Chapter 8 Breaking the Work Family Boundary Not all care personnel are considered workers because they are unpaid according to the GDP Gross Domestic Product ignores unpaid care work Example An older daughter taking care of siblings Shift Work and Childcare Parents work different shifts to take care of their children one night one day Problems Females won t be able to move up in jobs because they need to be home when their husbands are not Leave children with grandparents or take care of their children themselves while working Towards a Responsive Workplace Parental Leave Time off from work to care for a child with guarantee that the employee can have his or her job back when they return Some countries give them partial pay while they re on leave Family and medical leave act requires companies with 50 or more employees to provide 12 weeks of unpaid leave for birth adoption foster care or personal or family illness Employers must allow them to return after their leave Chapter 9 Adoption About 2 5 of children under 18 in the U S in 2000 were adopted Typical adoption used to involve an unmarried with mother placing an infant for adoption with an unrelated married couple With birth control abortion unplanned births decreased Current adoption trends Children placed in foster care after parents rights to them have been terminated due to neglect or abuse adopted by relatives sometimes Stepparents who do second parent adoptions of step children so that both parents in the home will have legal rights and responsibilities Parents in undeveloped countries give their children up for adoption to parents in developed countries Lesbian and gay couples adopt children Adopted children in the U S are more likely to be from another country have difficulty learning Adopted families are usually successful and most adopted children exhibit normal emotional development Unemployment and Poverty Read to Divorce and Remarriage Effect of poverty can start before a child is born Mother doesn t receive adequate care are more likely to engage in harmful activities smoking drinking Chapter 11 Which partnerships are at risk Social Class High rates of domestic violence among low income rather than middle income families May be because middle class people are less likely to report Lower education has a lot of do with being a controlling intimate terrorist Doesn t mean they are more violent but may suggest they act this way because of frustrations over lack of resources or social isolations Unemployed men have double the rates of abusing their spouses than employed men do Children who are abused experience greater emotional problems Hard to tell exactly where the feeling comes from because most of them also come from families in poverty Sending children to foster care sometimes causes more problems 18 40 of abused turn into abusers the abuser is more likely to not turn to elder abuse Child Abuse Poverty or Abuse Elder Abuse Elder abuse physical abuse or neglect of an elderly person by a caregiver Only 3 6 of elders are abused Physical and sexual abuse account for about 1 4 of all cases Most common type of abuse is being left by caregiver when you need help eating or getting out of bed Most happen in the home and caregiver has some sort of relationship with the elder Higher risk if the caregivers are isolated from family and friends if they have dementia if the caregiver has mental health problems and if the caregiver is financially dependent of the abused Chapter 12 The Era of Restricted Divorce Time of a restrictive approach toward divorce until about the middle of the nineteenth century divorces were usually granted only on the grounds of adultery or desertion and generally only to the men Divorce is forbidden for Catholics Only could get divorced if they were offered an annulment a ruling that a marriage was never properly formed too close of a relative or never had sexual intercourse Protestant countries granted divorce in cases of adultery or desertion Few divorces were granted to women at all giving men more power Marriage was primarily an economic partnership Men wanted women to child bear so they could continue leading their land Men got custody during a divorce Separation w o divorce was probably more common Contact and Co parenting Children usually remain in the care of their mothers most of the time Hard for fathers to provide care after divorce if they didn t provide a lot before the divorce Three groups of fathers Uninvolved fathers have decreased while involved have increased Cooperative parenting an arrangement whereby divorced parents coordinate their activities and cooperate with each other in raising their children Parallel Parenting an arrangement whereby divorced parents gravitate toward a more detached style going about their parenting business separately Tend to not talk or arrange meeting places etc Families and Public Policy Enforcing Child Support Obligations All parents who have been forced by the court to pay child support have the money automatically deducted from their pay check 1996 Welfare Reform Act More support for programs to establish paternity in hospitals at the birth of children and penalized welfare recipients who failed to cooperate Required employers to send names of newly hired employees to state and federal agencies to match names against list of parents who have not paid child support obligations Allowed states to deny occupational and driver s license renewals to parents who refuse to pay Conservatives agree with this because they strongly believe that you are in charge of supporting your child liberals agree because child support will help support children in low income single parent families Most divorced parents can reduce their conflict after 2 3 years but some cannot Continuing high level of conflict is the most widely cited factor in harming children s adjustment just after divorce Children in 2 parent families wracked by intense conflict are more depressed and show more behavior problems Little conflict less behavior problems Psychosocial Effects Parental Conflict In a study conducted Children whose parents divorced showed more behavior problems Before the parents divorced the children were already showing behavior problems Chapter 13 The Transitional Period Adjustment of the Stepchildren Some stepchildren show increased behavior problems in the early stage of a stepfamily Young children are more likely to accept the stepparent Young men tend to accept