending as this book was being published.

 

At the heart of the controversy over the Scarborough 11 is the question of what constitutes a family. It was a question that seemed to have a clear answer in the 20-year period after World War II, 1945 to 1965, when nearly all adults got married, divorce rates were modest, living together outside of marriage was frowned upon, and having a child out-of-wedlock was downright shameful. Back then, families centered on the marriage-based unit of husband, wife, and children. Starting in the 1970s, however, family life began a period of intense change that continues today. Divorce rates rose, cohabitation prior to marriage became the majority experience, young adults postponed marriage or forwent it entirely, childbearing outside of marriage became common, the family roles of women and men changed, and most recently same-sex marriage became legal. The uniformity of the post–World War II era gave way not to a dominant new family form but rather to a diversity of forms. It is therefore difficult today to impose a single definition of the family.

 

Yet the idea of family remains central to most people’s sense of themselves and their intimate connections in life, even as it has become harder to define exactly what a family is. In this regard it is similar to some other sociological concepts such as social class and race that are difficult to define precisely but too valuable to do without. Moreover, the definition of the family is important economically: It determines who is eligible for billions of dollars in government and corporate benefits that depend on rules about who is a family member. For example, if a low-income parent applies for food stamp benefits (now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), how much she receives depends on how large her officially defined family is. We must place some boundaries around the concept of family, some limitations on its shape, or else it will lose its usefulness. But how do we determine what the key aspects of family life are today and how can we best specify what we mean by the term family?

What Is a Family?

 

At one extreme, some observers claim that families are so diverse that the concept may not even be useful anymore. At the other extreme are those who press politicians to use the singular form “family” (instead of the plural “families”) to signify that there is only one proper kind of family—the married couple living with their biological children.

 

For example, I am eligible for health insurance coverage through my employer for my “family,” which is defined as a spouse and children under 18. If I were unmarried but living with a woman who was the mother of my children, I could insure the children but not their mother. If I had been living for years with a man whom I considered my lifelong partner, I probably could not insure him. Moreover, how one defines a family plays an important role in the debate over whether the family has declined.

 

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I would argue that there is no single definition of a family that is adequate for all purposes. Rather, how you define a family depends on what questions you want to answer. Two key questions are

 

How well are family members taking care of children, the chronically ill, and the frail elderly?

 

How well are families providing the emotional satisfaction people value so highly—intimacy, love, personal fulfillment?

 

These questions address, respectively, the public responsibilities and the private pleasures the family is called upon to meet. For each of these questions, I submit, one of two definitions of the family will be helpful; I will call them the public family and the private family. These definitions provide two useful ways of looking at the same reality—and often the very same group of adults and children. Some observers may impose their own theological definitions of what constitutes a family from religious works such as the Bible or the Koran. But social science cannot determine the moral essence of the family, nor need it do so.

THE PUBLIC FAMILY

 

In examining the concept of the public family, it’s useful to borrow a few terms from the field of economics. Economists who specialize in public welfare have introduced the notion of externalities, of which there are two types. First, negative externalities occur when an individual or a business produces something that is beneficial to itself but imposes costs on other individuals or businesses. For example, factories that release sulfur dioxide through smokestacks impose a cost on everyone else by polluting the air. The factory gains by producing goods without having to install expensive smokestack scrubbers, but everyone else loses. Second, positive externalities occur when an individual or business produces something that benefits others but for which the producers are not fully compensated. For example, a corporation may start an expensive job-training program in order to obtain qualified workers; but some of the workers may take jobs with rival firms after completing the training. The other firms obtain skilled workers without paying the cost of their training.

 

externalities benefits or costs that accrue to others when an individual or business produces something

 

negative externalities the costs imposed on other individuals or businesses when an individual or business produces something of value to itself

 

positive externalities benefits received by others when an individual or business produces something, but for which the producer is not fully compensated

 

Some positive externalities involve the production of what are called public goods. These goods have a peculiar property: It is almost impossible to stop people who don’t produce them from enjoying them. As a result, public goods are often produced in smaller quantities than is socially desirable. Suppose a town raises taxes to build a water filtration plant that cleans a polluted river. It cannot stop residents of other towns downstream from enjoying the cleaner water, yet these fortunate residents have paid nothing for the cleanup. In a situation like this, it is clearly in each town’s interest to have some other town farther up the river produce the public good—the treatment plant. Yet if no town builds the plant, no one will enjoy cleaner water. One solution to this dilemma is for the county or state government to raise taxes in all the towns and then build the plant. Another is for the towns to reach an agreement whereby one will build the plant but all will contribute to the costs. Either solution compensates the producer of the public good for the benefits that others obtain.

 

public goods things that may be enjoyed by people who do not themselves produce them

 

Although it may seem like a long leap from factories to families, the concepts of externalities and public goods still apply. Families do produce valuable public goods—most notably, children (England & Folbre, 1999). For example, when Americans retire, they hope to receive a Social Security check from the government each month. The funds for those checks come from payroll taxes paid by workers. During the next decade or so, the many men and women born during the post–World War II baby boom will reach retirement age. Currently, there are about five persons of working age for each retired person; but by 2030 there may be only three persons of working age for every retired person.2 This means that the burden of supporting the elderly will increase greatly. It’s in society’s interest, then, for families to have and rear children today who will pay taxes when they grow up. Children in this sense, are public goods.

 

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U.S. families are more diverse today than in earlier times because of the great changes that have occurred since the middle of the twentieth century. Single-parent families, extended families, and complex families formed by remarriages are among the kinds of families with which the two-parent, first-marriage family must share its spotlight.

 

© Purestock/PunchStock

 

© Jack Hollingsworth/Corbis

 

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More generally, it’s in society’s interest that today’s children become good citizens with traits such as obeying the law, showing concern about others, and being informed voters. It’s also in society’s interest that they be productive workers who are willing and able to fill the needs of the economy. To be sure, critics charge that families often raise children in ways that reproduce existing inequalities between women and men (see Chapter 3) or between the working class and middle class (see Chapter 4). Nevertheless, what they do is of great public value. They are greenhouses growing the workers and citizens of tomorrow.

 

But children are costly to raise, and a retiree will receive the same Social Security check whether or not the workers were raised by her. Therefore, it’s in each retiree’s economic interest to remain childless and to have every other family raise children. Yet if everyone followed this strategy there would be no next generation. This dilemma is sometimes known as the free-rider problem: the tendency for people to obtain public goods by letting others do the work of producing them—metaphorically, the temptation to ride free on the backs of others. Luckily, people have children for reasons other than economic self-interest. At the moment, however, they are barely having enough to replace the current generation of parents. Everyone benefits from the child rearing that parents do.

 

free-rider problem the tendency for people to obtain public goods by letting others do the work of producing them—metaphorically, the temptation to ride free on the backs of others

 

In addition, families provide other services that have the character of public goods. As will be noted in Chapter 10, adult children still provide the bulk of the care for the frail elderly. If I am old and ill, I will benefit if I have adult children who will care for me. But others will also benefit from the care that my family provides, because without them, I would need more assistance from the government-funded medical insurance programs for the elderly (Medicare) and for the poor (Medicaid). Consequently, the care my family provides will keep government spending, and hence taxes, lower for everyone. The same logic applies to care that family members provide for the chronically ill.

 

The first definition, then, concerns the view of the family you take when you are concerned about the family’s contribution to the public welfare—the useful services family members provide by taking care of one another. It is a definition of what I will call the public family: one or more adults who are jointly caring for dependents, and the dependents themselves. Dependents are defined as children, the frail elderly, and the chronically ill. By “jointly” I mean working as a cooperative unit. The family members usually reside in the same household, but that is not essential. For example, an elderly woman may live in her own apartment but still receive daily assistance from her daughter or son. Nor is it essential that the family members be married or of different sexes. The important fact is that they are taking care of dependents and, in doing so, producing public goods. This definition would include, of course, a married couple and their children or their elderly parents. But it would also include a divorced (or never-married) mother and her children, a cohabiting couple with children, or a lesbian couple who are jointly raising a child who they adopted or who was born to one of them. It would also include the Scarborough 11, who are jointly raising children. (“I love living here,” one of the children told a reporter, “If you need company there’s always someone there for you.”) Note also who would be excluded by this definition: a childless married couple with no dependent or elderly relatives, or different-sex or same-sex cohabitors without children, the elderly, or ill dependents.

 

public family one or more adults who are jointly caring for dependents, and the dependents themselves

 

The production of public goods invites public scrutiny, and public families are easily identifiable to outsiders by the presence of dependents. Because society has an interest in how well families manage the care of dependents, the law allows for page 9some regulation of these families—despite strong sentiment in the United States against intervening in family matters. For example, we require families to send their children to school until age 16. And state social welfare agencies have the power to remove children from homes judged to be harmful. More recently, several states have required medical personnel to report suspected cases of physical abuse of children. The public family, then, is about caretaking and dependency. It points us toward the kinds of kinship ties that are important for nurturing the young and caring for the elderly and the ill. It is a useful perspective for answering questions such as: How adequately will our society raise the next generation? How will we care for the growing number of elderly persons?

THE PRIVATE FAMILY

 

At the same time, the family is much more than a public service institution. It also provides individuals with intimacy, emotional support, and love. Indeed, most people today think of the family and experience it in these private terms. Although some of the intimacy is expressed sexually, the family is also where we get hugs as children and back rubs as adults. It is where children form first attachments, teenagers take steps toward autonomy, and adults share their inner selves with someone else. The public family is not the most useful perspective in this regard because the central question is not how we will care for dependents or reproduce the workforce but, rather, how we will obtain the intimacy and emotional support we desire.

 

An appropriate definition of the private family must, therefore, encompass intimate relationships whether or not they include dependents. Yet if we are to maintain our focus on families, the definition still must encompass some rules for defining what kinds of intimate relationships constitute a family. It is difficult to know where to draw the line between private families and other kinds of intimate relationships, such as two people who live in separate apartments but consider themselves to be a couple. Where exactly is the boundary between family life and less intensive forms of intimacy? Rapid change has undermined the consensus among Americans about the norms of family life—the social rules about what constitutes a family and how people should behave when they are in one. Let me offer, then, a definition of the private_family not as an authoritative statement but rather as a starting point for analyzing this uncertainty: two or more individuals who maintain an intimate relationship that they expect will last indefinitely—or, in the case of a parent and child, until the child reaches adulthood—and who usually live in the same household and pool their incomes and household labor. This definition allows for children to be part of the private family, although the character of the intimacy between parents and children is clearly different from that between adult partners. It does not require that the individuals be of different sexes. The relationship must be one in which the commitment is long term, in which the expectation is that the adult partners will stay together indefinitely. I do not require that they expect to stay together for life because it’s not clear how many married couples even expect as much, given the high rates of divorce. The definition also includes the notion that the partnership usually is household-based and economic as well as intimate—shared residence, common budgets. This reflects my sense that intimate relationships in families are not merely erotic and emotionally supportive but also involve sharing the day-to-day details of managing one’s life. Nevertheless, I have added the qualifier “usually live in the same household” to allow for couples who live apart but in other ways meet the criteria of the private family.

 

private family two or more individuals who maintain an intimate relationship that they expect will last indefinitely— or, in the case of a parent and child, until the child reaches adulthood—and who usually live in the same household and pool their incomes and household labor

 

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In fact, families are becoming so diverse and complex that it is hard to determine their boundaries from either the public or private perspectives. Suppose that after a divorce a father makes regular child support payments to his ex-wife and sees his children often. You might argue that he is still sharing parenthood and therefore part of the family. If he doesn’t make regular payments, on the other hand, and sees his children sporadically, you might not consider him to be part of the family any longer. When families are very complex, even the people who are involved may disagree about who’s in them. Take the example of a large national survey that asked the mothers of teenage children who else was living in their household. Several hundred mothers said that they were living with a man who was not the father of the teenager. In other words, according to the mothers’ reports, these were what might be called “cohabiting stepfamilies” that were similar to stepfamilies except that the stepfather and mother were not married. The survey also asked the teenage children in these households who besides their mothers was living with them. Strikingly, nearly half of them did not mention the man at all, as if their mothers were single parents (Brown & Manning, 2009). Perhaps in some of those households the men were present only half the week and the children considered them to be visitors; or perhaps the children rejected them as father figures. The correct answer, then, to the question of who is in the family is sometimes unclear. This is an example of boundary ambiguity, a state in which family members are uncertain about who is in or out of the family (Carroll, Olson, & Buckmiller, 2007). It is more common now than it was a half-century ago, when rates of divorce, remarriage, and childbearing outside of marriage were substantially lower.

 

boundary ambiguity a state in which family members are uncertain about who is in or out of the family

 

To be sure, individuals also receive emotional support and material assistance from kin with whom they are not in an intimate relationship. The word “family” is sometimes used in the larger sense of relationships with sisters, uncles, grandmothers, close friends, and so forth. These broader kinship ties are still an important part of the setting in which people embed their intimate relations to spouses, partners, and children. The usual definition of “kin” is the people who are related to you by descent (through your mother’s or father’s line) or marriage. Yet the concept of kinship is also becoming broader and harder to define. In settings as varied as sharing networks among low-income African Americans, friend-based support networks among lesbians and gay men, and middle-class networks of adults who are related only through the ties of broken marriages and remarriages, people are expanding the definition of kinship, creating kin, as it were, out of relationships that don’t fit the old mold. In fact, throughout the book I will distinguish between what I will call created kinship—kinship ties that people have to construct actively—and assigned kinship—kinship ties that people more or less automatically acquire when they are born or when they marry.

 

created kinship kinship ties that people have to construct actively

 

assigned kinship kinship ties that people more or less automatically acquire when they are born or when they marry

 

Created kinship is particularly valuable to people who can’t find adequate support among blood-based or first-marriage-based kin. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals, for example, are sometimes rejected by their parents, although less often than in the past. Poor African American mothers who cannot find suitable spouses exchange help not only with their mothers and grandmothers but also with close friends, creating kinship-like relationships. A divorced mother whose ex-husband provides little support can receive assistance from a live-in partner or second husband. Yet even people who could find adequate support in conventional arrangements may intentionally create new forms that fit their preferences and needs. The Scarborough 11, for instance, have created what we might call intentional kin (Nelson, 2013). You will recall that one of the members said, “We didn’t see the need to live in these isolated nuclear family units.”

 

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Some observers look at all of these new forms of intimate relationships and conclude that the concept of family is outmoded. The strongest criticism is coming from scholars in Europe, where rates of marriage are lower than in the United States and where, in many countries, long-term cohabiting relationships are more common (Roseneil & Budgeon, 2004). Family is a “zombie category,” said social theorist Ulrich Beck (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 2002), a dead body walking around that we mistakenly think is still alive. The critics note the boundary ambiguities of many families and the ways in which people are constructing new forms of kinship. They point to phenomena such as couples in intimate, committed relationships who are living in separate households because they prefer to (value their independence) or have to (each has a good job in a different city) (Levin, 2004). They note the family networks gays and lesbians construct from friends, former lovers, and relatives. Some conclude that we should give up on the term “family” and use a broader, more inclusive descriptor, such as “personal community” (Pahl & Spencer, 2004). But I think that in an American context, where marriage remains highly valued by heterosexuals and gays and lesbians alike, we are not at the point where we should give up on the concept of family. Its boundaries are fuzzy, it takes diverse forms, it is stressed and strained by social change, but for the current day it is, I suggest, still worth studying.

TWO VIEWS, SAME FAMILY

 

That there are two views—public and private—of the same reality may explain the paradox that Americans seem concerned about everyone else’s families but not their own. When people in a national survey by The New York Times, people were asked, “In general, do you think that because of such things as divorce, more working mothers, or single parents, etc., family ties in the U.S. are breaking down—or don’t you think so?” Seventy-seven percent responded that, yes, they thought family ties were breaking down.3 respond this way, they tend to think in terms of the public family. That is to say, when Americans view other families, they see their public faces: how their children are behaving, how they are providing for their oldest members, and how they are contributing to the civility of neighborhoods and communities. They worry about the effects of divorce, about the difficulties that low-income single parents can have in raising children, about teenage childbearing, and about high school dropouts—the litany of problems we learn about in the media and see around us.

 

But when the people in the same survey were asked “What about in your own family? Are family ties breaking down, or not,” 82 percent responded that their family ties were not breaking down. When people respond in this sense, they think in terms of the love and companionship they get. That is, they see the family’s private face. And they tend to be satisfied, by and large, with the emotional rewards they are obtaining at the moment. So they respond that, no, their families are fine. Cue people one way and they respond in terms of the public family, but cue them the other way and they respond in terms of the private family. The two perspectives, then, can be thought of as complementary and sometimes overlapping ways of looking at the same reality: the institution of the family.

 

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Table 1.1 reviews the basic distinction between these two perspectives. The first row shows examples of families as seen through the public and private family perspectives. The second row shows the main functions of the family in the public and private domains. In raising the next generation of children—the workers, citizens, and parents of the future—parents and other caregivers are best viewed as carrying out the functions of the public family. The same can be said for caregivers of the frail elderly or for disabled individuals. In contrast, when providing love, intimacy, and emotional support, family members are carrying out the functions of the private family. The third row shows the key challenges families face in these two guises. It’s in people’s narrow self-interests to let others do the hard work of raising children or caring for the elderly—activities that benefit society as a whole. (And much of this care is provided by women outside of the paid workforce. See Chapter 8.) But if too many people try to ride free, our society may not invest enough time and effort in producing the next generation or in caring for the elderly. In fact, some social critics believe American society has already reached this point. As for the private family, its key challenge is maintaining its dominant position as the setting where people experience emotional gratification. With the decline of marriage, there are many kinds of relationships that provide intimacy, love, and sex. Will the private family continue to cohere as a social institution, or will its boundaries collapse into a sea of diverse, limited personal relationships?

 

In sum, to examine the contributions of families to the public welfare is to look at relationships through the lens of the public family. To examine the family’s provisions of intimacy, love, and fulfillment is to look through the lens of the private family. Sometimes, both lenses apply to the same situation, as when a parent derives great emotional satisfaction from raising a child. Both perspectives are embedded in each of the chapters that follow. Which is better? Neither. They are two takes on the same reality. Many textbooks emphasize the private family by focusing primarily on interpersonal relationships, cohabitation, and marriage. In doing so, they pay less attention to the socially valuable work that families do. Although this book, too, will have much to say about the private family, it will also emphasize the public family. Most chapters will include a short essay on families and public policy; and the concluding chapter, “The Family, the State, and Social Policy,” is directed primarily toward public issues.

 

Table 1.1 Two Ways of Looking at the American Family

 

 

 

THE PUBLIC FAMILY

 

 

THE PRIVATE FAMILY

 

Examples

 

 

Married couple, cohabiting couple, or single parent with childrenSingle person caring for ailing parentCohabiting person caring for seriously ill partner

 

 

Married or cohabiting couples without children Gay or lesbian couples without children

 

Main Functions

 

 

Raising the next generation Caring for the elderly Caring for the ill and disabled

 

 

Providing love and intimacy Providing emotional support

 

Key Challenge

 

 

Free-rider problem

 

 

Boundary problem

 

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Quick Review

 

Families are more diverse in their forms than was the case in the mid-twentieth century.

No single definition of the family is adequate for all purposes.

This book takes two perspectives and proposes two definitions:

The “public family,” which focuses on the care that family members provide for dependents.

The “private family,” which focuses on the love and emotional satisfaction family members provide for each other.

Both definitions can be applied to the same family unit because most families have both a public and a private dimension.

 

How Do Family Sociologists Know What They Know?

 

Sociologists collect and analyze data consisting of observations of real families and the people in them. For the most part, they strive to analyze their data using objective, scientific methods. Objectivity means the ability to draw conclusions about a social situation that are unaffected by one’s own beliefs. But it is much more difficult for a sociologist to be objective than it is for a natural or physical scientist. Sociologists not only study families, they also live in them. They often have strong moral and political views of their own (indeed, strong views about social issues are what lead many people to become sociologists), and it is difficult to prevent those views from influencing one’s research. In fact, there are some sociologists who argue that objectivity is so difficult to achieve that sociologists shouldn’t try. Rather, they argue, sociologists should acknowledge their values and predispositions so that others can better interpret their work (see How Do Sociologists Know What They Know?: Feminist Research Methods, in Chapter 3).

 

objectivity the ability to draw conclusions about a social situation that are unaffected by one’s own beliefs

 

But most sociologists, although aware that their views can influence the way they interpret their data, model their research on the scientific method. For a detailed examination of the scientific method in sociology, consult any good introductory sociology textbook. For example, Schaefer (2007, p. 29) defines the scientific_method as “a systematic, organized series of steps that ensures maximum objectivity and consistency in researching a problem.” The essence of the scientific method is to formulate a hypothesis that can be tested by collecting and analyzing data. (A hypothesis, Schaefer writes, is “a speculative statement about the relationship between two or more variables” [p. 45].) It’s easy to come up with a hypothesis (God is a woman), but the trick is to find one that can be shown to be true or false by examining data. Sociologists therefore tend to formulate very specific hypotheses about family life that can be confirmed or disconfirmed by observation. For example, sociologists have hypothesized that having a first child as a teenager lowers, on average, the amount of education a woman attains; and statistical data are consistent with this claim.

 

scientific method a systematic, organized series of steps that ensures maximum objectivity and consistency in researching a problem

 

hypothesis a speculative statement about the relationship between two or more variables

 

Even so, there are inherent limitations in how well social scientists can use the scientific method. The best way to confirm or disconfirm a relationship between two factors is to conduct an experiment in which all other factors are held constant. Scientists do this by randomly assigning subjects to one of two groups: a treatment group and a control group. For example, doctors will study whether a new drug speeds recovery from an illness by assembling a group of volunteers, all of whom have the illness, and then randomly giving half of them (the treatment group) the new drug. By randomizing, the doctors hope that all other confounding factors (such as past medical history) will be equalized between the two groups. Then they compare the average recovery times of the treatment group and the control group (those who did not receive the drug).

 

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An interviewer goes door-to-door during the 2010 Census. Social scientists frequently use survey research to study families.

 

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Public Information Office (PIO)

 

But it is rarely possible for sociologists to conduct randomized experiments on families. Without randomization, there is always the possibility that another, unobserved factor, lurking just beneath the surface, is causing the relationship we see. Consider again teenage childbearing. Women who have a first child as a teenager tend to come from families that have less education and less money, on average, than do other women. So the reason that teenage mothers attain less education may reflect their disadvantaged family backgrounds rather than having a child; in other words, they might have had less education even if they hadn’t had children as teenagers. To truly settle this issue, a truth-seeking but cold-blooded sociologist would want to obtain a list of all families with teenage girls in the United States and then to assign at random some of the girls to have children and others to remain childless until their twenties. Because of the random assignment, teenage childbearing would be about as likely to occur in middle-class families as in poor families. In this way, the social scientist could eliminate family background as a cause of any differences that emerge between teenage mothers and nonmothers.

 

For very good ethical and legal reasons, of course, sociologists simply cannot conduct this type of study. Without random assignment, we can’t be sure that having a child as a teenager causes a woman to have less education. Still, the lack of randomized experiments does not mean that sociologists should abandon the scientific method. Astronomers, after all, can’t do experiments either. But this limitation makes the task of deciding whether a sociological study confirms or disconfirms a hypothesis more difficult.

 

If not from experiments, where does the data that family sociologists use come from? Generally, from one of two research methods. The first is the survey, a study in which individuals or households are randomly selected from a larger page 15 population and asked a fixed set of questions. Sociologists prepare a questionnaire and give it to a professional survey research organization. The organization then selects a sample of households randomly from an area (a city, a state, or the entire nation) and sends interviewers to ask the questions of one or more family members in the households. The responses are coded numerically (e.g., a “yes” answer is coded 1 and a “no” is coded 0), and the coded responses for all individuals are made available to the sociologists as a computer file.

 

survey a study in which individuals from a geographic area are selected, usually at random, and asked a fixed set of questions

 

The random selection of households is done to ensure that the people who are asked the questions are representative of the population in the area. This kind of random selection of households shouldn’t be confused with conducting a randomized experiment. A random-sample survey is not an experiment because the households that are selected are not divided into a treatment group and a control group. Nevertheless, data from surveys provides sociologists with the opportunity to examine associations among characteristics of a large number of individuals and families. (See How Do Sociologists Know What They Know?: The National Surveys, in this chapter.)

 

The advantage of the survey method (assuming that the households are randomly selected) is that its results are representative not only of the sample that was interviewed but also of the larger population in the area. The main disadvantage is the limited amount of information that can be gathered on each person or family. Most people won’t participate in an interview that takes more than an hour or two. Moreover, the same set of questions is asked of everyone, with little opportunity to tailor the interview to each participant. Another disadvantage is that it’s difficult to determine whether the people in the sample are responding honestly, especially if the questions touch upon sensitive issues. (See How Do Sociologists Know What They Know?: Asking about Sensitive Behavior, in Chapter 6.)

 

The second widely used research method is the observational study, also known as field research, in which the researcher spends time directly observing each participant in the study—often much more time than an interviewer from a survey organization spends. The researcher may even join the group she or he is studying for a period of time. The individuals and families to be studied are not usually selected randomly; rather, the researcher tries to find families that have a particular set of characteristics he or she is interested in. For example, in a classic observational study of a low-income area of Boston, Herbert Gans (1962) moved into an Italian neighborhood for eight months and got to know many families well. He was able to argue that the stereotype of slum families as “disorganized” was not true. The strength of the observational method is that it can provide a much more detailed and nuanced picture of the individuals and families being studied than can the survey method. Sociologist-observers can view the full complexity of family behavior and can learn more about it.

 

observational study (also known as field research) a study in which the researcher spends time directly observing each participant

 

The disadvantage of observational studies is that it is hard to know how representative the families being studied are of similar families. Because it takes a great deal of time to study a family in depth, observational studies typically are carried out with far fewer families than are surveys. Moreover, sociologists who do observational studies usually can’t choose their families randomly by knocking on doors or calling on the telephone because they must win a family’s cooperation and trust before the family will agree to be studied in such detail. So although observational studies may yield a great deal of information about a small number of families, we may be unsure that we can generalize this knowledge to other similar families that weren’t in the observational study.

 

Surveys and observational studies, then, have complementary strengths and limitations. If the knowledge from sociological studies could be stored in a lake,page 16 a survey-based lake would be wide (because of the large number of people reached) but shallow (because of the limited time spent with each family), whereas an observationally based lake would be narrow but deep. Ideally, it would be best to employ both methods to study a problem, and some research projects attempt to do so. But to choose a large number of families randomly and then to send in sociologists to observe each family intensively over weeks and months is too expensive to be feasible. Moreover, the set of skills necessary to do survey research versus observational research is so distinct that sociologists tend to specialize in one or the other.

 

Social scientists sometimes use other research methods as well. For some topics, it is useful to examine historical sources. Chapter 7 describes a study in which magazine articles from 1900 to 1979 were used to study changing conceptions of marriage (Cancian, 1987). Occasionally, it is even possible to do an experiment. In the 1990s, the Department of Housing and Urban Development conducted an experiment in which some low-income families living in public housing in five cities were randomly selected to receive a voucher that they could use to subsidize their rent if they moved to lower poverty neighborhoods. These “treatment-group” families were compared to “control-group” families that received less assistance. Four to seven years later, families that had received the vouchers were living in safer neighborhoods and were less poor; in addition, the daughters in these families had better mental health than daughters in the control-group families. Ten to fifteen years later, young adults who had moved with their parents to better neighborhoods before age 13 had higher incomes (Chetty, Hendren, & Katz, 2015).

 

These are the major methods that sociologists use to study families. In several of the chapters of this book, we will examine the methodology of key studies so that you may better understand how family sociologists develop their research findings.

 

Quick Review

 

Survey research and observational research are the two methods most commonly used by sociologists.

The two methods have complementary strengths and limitations.

Table 1.2 summarizes the differences between the two methods.

 

Table 1.2  Comparing Survey Studies and Observational Studies

 

WHO IS STUDIED

 

 

HOW THEY ARE STUDIED

 

 

STRENGTHS

 

 

LIMITATIONS

 

SURVEY STUDY

 

 

 

 

 

 

Large, random sample of individuals or families

 

 

An interviewer asks questions from a predesigned questionnaire and records the answers

 

 

Results can be generalized to the population of interest

 

 

Only limited knowledge can be obtained; hard to judge honesty of responses

 

OBSERVATIONAL STUDY

 

 

 

 

 

 

Small, purposefully chosen sample of individuals or families

 

 

A researcher observes them in depth over a long period of time, sometimes participating in their daily activities

 

 

Detailed knowledge is obtained

 

 

Findings may not be representative of other, similar individuals or families

 

page 17

Sociological Theory and Families

 

The methods sociologists use and the questions they ask are influenced by sociological theory. Let me present a brief introduction to four perspectives that I think are most actively used by family researchers today. I will draw on these perspectives often in this book.

FOUR WIDELY USED PERSPECTIVES

 

The Exchange Perspective The sociological approach known as exchange theory is similar to the model of human behavior that economists use. People are viewed as rational beings who decide whether to exchange goods or services by considering the benefits they will receive, the costs they will incur, and the benefits they might receive if they chose an alternative course of action. In the rational choice-based theory of the family that won Gary Becker the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics, women often choose rationally to exchange the performance of household and child care services in return for receiving the benefits of a man’s income. If men are more “efficient” at market production—meaning they can earn higher wages—and women are more “efficient” at home production—meaning they are better at raising small children—then both partners gain from this exchange, argues Becker (1991). Thus, Becker’s model was used to explain the prevalence in the mid-twentieth century of the breadwinner–homemaker family—a married couple with children in which the father worked for pay and the mother did not. His theory implied that the division of labor in this type of family is best for both husband and wife.

 

exchange theory a sociological theory that views people as rational beings who decide whether to exchange goods or services by considering the benefits they will receive, the costs they will incur, and the benefits they might receive if they were to choose an alternative course of action

 

breadwinner–homemaker family a married couple with children in which the father worked for pay and the mother did not

 

But in the hands of others, exchange theory can lead to very different conclusions. Many sociologists maintain that exchanges take on a different character if the two actors come to the exchange with unequal resources. Richard Emerson and his colleagues developed a version of exchange theory that is useful in studying families (Cook, O’Brien, & Kollock, 1990; Emerson, 1972). According to Emerson, if person A values goods or services person B has to offer, and if person A has few alternative sources of obtaining these goods or services, then person?A?is said to be dependent on person B. The degree of dependency is greater the more highly A values these goods or services and the fewer alternative sources A has. For example, if a husband (person B in this case), by virtue of his greater earning power, can offer to purchase many goods and services, and if his wife (person A) values these goods and services but can’t purchase them on her own because she can’t earn as much, then she is said to be dependent on her husband. Her dependency is greater if she has fewer alternative sources of income, perhaps because she took time away from paid work to have children and now finds it hard to find a good job. Moreover, according to Emerson, the more A is dependent on B, the greater is B’s power over A. When one person is more powerful than another, he or she may be able to shape the exchange so that he or she receives greater benefits and incurs fewer costs than does the other person. Husbands, many writers have suggested, are in a stronger bargaining position when they are the sole earners in their families because their wives have fewer alternative sources of income. According to exchange theory, when wives earn money on their own, their dependence decreases and therefore their husbands’ power over them decreases. They can drive a better bargain for who does the housework.

 

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How Do Sociologists Know What They Know? The National Surveys

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sociologists who study the family in the United States draw many of their findings from a series of national surveys that have been conducted over the past few decades. These surveys interview randomly selected samples of the U.S. population. They are similar to the opinion-poll surveys you see in news sites online (e.g., what percent of the public thinks the president is doing a good job?), but they differ in several important ways:

 

They are larger The surveys reported online typically interview 500 to 1,500 individuals. The social scientific surveys typically interview 5,000 to 10,000 individuals or more. Because of this larger size, the social scientific surveys can provide reliable information on subgroups of the population, such as couples who are living together outside of marriage, currently divorced individuals, and never-married adults.

 

They are carried out using in-person interviews In contrast, most of the online polls are conducted by randomly dialing telephone numbers and speaking to people over the telephone. In-person interviews can be longer and more detailed (because people tire of telephone conversations more quickly than in-person conversations) and can be more flexible (e.g., the interviewer can give the subject a self-administered questionnaire for her husband or partner to fill out). But in-person interviews are also much more expensive to carry out.

 

They are longitudinal Whereas the typical online poll is a one-time activity, social scientists prefer a longitudinal survey, meaning a survey in which interviews are conducted several times at regular intervals. This design allows social scientists to study social change. The surveys typically select families or individuals at random and then reinterview them annually or biennially about how their lives are changing.

 

They are intended to be public resources Most online polls are meant for primary analysis meaning they are analyzed by the people who collected the information. The data from these polls are then forgotten. The social scientific studies are designed for secondary analysis meaning analysis of the data by people other than the group that collected it. The questionnaires are intentionally broad so that the interviewers can collect a wide range of information that will be of interest to many researchers. The results are coded numerically into electronic files and made available to anyone who wants to analyze them.

 

They are conducted by academic research centers rather than by commercial polling firms The academic centers, such as the NORC at the University of Chicago and the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan, typically take extra steps in designing and carrying out a survey so that the results are of better quality (e.g., the data conforms better to the statistical theory underlying random sample surveys; a greater percentage of the selected subjects are reached and interviewed).

 

Because of the large sample size, longitudinal design, use of in-person rather than telephone interviews, and extra care in the fieldwork, the social scientific surveys are very expensive. Most are sponsored by U.S. government agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, or the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The agencies support those large surveys to provide information on many research questions so that hundreds of researchers can analyze the data.

 

One such project is the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, which was designed to learn more about unmarried parents and their children. Interviews were conducted between 1998 and 2000 in urban hospitals around the country with nearly 5,000 mothers, about three-fourths of them unmarried, just after their child’s birth. The researchers also interviewed the fathers of the children when possible, and they are still following these so-called fragile families more than 15 years later. They found that half of the unmarried mothers were living with the fathers of their children at the time of birth (McLanahan et al., 2003).

 

Another study is the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. In 1968, researchers at the University of Michigan interviewed 5,000 American households selected at random. They have reinterviewed the members of these households every year or two since then. When children grew up and left home, or adults divorced and moved out, the study followed them and interviewed them in their new households. The Panel Study of Income Dynamics greatly increased our knowledge of the economic fortunes of families over time. For example, the results indicate that few families are poor every year, but over the course of a decade many families, perhaps one-fourth, experience at least a year in which they are poor (Duncan, 1984).

 

Throughout the book, findings from these and other national surveys will be presented. Although not without limitations (see Chapter 6, How Do Sociologists Know What They Know?: Asking about Sensitive Behavior), they constitute a valuable resource to everyone interested in families, households, parents, and children.

 

Ask Yourself

 

Besides researchers, who else might be interested in the results of social scientific surveys? Can you think of any practical use for this information?

Why do you think researchers would want to see survey results for particular racial and ethnic groups or specific types of families?

 

longitudinal survey a survey in which interviews are conducted several times at regular intervals

 

primary analysis analysis of survey data by the people who collected the information

 

secondary analysis analysis of survey data by people other than those who collected it

 

The Symbolic Interaction Perspective Exchange theorists tend to see the social world as a concrete reality with easily perceived costs and benefits and they view individuals as rational, calculating beings, as if we each had a personal computer in our head, taking in data, calculating costs and benefits, and deciding how to act. The adherents of symbolic interaction theory, however, see the social world as a much more fragile and unstable place, in which individuals are continually creating and sustaining meanings, often without much conscious thought to costs and benefits (Stryker & Vryan, 2003). The major figure in symbolic interaction theory was philosopher George Herbert Mead, who taught at the University of Chicago early in the twentieth century. His foremost interpreter in sociology was Herbert Blumer (1962). According to these theorists, people do not react to the world like computers respond to mouse clicks, but rather they interpret what others do based on shared understandings they may take for granted. We interpret symbols—gestures, words, appearances—whose meanings we have come to understand. This interpretation occurs in situations in which we interact with someone. It is this process of the interpretation of symbols during social interaction that the symbolic interactionists study.

 

symbolic interaction theory a sociological theory that focuses on people’s interpretations of symbolic behavior

 

For instance, when women and men interact with each other, they vary the way they dress, the gestures they use, and the tone of voice they employ according to whether the situation is a friendly conversation or a potentially romantic encounter. Each person in the interaction picks up on the symbols used by the other in order to understand which type of situation is being experienced. Most of the time the symbols are so clear and so routine that we don’t even think about what’s happening. In fact, we rely on not having to think about what kind of social situation we are in—we don’t have the mental energy to continually scrutinize the basic facts of our social encounters. Instead, we rely on taken-for-granted symbols and meanings.

 

page 19

 

But these symbols and meanings can reinforce inequalities between women and men in subtle ways. When a man holds a door open for a woman, both people may see this as merely a display of courtesy. Yet a woman is much less likely to hold a door open for a man. Does this mean that women are less courteous than men? Of course not. Rather, the symbol of a man holding a door open has an additional meaning: It reinforces the cultural message that men are physically stronger than women and should take care of them, like gallant medieval knights ushering their ladies through the castle gates. In this way, the simple gesture of holding the door becomes a symbol of the cultural differences between men and women. And done again and again on a daily basis, it reinforces page 20 gender differences. There are many such interactions. For example, husbands who don’t want to change their babies’ diapers may make a display of fumbling at the changing table when called upon by their wives, thus exhibiting their male “inferiority” at the task.

 

The interactionist perspective is also useful in analyzing situations in which family relations seem less institutionalized, less set in concrete—such as in newly formed stepfamilies or dual-career marriages. How a stepfather acts toward his stepchildren when they misbehave, for instance, is a symbol of his emerging role: Does he speak loudly and angrily and admonish them, or does he leave that kind of language to the children’s mother and avoid the role of disciplinarian? In general, the interactionist perspective helps sensitize us to the ways in which people create shared understandings of how family members should act toward one another. These shared understandings become the bases of the social roles people play in families—spouse, parent, breadwinner, homemaker, child, and so forth.

 

The Feminist Perspective Feminist theory is a perspective developed to better understand, and to transform, inequalities between women and men. It draws upon both the exchange and the symbolic interaction perspectives. The central concept in feminist theory is gender, which is usually defined as the social and cultural characteristics that distinguish women and men in a society (see Chapter 3). Feminist theorists argue that nearly all the gender differences we see in the roles of women and men are of cultural origin and have been socially constructed. By socially constructed, they mean arising not from biological differences but rather from culturally accepted rules, from relationships of power and authority, and from differences in economic opportunities. For example, the culture might include a rule that women should not work outside the home (as was the case among the American middle class from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries). Or the opportunities for women might be limited to jobs that tend to pay less than comparable jobs in which most workers are men.

 

feminist theory a sociological theory that focuses on the domination of women by men

 

gender the social and cultural characteristics that distinguish women and men in a society

 

Moreover, feminist theorists assert that these cultural differences are constructed in ways that maintain the power of men over women (Thorne, 1992). For instance, feminist theorists criticize the notion that the breadwinner–—homemaker family provided an exchange that was equally beneficial to women and men. Rather, like Emersonian exchange theorists, they note that women’s direct access to money through paid employment was restricted in this type of family, which maintained women’s dependence on men. They also note that men’s relationships with their children were often limited. The cultural belief that “women’s place is in the home” and the lower wages paid to women employed outside the home compelled married women to give up the idea of paid employment. Under these constraints, their best strategy may indeed have been to trade household services for a male income; but it was a forced choice set up by a social system that favored men.

 

In addition, feminist theorists argue that the kinds of work that women tend to do are valued less highly in our culture than the kinds that men do. In particular, they say, the work of caring for other people is undervalued because we value individualism and autonomy from others more than we value connections with others (Tronto, 1993). Women have historically done much of the work of maintaining connections with kin and caring for young children and the frail elderly. They have done much of it for free as part of their family responsibilities; in fact, we may not even consider a mother who is raising children full time to be “working.” But today women also constitute most of the employees at hospitals, nursing page 21 homes, day care centers, and other settings where people are cared for. Their pay tends to be low: As we will see in Chapter 8, aides at child care centers make less, on average, than gas station attendants. Their low wages reflect, at least in part, the devaluing of caring work, sociologists say (England, 2005). Until we value care more highly, they say, we will continue to have less caring labor than is optimal. For instance, the low pay of child care workers will continue to cause high job turnover and less stable caregiving to young children.

 

Feminist theory makes us aware that the experience of living in a family is different for women than it is for men. Arrangements that make men happiest don’t necessarily make women happiest. A husband might prefer that his wife stay home to care for their children and do household work full time. His wife might prefer to combine a paying job with housework and child care, and she might wish that he would share more of the household tasks. In other words, women’s interests in the family are not necessarily the same as men’s interests. The breadwinner–homemaker bargain may have been great for men (except for those who wanted an active role in raising their children), and it may have been great for women who wished to raise children and do housework full time, but it frustrated other women by restricting the possibility of developing a satisfying career outside the home. Feminist theory urges us to view families through a prism that separates the experiences of men and women rather than just considering what’s best for the family as a whole. It is a view that I will take repeatedly in this book.

 

The Postmodern Perspective A number of theorists of modernity claim that personal life has changed fundamentally over the last several decades. They argue that the modern era—the long period that began with the spread of industrialization in the mid-to-late nineteenth century—effectively— ended in the last half of the twentieth century. It has been replaced, they state, by what they call the late modern era (Giddens, 1991) or sometimes the postmodern era Looking back at the modern era, they emphasize that individuals moved through a series of roles (student, spouse, parent, housewife, breadwinner) in a way that seemed more or less natural. Choices were constrained. In mill towns, two or three generations of kin might work at the same factory. Getting married was the only acceptable way to have children, except perhaps among the poor. Young people often chose their spouses from among a pool of acquaintances from their neighborhood, church, or school. Life’s stages flowed in a way that one accepted and didn’t have to question.

 

late modern or postmodern era the last few decades of the twentieth century and the present day

 

But in the late modern era, the theorists maintain, individuals must make choices about nearly all aspects of their lives (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 2002). You can’t get a job in the factory where your father and grandfather worked because overseas competition has forced it to close, so you must choose another career. Rather than allowing your relatives to help you find a partner, you sign on to an Internet dating service and review hundreds of personal profiles. As other lifestyles become more acceptable, you must choose whether to get married and whether to have children. In ways such as these, your identity in the late modern age is transformed from a “given” to a “task” you must undertake (Bauman, 1992, 2002).

 

As these choices are made, it is said, questions of self-identity become more important. By self-identity I mean a person’s sense of who he or she is and of where he or she fits in the social structure. In societies such as ours, individuals must construct their self-identities; they cannot rely on tradition or custom to order their daily lives. “We are not what we are,” wrote social theorist Anthony Giddens (1991), “but what we make of ourselves.” Developing one’s self—identity becomes page 22 an important project that individuals must work on. People do the work of developing their identities through reflexivity, the process through which individuals take in knowledge, reflect on it, and alter their behavior as a result (Beck, Giddens, & Lash, 1994). In other words, people pay attention to their experiences and regularly ask themselves: How am I feeling? Do I find my life fulfilling? How do I want to live the rest of it? Depending on the answers to questions such as these, people may change the way they are living their lives. The postmodern theorists believe that the rise of reflexive change is a key characteristic of what they call the late modern era: the last few decades of the twentieth century and?the beginning of the twenty-first. Table 1.3 compares the current era with the modern era that began with industrialization and ended in the mid-twentieth century (although, in a broader sense, modernization can be traced back to the Enlightenment in eighteenth-century Europe). In reality, the periods are not quite as distinct, and the differences not as sharp, as the table suggests.

 

self-identity a person’s sense of who he or she is and of where he or she fits in the social structure

 

reflexivity the process through which individuals take in knowledge, reflect on it, and alter their behavior as a result

 

Family life is changing so much that no clear rules govern how husbands and wives should divide the household chores.

 

© Reed Kaestner/Corbis

 

Behavior, according to the theorists, was rule-directed in the earlier era, meaning that (1) rules such as social norms, laws, and customs strongly influenced personal life, and (2) the actions of individuals did not change those rules. Marriage was the only acceptable context for having children. Divorce was frowned upon and harder to obtain. Despite occasional movements to liberalize divorce laws, the norms and customs did not change much. In the current era, behavior is rule—altering to a much greater extent because the lifestyle choices individuals make can alter the laws and customs pertaining to families. For instance, as more gay and lesbian couples began to live openly together, many municipalities, in reaction, enacted domestic—partnership laws that gave same-sex couples privileges similar to those of married couples (such as requiring that employers who offer health insurance benefits that cover the spouses of their employees also cover their same-sex partners). These new laws altered the rules about what constituted a legally valid partnership. And as privileges and acceptability increased, gay men and lesbians found it even easier to live together in marriage-like partnership, leading to the legalization of same-sex marriage.

 

page 23

 

Table 1.3 Aspects of Personal Life in the Late Modern Era

 

 

 

MODERN ERA

 

 

LATE MODERN ERA

 

Time period

 

 

Industrialization to mid-twentieth century

 

 

Since mid-twentieth century

 

Behavior

 

 

Rule-directed

 

 

Rule-altering

 

Lifestyle choices

 

 

Restricted

 

 

Mandatory

 

Kinship ties

 

 

Assigned

 

 

Created

 

Note: The table is the author’s, but it is based on Giddens (1991, 1992), Beck & Beck-Gernsheim (1995, 2002), and Beck, Giddens, & Lash (1994).

 

Lifestyle choices, as Table 1.3 suggests, were restricted in the earlier era. For example, people were much less likely to choose a spouse of a different religion or racial-ethnic group. In the current era, choices are not only greater but also mandatory: You must make choices in nearly all aspects of personal life. Having to make so many decisions has its good and bad points. It opens the possibility of developing a self-identity that is deeply fulfilling; and it allows people to seize the opportunities that may be before them. On the other hand, choices can bring insecurity and doubt. The risk of making the wrong ones can weigh on you, creating a burden as well as a boon.

 

Finally, kinship ties tend to shift from being assigned to being created. In the past, you acquired your relatives at birth; then, when you married, you acquired a spouse and in-laws. There was little choice in the matter. Today, people in a variety of settings are more likely to choose their own kin and create their own kinship networks. What all these settings have in common is that they are defined outside the boundaries of lifelong marriage.

 

People who choose not to rely on lifelong marriage must construe kinship differently. They must do the hard work of constructing a group of kin, a broader family, that they can rely on. These ties require continual attention to maintain. In contrast, relations of blood and first marriage are supported by strong social norms and the law. Lacking this support, people must actively keep up created kinship ties. If they are allowed to lapse, there is no guarantee that they can be revived.

 

Postmodern theory is consistent with a view of families as diverse, changing, and developing in unpredictable directions. It can help us make sense of family life at a time when individuals must continually make choices in uncertain circumstances, for which there are no clear rules. For instance, same-sex marriage is new enough that no general agreement exists on how spouses should divide up the tasks of work at home and in the labor market. (We will examine the work/family dilemma in Chapter 8.) Divorce and remarriage are new enough on a large scale that stepparents and stepchildren have little guidance on who is part of their family and how they should act toward them. (We will examine stepfamilies in Chapter 12.) These new circumstances bring both opportunities for fashioning mutually beneficial arrangements and the costs of the anxiety and conflict that working out new rules can cause.

 

page 24

 

Table 1.4 Theoretical Perspectives on the Family

 

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE

 

 

MAIN THEME

 

 

APPLICATION TO FAMILIES

 

Exchange

 

 

Individuals with greater resources and more alternatives can drive better bargains.

 

 

Husbands’ power over wives is greater when wives do not earn money on their own.

 

Symbolic interaction

 

 

Individuals interpret the actions of others and act in ways consistent with their interpretations.

 

 

Individuals give, and look for, symbolic cues about how to conduct the activities of everyday family life.

 

Feminist

 

 

Society is organized in ways that privilege men over women.

 

 

A system of male dominance gives husbands more power than their wives.

 

Postmodern

 

 

Individuals reflexively influence their social environments.

 

 

Individuals choose how they will act in new family forms such as stepfamilies.

 

Quick Review

 

Four widely used theoretical perspectives are exchange, symbolic interaction, feminist, and postmodern.

Table 1.4 summarizes the main theme of each perspective and its application to studying families.

 

Globalization and Families

 

These days, many sociologists are applying their theories to the study of a major social trend that has occurred over the past few decades: globalization, the increasing flow of goods and services, money, migrants, and information across the nations of the world.

 

globalization the increasing flow of goods and services, money, migrants, and information across the nations of the world

 

Globalization is evident in the movement of factory work overseas so that, for instance, virtually every piece of clothing you own was probably made outside of the United States. You face it when you call the technical service line for help with a laptop problem and are connected to someone in India. You have seen it if you know one of the many middle-class families that have hired women from countries such as Mexico or the Philippines to help care for their children while the parents work. You have experienced it on news sites that collect Twitter feeds and cellphone videos keep you apprised of uprisings in distant lands. Globalization is tying together the lives of people around the world in a way that was not possible before late—twentieth—century advances in computing, communications, and transportation. It has been aided by the ascendency of a political viewpoint known as neo—liberalis—m that supports free movement of investment funds and free trade of goods across nations, open borders, and individual initiative.

 

No national government controls this trend. Rather, globalization operates at world level above the nation state, as money, people, and information transit the page 25 globe. It is affecting family life in nearly every region of the world, although its effects differ from region to region (Trask, 2010). In developing countries, the new factories have created millions of low-wage jobs that have drawn mothers into the paid work force. As in the United States, the employment of mothers with young children can create child care problems, which are often worsened by the lack of any government child care assistance and by workers’ inability to pay for care. But the jobs, modest in pay though they are, have also provided women with a greater degree of independence in their family lives, increasing their bargaining power with their husbands and allowing some to escape abusive marriages. Therefore, globalization is changing the relations between women and men in areas where manufacturing work has grown. In addition, the style of romantic love and companionship to be found in the United States and other wealthy countries seems to be spreading across much of the developing world.

 

The effects of globalization on family life can also be seen in the Western nations, the countries of Western Europe and the non-European, English-speakin—g countries of the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. This book’s main focus will be on the family in the United States, but there are strong similarities between the American family and the family in other Western nations.

 

Western nations the countries of Western Europe and the non-European, English-speaking countries of the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand

 

In the United States, the movement of manufacturing jobs overseas has made it more difficult for high school educated young adults to find decent jobs. As a result they frequently are hesitant to marry, and they form short-term cohabiting relationships instead. Meanwhile, college-educated young adults, who have an easier time finding the kinds of well-paying professional and technical jobs that still remain in the United States, finish their education, marry, and enjoy a higher standard of living. In this way, globalization is creating a gap between the family lives of the college graduates and those with less education.

 

Moreover, international migration is creating family forms that span the developed and developing countries in ways that have never been seen before. Whereas in the past most people who migrated from their home country to another country were men, today half of all international migrants are women (United Nations, 2013a). Many of them are mothers who leave their children at home. For instance, the women who migrate to the United States to care for the children of working parents often leave their own children in the care of others in their home countries. They typically send back most of their salary to pay for the children’s school fees, better clothes, or a nicer house. A grandmother may be minding the children during the years that the mother is gone, or the family may be paying someone else to do the caring. In this way, the immigrant nannies create transnational families in which mothers and children can be thousands of miles apart and yet keep in touch through phone calls, text messages, and Skype sessions.

 

Globalization, then, can influence family life both positively and negatively. In less developed countries it can induce parents to work long hours for wages that are low by Western standards and it can create child care crises. But the increase in household income does represent a step up in the families’ economic fortunes, and it elevates the position of women. In the home countries of the women who migrate to the Western countries to do caring work, children are separated from their mothers by hundreds or thousands of miles; yet their opportunities are increased by the money their mothers send home. In the West, globalization has improved the economic prospects of highly educated young adults, most of whom are still forming marriage-based families, while eroding the ability of young adults with less education to form stable, long-term family bonds.

 

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The world is too interconnected to consider what is happening to families in the United States without also considering what is happening elsewhere. Consequently, Chapter 13 will be devoted to international family change.

 

Quick Review

 

During the past few decades the international flows of goods and services, money, migrants, and information have increased greatly, in a process known as globalization.

Globalization has affected family life throughout the world, although its effects are different in Western countries than in other regions.

 

Family Life and Individualism

 

A family life centered on marriage remains the preference of most Americans. When young adults are asked their plans for the future, the overwhelming majority respond that they plan to marry and to have children. But it is a different kind of marriage than it used to be. In most societies at most times in the past, marriage was the only acceptable setting for sexual activity and childbearing. As recently as the mid-twentieth century, marriage, childbearing, and sexual activity overlapped to a great extent, possibly even greater than in prior times. Sexual intercourse, for the majority of women at least, was restricted to marriage (or to the men they were engaged to); consequently, few children were born outside marriage. Cohabitation was rare except among the poor. Marriage was more nearly universal than at any other time in the twentieth century. The probability that a marriage would end in divorce, although substantially higher than in the nineteenth century, was much less than it is today. To be respectable, it was necessary to be married before living with a partner or having a child; to stay respectable, it was necessary to avoid divorce if at all possible.

 

By the 1990s the power of marriage to regulate people’s personal lives was much weaker than in the past. Cohabitation before marriage had become common and acceptable to most people. Although childbearing outside marriage was still frowned upon by many, it was tolerated by most. Divorce was considered to be unfortunate but acceptable if a partner wished to end a marriage. Lifelong singlehood, although still uncommon, was also acceptable. In general, there was a greater acceptance of nonmarried adults.

 

There are several reasons for the lesser role of marriage and the greater tolerance of those who are not married. Marriage is less economically necessary than when most people needed to pool their labor and earnings with a spouse in order to subsist. Moreover, the movement of married women into the paid workforce—a major trend of the past half-century—has lessened women’s economic dependence on men. Even though women’s wages remain, on average, lower than men’s, it is less difficult now for a woman to support herself and her children. Also, the job prospects for young men without college educations have worsened as jobs are transferred overseas or lost to automation, discouraging young adults from marrying.

 

But in addition, the decline of marriage and greater tolerance for alternative lifestyles reflect the rise of a more individualized view of family and personal life. By individualism, I mean a style of life in which individuals pursue their own page 27 interests and place great importance on developing a personally rewarding life. Individualism in American life is of two types (Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, & Tipton, 1985). The older, more-established type is utilitarian individualism: a style of life that emphasizes self-reliance and personal achievement, especially in one’s work life. Benjamin Franklin was the quintessential utilitarian individualist. In his Poor Richard’s Almanack he advised that “early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise” and that “God helps them that help themselves.” Today, this is the style of the person determined to succeed on his or her own or to get to the top of the corporate ladder. It is also the style of a single mother who works two jobs to pay for her children’s college tuition. The second type, newer on a large scale, is expressive individualism: a style of life that emphasizes developing one’s feelings and emotional satisfaction. This is the style of the person who wants to connect emotionally with a romantic partner, express his or her innermost thoughts to a trusted friend, and develop a good body at the health club. It is consistent with the focus on self-identity that, according to the postmodern theorists, characterizes our day.

 

individualism a style of life in which individuals pursue their own interests and place great importance on developing a personally rewarding life

 

utilitarian individualism a style of life that emphasizes self-reliance and personal achievement, especially in one’s work life

 

expressive individualism a style of life that emphasizes developing one’s feelings and emotional satisfaction

 

The Supreme Court decision that legalized same sex marriage nationwide, Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), exemplifies these individualistic views. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy stated:

 

A first premise of the Court’s relevant precedents is that the right to personal choice regarding marriage is inherent in the concept of individual autonomy.

 

Individual autonomy: Kennedy implies that autonomy is a basic right under the constitution. Personal choice: autonomous individuals must be able to choose whether or not to marry, regardless of sexual orientation. As he writes elsewhere in the decision, “the decision whether and whom to marry is among life’s momentous acts of self definition.” Getting married is here conceived of not as a social norm that people should follow (and that might restrict marriage to different sex couples) but rather as a constitutionally protected choice that individuals must be free to make on their own.

 

In an individualistically oriented society, adults are expected to construct their family lives in ways that are consistent with their self-development. Today, most Americans still want to marry, but they have less of a need to do so than in the past. Marriage must compete with alternatives such as staying in school longer to obtain a higher degree, taking more time to develop a career, living with a partner without marrying, or having children outside of marriage. Some people may be ambivalent about marriage, at once drawn by its promise of intimacy and wary of its commitments and constraints. Family life therefore becomes much more diverse than it was a half-century ago. Even though most Americans choose to marry and a majority choose to have children within a marriage, they tend to respect the choices that other, freely acting individuals may make.

 

Compared to a half-century ago, what’s most notable is that people have so many choices. They don’t have to be married in the sense that adults at midcentury did. Predictably, people spend less of their lives married and fewer children are raised by two married parents. Moreover, people tend to marry at a later point in their lives than they did a half-century ago. Individuals used to get married prior to living together, having children, and establishing careers. Today, before marrying you may live with your future spouse or with someone else, you may spend several years establishing yourself in the labor market, and you may even have children. It is not a status to enter page 28 into lightly; rather, you wait until you’re sure it’s going to work. Marriage is a status you work toward, a personal achievement, a mark of distinction. In some ways, then, marriage’s symbolic value has increased even as its practical significance has decreased. For instance, although you and your partner can have children without marrying and still be respectable, you may choose to marry to show everyone that you have achieved a successful personal life. For some people, then, marriage has become the ultimate family merit badge.

 

As the postmodernists argue, a key way in which family and personal life differ today from the way they were in the past is that you not only can make choices, but also you must make choices. You have to choose whether to live with someone, whether and when to have children, whether to marry, and sometimes whether to end a marriage. You must make these decisions yourself because your options are less constrained by parents and social norms. One’s family life, according to two social theorists, becomes a permanent do-it-yourself project (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 2002). And so you get out your hammer and nails and construct a cohabiting relationship with someone, try it out, see how you like it, renovate or clean house, or maybe remodel with someone else. You construct it and reconstruct it; every person is his or her own architect. This is a very individualistic approach to marriage and family life because it centers on your personal evaluation of how much satisfaction you are getting, on your sense of whether you are growing and developing as a person, and on whether your partnership is meeting your emotional needs. It has led to the growth of what I will call later in this book the “individualistic marriage”: a union based on individual rewards rather than on the approval of family, friends, and community. These are different criteria for judging whether your family life is a success from the criteria your grandparents’ generation used. What this transformation means for the personal life of adults today, as well as for the lives of the children and elderly they care for, is one of the fundamental questions that underlies this book. It is a vital concern because so much depends on it: the well-being of the next generation, the health and comfort of the growing older population, and the emotional rewards we so highly value.

 

Quick Review

 

Americans tend to take individualistic perspectives on adult life.

Utilitarian individualism emphasizes self-reliance and personal achievement.

Expressive individualism emphasizes one’s feelings and emotional satisfaction.

People must choose the kind of family life they will have.

 

A Sociological Viewpoint on Families

 

As noted earlier, some sociologists would argue that no one can conduct completely objective research. Therefore, they say, one must examine, reflexively, how one approaches the subject. Only by frankly examining and stating one’s viewpoint can one provide a framework others can use to properly evaluate one’s own research. In that spirit, let me briefly discuss the viewpoint I bring to the writing of this textbook. In reading this book, you should keep these convictions in mind. I believe that families perform services of value to society and therefore should be publicly page 29 supported when necessary. Despite their increasing diversity, families, in my opinion, still constitute a coherent social category worth studying. I believe that, other things being equal, stable, long-term partnerships—different-sex or same-sex—provide the best environment for raising children. These partnerships need not be marriages, but getting married seems to enhance the chances of long-term stability and to increase the investments parents make, at least in the United States. I also believe that alternative family forms, with adequate support, can provide good environments for children.

 

In addition, I think it is likely that our evolutionary history has produced some inherent differences between the ways that women and men go about finding partners and building family lives. But I don’t believe these differences are significant enough to prevent equality for women and men, which is a goal that I think we should strive for in the early twenty-first century. Biologically based differences, if any, would stem from the different roles that men and women played in the hunter-gatherer bands in which most humans and their evolutionary predecessors lived until about 8,000 B.C. Women, on average, may be predisposed to value sex in the context of relationships and commitment more than men, whereas men may be predisposed to value sex outside of relationships and to behave aggressively more than women. But even if we do have biological predispositions toward some behaviors and away from others, whether we exhibit these behaviors depends on the social circumstances of our lives: the upbringing we received from our parents; the cultural influences we absorbed from peers, neighbors, ministers, and the media; and the economic constraints or racial prejudices we may have faced. These social factors may exaggerate whatever biological differences there may be between women and men, so that the differences we see are greater than biology alone would create. Biological predispositions, then, would not determine a person’s behavior. Rather, they would create tendencies and leanings. On average, a group of people who share a predisposition (toward, say, aggressive behavior) would be likely to show more of it than would a group who does not share it; but it is difficult to predict how any single member of the group would behave.

 

In this book, I will use the singular form “the family” rather than the plural form “families” when discussing the family as a social institution. This term refers to a set of roles and rules that define a social unit of importance to society. The roles give us positions such as parent, child, spouse, ex-spouse, stepfather, partner, and so forth. The rules offer us guidance about how to act in these roles. But the use of the singular is not meant to imply that there is only one kind of family. On the contrary, there are many forms. Similarly, one might write about “the corporation” in a textbook on social organizations without implying that there is no difference between ExxonMobil and a chain of grocery stores. Or an author might discuss “the hospital” in a text on medical sociology while recognizing the difference between a giant teaching hospital in a central city and a community hospital out in the suburbs. In addition, referring to “the family” is not meant to imply that the interests of wives, husbands, and children are always identical—any more than that the interests of workers and managers in corporations are identical.

 

social institution a set of roles and rules that define a social unit of importance to society

 

In all of these cases, the use of the singular would signal the study of a social institution rather than just a set of relationships. An institution can grow stronger or weaker over time; it can take on somewhat different forms at different times and places; and it can be difficult to define at its margins. But it is a visible structure that people can recognize and understand. It also does something important for society. I think the “family” still fits this description. Its important functions page 30 include rearing children, caring for the elderly, and providing comfort and emotional support to its members. Nevertheless, people’s actions are greatly changing the family and eroding its institutional basis. Stability and change in the family are the subject matter of this book.

 

Currently, most Americans seem to view their own families primarily in emotional, personal terms—the terms of the private family—and to pay less attention to the commitments and obligations of the public family. This emphasis on sentiment and self-fulfillment might lead one to assume that the private family is the older, more established perspective. But that isn’t so. The emergence of the private family is a relatively new development in history. Its origins lie in the upper-class and merchant families of Western Europe in the 1600s and 1700s. It did not spread to the masses until the late 1800s and 1900s. Most people have used the public perspective in thinking about families throughout most of history. The historical development of the family is the subject of the next chapter.

Looking Back

 

 

What do families do that is important for society? What do families do that is important for the individuals in them? Families contribute to society by raising the next generation and caring for the ill and the elderly. On an individual level, families are settings in which people give and receive love, intimacy, and social support. This book proposes two definitions of the family—one for each of these questions. The public family perspective defines the family in terms of the presence of caregivers and dependents. The private family perspective defines the family in terms of an indefinite, intimate relationship between two or more individuals who live in the same household and share the fruits of their labor. These two perspectives constitute different views of the same reality; a given family unit might fit both of them.

 

How do sociologists go about studying families? Sociologists observe real families and the people in them, and for the most part, they try to analyze their data objectively using the scientific method. Sociologists formulate hypotheses that can be tested, although there are limits to their use of the scientific method. The two most common research methods sociologists use are (1) the survey, a study in which a randomly selected group of individuals or families are asked a fixed set of questions; and (2) the observational study, in which the researcher spends time directly observing each participant in the study.

 

What are the leading theoretical approaches to studying families? Four widely used perspectives are exchange theory, which examines how family members bargain based on their resources and their alternatives; symbolic interaction, which focuses on how individuals interpret the social world; feminist theory, which analyzes the sources of gender inequality in families; and postmodernism, which emphasizes the choices individuals must make in constructing family lives.

 

How does individualism influence American family life? In general, Americans take an individualistic perspective toward family life. An older form, utilitarian individualism, emphasizes self-reliance and achievement. A new form, expressive individualism, emphasizes personal feelings and emotional satisfaction. Individuals must choose the kind of family life they want, rather than relying on their parents or customs to define their lives for them.

 

How is globalization changing family life? In developing nations, it has created factory jobs that have drawn mothers into the paid workforce, creating childcare problems for those women, but also giving mothers more bargaining power within marriage. In the developed, Western nations, it has opened a gap between the marriage-based family lives of the college-educated and the family lives of the less-educated.

 

page 31

Study Questions

 

Do you think that the Scarborough 11 are one family?

 

What are the two components of American individualism?

 

Why might children be considered a “public good”?

 

What kinds of daily activities are better analyzed by thinking of the family as a public rather than a private institution?

 

Conversely, what daily activities are better analyzed by thinking of the family as a private institution?

 

Are there daily activities that could be viewed as having both a public and a private component?

 

Why can’t sociological research be as objective as research in physics or chemistry?

 

How do people develop their self-identities today?

 

How do people rate their own family’s troubles compared to the average family?

 

Key Terms

 

assigned kinship 10

 

boundary ambiguity 10

 

breadwinner–homemaker family 17

 

created kinship 10

 

exchange theory 17

 

expressive individualism 27

 

externalities 6

 

feminist theory 20

 

free-rider problem 8

 

gender 20

 

globalization 24

 

hypothesis 13

 

individualism 26

 

late modern or postmodern era 21

 

longitudinal survey 18

 

negative externalities 6

 

objectivity 13

 

observational study 15

 

positive externalities 6

 

primary analysis 18

 

private family 9

 

public family 8

 

public goods 6

 

reflexivity 22

 

scientific method 13

 

secondary analysis 18

 

self-identity 21

 

social institution 29

 

survey 14

 

symbolic interaction theory 18

 

utilitarian individualism 27

 

Western nations 25

 

Thinking about Families

 

The Public Family

 

 

The Private Family

 

What are some of the ways that your family has carried out its “public” functions?

 

 

How has your family carried out its “private” functions?

 

1 My account is drawn from stories in the Hartford Courant, including “Zoning Squabble: Family is What Family Does,” November 21, 2014; “Scarborough 11’s Family Dynamic One to Be Envious of,” February 26, 2015; “Hartford Upholds Action against Scarborough Street Family,” February 17, 2015; and in addition, “When 8 Adults and 3 Children Are a Family,” The Daily Beast, May 10, 2015.

 

2 Considering 20 to 64 as working age and 65 or older as retirement age. See U.S. Bureau of the Census 2011a, Table 8.

 

3 The data that I cite from the survey come from unpublished tabulations. For an overview, see Cherlin (1999).