Chapter 1 Family Commitments Making Choices in a Changing Society Most of us hope to experience ongoing happiness in committed unions and families 82 and 70 of girls and boys say that having a good marriages and family life is extremely important of HS seniors The high divorce rate has called into question the stability of marriage Conjugal succession series of marriages for each person RECENT Families are central to society as an institution and to our everyday lives Maintaining a family requires commitment and knowing what your doing PICTURE Indirect indicator of the centrality of the family to American Life is the degree to which family these are used as advertising motifs First family photo family in the water splashing other is family life of the father and daughter while holding her Defining a Family Family Traditionally both law and social science have specified that family consist of people related by blood marriage or adoption A common household economic interdependency and sexual and reproductive relations US Census Bureau a group of two or more persons related by blood marriage or adoption and residing together in a household Earnest Burgess and Harvey Locke from Charles Cooley Burgess and Locke Primary Group coined by Cooley to describe any group in which there is a close face to face relationship PICTURE Close friendship share experiences express emotions they know they are accepted and valued Joys are celebrated spontaneously tempers can flare quickly and expression is often physical People communicate with one another as whole human beings Give us the feeling of being accepted and liked for who we are Burgess and Locke s view was more limited than current views Assumed family interaction occurred primarily in the context of traditional heterosexual married couple gender differentiated social roles rather than emphasizing spontaneity individuality and intimacy Today continue to see family important responsibility in performing necessary roles such as child rearing economic support and domestic maintance Now place more emphasis on companionship and emotional support than did Burgess and Locke NOW families are NOT necessarily bound to each other by blood legal marriage or by adoption but experience family relationships and commitment in other forms Burgess and Locke said that family members constitute a household that is people residing together Now definition expanded to commuter couples noncustodial parents parents with adult children living elsewhere extended kin such as aunts uncles and adult siblings and stepsiblings The term family can identify relationships beyond partners parents and children living in one household PETS Now primary group is not exactly FACE to FACE b c texting email IM cell phones and websites as well as conventional telephone calls TECHNOLOGY Secondary Group more distant practical and unemotional relationships EX professional organization or business association There is no Typical Family Until recently societal attitudes religious beliefs and law converged into a fairly common expectation about what form the American family should take husband wife and children in an independent household Nuclear Family Model Today only 7 of families fit the 1950 s nuclear family ideal of married couple and children with husband as the breadwinner and the wife as the wife homemaker Social scientists believe that no long assume family has to be male breadwinner and female homemaker Dual career families are common and there are reversed role families working wife household Now different family homes single parent families stepfamilies cohabitating families gay and lesbian families and three generational families FIGURE 1 1 28 5 Most common is married couple without children post or no children at all 26 4 is people living alone 23 married couple families with children under 18 7 5 male or female headed households with relatives other than spouses and children 7 3 female headed single parent families 5 3 is unmarried couples 1 7 male headed single parent families 4 is other nonfamily A household is a person or group of people who occupy a dwelling unit Household is broader than that of family as it includes nonfamilal living arrangements as well Most common household is married couples WITHOUT children where children have grown up and moved elsewhere or has not had children or doesn t plan to have children Less than of households are nuclear families of husband wife and children this compares to 44 in 1960 Increase in family and household diversity that new family diversity Frank Furstenberg s My definition of family which includes membership related by blood legal ties adoption and informal ties including fictive or socially agreed upon kinship How strangers became family Pets as Family Companion animals 58 of households 80 of families with children Mommy or daddy not alone if animal is there talk to their pets insurance trust fund pet spas willing to spend money on pet health increase family adaptivity and reduce stress help with owners who are depressed or family crisis opened a void that pets may fill uneasy about attention to pets when society s needs for children are so great people worry that pets are replacing people in emotional networks New Definitions of the Family As families have become less traditional the legal definition of a family has become more flexible Law government agencies and to some extent private bureaucracies such as insurance companies must make decisions to what a family is PICTURE In a world of demographic cultural and political changes our views of family structure and life cycle have begun to broaden Today there are more single parent gay partners and parents remarried families families in which adult children care for their aging parents Whatever the form families can remain a center of love and support Black kid with black mother PICTURE Advertisers say they are accurately reflecting their customers many of who do not fit in the traditional nuclear family often seen in commercials Divorce lighthearted view with dogs he left me good riddance he never picked up his socks he thought I was his mother he didn t make me laugh anymore he s gone who cares all I wanted was the sofa and the dogs and Gay parent couples with daughter picture Survivors of September 11 victims NY state law was amended to permit commission discretion in making awards to both heterosexual and gay partners Some employers have also sought to redefine family
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