Family

Family

1. What is a family?

   • The meaning of family is dynamic
   • There is no correct or absolute deffinition
   • Definitions vary across time and place
   • Multiple meaning of family co-exist within a society at any one time
     • These meanings are constantly being negotiated and re-negotiated

2. The Mythical Family

   • The myth of a stable and harmonious family of the past
   • The myth of the family as a "haven in a heartless world"
   • The myth of the monolithic family form
   • The myth of a unified family experience
   • The myth of the family in decline as the cause of social problems
   • The family is a GENDERED institution
   • "Family values" rhetoric
   • Why is the final myth flawed?
     • Reverses the relationship b/n the family and society by treating families as the building blocks of society, rather than as a reflection of social conditions
     • Ignores the structural reasons for family breakdown and the profound changes occurring throughout the world

3. What many uphold as the "legitimate" family is a product of SOCIAL STRUCTURE

   • Family arrangements in the US are related to economic development (CAPITALISM)
   • INDUSTRIALIZATION helped to create the "modern American family"
     • Class differentiation increased and sharpened
       • Created distinctions in the content and nature of woman's family lives
     • Separation of "woman's work" in the home from the "productive" labor of men
       • Cult of Domesticity
         • Also known as "cult of true womanhood" or hegemonic womanhood
         • A belief that linked the ideals of womanhood to the domestic sphere
         • Promotes the idea that a woman's duty and responsibility is to create a safe retreat for her husband and provide a moral example for her chilren
         • Reproductive Labor
           • Refers to all of the work of women in the home
             • Preparation of food and clothing
             • Provision of emotional support and nurturance for all family members
             • Bearing children
             • Planning and organizing
             • Carrying out a wide variety of tasks associated with their socialization
             • These activities are necessary for the growth of patriarchal capitalism because they maintain, sustain, stabilize and reproduce (both biologically and socially) the labor force (Thomton Dill)
               • But not everyone could (or can live up to these ideological "standards"
                 • CLASS
                   • Poor or working class families required different family arrangements
                     • Women had to take jobs outside the home to make ends meet
                     • "Second shift" - The unpaid domestic work that women typically do after they come home from their paid employment
                   • THEMES IN LOW IN-COME FAMILIES
                     • Inflexible and unpredictable work schedules undermine mother's abilities to provide family care
                     • Low-income mothers and their children are stigmatized because they put family care first - and, consequently, do not meet middle class norms of work and school
                       • HURRIED CHILDHOOD: aimed at creating early academic and social winds for middle class chilren
                       • ADULTIFIED CHILDHOOD: Critical in coping strategy of poor/low income families; children labor within the family to ensure its survival
                       • Major societal institutions operate according to norms that demand untenable choices from mothers to children
                 • RACE
                   • Breadwinner-homemaker roles never applied to men and women of color (or other families with limited resources) because they were denied the opportunity to earn a family wage

4. Changing composition of the US household

   • Household: residential and economic unit; resident group that carreis out domestic functions
   • Single parents account for 27 percent of family households with children under 18
   • One in three children is born to unmarried parents
   • One in two children will live in a single-parent family at some point in childhood
   • Divorced Parents
     • Nearly half of all marriages end in divorce
     • More than one million children have parents who separate or divorce each year
     • More than half Americans today have been, are or will be in one or more step-family situations
   • Constructing Gay and Lesbian Parenting Families: "Beyond the Closet"
     • SNAF: hegemonic Standard North American Family of two heterosexual married persons parenting their biologically produced children
     • HETEROSEXISM: An ideological system that denies, denigrates and stigmatizes any non-heterosexual form of heterosexuality and persons who are defined as heterosexual
     • Blood bias
       • The assumption that blood relationship is central to what family is all about
       • Folk knowledge: People think that biology is primarily responsible for making us who we are
       • Sociology believes NURTURE trumps nature.

5. Critical Problems facing US working parents

   • Obtaining job-protected leaves for family emergencies (including birth)
   • Finding accessible AND acceptable care for children
     • Costs more to send a 4-year-old to day care than to pay college tuition for a 19-year-old in most urban areas

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