Families vary across time, among societies, and within societies. The variations among societies underscore the fact that some differ from what we may regard as normal, natural, right, or typical. The ideal of most Americans is monogamous marriage, and mate selection is a personal choice. Polygyny has been practiced by more human societies than any other form of marriage. Other variations are based not so much in ideals as in common practices. Within any particular society, family life varies over time. And in a complex, modern society, it varies among groups at any particular point in time as well. The American colonists generally believed that it was important for every individual to be part of a household. Because of the lack of birth control, marriage was likely to lead quickly to children, and families tended to be large. Sexual standards were strict. Marriage did not always work out in the colonies (see The Scarlet Letter).
The text defines
family as a group united by marriage, blood, and/or adoption in order to
satisfy intimacy needs and/or bear and socialize children.
In Traditional Family Life, the mother
rears children and is pivotal for family life, the father earns a
living and provides a moral (religious) base, and children are involved
in social and emotional development. This was the view of family life,
as portrayed through the media
because
it was simple (simplistic) and it served the purposes of the government
and economy. It also fit quite well with the Functional Perspective on Social Organization:
The institutions of society (i.e., Government, Religion, Family, Community, Economy) are dependent on each other to supplement the delivery of goods and services to members of society. When one institution changes fundamentally, all the other institutions are affected. The Economy, the most powerful institution, changed at the turn of the century, moving people from rural and agricultural work to urban/factory work. It changed again in the late l960s, from a labor intensive factory model to one of Information/Services. This means people don't need big muscles to work at most jobs - they need super sharp social and intellectual skills - Thus, women and men were immediately equalized in terms of their innate abilities to perform paid work.
Because of fairly massive changes in our society - its values, traditions, and economic philosophies - Times have Changed. The Times today are about unconventional living arrangements
Changing Sex roles and the Man-Woman Crisis.
Early on - the children were socialized into very strict gender roles - boys did masculine things, girls did feminine things.
| Male Gender Orientation | Female Gender Orientation |
| Bread winner
Outwardly oriented Protector |
Home Maker
Inwardly oriented Protected |
As the Economy moved from a Labor intensive to an Information based economy, the reasons for maintaining such a division of the genders have become less salient (less important), leaving only the sociocultural desire to be traditional, with little in the way of payoff. The results are: people who are confused about the way to go about initiating relationships and families where all the adults work outside the home, leaving children to develop on their own.
Single-parent families may occur in various ways,
including divorce, death of a spouse, and the decision to have or adopt a child
on one’s own without getting married. Single- parent does not necessarily mean
a permanent arrangement. Single-parent
families have increased considerably over the past few decades. In 2001, the
proportion of all families that were single-parent varied by race/ethnicity:
26.1 percent for whites, 61.4 percent for blacks, and 34.1 percent for
Hispanics. People may be single parents by default. Single parenting may also
be a choice. Most of those living with one parent are with a divorced parent, but
since 1996, the single-parent home is as likely to involve a never-married as a
divorced parent.
Single Parent Families may be created through divorce, or
death
of a spouse, and the few who decide to have or adopt children but not
be
married. The number of single parent families is growing even
while
the number of children in the country has decreased. Between 1970 and
1985
there are 7 million fewer children under 18, but 6 million more
children
are living with single parents. In a child's lifetime, he or she has a
50% chance of having only one parent to love them, to see to their
needs,
and to pay their way. This is directly tied to the high divorce rate,
and
because of irresponsible boys and girls conceiving children without
financial
means.
Single parents and
children in single-parent families are more likely to experience various
challenges. In particular, the
single parent is likely to face three kinds of overload: responsibility, task,
and emotional. Responsibility overload may result from having too few financial
resources. Task overload arises from the fact that one parent must do the work
of two parents. Emotional overload can occur when the single parent neglects
his or her own needs. Alone or in combination, the three kinds of overload can
result in loneliness, a feeling of hopelessness, or other various emotional
problems. As in the case of
the single parent, the child of a single parent, and particularly the male
child, is more likely to be depressed. The children in single-parent homes have
more difficulties within the family as well as within themselves and in their
outside relationships. Children in single-parent families feel less cohesion and
are less likely to achieve higher levels of education, occupation, and income
and to maintain stable marriages. There are also
problems between single parents and their children. Boys seem to present even
greater problems than girls. Most single-parent families are headed by a
mother, and single-mother families have received more attention than
single-father families. An advantage of single fathers is the likelihood of
higher income. Dating can be a vexing problem. Single parents who perceive
their children to be less positive about their dating agree that the children react
with both anger and resentment toward the dates.
The challenges and
problems just described are not necessarily experienced by all - or even the
majority of - single-parent families. The majority of single parents
and their children
have fairly high levels of physical and mental health. In spite of the extra demands on
their time and energy, single parents function well at work.
Problems of Single Parent Families:
African Americans
constitute the largest of
two-parent black
families has been steadily increasing.
From slavery
through segregation to present-day discrimination, African Americans have waged
a long battle in the
African Americans
are more likely than whites to grow up in a family that is impoverished, that
is disrupted by divorce, or that is headed by a mother who has never married. African
American married women who work outside the home tend to feel more overworked
than their husbands. Violence is more prevalent in African American homes. Despite
all of this, there are positive aspects of life in the black family: Black
families have strengths and, in fact, advantages over white families in some
areas, including the fact that the decline in marital satisfaction during the
child- rearing years may not hold for African Americans. Overall, black single parents
appear to be more satisfied than are whites with their parenting. There is a
greater acceptance of single parenthood in the black community. Among black
two-parent families, there is likely to be a greater amount of equality than
among whites.
Hispanics (Mexican
Americans, Puerto Ricans, and others with Spanish surnames) are the
second-largest minority group in the
Comparatively
little research has been done on Asian American families, but Asian Americans
are a rapidly growing minority in the
In 2000, American
Indians, Eskimos, and Aleuts represented 0.9 percent of the total
Interracial Couples - Although the vast majority of Americans marry within their own racial group, the number of interracial marriages has increased dramatically in recent decades. Interracial marriages are more challenging and more fragile than marriages that are racially homogamous. A few of those in interracial marriages indicate that they are motivated by rebellion against the conventions of society or by an attraction to the opposite sex of another race. Even in the most accepting, multicultural settings, the marital relationship itself is problematic. Interracial families face the same problems as others plus some additional problems that are unique.
The claim that 98 percent of Americans marry within their own racial group may not be realistic This is racial boundaries referred to have been crossed so many times. There are three very broad racial categories - Mongoloid (Asian), Negroid (African), and Caucasoid (Western European). Historically, every time the people's of the earth waged war on each other, there has been widespread miscegenation to the extent that: nobody really knows which racial category to which they belong. The results are people who are part French, part Spanish, part Native American, part Nigerian, part Laotian, part whatever else. As Americans, our pedigrees are a bit mixed up. For me and my wife: she is Catholic Hungarian, and Protestant Polish, while I am French, Irish, Spanish-German, and Baptist. While we are likely to be attracted to those who are "like us", we are also attracted to those who are around us at the time we enter into puberty (middle and high school years). We tend to be attracted to those persons who are available to us for dating and social interaction. Interracial couples have more difficulty in feeling accepted by their own families and by society in general, but this is changing slowly. Such couples have an easier time of socially fitting in than in the past.
Homosexual Couples - two people living as a family who may
or
may not have children from previous relationships, or children made
possible
using surrogate mothers, or sperm donors. About one in five homosexual
men and one in three homosexual women enter into long-term relationships that are, for all practical purposes, marriages. Tens of thousands of gay/lesbian couples have children and parent them well, and are in long
term relationships that are as stable and committed as heterosexual
couples. The exact statistical facts here are somewhat
difficult to ascertain, since record keeping is almost as slow as
social change itself. If homosexual couples are even a little more likely
to have relationships that fail when compared to heterosexual
couples, a likely cause for failure might be social rejection of
the
relationship type. For further reading on homosexuality and
family life, there are academic journals devoted to
issues
surrounding gay and lesbian life, and on the world-wide web see http://www.familypride.org. Although uninformed people often may not think of homosexual
relationships as resulting in a family, same-sex couples are the heads of
nearly 600,000 households in the