Family in Transition

FIFTEENTH EDITION
Arlene S. Skolnick
New York University
Jerome H. Skolnick
New York University
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FM.indd i 7/8/2008 12:31:19 PM
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ISBN-13: 978-0-205-57877-1
ISBN-10: 0-205-57877-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Family in transition / [edited by] Arlene S. Skolnick, Jerome H. Skolnick.15th ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN-13: 978-0-205-57877-1 (pbk.)
ISBN-10: 0-205-57877-2 (pbk.)
1. Family. I. Skolnick, Arlene S. II. Skolnick, Jerome H.
HQ518.F336 2009
306.85dc22 2008023692
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 HAM 12 11 10 09 08
Credits appear on pp. 539541, which constitute an extension of the copyright page.
FM.indd ii 7/8/2008 12:31:19 PM
Contents
Preface ix
Introduction 1
PART ONE The Changing Family 11
1 Families Past and Present 13
R E A DI NG 1
William J. Goode / The Theoretical Importance of the Family 13
R E A DI NG 2
Anthony Giddens / The Global Revolution in Family
and Personal Life 25
R E A DI NG 3
Arlene Skolnick / The Life Course Revolution 31
R E A DI NG 4
Claude S. Fischer and Michael Hout / The Family in Trouble: Since When?
For Whom? 40
2 Public Debates and Private Lives 57
R E A DI NG 5
Sharon Hays / The Mommy Wars: Ambivalence, Ideological Work,
and the Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood 57
R E A DI NG 6
Janet Z. Giele / Decline of the Family: Conservative, Liberal,
and Feminist Views 76
iii
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PART TWO Sex and Gender 97
3 Changing Gender Roles 101
R E A DI NG 7
Robert M. Jackson / Destined for Equality 101
R E A DI NG 8
Kathleen Gerson / What Do Women and Men Want? 109
R E A DI NG 9
Andrew Greeley and Michael Hout / The Conservative
Christian Family and the Feminist Revolution 114
4 Sexuality and Society 125
R E A DI NG 1 0
Beth Bailey / Sexual Revolution(s) 125
R E A DI NG 1 1
Paula England and Reuben J. Thomas / The Decline
of the Date and the Rise of the College Hook Up 141
5 Courtship and Marriage 153
R E A DI NG 1 2
Lynne M. Casper and Suzanne M. Bianchi / Cohabitation 153
R E A DI NG 1 3
Michael J. Rosenfeld / Alternative Unions
and the Independent Life Stage 164
R E A DI NG 1 4
Andrew J. Cherlin / American Marriage
in the Early Twenty-First Century 171
R E A DI NG 1 5
Arlene Skolnick / Grounds for Marriage: How Relationships
Succeed or Fail 192
iv Contents
FM.indd iv 7/8/2008 12:31:20 PM
6 Divorce and Remarriage 203
R E A DI NG 1 6
Laurence M. Friedman / Divorce:
The Silent Revolution 203
R E A DI NG 1 7
Joan B. Kelly and Robert E. Emery / Childrens Adjustment
Following Divorce: Risk and Resilience Perspectives 210
R E A DI NG 1 8
Mary Ann Mason / The Modern American Stepfamily:
Problems and Possibilities 233
PART THREE Parents and Children 251
7 Parenthood 255
R E A DI NG 1 9
Philip Cowan and Carolyn Pape Cowan / New Families: Modern
Couples as New Pioneers 255
R E A DI NG 2 0
Dan Clawson and Naomi Gerstel / Caring for Our Young:
Child Care in Europe and the United States 275
R E A DI NG 2 1
Nicholas Townsend / The Four Facets
of Fatherhood 283
8 Childhood and Youth 293
R E A DI NG 2 2
Steven Mintz / Beyond Sentimentality: American Childhood
as a Social and Cultural Construct 293
R E A DI NG 2 3
Annette Lareau / Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race,
and Family Life 306
Contents v
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R E A DI NG 2 4
Vern L. Bengston, Timothy J. Biblarz, and Robert E. L. Roberts /
How Families Still Matter: A Longitudinal Study of Youth
in Two Generations 318
R E A DI NG 2 5
Jeffrey J. Arnett / A Longer Road to Adulthood 328
PART FOUR Families in Society 343
9 Work and Family Life 349
R E A DI NG 2 6
Arlie Hochschild, with Anne Machung / The Second Shift: Working Parents
and the Revolution at Home 349
R E A DI NG 2 7
Kathleen Gerson and Jerry A. Jacobs / The Work-Home Crunch 356
R E A DI NG 2 8
Pamela Stone / The Rhetoric and Reality of Opting Out 365
10 Family and the Economy 375
R E A DI NG 2 9
Lillian B. Rubin / Families on the Fault Line 375
R E A DI NG 3 0
Harriet B. Presser / The Economy That Never Sleeps 392
R E A DI NG 3 1
Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi / Why Middle-Class Mothers
and Fathers Are Going Broke 399
11 Dimensions of Diversity 419
R E A DI NG 3 2
Ronald L. Taylor / Diversity within African American Families 419
vi Contents
FM.indd vi 7/8/2008 12:31:20 PM
R E A DI NG 3 3
Maxine Baca Zinn and Barbara Wells / Diversity within Latino Families:
New Lessons for Family Social Science 443
R E A DI NG 3 4
Rona J. Karasik and Raeann R. Hamon / Cultural Diversity
and Aging Families 469
R E A DI NG 3 5
Judith Stacey / Gay and Lesbian Families: Queer Like Us 480
12 Trouble in the Family 503
R E A DI NG 3 6
Jeremy Travis / Prisoners Families and Children 503
R E A DI NG 3 7
Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas / Unmarried with Children 520
R E A DI NG 3 8
Michael P. Johnson / Domestic Violence: The Intersection of Gender
and Control 527
Credits 539
Contents vii
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FM.indd viii 7/8/2008 12:31:20 PM
Preface
Once again, this new edition of Family in Transition has three aims. First, we looked for
articles that help the reader make sense of current trends in family life. Second, we tried
to balance excellent older articles with newer ones. Third, we have tried to select articles
that are scholarly yet readable for an audience of undergraduates.
Among the new readings are the following:
Claude S. Fischer and Michael Hout analyze Census Bureau statistics on Ameri-
can family life across the entire twentieth century. They find that many widespread
worries about todays families are based on mistaken understandings about history
and overly simple impressions of family demographic change.
Kathleen Gerson reports that 18- to 30-year-old children of the gender
revolutionboth men and womenwould prefer to balance work and family in
an egalitarian way. But todays workplace realities dont support such arrangements,
so young women and men choose different fall back strategies.
Andrew Greeley and Michael Hout report some surprising findings about the
attitudes and beliefs of people who belong to conservative (or evangelical) Prot-
estant denominations. Although they prefer the more traditional breadwinner
homemaker division of labor in the home, they are not as opposed to the gender
revolution as their leaders.
Two readings report on the dramatic changes in recent decades in the transition
from adolescence to adulthood. Michael J. Rosenfeld argues that what he calls the
independent life stage has made it easier for people to form alternative unions,
such as marrying across racial lines or choosing a partner of the same sex. Jeffrey J.
Arnett describes a new life stage, emerging adulthood, an unsettled period when
young people explore different possibilities in work and relationships.
Andrew J. Cherlin describes the economic and cultural forces that have trans-
formed marriage in America in the past few decades. But he also finds that Americans
value marriage more than people in other modern countries, and the two-parent
family remains the most common living arrangement for children.
Laurence M. Friedman shows that the divorce revolution of the 1970swhen
many states passed no-fault divorce lawsdid not spring up suddenly out of no-
where. In fact, legal reformers proposed no-fault divorce to remedy what they saw
as a mockery of the law in the old system.
Annette Lareaus ethnographic studies of racially and economically diverse fami-
lies reveal striking class differences in childrearing styles. Middle-class families,
ix
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regardless of race, practice what she calls concerted cultivation; working and
lower-class parents practice natural growth.
Pamela Stone examines what has been called the opt-out revolutionthe wide-
spread notion that highly educated women are leaving the workplace in droves
because they find that motherhood is their true calling. She finds instead that when
women leave professional jobs, the reasons have more to do with inflexible work-
places and unhelpful husbands than simple mother-love.
Rona J. Karasik and Raeann R. Hamon remind us that America is graying as
well as becoming more diverse. They discuss what is known about the intersection
of ethnicity, race, and aging, and suggest that researchers and clinicians practice
cultural humility.
Michael P. Johnson proposes a solution to the debate about whether women are as
violent as men in their intimate relationships. He finds that there are three types of
partner violence, and in only one type are women as likely to be as violent as men.
We would like to thank all those who have helped us with suggestions for this edi-
tion, as well as past ones. Thanks to Pamela Kaufman, an NYU doctoral candidate who
helped to review the family research literature, and to Janelle Pitterson, who helped with
proofreading. Also, many thanks to the reviewers who offered many good suggestions for
this edition: Yasemin Besen, Montclair State University; Margo Capparelli, Northeast-
ern University; Rebecca Fahrlander, University of NebraskaOmaha; DeAnn D. Judge,
North Carolina State University; Edythe Krampe, California State University; Scott M.
Myers, Montana State University; Daniel Romesberg, University of Pittsburgh; Brooke
Strahn-Koller, Kirkwood Community College; and Kathy Westman, Waubonsee Com-
munity College.
x Preface
FM.indd x 7/8/2008 12:31:20 PM
1
Introduction
Family in Transition
The aim of this book is to help the reader make sense of American family life in the early
years of the twenty-first century. Contrary to most students expectations, the family
is not an easy topic to study. One reason is that we know too much about it, because vir-
tually everyone has grown up in a family. As a result there is a great temptation to gen-
eralize from our own experiences.
Another difficulty is that the family is a subject that arouses intense emotions. Not
only are family relationships themselves deeply emotional, but family issues are also en-
twined with strong moral and religious beliefs. In the past several decades, family val-
ues have become a central battleground in American politics. Abortion, sex education,
single parenthood, and gay rights are some of the issues that have have been debated since
the 1980s.
Still another problem is that the current state of the family is always being com-
pared with the way families used to be. The trouble is, most people tend to have an ide-
alized image of families in the good old days. No era ever looked like a golden age of
family life to people actually living through it. That includes the 1950s, which many
Americans now revere as the high point of American family life.
Finally, it is difficult to make sense of the state of the family from the statistics pre-
sented in the media. For example, just before Fathers Day in 2003, the Census Bureau
issued a press release with the following headline: Two Married Parents the Norm. It
went on to state that, according to the Bureaus most recent survey, about 70 percent of
children live with their two parents. Two months earlier, however, a report by a respected
social science research organization contained the following headlines: Americans In-
creasingly Opting Out of Marriage and Traditional Families Account for Only 7 Per-
cent of U.S. Households.
These are just a few examples of the confusing array of headlines and statistics
about the family that the media are constantly serving up. Most often, the news tells
of yet another fact or shocking incident that shows the alarming decline of the family.
But every once in a while, the news is that the traditional family is making a comeback.
No wonder one writer compared the family to a great intellectual Rorschach blot
( Featherstone, 1979).
Everyone agrees that families have changed dramatically over the past several de-
cades, but there is no consensus on what the changes mean. The majority of women, in-
cluding mothers of young children, are now working outside the home. Divorce rates
have risen sharply (although they have leveled off since 1979). Twenty-eight percent of
children are living in single-parent families. Cohabitationonce called shacking up
Ch-Intro.indd 1 7/8/2008 12:37:28 PM
2 Introduction
or living in sinis a widespread practice. The sexual double standardthe norm that
demanded virginity for the bride, but not the groomhas largely disappeared from main-
stream American culture. There are mother-only families, father-only families, grand-
parents raising grandchildren, and gay and lesbian families.
Indeed, the growing public acceptance of homosexuals is one of the most striking
trends of recent time, despite persisting stigma and the threat of violence. Local govern-
ments and some leading corporations have granted gays increasing recognition as domes-
tic partners entitled to spousal benefits. In June 2003, the Supreme Court struck down
the last state laws that made gay sex a crime. The following November 18, the Massa-
chusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that gays have the right to marry. These rulings
have set off a national debate and a demand by conservatives to sponsor a Constitutional
amendment forbidding same-sex marriage.
Does all of this mean the family is in decline? In crisis? Are we witnessing a moral
meltdown? Why is there so much anxiety about the family? Why do so many families
feel so much stress and strain? We cant answer these questions if we assume that family
life takes place in a social vacuum. Social and economic circumstances have always had
a profound impact on families, and when the world outside changes in important ways,
families must also reshape themselves.
All these shifts in family life are part of an ongoing global revolution. All indus-
trialized nations, and many of the emerging ones, have experienced similar changes. In
no other Western country, however, has family change been so traumatic and divisive
as in the United States. For example, the two-earner family is the most common fam-
ily pattern in the United States; 75 percent of mothers of children under 18 and more
than 60 percent of those with young children work outside the home. Yet the question
of whether mothers should work is still a fiercely debated issueexcept if the mother is
on welfare.
Thus, the typical pattern for public discussion of family issues is a polarized, emo-
tional argument. Lurching from one hot topic to another, every issue is presented as an
eitheror choice: Which is better for childrentwo parents or one? Is divorce bad or
good for children? Should mothers of young children work or stay home?
This kind of argument makes it difficult to discuss the issues and problems facing
the family in a realistic way. It doesnt describe the range of views among family scholars,
and it doesnt fit the research evidence. For example, the right question to ask about di-
vorce is Under what circumstances is divorce harmful or beneficial to children? How
can parents make divorce less harmful for their children? (Amato, 1994). In most public
debates about divorce, however, that question is never asked, and the public never hears
the useful information they should.
Still another problem with popular discourse about the family is that it exaggerates
the amount of change that has actually occurred. For example, consider the previous
statement that only 7 percent of American households fit the model of the traditional
family. This number, or something like it, is often cited by conservatives as proof that
the institution is in danger of disappearing unless the government steps in to restore mar-
riage and the two-parent family. At the opposite end of the political spectrum are those
who celebrate the alleged decline of the traditional family and welcome the new family
forms that have supposedly replaced it.
Ch-Intro.indd 2 7/8/2008 12:37:28 PM
Introduction 3
But is it true that only 7 percent of American households are traditional families?
It all depends, as the saying goes, on how you define traditional. The statement is true if
you count only families with children under 18 in which only the husband works outside
the home. But if the wife works too, as most married women now do, the family doesnt
count as traditional by that definition. Neither does the recently married couple who
do not have children yet. The couple whose youngest child turns 18 is no longer counted
as a traditional family either.
Despite the current high divorce rates (actually down from 1979), Americans have
not abandoned the institution of marriage. The United States has the highest marriage
rate in the industrial world. About 90 percent of Americans marry at some point in their
lives, and virtually all who do either have, or want children. Further, surveys repeatedly
show that family is central to the lives of most Americans. Family ties are their deepest
source of satisfaction and meaning, as well as the source of their greatest worries ( Mell-
man, Lazarus, and Rivlin, 1990). In sum, family life in the United States is a complex
mixture of continuity and change, satisfaction and trouble.
While the transformations of the past three decades do not mean the end of family
life, they have brought a number of new difficulties. For example, although most families
now depend on the earnings of wives and mothers, the rest of society has not caught up
to the new realities. For example, most schools are out of step with parents working
hoursthey let out at 3:00, and still maintain the long summer vacations that once al-
lowed children to work on the family farm. Most jobs, especially well-paying ones, are
based on the male modelthat is, a worker who can work full-time or longer without
interruptions. An earnings gap persists between men and women in both blue-collar
and white-collar jobs. Employed wives and mothers still bear most of the workload in
the home.
UNDERSTANDING THE CHANGING FAMILY
During the same years in which the family was becoming the object of public anxiety
and political debate, a torrent of new research on the family was pouring forth. The
study of the family had come to excite the interest of scholars in a range of disciplines
history, demography, economics, law, and psychology. We now have much more infor-
mation available about families of the past, as well as current families, than we have ever
had before.
The main outcome of this research has been to debunk myths about family life,
both past and present. Nevertheless, the myths persist and help to fuel the cultural wars
over family change.
The Myth of Universality
To say that families are the same everywhere is in some sense true. Yet families also vary
in many waysin who is included as a family member, emotional environments, living
arrangements, ideologies, social and kinship networks, and economic and other func-
tions. Although anthropologists have tried to come up with a single definition of family
Ch-Intro.indd 3 7/8/2008 12:37:29 PM
4 Introduction
that would hold across time and place, they generally have concluded that doing so is not
useful (Geertz, 1965; Stephens, 1963).
For example, although marriage is virtually universal across cultures, the definition
of marriage is not the same. Although many cultures have weddings and notions of mo-
nogamy and permanence, some lack one or more of these attributes. In some cultures,
the majority of people mate and have children without legal marriage and often without
living together. In other societies, husbands, wives, and children do not live together
under the same roof.
In U.S. society, the assumption of universality has usually defined what is normal
and natural both for research and therapy and has subtly influenced our thinking to re-
gard deviations from the nuclear family as sick, perverse, or immoral. As Suzanne Keller
(1971) once observed, The fallacy of universality has done students of behavior a great
disservice by leading us to seek and hence to find a single pattern that has blinded us to
historical precedents for multiple legitimate family arrangements.
The Myth of Family Harmony
Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. This
well-known quotation from Leo Tolstoy is a good example of the widespread tendency
to divide families into two opposite typeshappy or unhappy, good or bad, normal or
abnormal. The sitcom families of the 1950sOzzie and Harriet, Leave It to Beaver, and
the reststill serve as ideal models for how families should be.
But few families, then or now, fit neatly into either category. Even the most loving
relationships inevitably involve negative feelings as well as positive ones. It is this ambi-
valence that sets close relationships apart from less intimate ones. Indeed, from what we
have learned about the Nelson family over the years, the real Ozzie and Harriet did not
have an Ozzie and Harriet family.
Only in fairly recent times has the darker side of family life come to public atten-
tion. For example, child abuse was only discovered as a social problem in the 1960s. In
recent years, family scholars have been studying family violence such as child or spousal
abuse to better understand the normal strains of family life. More police officers are kil led
and injured dealing with family fights than in dealing with any other kind of situation.
In addition, of all the relationships between murderers and their victims, the family re-
lationship is most common. Studies of family violence reveal that it is much more wide-
spread than had been assumed, cannot easily be attributed to mental illness, and is not
confined to the lower classes. Family violence seems to be a product of psychological
tensions and external stresses that can affect all families at all social levels.
The study of family interaction has also undermined the traditional image of the
happy, harmonious family. About three decades ago, researchers and therapists began
to bring schizophrenic patients and their families together to watch how they behaved
with one another. Oddly, researchers had not studied whole family groups before. At
first the family interactions were interpreted as pathogenic: a parent expressing affection
in words but showing nonverbal hostility; alliances being made between different family
members; families having secrets; or one family member being singled out as a scapegoat
Ch-Intro.indd 4 7/8/2008 12:37:29 PM
Introduction 5
to be blamed for the familys troubles. As more and more families were studied, however,
such patterns were found in many families, not just in those families with a schizophrenic
child. Although this line of research did not uncover the cause of schizophrenia, it re-
vealed that normal, ordinary families can often seem dysfunctional, or, in the words of
one study, they may be difficult environments for interaction.
The Myth of Parental Determinism
The kind of family a child grows up in leaves a profound, lifelong impact. But a growing
body of studies shows that early family experience is not the all-powerful, irreversible
influence it has sometimes been thought to be. An unfortunate childhood does not doom
a person to an unhappy adulthood. Nor does a happy childhood guarantee a similarly
blessed future ( Emde and Harmon, 1984; Macfarlane, 1964; Rubin, 1996).
Any parent knows that child rearing is not like molding clay or writing on a blank
slate. Rather, its a two-way process in which both parent and child influence each other.
Children come into this world with their own temperaments and other characteristics.
Moreover, from a very early age, children are active perceivers and thinkers. Finally,
parents and children do not live in a social vacuum; children are also influenced by the
world around them and the people in itrelatives, family friends, their neighborhoods,
other children, their schools, as well as the media.
The traditional view of parental determinism has been challenged by the extreme
opposite view. Psychologist Judith Rich Harris asserts that parents have very little im-
pact on their childrens development. In her book, The Nurture Assumption: Why Children
Turn Out the Way They Do (1998), Harris argues that genetics and peer groups, not par-
ents, determine how a child will develop. As in so many debates about the family, both
extremes oversimplify complex realities.
The Myth of a Stable Past
Laments about the current state of decay of the family imply some earlier era when the
family was more stable and harmonious. Historians have not, in fact, located a golden age
of the family. Nor have they found any time or place when families did not vary in many
ways from whatever the standard model was. Indeed, they have found that premarital
sexuality, illegitimacy, and generational conflict can best be studied as a part of family life
itself rather than as separate categories of deviation.
The most shocking finding of recent years is the prevalence of child abandonment
and infanticide throughout European history. It now appears that infanticide provided a
major means of population control in all societies lacking reliable contraception, Europe
included, and that it was practiced by families on legitimate children ( Hrdy, 1999).
Rather than being a simple instinctive trait, having profound love for a newborn
child seems to require two things: the infant must have a decent chance of surviving, and
the parents must feel that the infant is not competing with them and their older children
in a struggle for survival. Throughout many centuries of European history, both of these
conditions were lacking.
Ch-Intro.indd 5 7/8/2008 12:37:29 PM
6 Introduction
Another myth about the family is that it has been a static, unchanging form until
recently, when it began to come apart. In reality, families have always been in flux; when
the world around them changes, families have to change in response. At periods when
a whole society undergoes some major transformation, family change may be especially
rapid and dislocating.
In many ways, the era we are living through now resembles two earlier periods of
family crisis and transformation in U.S. history (see Skolnick, 1991). The first occurred
in the early nineteenth century, when the industrial era moved work out of the home
( Ryan, 1981). In the older pattern, most people lived on farms. A father was not only the
head of the household, but also boss of the family enterprise. The mother, children, and
hired hands worked under his supervision.
When work moved out, however, so did the father and the older sons and daugh-
ters, leaving behind the mother and the younger children. These dislocations unleashed an
era of personal stress and cultural confusion. Eventually, a new model of family emerged
that not only reflected the new separation of work and family, but also glorified it.
The household now became idealized as home sweet home, an emotional and
spiritual shelter from the heartless world outside. Many of our cultures most basic ideas
about the family and gender were formed at this time. The mother-at-home, father-out-
at-work model that most people think of as traditional was in fact the first version of
the modern family.
Historians label this nineteenth century model of the family Victorian because it
became influential in England and Western Europe, as well as in the United States, dur-
ing the reign of Queen Victoria. It reflected, in idealized form, the nineteenth-century
middle-class family. The Victorian model became the prevailing cultural definition of
family, but few families could live up to the ideal in all its particulars. Working-class, black,
and ethnic families, for example, could not get by without the economic contributions of
wives, mothers, and daughters. Even for middle-class families, the Victorian ideal pre-
scribed a standard of perfection that was virtually impossible to fulfill (Demos, 1986).
Eventually, social change overtook the Victorian model. Beginning around the
1880s, another period of rapid economic, social, and cultural change unsettled Victorian
family patterns, especially their gender arrangements. Several generations of so-called
new women challenged Victorian notions of femininity. They became educated, pursued
careers, became involved in political causesincluding their ownand created the first
wave of feminism. This ferment culminated in the victory of the womens suffrage move-
ment. It was followed by the 1920s jazz-age era of flappers and flaming youththe first,
and probably the major, sexual revolution of the twentieth century.
Another cultural crisis ensued, until a new cultural blueprint emergedthe com-
panionate model of marriage and the family. The new model was a modern, more relaxed
version of the Victorian family; companionship and sexual intimacy were now defined as
central to marriage.
This highly abbreviated history of family and cultural change forms the necessary
backdrop for understanding the family upheavals of the late twentieth and early twenty-
first centuries. As in earlier times, major changes in the economy and society have de-
stabilized an existing model of family life and the everyday patterns and practices that
have sustained it.
Ch-Intro.indd 6 7/8/2008 12:37:29 PM
Introduction 7
In the last half of the twentieth century, we experienced a triple revolution: first,
the move toward a postindustrial service and information economy; second, a life course
revolution brought about by reductions in mortality and fertility; and third, a psycho-
logical transformation rooted mainly in rising educational levels. Although these shifts
have profound implications for everyone, women have been the pacesetters of change.
Most womens lives and expectations over the past three decades, inside and outside the
family, have departed drastically from those of their own mothers. Mens lives today also
are different from their fathers generation, but to a much lesser extent.
THE TRIPLE REVOLUTION
The Postindustrial Family
A service and information economy produces large numbers of jobs that, unlike factory
work, seem suitable for women. Yet as Jessie Bernard (1982) once observed, the transfor-
mation of a housewife into a paid worker outside the home sends tremors through every
family relationship. It blurs the sharp contrast between mens and womens roles that
mark the breadwinner/housewife pattern. It also reduces womens economic dependence
on men, thereby making it easier for women to leave unhappy marriages.
Beyond drawing women out of the home, shifts in the nature of work and a rap-
idly changing globalized economy have unsettled the lives of individuals and families at
all class levels. The well-paying industrial jobs that once enabled a blue-collar worker
to own a home and support a family are no longer available. The once secure jobs that
sustained the organization men and their families in the 1950s and 1960s have been
made shaky by downsizing, an unstable economy, corporate takeovers, and a rapid pace of
technological change.
The new economic uncertainty has also made the transition to adulthood increas-
ingly problematic. In the postwar years, particularly in the United States, young people
entered adulthood in one giant step. They found jobs, often out of high school, married
young, left home, and had children quickly. Today, few young adults can afford to marry
and have children in their late teens or early twenties. In an economy where a college
degree is necessary to earn a living wage, early marriage impedes education for both men
and women.
Those who do not go on to college have little access to jobs that can sustain a family.
Particularly in the inner cities of the United States, growing numbers of young people
have come to see no future for themselves in the ordinary world of work. In middle-
class families, a narrowing opportunity structure has increased anxieties about downward
mobility for offspring and parents as well. Because of the new economic and social reali-
ties, a new stage of life has opened up between adolescence and adulthood. It is simply
impossible for most young people in todays postindustrial societies to become financially
and emotionally independent at the same ages as earlier generations did.
This new stage of life is so new it doesnt have an agreed-on name. It has been
called arrested development, adultolescence, or emerging adulthood. And many
people assume that todays younger generations are simply slackersunwilling to grow
Ch-Intro.indd 7 7/8/2008 12:37:29 PM
8 Introduction
up, get jobs, and start their own families. But the fact is that todays economy demands
more schooling than ever before, and jobs that can sustain a family are fewer and less
permanent than ever before.
The Life Course Revolution
Its not just the rise of a new economy that has reshaped the stages of life. The basic facts
of life and death changed drastically in the twentieth century. In 1900, average life expec-
tancy was 47 years. Infants had the highest mortality rates, but young and middle-aged
adults were often struck down by infectious diseases. Before the turn of the twentieth
century, only 40 percent of women lived through all the stages of a normal life course:
growing up, marrying, having children, and surviving with a spouse to the age of 50
( Uhlenberg, 1980).
Declining mortality rates have had a profound effect on womens lives. Women
today are living longer and having fewer children. When infant and child mortality rates
fall, women no longer have five, seven, or nine children to ensure that two or three will
survive to adulthood. After rearing children, the average woman can look forward to
three or four decades without maternal responsibilities.
One of the most important changes in contemporary marriage is the potential
length of marriage and the number of years spent without children in the home. Our
current high divorce rates may be a by-product of this shift. By the 1970s, the statistically
average couple spent only 18 percent of their married lives raising young children, com-
pared with 54 percent a century ago (Bane, 1976). As a result, marriage is becoming de-
fined less as a union between parents raising a brood of children and more as a personal
relationship between two individuals.
A Psychological Revolution
The third major transformation is a set of psychocultural changes that might be described
as psychological gentrification (Skolnick, 1991). That is, cultural advantages once enjoyed
only by the upper classesin particular, educationhave been extended to those lower
down on the socioeconomic scale. Psychological gentrification also involves greater lei-
sure time, travel, and exposure to information, as well as a general rise in the standard
of living. Despite the persistence of poverty, unemployment, and economic insecurity in
the industrialized world, far less of the population than in the historical past is living at
the level of sheer subsistence.
Throughout Western society, rising levels of education and related changes have
been linked to a complex set of shifts in personal and political attitudes. One of these
is a more psychological approach to lifegreater introspectiveness and a yearning for
warmth and intimacy in family and other relationships ( Veroff, Douvan, and Kulka,
1981). There is also evidence of an increasing preference on the part of both men and
women for a more companionate ideal of marriage and a more democratic family. More
broadly, these changes in attitude have been described as a shift to postmaterialist val-
ues, emphasizing self-expression, tolerance, equality, and a concern for the quality of
life ( Inglehart, 1990).
Ch-Intro.indd 8 7/8/2008 12:37:29 PM
Introduction 9
The multiple social transformations of our era have brought both costs and bene-
fits: Family relations have become both more fragile and more emotionally rich; longev-
ity has brought us a host of problems as well as the gift of extended life. Although change
has brought greater opportunities for women, persisting gender inequality means women
have borne a large share of the costs of these gains. We cannot turn the clock back to the
family models of the past.
Despite the upheavals of recent decades, the emotional and cultural significance
of the family persists. Family remains the center of most peoples lives and, as numer-
ous surveys show, is a cherished value. Although marriage has become more fragile, the
parentchild relationshipespecially the motherchild relationshipremains a core at-
tachment across the life course ( Rossi and Rossi, 1990). The family, however, can be both
here to stay and beset with difficulties.
Most European countries have recognized for some time that governments must
play a role in supplying an array of supports to families, such as health care, childrens al-
lowances, and housing subsidies. Working parents are offered child care, parental leave,
and shorter workdays. Services are provided for the elderly.
Each countrys response to these changes, as we noted earlier, has been shaped by its
own political and cultural traditions. The United States remains embroiled in a cultural
war over the family; many social commentators and political leaders have promised to re-
verse the recent trends and restore the traditional family. In contrast, other Western
nations, including Canada and other English-speaking countries, have responded to fam-
ily change by trying to remedy the problems brought about by economic and social trans-
formations. These countries have been spared much of the poverty and other social ills
that have plagued the United States in recent decades.
Looking Ahead
The world at the beginning of the twenty-first century is vastly different from what it was
at the beginning, or even the middle, of the twentieth century. Families are struggling to
adapt to new realities. The countries that have been at the leading edge of family change still
find themselves caught between yesterdays norms, todays new realities, and an uncertain
future. As we have seen, changes in womens lives have been a pivotal factor in recent family
trends. In many countries there is a considerable difference between mens and womens at-
titudes and expectations of one another. Even where both partners accept a more equal divi-
sion of labor in the home, there is often a gap between beliefs and behavior. In no country
have employers, the government, or men fully caught up to the changes in womens lives.
Families have always struggled with outside circumstances and inner conflict. Our
current troubles inside and outside the family are genuine, but we should never forget
that many of the most vexing issues confronting us derive from benefits of modernization
few of us would be willing to give upfor example, longer, healthier lives, and the ability
to choose how many children to have and when to have them.
When most people died before they reached age 50, there was no problem of a
large elderly population to care for. Nor was adolescence a difficult stage of life when
children worked; education was a privilege of the rich, and a persons place in society was
determined by heredity rather than choice.
Ch-Intro.indd 9 7/8/2008 12:37:29 PM
10 Introduction
In short, family life is bound up with the social, economic, and cultural circum-
stances of particular times and places. We are no longer peasants, Puritans, pioneers, or
even suburbanites circa 1955. We face a world earlier generations could hardly imagine,
and we struggle to find new ways to cope with it.
A NOTE ON THE FAMILY
Some family scholars have suggested that we drop the term the family and replace it with
families or family life. The problem with the family is that it calls to mind the stereotyped
image of the Ozzie and Harriet kind of familytwo parents and their two or three minor
children. But those other terms dont always work. In our own writing we use the term
the family in much the same way we use the economya set of institutional arrangements
through which particular tasks are carried out in a society. The economy deals with the
production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The family deals with
reproduction and care and support for children and adults.
References
Amato, P. R. 1994. Life span adjustment of children to their parents divorce. The Future of Children 4,
no. 1 (Spring).
Bane, M. J. 1976. Here to Stay. New York: Basic Books.
Bernard, J. 1982. The Future of Marriage. New York: Bantam.
Demos, J. 1986. Past, Present, and Personal. New York: Oxford University Press.
Emde, R. N., and R. J. Harmon, eds. 1984. Continuities and Discontinuities in Development. New York:
Plenum Press.
Featherstone, J. 1979. Family matters. Harvard Educational Review 49, no. 1: 20 52.
Geertz, G. 1965. The impact of the concept of culture on the concept of man. In New Views of the Nature
of Man, edited by J. R. Platt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Harris, J. R. 1998. The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do. New York: Free
Press.
Hrdy, S. B. 1999. Mother Nature. New York: Pantheon Books.
Inglehart, R. 1990. Culture Shift. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Keller, S. 1971. Does the family have a future? Journal of Comparative Studies, Spring.
Macfarlane, J. W. 1964. Perspectives on personality consistency and change from the guidance study.
Vita Humana 7: 115126.
Mellman, A., E. Lazarus, and A. Rivlin. 1990. Family time, family values. In Rebuilding the Nest, edited
by D. Blankenhorn, S. Bayme, and J. Elshtain. Milwaukee, WI: Family Service America.
Rossi, A. S., and P. H. Rossi. 1990. Of Human Bonding: ParentChild Relations across the Life Course. Haw-
thorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter.
Rubin, L. 1996. The Transcendent Child. New York: Basic Books.
Ryan, M. 1981. The Cradle of the Middle Class. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Schnaiberg, A., and S. Goldenberg. 1989. From empty nest to crowded nest: The dynamics of incom-
pletely launched young adults. Social Problems 36, no. 3 ( June): 251269.
Skolnick, A. 1991. Embattled Paradise: The American Family in an Age of Uncertainty. New York: Basic
Books.
Stephens, W. N. 1963. The Family in Cross-Cultural Perspective. New York: World.
Uhlenberg, P. 1980. Death and the family. Journal of Family History 5, no. 3: 313320.
Veroff, J., E. Douvan, and R. A. Kulka. 1981. The Inner American: A Self-Portrait from 1957 to 1976.
New York: Basic Books.
Ch-Intro.indd 10 7/8/2008 12:37:29 PM
11
The Changing Family
The study of the family does not belong to any single scholarly field; genetics, physiology,
archaeology, history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and economics all touch on
it. Religious and ethical authorities claim a stake in the family, and troubled individuals
and families generate therapeutic demands on family scholarship. In short, the study of
the family is interdisciplinary, controversial, and necessary for the formulation of social
policy and practices.
Interdisciplinary subjects present characteristic problems. Each discipline has its
own assumptions and views of the world, which may not directly transfer into another
field. For example, some biologists and physically oriented anthropologists analyze
human affairs in terms of individual motives and instincts; for them, society is a shadowy
presence, serving mainly as the setting for biologically motivated individual action. Many
sociologists and cultural anthropologists, in contrast, perceive the individual as an actor
playing a role written by culture and society. One important school of psychology sees
people neither as passive recipients of social pressures nor as creatures driven by powerful
lusts, but as information processors trying to make sense of their environment. There
is no easy way to reconcile such perspectives. Scientific paradigmscharacteristic ways
of looking at the worlddetermine not only what answers will be found, but also what
questions will be asked. This fact has perhaps created special confusion in the study of
the family.
There is the assumption that family life, so familiar a part of everyday experience,
is easily understood. But familiarity may breed a sense of destinywhat we experience is
transformed into the natural.
Social scientists have been arguing for many years about how to define the family,
even before the dramatic changes of the past four decades. Now the question of how to
define the family has become a hot political issue. Is a mother and her child a family?
A cohabiting couple? A cohabiting couple with children? A married couple without chil-
dren? A grandmother who is raising her grandchildren? A gay couple? A gay couple with
children?
In his article, The Theoretical Importance of the Family, William J. Goode de-
fines family as a special kind of relationship between people rather than a particular kind
of household or group, such as two married parents and their children. He argues that in
all known societies, and under many social conditions, people develop family-like social
patternsa familistic packageeven when some of the traditional aspects of family
are missing.
I
Ch-01.indd 11 7/8/2008 12:31:35 PM
12 Part I The Changing Family
What is in this familistic package? Continuity is an essential element: the ex-
pectation that the relationship will continue. This makes it possible to share money and
goods and offer help to the other person, knowing that in the future that person will
reciprocate. Familiarity is another benefit; family members know one another and their
likes and dislikes. In other words, the family is something like a mutual aid society. It
helps individuals meet their multiple needs, including the need for affection and com-
panionship, and also serves as an insurance policy in times of sickness or other trouble.
Still another obstacle to understanding family life is that it is hard to see the links
between the larger world outside the home and the individuals and families inside. Sev-
eral of the selections in Part One aim to show us these links. For example, Anthony Gid-
dens argues that there is a global revolution going on in sexuality, in marriage and the
family, and in how people think of themselves and their relationships. He argues that we
are living through another wave of technological and economic modernization that is
having a profound impact on personal life. Further, he sees a strong parallel between the
ideals of a democratic society and the emerging new ideals of family relationships. For
example, a good marriage is coming to be seen as a relationship between equals. Giddens
recognizes that many of the changes in family life are worrisome, but we cant go back
to the family patterns of an earlier time.
Nor would most of us really want to. Nostalgic images of the family in earlier times
typically omit the high mortality rates that prevailed before the twentieth century. Death
could strike at any age, and was a constant threat to family stability. Arlene Skolnicks
article reveals the profound impact of high mortality on family relationships.
Claude S. Fischer and Michael Hout analyze Census Bureau statistics on American
family life across the entire twentieth century. They find that many widespread worries
about todays families are based on mistaken understandings about history and overly
simple impressions of family demographic change. For example, many people worry
about the increase in one-person households. But the cause is not people fleeing marriage
and family. Its that the elderly population is growing larger, they have more money than
in the past, and prefer to live alone if widowed.
The readings in Chapter 2 are concerned with the meaning of family in modern so-
ciety. As women increasingly participate in the paid workforce, argues Sharon Hays, they
find themselves caught up in a web of cultural contradictions that remain unresolved and
indeed have deepened. There is no way, she says, for contemporary women to get it just
right. Both stay-at-home and working mothers maintain an intensive commitment to
motherhood, although they work it out in different ways. Women who stay at home no
longer feel comfortable and fulfilled being defined by themselves and others as mere
housewives. And working women are frequently anxious about the time away from
children and the complexities of balancing parental duties with the demands of the job.
The cultural contradictions that trouble motherhood can be seen as a part of the
larger cultural war over the family. But there are more than two sides in the family wars.
Janet Z. Giele carefully diagrams three positions on the family: the conservative, the lib-
eral, and the feminist. The latter, for Giele, is the most promising for developing public
policies that would combine conservative and liberal perspectives. The feminist vision,
she argues, appreciates both the premodern nature of the family with the inevitable
interdependence of family with a modern, fast-changing economy.
Ch-01.indd 12 7/8/2008 12:31:36 PM
13
Families Past and Present
R E A DI NG 1
The Theoretical Importance
of the Family
William J. Goode
Through the centuries, thoughtful people have observed that the family was disintegrat-
ing. In the past several decades, this idea has become more and more common. Many
analysts have reported that the family no longer performs tasks once entrusted to it
production, education, protection, for example. From these and other data we might
conclude that the family is on its way out.
But almost everyone who lives out an average life span enters the married state.
Most eventually have children, who will later do the same. Of the increasing number who
divorce, many will hopefully or skeptically marry again. In the Western nations, a higher
percentage of people marry than a century ago. Indeed, the total number of years spent
within marriage by the average person is higher now than at any previous time in the
history of the world. In all known societies, almost everyone lives enmeshed in a network
of family rights and obligations. People are taught to accept these rules through a long
period of childhood socialization. That is, people come to feel that these family patterns
are both right and desirable.
At the present time, human beings appear to get as much joy and sorrow from
the family as they always have, and seem as bent as ever on taking part in family life. In
most of the world, the traditional family may be shaken, but the institution will prob-
ably enjoy a longer life than any nation now in existence. The family does not seem to
be a powerful institution, like the military, the church, or the state, but it seems to be
the most resistant to conquest, or to the efforts people make to reshape it. Any specific
family may appear to be fragile or unstable, but the family system as a whole is tough
and resilient.
1
Ch-01.indd 13 7/8/2008 12:31:36 PM
14 Part I The Changing Family
THE FAMILY: VARIOUS VIEWS
The intense emotional meaning of family relations for almost everyone has been ob-
served throughout history. Philosophers and social analysts have noted that any society is
a structure made up of families linked together. Both travelers and anthropologists often
describe the peculiarities of a given society by outlining its family relations.
The earliest moral and ethical writings of many cultures assert the significance of
the family. Within those commentaries, the view is often expressed that a society loses
its strength if people do not fulfill family obligations. Confucius thought that happiness
and prosperity would prevail if everyone would behave correctly as a family member.
This meant primarily that no one should fail in his filial obligations. That is, the proper
relationship between ruler and subjects was like that between a father and his children.
The cultural importance of the family is also emphasized in the Old Testament. The
books of Exodus, Deuteronomy, Ecclesiastes, Psalms, and Proverbs, for example, pro-
claim the importance of obeying family rules. The earliest codified literature in India,
the Rig-Veda, which dates from about the last half of the second millennium B.C., and the
Law of Manu, which dates from about the beginning of the Christian era, devote much
attention to the family. Poetry, plays, novels, and short stories typically seize upon family
relationships as the primary focus of human passion, and their ideas and themes often
grow from family conflict. Even the great epic poems of war have subthemes focusing
on problems in family relations.
1
From time to time, social analysts and philosophers have presented plans for socie-
ties that might be created (these are called utopias) in which new family roles (rights and
obligations of individual members) are offered as solutions to traditional social problems.
Platos Republic is one such attempt. Plato was probably the first to urge the creation of
a society in which all members, men and women alike, would have an equal opportunity
to develop their talents to the utmost, and to achieve a position in society solely through
merit. Since family patterns in all societies prevent selection based entirely on individual
worth, to Platos utopia the tie between parents and children would play no part, be-
cause knowledge of that link would be erased. Approved conception would take place
at the same time each year at certain hymeneal festivals; children born out of season would
be eliminated (along with those born defective). All children would be taken from their
parents at birth and reared by specially designated people.
Experimental or utopian communities like Oneida, the Shakers, the Mormons, and
modern communes have typically insisted that changes in family relations were necessary
to achieve their goals. Every fundamental political upheaval since the French Revolution
of 1789 has offered a program that included profound changes in family relations. Since
World War II, most countries of the world have written new constitutions. In perhaps
all of them, but especially in all the less developed nations, these new laws have been far
more advanced than public opinion in those countries. They have aimed at creating new
family patterns more in conformity with the leaders views of equality and justice, and
often antagonistic to traditional family systems. This wide range of commentary, analysis,
1. See in this connection Nicholas Tavuchis and William J. Goode (eds.), The Family through Literature
(Oxford University Press, 1973).
Ch-01.indd 14 7/8/2008 12:31:36 PM
Chapter 1 Families Past and Present 15
and political action, over a period of twenty-five hundred years, suggests that throughout
history we have been at least implicitly aware of the importance of family patterns as a
central element in human societies.
THE CENTRAL POSITION
OF THE FAMILY IN SOCIETY
In most tribal societies, kinship patterns form the major part of the whole social structure.
By contrast, the family is only a small part of the social structure of modern industrial
societies. It is nevertheless a key element in them, specifically linking individuals with
other social institutions, such as the church, the state, or the economy. Indeed modern
society, with its complex advanced technology and its highly trained bureaucracy, would
collapse without the contributions of this seemingly primitive social agency. The class
system, too, including its restrictions on education and opportunity, its high or low social
mobility rates, and its initial social placement by birth, is founded on the family.
Most important, it is within the family that the child is first socialized to serve the
needs of the society, and not only its own needs. A society will not survive unless its
needs are met, such as the production and distribution of commodities, protection of the
young and old or the sick and the pregnant, conformity to the law, and so on. Only if
individuals are motivated to serve these needs will the society continue to operate, and
the foundation for that motivation is laid by the family. Family members also participate
in informal social control processes. Socialization at early ages makes most of us wish to
conform, but throughout each day, both as children and as adults, we are often tempted
to deviate. The formal agencies of social control (such as the police) are not enough to do
more than force the extreme deviant to conform. What is needed is a set of social pres-
sures that provide feedback to the individual whenever he or she does well or poorly and
thus support internal controls as well as the controls of the formal agencies. Effectively
or not, the family usually takes on this task.
The family, then, is made up of individuals, but it is also a social unit, and part of
a larger social network. Families are not isolated, self-enclosed social systems; and the
other institutions of society, such as the military, the church, or the school system, contin-
ually rediscover that they are not dealing with individuals, but with members of families.
Even in the most industrialized and urban of societies, where it is sometimes supposed
that people lead rootless and anonymous lives, most people are in continual interaction
with other family members. Men and women who achieve high social position usually
find that even as adults they still respond to their parents criticisms, are still angered
or hurt by a siblings scorn. Corporations that offer substantial opportunities to rising
executives often find that their proposals are turned down because of objections from
family members.
So it is through the family that the society is able to elicit from the individual his or
her contributions. The family, in turn, can continue to exist only if it is supported by the
larger society. If these two, the smaller and the larger social system, furnish each other
the conditions necessary for their survival, they must be interrelated in many important
Ch-01.indd 15 7/8/2008 12:31:36 PM
16 Part I The Changing Family
ways. Thus, the two main themes in this [reading] will be the relations among family
members, and the relations between the family and the society.
PRECONCEPTIONS ABOUT THE FAMILY
The task of understanding the family presents many difficulties, and one of the greatest
barriers is found in ourselves. We are likely to have strong emotions about the family. Be-
cause of our own deep involvement in family relationships, objective analysis is not easy.
When we read about other types of family behavior, in other classes or societies, we are
likely to feel that they are odd or improper. We are tempted to argue that this or that
type of family behavior is wrong or right, rather than to analyze it. Second, although we
have observed many people in some of their family behavior, usually we have had very
limited experience with what goes on behind the walls of other homes. This means that
our sample of observations is very narrow. It also means that for almost any generaliza-
tion we create or read about, we can often find some specific experience that refutes it,
or fits it. Since we feel we already know, we may not feel motivated to look for further
data against which to test generalizations.
However, many supposedly well-known beliefs about the family are not well
grounded in fact. Others are only partly true and must be studied more precisely if they
are to be understood. One such belief is that children hold the family together. De-
spite repeated attempts to affirm it, this generalization does not seem to be very strong.
A more correct view seems to be that there is a modest association between divorce and
not having children, but it is mostly caused by the fact that people who do not become
well adjusted, and who may for some reasons be prone to divorce, are also less likely to
have children.
Another way of checking whether the findings of family sociology are obvious is to
present some research findings, and ask whether it was worth the bother of discovering
them since everybody knew them all along. Consider the following set of facts. Suppose
a researcher had demonstrated those facts. Was it worthwhile to carry out the study, or
were the facts already known?
1. Because modern industrial society breaks down traditional family systems, one re-
sult is that the age of marriage in Western nations (which was low among farmers)
has risen greatly over many generations.
2. Because of the importance of the extended family in China and India, the average
size of the household has always been large, with many generations living under
one roof.
3. In polygynous societies, most men have several wives, and the fertility rate is higher
than in monogamous societies.
Although these statements sound plausible to many people, and impressive argu-
ments have been presented to support them, in fact they are all false. For hundreds of
years, the age at marriage among farmers in Western nations has been relatively high
(2527 years), and though it rises and falls somewhat over time, there seems to be no
Ch-01.indd 16 7/8/2008 12:31:36 PM
Chapter 1 Families Past and Present 17
important trend in any particular direction. With reference to multifamily households,
every survey of Chinese and Indian households has shown that even generations ago
they were relatively modest in size (from four to six persons, varying by region and time
period). Only under special historical circumstances will large, extended households be
common. As to polygyny, the fact is that except under special circumstances, almost all
men in all societies must be content with only one wife, and the fertility rate of poly-
gynous marriages (one man married to several wives) is lower than that for monogamous
marriages. Thus we see that with reference to the incorrect findings just cited, common
beliefs did require testing, and they were wrong.
On the other hand, of course, many popular beliefs about how families work are
correct. We cannot assume their correctness, however. Instead, we have to examine our
observations, and make studies on our own to see how well these data fit in order to
improve our understanding of the dynamics of family processes in our own or in other
societies. If we emphasize the problems of obtaining facts, we should not lose sight of
the central truth of any science: vast quantities of figures may be entirely meaningless,
unless the search is guided by fruitful hypotheses or broad conceptions of social behavior.
What we seek is organized facts, a structure of propositions, in which theory and fact
illuminate one another. If we do not seek actual observation, we are engaged in blind
speculation. If we seek facts without theoretical guidance, our search is random and
often yields findings that have no bearing on anything. Understanding the family, then,
requires the same sort of careful investigation as any other scientific endeavor.
WHY THE FAMILY IS
THEORETICALLY SIGNIFICANT
Because the family is so much taken for granted, we do not often stop to consider the
many traits that make it theoretically interesting. A brief consideration of certain pecu-
liarities of the family will suggest why it is worthwhile exploring this social unit.
The family is the only social institution other than religion that is formally devel-
oped in all societies: a specific social agency is in charge of a great variety of social be-
haviors and activities. Some have argued that legal systems did not exist in preliterate or
technologically less developed tribes or societies because there was no formally organized
legislative body or judiciary. Of course, it is possible to abstract from concrete behavior
the legal aspects of action, or the economic aspects, or the political dynamics, even when
there are no explicitly labeled agencies formally in control of these areas in the society.
However, kinship statuses and their responsibilities are the object of both formal and
informal attention in societies at a high or a low technological level.
Family duties are the direct role responsibility of everyone in the society, with rare
exceptions. Almost everyone is both born into a family and founds one of his or her own.
Each individual is kin to many others. Many people, by contrast, may escape the religious
duties others take for granted, or military or political burdens. Moreover, many family
role responsibilities cannot usually be delegated to others, while in a work situation spe-
cialized obligations can be delegated.
Ch-01.indd 17 7/8/2008 12:31:36 PM
18 Part I The Changing Family
Taking part in family activities has the further interesting quality that though it is
not backed by the formal punishments supporting many other obligations, almost every-
one takes part nonetheless. We must, for example, engage in economic or productive acts,
or face starvation. We must enter the army, pay taxes, and appear before courts, or face
money penalties and force. Such punishments do not usually confront the individual who
does not wish to marry, or refuses to talk with his father or brother. Nevertheless, so
pervasive are the social pressures, and so intertwined with indirect or direct rewards and
punishments, that almost everyone conforms, or claims to conform, to family demands.
Although the family is usually thought of as an expressive or emotional social unit,
it serves as an instrumental agency for the larger social structures, and all other institu-
tions and agencies depend upon its contributions. For example, the role behavior learned
within the family becomes the model or prototype for behavior required in other seg-
ments of the society. Inside the family, the content of the socialization process is the
cultural tradition of the larger society. Families are also themselves economic units with
respect to production and allocation. With reference to social control, each persons total
range of behavior, and how his or her time and energies are budgeted, is more easily
visible to family members than to outsiders. They can evaluate how the individual is al-
locating his or her time and money, and how well he or she is carrying out various duties.
Consequently, the family acts as a source of pressure on the individual to adjustto work
harder and play less, or go to church less and study more. In all these ways, the family is
partly an instrument or agent of the larger society. If it fails to perform adequately, the
goals of the larger society may not be effectively achieved.
Perhaps more interesting theoretically is the fact that the various tasks of the family
are all separable from one another, but in fact are not separated in almost all known family
systems. We shall discuss these functions or tasks in various contexts in this book, so no
great elaboration is needed at this point. Here are some of the contributions of the family
to the larger society: reproduction of young, physical maintenance of family members,
social placement of the child, socialization, and social control.
Let us consider how these activities could be separated. For example, the mother
could send her child to be fed in a neighborhood mess hall, and of course some harassed
mothers do send their children to buy lunch in a local snack bar. Those who give birth
to a child need not socialize the child. They might send the child to specialists, and in-
deed specialists do take more responsibility for this task as the child grows older. Parents
might, as some eugenicists have suggested, be selected for their breeding qualities, but
these might not include any great talent for training the young. Status placement might
be accomplished by random drawing of lots, by IQ tests or periodic examinations in
physical and intellectual skills, or by popularity polls. This assignment of children to vari-
ous social positions could be done without regard to an individuals parents, those who
socialized or fed the child, or others who might supervise the childs daily behavior.
Separations of this kind have been suggested from time to time, and a few hesi-
tant attempts have been made here and there in the world to put them into operation.
However, three conclusions relevant to this kind of division can be drawn: (1) In all
known societies, the ideal (with certain qualifications to be noted) is that the family be
entrusted with all these functions. (2) When one or more family tasks are entrusted to
another agency by a revolutionary or utopian society, the change can be made only with
Ch-01.indd 18 7/8/2008 12:31:36 PM
Chapter 1 Families Past and Present 19
the support of much ideological fervor, and usually political pressure as well. (3) These
experiments are also characterized by a gradual return to the more traditional type of
family. In both the Israeli kibbutzim and the Russian experiments in relieving parents of
child care, the ideal of completely communal living was once urged. Husband and wife
were to have only a personal and emotional tie with one another: divorce would be easy.
The children were to see their parents at regular intervals but look to their nursery at-
tendants and mother surrogates for affection and direction during work hours. Each in-
dividual was to contribute his or her best skills to the cooperative unit without regard to
family ties or sex status (there would be few or no female or male tasks). That ideal
was attempted in a modest way, but behavior gradually dropped away from the ideal. The
only other country in which the pattern has been attempted on a large scale is China.
Already Chinese communes have retreated from their high ambitions, following the path
of the kibbutz and the Russian kolkhoz.
Various factors contribute to these deviations from attempts to create a new type
of family, and the two most important sets of pressures cannot easily be separated from
each other. First is the problem, also noted by Plato, that individuals who develop their
own attitudes and behaviors in the usual Western ( European and European-based) fam-
ily system do not easily adjust to the communal family even when they believe it is the
right way. The second is the likelihood that when the family is radically changed, the
various relations between it and the larger society are changed. New strains are created,
demanding new kinds of adjustments on the part of the individuals in the society. Per-
haps the planners must develop somewhat different agencies, or a different blueprint, to
transform the family.
These comments have nothing to do with capitalism in its current political and
economic argument with communism. They merely describe the historical fact that
though various experiments in separating the major functions of the family from one
another have been conducted, none of these evolved from a previously existing family
system. In addition, the several modern important attempts at such a separation, includ-
ing the smaller communes that were created in the United States during the 1960s and
1970s, mostly exhibit a common pattern, a movement away from the utopian blueprint of
separating the various family activities and giving each of them to a different social unit.
It is possible that some of these activities (meals) can be more easily separated than
others; or that some family systems (for example, matrilineal systems) might lend them-
selves to such a separation more easily than others. On the other hand, we have to begin
with the data that are now available. Even cautiously interpreted, they suggest that the
family is a rather stable institution. On the other hand, we have not yet analyzed what
this particular institution is. In the next section we discuss this question.
DEFINING THE FAMILY:
A MATTER OF MORE OR LESS
Since thousands of publications have presented research findings on the family, one might
suppose that there must be agreement on what this social unit is. In fact, sociologists and
Ch-01.indd 19 7/8/2008 12:31:36 PM
20 Part I The Changing Family
anthropologists have argued for decades about how to define it. Indeed, creating a clear,
formal definition of any object of study is sometimes more difficult than making a study
of that object. If we use a concrete definition, and assert that a family is a social unit made
up of father, mother, and children, then only about 35 percent of all U.S. households
can be classed as a family. Much of the research on the family would have to exclude a
majority of residential units. In addition, in some societies, one wife may be married to
several husbands, or one husband to several wives. The definition would exclude such
units. In a few societies there have been families in which the husband was a woman;
and in some, certain husbands were not expected to live with their wives. In the
United States, millions of households contain at least one child, but only one parent. In
a few communes, every adult male is married to all other adult females. That is, there are
many kinds of social units that seem to be like a family, but do not fit almost any concrete
definition that we might formulate.
We can escape such criticisms in part by claiming that most adults eventually go
through such a phase of family life; that is, almost all men and women in the United
States marry at some time during their lives, and most of them eventually have children.
Nevertheless, analysis of the family would be much thinner if we focused only on that
one kind of household. In ordinary language usage, people are most likely to agree that a
social unit made up of father, mother, and child or children is a genuine family. They will
begin to disagree more and more, as one or more of those persons or social roles is miss-
ing. Few people would agree that, at the other extremes, a household with only a single
person in it is a family. Far more would think of a household as a family if it comprised a
widow and her several children. Most people would agree that a husband-wife household
is a family if they have children, even if their children are now living somewhere else.
However, many would not be willing to class a childless couple as a family, especially if
that couple planned never to have children. Very few people would be willing to accept
a homosexual couple as a family.
What can we learn from such ordinary language usage? First, that family is not a
single thing, to be captured by a neat verbal formula. Second, many social units can be
thought of as more or less families, as they are more or less similar to the traditional
type of family. Third, much of this graded similarity can be traced to the different kinds
of role relations to be found in that traditional unit. Doubtless the following list is not
comprehensive, but it includes most of those relationships: (1) At least two adult persons
of opposite sex reside together. (2) They engage in some kind of division of labor; that
is, they do not both perform exactly the same tasks. (3) They engage in many types of
economic and social exchanges; that is, they do things for one another. (4) They share
many things in common, such as food, sex, residence, and both goods and social activi-
ties. (5) The adults have parental relations with their children, as their children have filial
relations with them; the parents have some authority over their children, and both share
with one another, while also assuming some obligation for protection, cooperation, and
nurturance. (6) There are sibling relations among the children themselves, with, once
more, a range of obligations to share, protect, and help one another. When all these con-
ditions exist, few people would deny that the unit is a family. As we consider households
in which more are missing, a larger number of people would express some doubt as to
whether it really is a family. Thus, if two adults live together, but do nothing for each
Ch-01.indd 20 7/8/2008 12:31:37 PM
Chapter 1 Families Past and Present 21
other, few people would agree that it is a family. If they do not even live together, fewer
still would call the couple a family.
Individuals create all sorts of relations with each other, but others are more or less
likely to view them as a family to the extent that their continuing social relations exhibit
some or all of the role patterns noted above. Most important for our understanding of
the family is that in all known societies, and under a wide range of social conditions, some
kinds of familistic living arrangements seem to emerge, with some or all of these traits.
These arrangements can emerge in prisons (with homosexual couples as units), under
the disorganized conditions of revolution, conquest, or epidemic; or even when political
attempts are made to reduce the importance of the family, and instead to press people
to live in a more communal fashion. That is, people create and re-create some forms of
familistic social patterns even when some of those traditional elements are missing.
This raises the inevitable question: Why does this happen? Why do people con-
tinue to form familistic relations, even when they are not convinced that it is the ideal
social arrangement? Why is this and not some other social pattern so widespread? Of
course, this is not an argument for the universality of the conjugal family. Many other
kinds of relations between individuals are created. Nevertheless, some approximation of
these familistic relationships do continue to occur in the face of many alternative tempta-
tions and opportunities as well as counterpressures. Unless we are willing to assert that
people are irrational, we must conclude that these relationships must offer some advan-
tages. What are they?
ADVANTAGES OF THE FAMILISTIC PACKAGE
We suppose that the most fundamental set of advantages is found in the division of labor
and the resulting possibility of social exchanges between husband and wife (or members
of a homosexual couple), as well as between children and parents. This includes not only
economic goods, but help, nurturance, protection, and affection. It is often forgotten that
the modern domestic household is very much an economic unit even if it is no longer a
farming unit. People are actually producing goods and services for one another. They are
buying objects in one place, and transporting them to the household. They are transform-
ing food into meals. They are engaged in cleaning, mowing lawns, repairing, transport-
ing, counselinga wide array of services that would have to be paid for in money if some
member of the family did not do them.
Families of all types also enjoy some small economies of scale. When there are two
or more members of the household, various kinds of activities can be done almost as easily
for everyone as for a single person; it is almost as easy to prepare one meal for three or
four people as it is to prepare a similar meal for one person. Thus, the cost of a meal is less
per person within a family. Families can cooperate to achieve what an individual cannot,
from building a mountain cabin to creating a certain style of life. Help from all members
will make it much easier to achieve that goal than it would be for one person.
All the historic forms of the family that we know, including communal group
marriages, are also attractive because they offer continuity. Thus, whatever the members
produce together, they expect to be able to enjoy together later. Continuity has several
Ch-01.indd 21 7/8/2008 12:31:37 PM
22 Part I The Changing Family
implications. One is that members do not have to bear the costs of continually searching
for new partners, or for new members who might be better at various family tasks.
In addition, husband and wife, as well as children, enjoy a much longer line of social
credit than they would have if they were making exchanges with people outside the fam-
ily. This means that an individual can give more at one time to someone in the family,
knowing that in the longer run this will not be a loss: the other person will remain long
enough to reciprocate at some point, or perhaps still another member will offer help at
a later time.
Next, the familistic mode of living offers several of the advantages of any informal
group.
2
It exhibits, for example, a very short line of communication; everyone is close
by, and members need not communicate through intermediaries. Thus they can respond
quickly in case of need. A short line of communication makes cooperation much easier.
Second, everyone has many idiosyncratic needs and wishes. In day to day interaction with
outsiders, we need not adjust to these very much, and they may be a nuisance; others,
in turn, are likely not to adjust to our own idiosyncracies. However, within the familis-
tic mode of social interaction, people learn what each others idiosyncratic needs are.
Learning such needs can and does make life together somewhat more attractive because
adjusting to them may not be a great burden, but does give pleasure to the other. These
include such trivia as how strong the tea or coffee should be, how much talk there will
be at meals, sleep and work schedules, levels of noise, and so on. Of course with that
knowledge we can more easily make others miserable, too, if we wish to do so.
Domestic tasks typically do not require high expertise, and as a consequence most
members of the family can learn to do them eventually. Because they do learn, members
derive many benefits from one another, without having to go outside the family unit.
Again, this makes a familistic mode of living more attractive than it would be otherwise.
In addition, with reference to many such tasks, there are no outside experts anyway
(throughout most of world history, there have been no experts in childrearing, taking care
of small cuts or bruises, murmuring consoling words in response to some distress, and
so on). That is, the tasks within a family setting are likely to be tasks at which insiders
are at least as good as outsiders, and typically better.
No other social institutions offer this range of complementarities, sharing, and
closely linked, interwoven advantages. The closest possible exception might be some
ascribed, ritual friendships in a few societies, but even these do not offer the range of
exchanges that are to be found in the familistic processes.
We have focused on advantages that the members of families obtain from living
under this type of arrangement. However, when we survey the wide range of family pat-
terns in hundreds of societies, we are struck by the fact that this social unit is strongly
supported by outsidersthat is, members of the larger society.
It is supported by a structure of norms, values, laws, and a wide range of social pres-
sures. More concretely, other members of the society believe such units are necessary,
and they are concerned about how people discharge their obligations within the family.
2. For further comparisons of bureaucracy and informal groups, see Eugene Litwak, Technical Innovation
and Theoretical Functions of Primary Groups and Bureaucratic Structures, American Journal of Sociology, 73
(1968), 468 481.
Ch-01.indd 22 7/8/2008 12:31:37 PM
Chapter 1 Families Past and Present 23
They punish members of the family who do not conform to ideal behavior, and praise
those who do conform. These intrusions are not simply whimsical, or a matter of op-
pression. Other members of the society do in fact have a stake in how families discharge
their various tasks. More broadly, it is widely believed that the collective needs of the
whole society are served by some of the activities individual families carry out. In short,
it is characteristic of the varieties of the family that participants on an average enjoy
more, and gain more comfort, pleasure, or advantage from being in a familistic arrange-
ment than from living alone; and other members of the society view that arrangement as
contributing in some measure to the survival of the society itself. Members of societies
have usually supposed it important for most other individuals to form families, to rear
children, to create the next generation, to support and help each otherwhether or not
individual members of specific families do in fact feel they gain real advantages from liv-
ing in a familistic arrangement. For example, over many centuries, people opposed legal
divorces, whether or not they themselves were happily married, and with little regard for
the marital happiness of others.
This view of what makes up the familistic social package explains several kinds of
widely observable social behavior. One is that people experiment with different kinds
of arrangements, often guided by a new philosophy of how people ought to live. They
do so because their own needs have not been adequately fulfilled in the traditional modes
of family arrangements available to them in their own society. Since other people have a
stake in the kinds of familistic arrangements people make, we can also expect that when
some individuals or groups attempt to change or experiment with the established system,
various members of the society will object, and may even persecute them for it. We can
also see why it is that even in a high-divorce society such as our own, where millions of
people have been dissatisfied or hurt by their marriages and their divorces, they neverthe-
less move back into a marital arrangement. That is, after examining various alternatives,
the familistic social package still seems to offer a broader set of personal advantages, and
the outside society supports that move. And, as noted earlier, even when there are strong
political pressures to create new social units that give far less support for the individual
family, as in China, Russia, and the Israeli kibbutzim, we can expect that people will con-
tinue to drift back toward some kind of familistic arrangement.
A SOCIOLOGICAL APPROACH
TO FAMILY RESEARCH
The unusual traits the family exhibits as a type of social subsystem require that some at-
tention be paid to the analytic approach to be used in studying it. First, neither ideal nor
reality can be excluded from our attention. It would, for example, be naive to suppose that
because some 40 percent of all U.S. couples now marrying will eventually divorce, they
do not cherish the ideal of remaining married to one person. Contemporary estimates
suggest that about half of all married men engage in extramarital intercourse at some
time, but public opinion surveys report that a large majority of both men and women in
the United States, even in these permissive times, approve of the ideal of faithfulness. On
Ch-01.indd 23 7/8/2008 12:31:37 PM
24 Part I The Changing Family
a more personal level, every reader of these lines has lied at some time, but nevertheless
most believe in the ideal of telling the truth.
A sociologist ascertains the ideals of family systems partly because they are a rough
guide to behavior. Knowing that people prefer to have their sons and daughters marry
at least at the same class level, we can expect them to try to control their childrens mate
choices if they can do so. We can also specify some of the conditions under which they
will have a greater or lesser success in reaching that goal. We also know that when a per-
son violates the ideal, he or she is likely to conceal the violation if possible. If that is not
possible, people will try to find some excuse for the violation, and are likely to be embar-
rassed if others find out about it.
The sociology of the family cannot confine itself only to contemporary urban (or
suburban) American life. Conclusions of any substantial validity or scope must include
data from other societies, whether these are past or present, industrial or nonindustrial,
Asian or European. Data from the historical past, such as Periclean Athens or imperial
Rome, are not often used because no sociologically adequate account of their family sys-
tems has as yet been written.
3
On the other hand, the last two decades have seen the ap-
pearance of many studies about family systems in various European cities of the last five
centuries.
The study of customs and beliefs from the past yields a better understanding of
the possible range of social behavior. Thereby, we are led to deny or at least to qualify
a finding that might be correct if limited only to modern American life (such as the rise
in divorce rates over several decades). The use of data from tribal societies of the past or
present helps us in testing conclusions about family systems that are not found at all in
Western society, such as matrilineal systems or polygyny. Or, an apparently simple rela-
tionship may take a different form in other societies. For example, in the United States
most first marriages are based on a love relationship (whatever else they may be based
on), and people are reluctant to admit that they have married someone with whom they
were not in love. By contrast, though people fall in love in other societies, love may play
a small or a large part in the marriage system. . . .
It is possible to study almost any phenomenon from a wide range of viewpoints. We
may study the economic aspects of family behavior, or we may confine ourselves to the
biological factors in family patterns. A full analysis of any concrete object is impossible.
Everything can be analyzed from many vantage points, each of them yielding a somewhat
different but still limited picture. Everything is infinitely complex. Each science limits its
perspective to the range of processes that it considers important. Each such approach has
its own justification. Here we examine the family mainly from a sociological perspective.
The sociological approach focuses on the family as a social institution, the peculiar
and unique quality of family interaction as social. For example, family systems exhibit the
characteristics of legitimacy and authority, which are not biological categories at all.
The values and the prescribed behavior to be found in a family, or the rights and duties
of family statuses such as father or daughter, are not psychological categories. They are
peculiar to the theoretical approach of sociology. Personality theory is not very useful in
3. However, Keith Hopkins has published several specialized studies on various aspects of Roman families.
See his Conquerors and Slaves (Cambridge University Press, 1978).
Ch-01.indd 24 7/8/2008 12:31:37 PM
Chapter 1 Families Past and Present 25
explaining the particular position of the family in Chinese and Japanese social structures,
although it may help us understand how individuals respond emotionally to those rights
and obligations. If we use a consistently sociological approach, we will miss some impor-
tant information about concrete family interaction. The possible gain when we stay on
one theoretical level may be the achievement of some increased systematization, and some
greater rigor.
At a minimum, however, when an analyst moves from the sociological to the psy-
chological level of theory, he or she ought at least to be conscious of it. If the investigation
turns to the impact of biological or psychological factors on the family, they should be
examined with reference to their social meaning. For example, interracial marriage ap-
pears to be of little biological significance, but it has much social impact on those who
take part in such a marriage. A sociologist who studies the family is not likely to be an
expert in the psychodynamics of mental disease, but is interested in the effect of mental
disease on the social relations in a particular family or type of family, or in the adjustment
different family types make to it.
R E A DI NG 2
The Global Revolution in Family
and Personal Life
Anthony Giddens
Among all the changes going on today, none are more important than those happening in
our personal livesin sexuality, emotional life, marriage and the family. There is a global
revolution going on in how we think of ourselves and how we form ties and connections
with others. It is a revolution advancing unevenly in different regions and cultures, with
many resistances.
As with other aspects of the runaway world, we dont know what the ratio of ad-
vantages and anxieties will turn out to be. In some ways, these are the most difficult and
disturbing transformations of all. Most of us can tune out from larger problems for much
of the time. We cant opt out, however, from the swirl of change reaching right into the
heart of our emotional lives.
There are few countries in the world where there isnt intense discussion about sex-
ual equality, the regulation of sexuality and the future of the family. And where there isnt
open debate, this is mostly because it is actively repressed by authoritarian governments
or fundamentalist groups. In many cases, these controversies are national or localas
are the social and political reactions to them. Politicians and pressure groups will suggest
that if only family policy were modified, if only divorce were made harder or easier to get
in their particular country, solutions to our problems could readily be found.
Ch-01.indd 25 7/8/2008 12:31:37 PM
26 Part I The Changing Family
But the changes affecting the personal and emotional spheres go far beyond the bor-
ders of any particular country, even one as large as the United States. We find the same
issues almost everywhere, differing only in degree and according to the cultural context
in which they take place.
In China, for example, the state is considering making divorce more difficult. In
the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, very liberal marriage laws were passed. Mar-
riage is a working contract, that can be dissolved, I quote: when husband and wife both
desire it.
Even if one partner objects, divorce can be granted when mutual affection has
gone from the marriage. Only a two week wait is required, after which the two pay $4
and are henceforth independent. The Chinese divorce rate is still low as compared with
Western countries, but it is rising rapidlyas is true in the other developing Asian socie-
ties. In Chinese cities, not only divorce, but cohabitation is becoming more frequent.
In the vast Chinese countryside, by contrast, everything is different. Marriage and
the family are much more traditionalin spite of the official policy of limiting child-
birth through a mixture of incentives and punishment. Marriage is an arrangement be-
tween two families, fixed by the parents rather than the individuals concerned.
A recent study in the province of Gansu, which has only a low level of economic
development, found that 60% of marriages are still arranged by parents. As a Chinese
saying has it: meet once, nod your head and marry. There is a twist in the tail in mod-
ernising China. Many of those currently divorcing in the urban centres were married in
the traditional manner in the country.
In China there is much talk of protecting the family. In many Western countries
the debate is even more shrill. The family is a site for the struggles between tradition
and modernity, but also a metaphor for them. There is perhaps more nostalgia surround-
ing the lost haven of the family than for any other institution with its roots in the past.
Politicians and activists routinely diagnose the breakdown of family life and call for a
return to the traditional family.
Now the traditional family is very much a catch-all category. There have been
many different types of family and kinship systems in different societies and cultures.
The Chinese family, for instance, was always distinct from family forms in the West.
Ar ranged marriage was never as common in most European countries, as in China, or
India. Yet the family in non-modern cultures did, and does, have some features found
more or less everywhere.
The traditional family was above all an economic unit. Agricultural production
normally involved the whole family group, while among the gentry and aristocracy, trans-
mission of property was the main basis of marriage. In mediaeval Europe, marriage was
not contracted on the basis of sexual love, nor was it regarded as a place where such love
should flourish. As the French historian, Georges Duby, puts it, marriage in the middle
ages was not to involve frivolity, passion, or fantasy.
The inequality of men and women was intrinsic to the traditional family. I dont
think one could overstate the importance of this. In Europe, women were the property
of their husbands or fatherschattels as defined in law.
In the traditional family, it wasnt only women who lacked rightschildren did too.
The idea of enshrining childrens rights in law is in historical terms relatively recent. In
Ch-01.indd 26 7/8/2008 12:31:37 PM
Chapter 1 Families Past and Present 27
premodern periods, as in traditional cultures today, children werent reared for their own
sake, or for the satisfaction of the parents. One could almost say that children werent
recognised as individuals.
It wasnt that parents didnt love their children, but they cared about them more for
the contribution they made to the common economic task than for themselves. More-
over, the death rate of children was frightening. In Colonial America nearly one in four
infants died in their first year. Almost 50% didnt live to age 10.
Except for certain courtly or elite groups, in the traditional family sexuality was
always dominated by reproduction. This was a matter of tradition and nature combined.
The absence of effective contraception meant that for most women sexuality was inevi-
tably closely connected with childbirth. In many traditional cultures, including in West-
ern Europe up to the threshold of the 20th Century, a woman might have 10 or more
pregnancies during the course of her life.
Sexuality was regulated by the idea of female virtue. The sexual double standard is
often thought of as a creation of the Victorian period. In fact, in one version or another
it was central to almost all non-modern societies. It involved a dualistic view of female
sexualitya clear cut division between the virtuous woman on the one hand and the
libertine on the other.
Sexual promiscuity in many cultures has been taken as a positive defining feature
of masculinity. James Bond is, or was, admired for his sexual as well as his physical hero-
ism. Sexually adventurous women, by contrast, have nearly always been beyond the pale,
no matter how much influence the mistresses of some prominent figures might have
achieved.
Attitudes towards homosexuality were also governed by a mix of tradition and na-
ture. Anthropological surveys show that homosexualityor male homosexuality at any
ratehas been tolerated, or openly approved of, in more cultures than it has been
outlawed.
Those societies that have been hostile to homosexuality have usually condemned it
as specifically unnatural. Western attitudes have been more extreme than most; less than
half a century ago homosexuality was still widely regarded as a perversion and written up
as such in manuals of psychiatry.
Antagonism towards homosexuality is still widespread and the dualistic view of
women continues to be held by manyof both sexes. But over the past few decades the
main elements of peoples sexual lives in the West have changed in an absolutely basic
way. The separation of sexuality from reproduction is in principle complete. Sexuality is
for the first time something to be discovered, moulded, altered. Sexuality, which used to
be defined so strictly in relation to marriage and legitimacy, now has little connection
to them at all. We should see the increasing acceptance of homosexuality not just as a
tribute to liberal tolerance. It is a logical outcome of the severance of sexuality from
reproduction. Sexuality which has no content is by definition no longer dominated by
heterosexuality.
What most of its defenders in Western countries call the traditional family was
in fact a late, transitional phase in family development in the 1950s. This was a time at
which the proportion of women out at work was still relatively low and when it was still
difficult, especially for women, to obtain divorce without stigma. On the other hand, men
Ch-01.indd 27 7/8/2008 12:31:37 PM
28 Part I The Changing Family
and women by this time were more equal than they had been previously, both in fact and
in law. The family had ceased to be an economic entity and the idea of romantic love as
basis for marriage had replaced marriage as an economic contract.
Since then, the family has changed much further. The details vary from society to
society, but the same trends are visible almost everywhere in the industrialised world.
Only a minority of people now live in what might be called the standard 1950s family
both parents living together with their children of the marriage, where the mother is a
full time housewife, and the father the breadwinner. In some countries, more than a third
of all births happen outside wedlock, while the proportion of people living alone has gone
up steeply and looks likely to rise even more.
In most societies, like the U.S., marriage remains popularthe U.S. has aptly been
called a high divorce, high marriage society. In Scandinavia, on the other hand, a large
proportion of people living together, including where children are involved, remain
unmarried. Moreover, up to a quarter of women aged between 18 and 35 in the U.S. and
Europe say they do not intend to have childrenand they appear to mean it.
Of course in all countries older family forms continue to exist. In the U.S., many
people, recent immigrants particularly, still live according to traditional values. Most
family life, however, has been transformed by the rise of the couple and coupledom. Mar-
riage and the family have become what I termed in an earlier lecture shell institutions.
They are still called the same, but inside their basic character has changed.
In the traditional family, the married couple was only one part, and often not the
main part, of the family system. Ties with children and other relatives tended to be equally
or even more important in the day to day conduct of social life. Today the couple, married
or unmarried, is at the core of what the family is. The couple came to be at the centre of
family life as the economic role of the family dwindled and love, or love plus sexual at-
traction, became the basis of forming marriage ties.
A couple once constituted has its own exclusive history, its own biography. It is a
unit based upon emotional communication or intimacy. The idea of intimacy, like so
many other familiar notions Ive discussed in these lectures, sounds old but in fact is very
new. Marriage was never in the past based upon intimacyemotional communication.
No doubt this was important to a good marriage but it was not the foundation of it. For
the couple, it is. Communication is the means of establishing the tie in the first place and
it is the chief rationale for its continuation.
We should recognise what a major transition this is. Coupling and uncoupling
provide a more accurate description of the arena of personal life now than do marriage
and the family. A more important question for us than are you married? is how good
is your relationship?
The idea of a relationship is also surprisingly recent. Only 30 or so years ago, no
one spoke of relationships. They didnt need to, nor did they need to speak in terms
of intimacy and commitment. Marriage at that time was the commitment, as the exis-
tence of shotgun marriages bore witness. While statistically marriage is still the normal
condition, for most people its meaning has more or less completely changed. Marriage
signifies that a couple is in a stable relationship, and may indeed promote that stability,
since it makes a public declaration of commitment. However, marriage is no longer the
chief defining basis of coupledom.
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Chapter 1 Families Past and Present 29
The position of children in all this is interesting and somewhat paradoxical. Our
attitudes towards children and their protection have altered radically over the past sev-
eral generations. We prize children so much partly because they have become so much
rarer, and partly because the decision to have a child is very different from what it was
for previous generations. In the traditional family, children were an economic benefit.
Today in Western countries a child, on the contrary, puts a large financial burden on the
parents. Having a child is more of a distinct and specific decision than it used to be, and
it is a decision guided by psychological and emotional needs. The worries we have about
the effects of divorce upon children, and the existence of many fatherless families, have
to be understood against the background of our much higher expectations about how
children should be cared for and protected.
There are three areas in which emotional communication, and therefore intimacy,
are replacing the old ties that used to bind together peoples personal livesin sexual and
love relations, parent-child relations and in friendship.
To analyse these, I want to use the idea of what I call the pure relationship. I mean
by this a relationship based upon emotional communication, where the rewards derived
from such communication are the main basis for the relationship to continue.
I dont mean a sexually pure relationship. Also I dont mean anything that exists in
reality. Im talking of an abstract idea that helps us understand changes going on in the
world. Each of the three areas just mentionedsexual relationships, parent-child rela-
tions and friendshipis tending to approximate to this model. Emotional communica-
tion or intimacy, in other words, are becoming the key to what they are all about.
The pure relationship has quite different dynamics from more traditional social
ties. It depends upon processes of active trustopening oneself up to the other. Self-
disclosure is the basic condition of intimacy.
The pure relationship is also implicitly democratic. When I was originally working
on the study of intimate relationships, I read a great deal of therapeutic and self-help lit-
erature on the subject. I was struck by something I dont believe has been widely noticed
or remarked upon. If one looks at how a therapist sees a good relationshipin any of
the three spheres just mentionedit is striking how direct a parallel there is with public
democracy.
A good relationship, of course, is an idealmost ordinary relationships dont come
even close. Im not suggesting that our relations with spouses, lovers, children or friends
arent often messy, conflictful and unsatisfying. But the principles of public democracy
are ideals too, that also often stand at some large distance from reality.
A good relationship is a relationship of equals, where each party has equal rights
and obligations. In such a relationship, each person has respect, and wants the best, for
the other. The pure relationship is based upon communication, so that understanding the
other persons point of view is essential.
Talk, or dialogue, are the basis of making the relationship work. Relationships func-
tion best if people dont hide too much from each otherthere has to be mutual trust.
And trust has to be worked at, it cant just be taken for granted.
Finally, a good relationship is one free from arbitrary power, coercion or violence.
Every one of these qualities conforms to the values of democratic politics. In a de-
mocracy, all are in principle equal, and with equality of rights and responsibilities comes
Ch-01.indd 29 7/8/2008 12:31:37 PM
30 Part I The Changing Family
mutual respect. Open dialogue is a core property of democracy. Democratic systems
substitute open discussion of issuesa public space of dialoguefor authoritarian power,
or for the sedimented power of tradition. No democracy can work without trust. And
democracy is undermined if it gives way to authoritarianism or violence.
When we apply these principlesas ideals, I would stress againto relationships,
we are talking of something very importantthe possible emergence of what I shall call,
a democracy of the emotions in everyday life. A democracy of the emotions, it seems to
me, is as important as public democracy in improving the quality of our lives.
This holds as much in parent-child relations as in other areas. These cant, and
shouldnt, be materially equal. Parents must have authority over children, in everyones
interests. Yet they should presume an in-principle equality. In a democratic family, the
authority of parents should be based upon an implicit contract. The parent in effect says
to the child: If you were an adult, and knew what I know, you would agree that what
I ask you to do is legitimate.
Children in traditional families wereand aresupposed to be seen and not heard.
Many parents, perhaps despairing of their childrens rebelliousness, would dearly like to
resurrect that rule. But there isnt any going back to it, nor should there be. In a democ-
racy of the emotions, children can and should be able to answer back.
An emotional democracy doesnt imply lack of discipline, or absence of authority.
It simply seeks to put them on a different footing.
Something very similar happened in the public sphere, when democracy began
to replace arbitrary government and the rule of force. And like public democracy the
democratic family must be anchored in a stable, yet open, civil society. If I may coin a
phraseIt takes a village.
A democracy of the emotions would draw no distinctions of principle between het-
erosexual and same-sex relationships. Gays, rather than heterosexuals, have actually been
pioneers in discovering the new world of relationships and exploring its possibilities.
They have had to be, because when homosexuality came out of the closet, gays werent
able to depend upon the normal supports of traditional marriage. They have had to be
innovators, often in a hostile environment.
To speak of fostering an emotional democracy doesnt mean being weak about
family duties, or about public policy towards the family. Democracy, after all, means the
acceptance of obligations, as well as rights sanctioned in law. The protection of children
has to be the primary feature of legislation and public policy. Parents should be legally
obliged to provide for their children until adulthood, no matter what living arrangements
they enter into. Marriage is no longer an economic institution, yet as a ritual commit-
ment it can help stabilise otherwise fragile relationships. If this applies to heterosexual
relationships, I dont see why it shouldnt apply to homosexual ones too.
There are many questions to be asked of all thistoo many to answer in a short lec-
ture. I have concentrated mainly upon trends affecting the family in Western countries.
What about areas where the traditional family remains largely intact, as in the example
of China with which I began? Will the changes observed in the West become more and
more global?
I think they willindeed that they are. It isnt a question of whether existing forms
of the traditional family will become modified, but when and how. I would venture even
Ch-01.indd 30 7/8/2008 12:31:38 PM
Chapter 1 Families Past and Present 31
further. What I have described as an emerging democracy of the emotions is on the
front line in the struggle between cosmopolitanism and fundamentalism that I described
in the last lecture. Equality of the sexes, and the sexual freedom of women, which are
incompatible with the traditional family, are anathema to fundamentalist groups. Op-
position to them, indeed, is one of the defining features of religious fundamentalism
across the world.
There is plenty to be worried about in the state of the family, in Western countries
and elsewhere. It is just as mistaken to say that every family form is as good as any other,
as to argue that the decline of the traditional family is a disaster.
I would turn the argument of the political and fundamentalist right on its head.
The persistence of the traditional familyor aspects of itin many parts of the world
is more worrisome than its decline. For what are the most important forces promoting
democracy and economic development in poorer countries? Well, they are the equality
and education of women. And what must be changed to make these possible? Most im-
portantly, what must be changed is the traditional family.
In conclusion, I should emphasise that sexual equality is not just a core principle of
democracy. It is also relevant to happiness and fulfilment.
Many of the changes happening to the family are problematic and difficult. But
surveys in the U.S. and Europe show that few want to go back to traditional male and
female roles, much less to legally defined inequality.
If ever I were tempted to think that the traditional family might be best after all,
I remember what my great aunt said. She must have had one of the longest marriages
of anyone. She married young, and was with her husband for over 60 years. She once
confided to me that she had been deeply unhappy with him the whole of that time. In
her day there was no escape.
R E A DI NG 3
The Life Course Revolution
Arlene Skolnick
Many of us, in moments of nostalgia, imagine the past as a kind of Disneylanda quaint
setting we might step back into with our sense of ourselves intact, yet free of the stresses
of modern life. But in yearning for the golden past we imagine we have lost, we are un-
aware of what we have escaped.
In our time, for example, dying before reaching old age has become a rare event;
about three-quarters of all people die after their sixty-fifth birthday. It is hard for us to
appreciate what a novelty this is in human experience. In 1850, only 2 percent of the
population lived past sixty-five. We place dying in what we take to be its logical posi-
tion, observes the social historian Ronald Blythe, which is at the close of a long life,
Ch-01.indd 31 7/8/2008 12:31:38 PM
32 Part I The Changing Family
whereas our ancestors accepted the futility of placing it in any position at all. In the
midst of life we are in death, they said, and they meant it. To them it was a fact; to us it
is a metaphor.
This longevity revolution is largely a twentieth-century phenomenon. Astonish-
ingly, two-thirds of the total increase in human longevity since prehistoric times has
taken place since 1900and a good deal of that increase has occurred in recent decades.
Mortality rates in previous centuries were several times higher than today, and death
commonly struck at any age. Infancy was particularly hazardous; it took two babies to
make one adult, as one demographer put it. A white baby girl today has a greater chance
of living to be sixty than her counterpart born in 1870 would have had of reaching her
first birthday. And after infancy, death still hovered as an ever-present possibility. It was
not unusual for young and middle-aged adults to die of tuberculosis, pneumonia, or
other infectious diseases. ( Keats died at twenty-five, Schubert at thirty-one, Mozart at
thirty-five.)
These simple changes in mortality have had profound, yet little-appreciated effects
on family life; they have encouraged stronger emotional bonds between parents and chil-
dren, lengthened the duration of marriage and parent-child relationships, made grandpar-
enthood an expectable stage of the life course, and increased the number of grandparents
whom children actually know. More and more families have four or even five generations
alive at the same time. And for the first time in history, the average couple has more
parents living than it has children. It is also the first era when most of the parent-child
relationship takes place after the child becomes an adult.
In a paper entitled Death and the Family, the demographer Peter Uhlenberg
has examined some of these repercussions by contrasting conditions in 1900 with those
in 1976. In 1900, for example, half of all parents would have experienced the death of a
child; by 1976 only 6 percent would. And more than half of all children who lived to the
age of fifteen in 1900 would have experienced the death of a parent or sibling, compared
with less than 9 percent in 1976. Another outcome of the lower death rates was a decline
in the number of orphans and orphanages. Current discussions of divorce rarely take
into account the almost constant family disruption children experienced in the good
old days. In 1900, 1 out of 4 children under the age of fifteen lost a parent; 1 out of 62
lost both. The corresponding figures for 1976 are, respectively, 1 out of 20 and 1 out
of 1,800.
Because being orphaned used to be so common, the chances of a childs not living
with either parent was much greater at the turn of the century than it is now. Indeed,
some of the current growth in single-parent families is offset by a decline in the number
of children raised in institutions, in foster homes, or by relatives. This fact does not di-
minish the stresses of divorce and other serious family problems of today, but it does help
correct the tendency to contrast the terrible Present with an idealized Past.
Todays children rarely experience the death of a close relative, except for elderly
grandparents. And it is possible to grow into adulthood without experiencing even that
loss. We never had any deaths in my family, a friend recently told me, explaining that
none of her relatives had died until she was in her twenties. In earlier times, children were
made aware of the constant possibility of death, attended deathbed scenes, and were even
encouraged to examine the decaying corpses of family members.
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Chapter 1 Families Past and Present 33
One psychological result of our escape from the daily presence of death is that we
are ill prepared for it when it comes. For most of us, the first time we feel a heightened
concern with our own mortality is in our thirties and forties when we realize that the
years we have already lived outnumber those we have left.
Another result is that the death of a child is no longer a sad but normal hazard of
parenthood. Rather, it has become a devastating, life-shattering loss from which a parent
may never fully recover. The intense emotional bonding between parents and infants that
we see as a sociobiological given did not become the norm until the eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries. The privileged classes created the concept of the emotionally price-
less child, a powerful ideal that gradually filtered down through the rest of society.
The high infant mortality rates of premodern times were partly due to neglect,
and often to lethal child-rearing practices such as sending infants off to a wet nurse* or,
worse, infanticide. It now appears that in all societies lacking reliable contraception, the
careless treatment and neglect of unwanted children acted as a major form of birth con-
trol. This does not necessarily imply that parents were uncaring toward all their children;
rather, they seem to have practiced selective neglect of sickly infants in favor of sturdy
ones, or of later children in favor of earlier ones.

In 1801 a writer observed of Bavarian

peasants:
The peasant has joy when his wife brings forth the first fruit of their love, he has joy with
the second and third as well, but not with the fourth. . . . He sees all children coming
thereafter as hostile creatures, which take the bread from his mouth and the mouths of his
family. Even the heart of the most gentle mother becomes cold with the birth of the fifth
child, and the sixth, she unashamedly wishes death, that the child should pass to heaven.
Declining fertility rates are another major result of falling death rates. Until the
baby boom of the 1940s and 1950s, fertility rates had been dropping continuously since
the eighteenth century. By taking away parents fear that some of their children would
not survive to adulthood, lowered early-childhood mortality rates encouraged careful
planning of births and smaller families. The combination of longer lives and fewer, more
closely spaced children created a still-lengthening empty-nest stage in the family. This
* Wet-nursingthe breastfeeding of an infant by a woman other than the motherwas widely practiced in
pre-modern Europe and colonial America. Writing of a two-thousand-year-old war of the breast, the devel-
opmental psychologist William Kessen notes that the most persistent theme in the history of childhood is the
reluctance of mothers to suckle their babies, and the urgings of philosophers and physicians that they do so.
Infants were typically sent away from home for a year and a half or two years to be raised by poor country
women, in squalid conditions. When they took in more babies than they had milk enough to suckle, the babies
would die of malnutrition.
The reluctance to breast-feed may not have reflected maternal indifference so much as other demands
in premodern, precontraceptive timesthe need to take part in the family economy, the unwillingness of
husbands to abstain from sex for a year and a half or two. ( Her milk would dry up if a mother became pregnant.)
Although in France and elsewhere the custom persisted into the twentieth century, large-scale wet-nursing
symbolizes the gulf between modern and premodern sensibilities about infants and their care.

The anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes describes how impoverished mothers in northeastern Brazil se-
lect which infants to nurture.
Ch-01.indd 33 7/8/2008 12:31:38 PM
34 Part I The Changing Family
in turn has encouraged the companionate style of marriage, since husband and wife can
expect to live together for many years after their children have moved out.
Many demographers have suggested that falling mortality rates are directly linked
to rising divorce rates. In 1891 W. F. Willcox of Cornell University made one of the most
accurate social science predictions ever. Looking at the high and steadily rising divorce
rates of the time, along with falling mortality rates, he predicted that around 1980, the
two curves would cross and the number of marriages ended by divorce would equal
those ended by death. In the late 1970s, it all happened as Willcox had predicted. Then
divorce rates continued to increase before leveling off in the 1980s, while mortality rates
continued to decline. As a result, a couple marrying today is more likely to celebrate a
fortieth wedding anniversary than were couples around the turn of the century.
In statistical terms, then, it looks as if divorce has restored a level of instability to
marriage that had existed earlier due to the high mortality rate. But as Lawrence Stone
observes, it would be rash to claim that the psychological effects of the termination of
marriage by divorce, that is by an act of will, bear a close resemblance to its termination
by the inexorable accident of death.
THE NEW STAGES OF LIFE
In recent years it has become clear that the stages of life we usually think of as built
into human development are, to a large degree, social and cultural inventions. Although
people everywhere may pass through infancy, childhood, adulthood, and old age, the facts
of nature are doctored, as Ruth Benedict once put it, in different ways by different
cultures.
The Favorite Age
In 1962 Phillipe Aris made the startling claim that in medieval society, the idea of
childhood did not exist. Aris argued not that parents then neglected their children,
but that they did not think of children as having a special nature that required spe-
cial treatment; after the age of around five to seven, children simply joined the adult
world of work and play. This small adult conception of childhood has been observed
by many anthropologists in preindustrial societies. In Europe, according to Aris and
others, childhood was discovered, or invented, in the seventeenth and nineteenth cen-
turies, with the emergence of the private, domestic, companionate family and formal
schooling. These institutions created distinct roles for children, enabling childhood to
emerge as a distinct stage of life.
Despite challenges to Ariss work, the bulk of historical and cross-cultural evidence
supports the contention that childhood as we know it today is a relatively recent cultural
invention; our ideas about children, child-rearing practices, and the conditions of chil-
drens lives are dramatically different from those of earlier centuries. The same is true of
adolescence. Teenagers, such a conspicuous and noisy presence in modern life, and their
stage of life, known for its turmoil and soul searching, are not universal features of life
in other times and places.
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Chapter 1 Families Past and Present 35
Of course, the physical changes of pubertysexual maturation and spurt in growth
happen to everyone everywhere. Yet, even here, there is cultural and historical variation.
In the past hundred years, the age of first menstruation has declined from the mid-teens
to twelve, and the age young men reach their full height has declined from twenty-five
to under twenty. Both changes are believed to be due to improvements in nutrition and
health care, and these average ages are not expected to continue dropping.
Some societies have puberty rites, but they bring about a transition from childhood
not to adolescence but to adulthood. Other societies take no note at all of the changes,
and the transition from childhood to adulthood takes place simply and without social
recognition. Adolescence as we know it today appears to have evolved late in the nine-
teenth century; there is virtual consensus among social scientists that it is a creature of
the industrial revolution and it continues to be shaped by the forces which defined that
revolution: industrialization, specialization, urbanization . . . and bureaucratization of
human organizations and institutions, and continuing technological development.
In America before the second half of the nineteenth century, youth was an ill-defined
category. Puberty did not mark any new status or life experience. For the majority of
young people who lived on farms, work life began early, at seven or eight years old or
even younger. As they grew older, their responsibility would increase, and they would
gradually move toward maturity. Adults were not ignorant of the differences between
children and adults, but distinctions of age meant relatively little. As had been the prac-
tice in Europe, young people could be sent away to become apprentices or servants in
other households. As late as the early years of this century, working-class children went
to work at the age of ten or twelve.
A second condition leading to a distinct stage of adolescence was the founding of
mass education systems, particularly the large public high school. Compulsory educa-
tion helped define adolescence by setting a precise age for it; high schools brought large
numbers of teenagers together to create their own society for a good part of their daily
lives. So the complete set of conditions for adolescence on a mass scale did not exist until
the end of the nineteenth century.
The changed family situations of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century
youth also helped make this life stage more psychologically problematic. Along with the
increasing array of options to choose from, rapid social change was making one genera-
tions experience increasingly different from that of the next. Among the immigrants
who were flooding into the country at around the time adolescence was emerging, the
generation gap was particularly acute. But no parents were immune to the rapid shifts
in society and culture that were transforming America in the decades around the turn of
the century.
Further, the structure and emotional atmosphere of middle-class family life was
changing also, creating a more intimate and emotionally intense family life. Contrary to
the view that industrialization had weakened parent-child relations, the evidence is that
family ties between parents and adolescents intensified at this time: adolescents lived at
home until they married, and depended more completely, and for a longer time, on their
parents than in the past. Demographic change had cut family size in half over the course
of the century. Mothers were encouraged to devote themselves to the careful nurturing
of fewer children.
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36 Part I The Changing Family
This more intensive family life seems likely to have increased the emotional strain
of adolescence. Smaller households and a more nurturing style of child rearing, combined
with the increased contact between parents, especially mothers, and adolescent children,
may have created a kind of Oedipal family in middle class America.
The young persons awakening sexuality, particularly the young males, is likely to
have been more disturbing to both himself and his parents than during the era when
young men commonly lived away from home. . . . There is evidence that during the Vic-
torian era, fears of adolescent male sexuality, and of masturbation in particular, were
remarkably intense and widespread.
Family conflict in general may have been intensified by the peculiar combination
of teenagers increased dependence on parents and increased autonomy in making their
own life choices. Despite its tensions, the new emotionally intense middle-class home
made it more difficult than ever for adolescents to leave home for the heartless, indiffer-
ent world outside.
By the end of the nineteenth century, conceptions of adolescence took on modern
form, and by the first decades of the twentieth century, adolescence had become a house-
hold word. As articulated forcefully by the psychologist G. Stanley Hall in his 1904 trea-
tise, adolescence was a biological processnot simply the onset of sexual maturity but a
turbulent, transitional stage in the evolution of the human species: some ancient period
of storm and stress when old moorings were broken and a higher level attained.
Hall seemed to provide the answers to questions people were asking about the
troublesome young. His public influence eventually faded, but his conception of adoles-
cence as a time of storm and stress lived on. Adolescence continued to be seen as a period
of both great promise and great peril: every step of the upward way is strewn with the
wreckage of body, mind and morals. The youth problemwhether the lower-class prob-
lem of delinquency, or the identity crises and other psychological problems of middle-
class youthhas continued to haunt America, and other modern societies, ever since.
Ironically, then, the institutions that had developed to organize and control a prob-
lematic age ended by heightening adolescent self-awareness, isolating youth from the rest
of society, and creating a youth culture, making the transition to adulthood still more
problematic and risky. Institutional recognition in turn made adolescents a more distinct
part of the population, and being adolescent a more distinct and self-conscious experi-
ence. As it became part of the social structure of modern society, adolescence also became
an important stage of the individuals biographyan indeterminate period of being nei-
ther child nor adult that created its own problems. Any society that excludes youth from
adult work, and offers them what Erikson calls a moratoriumtime and space to try
out identities and lifestylesand at the same time demands extended schooling as the
route to success is likely to turn adolescence into a struggle for self. It is also likely to
run the risk of increasing numbers of mixed-up, rebellious youth.
But, in fact, the classic picture of adolescent storm and stress is not universal. Stud-
ies of adolescents in America and other industrialized societies suggest that extreme re-
bellion and rejection of parents, flamboyant behavior, and psychological turmoil do not
describe most adolescents, even today. Media images of the youth of the 1980s and 1990s
as a deeply troubled, lost generation beset by crime, drug abuse, and teenage pregnancy
are also largely mistaken.
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Chapter 1 Families Past and Present 37
Although sexual activity and experimenting with drugs and alcohol have become
common among middle-class young people, drug use has actually declined in recent
years. Disturbing as these practices are for parents and other adults, they apparently do
not interfere with normal development for most adolescents. Nevertheless, for a signifi-
cant minority, sex and drugs add complications to a period of development during which
a young persons life can easily go awrytemporarily or for good.
More typically, for most young people, the teen years are marked by mild rebel-
liousness and moodinessenough to make it a difficult period for parents but not one of
a profound parent-child generation gap or of deep alienation from conventional values.
These ordinary tensions of family living through adolescence are exacerbated in times of
rapid social change, when the world adolescents confront is vastly different from the one
in which their parents came of age. Always at the forefront of social change, adolescents
in industrial societies inevitably bring discomfort to their elders, who wish to see their
childrens adolescence as an enactment of the retrospectively distorted memory of their
own. . . . But such intergenerational continuity can occur only in the rapidly disappearing
isolation of the desert or the rain forest.
If adolescence is a creation of modern culture, that culture has also been shaped by
adolescence. Adolescents, with their music, fads, fashions, and conflicts, not only are con-
spicuous, but reflect a state of mind that often extends beyond the years designated for
them. The adolescent mode of experienceaccessible to people of any ageis marked
by exploration, becoming, growth, and pain.
Since the nineteenth century, for example, the coming-of-age novel has become
a familiar literary genre. Patricia Spacks observes that while Victorian authors looked
back at adolescence from the perspective of adulthood, twentieth-century novelists since
James Joyce and D. H. Lawrence have become more intensely identified with their young
heroes, writing not from a distance but from deep inside the adolescence experience.
The novelists use of the adolescent to symbolize the artist as romantic outsider mirrors
a more general cultural tendency. As Phillipe Aris observes, Our society has passed
from a period which was ignorant of adolescence to a period in which adolescence is the
favorite age. We now want to come to it early and linger in it as long as possible.
The Discovery of Adulthood
Middle age is the latest life stage to be discovered, and the notion of mid-life crisis reca-
pitulates the storm-and-stress conception of adolescence. Over the course of the twen-
tieth century, especially during the years after World War II, a developmental conception
of childhood became institutionalized in public thought. Parents took it for granted that
children passed through ages, stages, and phases: the terrible twos, the teenage rebel.
In recent years the idea of development has been increasingly applied to adults, as new
stages of adult life are discovered. Indeed much of the psychological revolution of recent
yearsthe tendency to look at life through psychological lensescan be understood in
part as the extension of the developmental approach to adulthood.
In 1976 Gail Sheehys best-selling Passages popularized the concept of mid-life cri-
sis. Sheehy argued that every individual must pass through such a watershed, a time when
we reevaluate our sense of self, undergo a crisis, and emerge with a new identity. Failure
Ch-01.indd 37 7/8/2008 12:31:38 PM
38 Part I The Changing Family
to do so, she warned, can have dire consequences. The book was the most influential
popular attempt to apply to adults the ages-and-stages approach to development that had
long been applied to children. Ironically, this came about just as historians were raising
questions about the universality of those stages.
Despite its popularity, Sheehys book, and the research she reported in it, have come
under increasing criticism. Is the mid-life crisis, if it exists, more than a warmed-over
identity crisis? asked one review of the research literature on mid-life. In fact, there is lit-
tle or no evidence for the notion that adults pass through a series of sharply defined stages,
or a series of crises that must be resolved before passing from one stage to the next.
Nevertheless, the notion of a mid-life crisis caught on because it reflected shifts
in adult experience across the life course. Most peoples decisions about marriage and
work are no longer irrevocably made at one fateful turning point on the brink of adult-
hood. The choices made at twenty-one may no longer fit at forty or fiftythe world has
changed; parents, children, and spouses have changed; working life has changed. The kind
of issue that makes adolescence problematicthe array of choices and the need to fashion
a coherent, continuous sense of self in the midst of all this changerecurs throughout
adulthood. As a Jules Feiffer cartoon concludes, Maturity is a phase, but adolescence is
forever.
Like the identity crisis of adolescence, the concept of mid-life crisis appears to
reflect the experience of the more educated and advantaged. Those with more options
in life are more likely to engage in the kind of introspection and reappraisal of previous
choices that make up the core of the mid-life crisis. Such people realize that they will
never fulfill their earlier dreams, or that they have gotten what they wanted and find they
are still not happy. But as the Berkeley longitudinal data show, even in that segment of
the population, mid-life crisis is far from the norm. People who have experienced fewer
choices in the past, and have fewer options for charting new directions in the future, are
less likely to encounter a mid-life crisis. Among middle Americans, life is dominated by
making ends meet, coping with everyday events, and managing unexpected crises.
While there may be no fixed series of stages or crises adults must pass through, mid-
dle age or mid-life in our time does have some unique features that make it an unsettled
time, different from other periods in the life course as well as from mid-life in earlier eras.
First, as we saw earlier, middle age is the first period in which most people today confront
death, illness, and physical decline. It is also an uneasy age because of the increased impor-
tance of sexuality in modern life. Sexuality has come to be seen as the core of our sense
of self, and sexual fulfillment as the center of the couple relationship. In mid-life, people
confront the decline of their physical attractiveness, if not of their sexuality.
There is more than a passing resemblance between the identity problems of ado-
lescence and the issues that fall under the rubric of mid-life crisis. In a list of themes
recurring in the literature on the experience of identity crisis, particularly in adolescence,
the psychologist Roy Baumeister includes: feelings of emptiness, feelings of vagueness,
generalized malaise, anxiety, self-consciousness. These symptoms describe not only ado-
lescent and mid-life crises but what Erikson has labeled identity problemsor what has,
of late, been considered narcissism.
Consider, for example, Heinz Kohuts description of patients suffering from what he
calls narcissistic personality disorders. They come to the analyst with vague symptoms, but
Ch-01.indd 38 7/8/2008 12:31:38 PM
Chapter 1 Families Past and Present 39
eventually focus on feelings about the selfemptiness, vague depression, being drained of
energy, having no zest for work or anything else, shifts in self-esteem, heightened sen-
sitivity to the opinions and reactions of others, feeling unfulfilled, a sense of uncertainty
and purposelessness. It seems on the face of it, observes the literary critic Steven Mar-
cus, as if these people are actually suffering from what was once called unhappiness.
The New Aging
Because of the extraordinary revolution in longevity, the proportion of elderly people
in modern industrial societies is higher than it has ever been. This little-noticed but
profound transformation affects not just the old but families, an individuals life course,
and society as a whole. We have no cultural precedents for the mass of the population
reaching old age. Further, the meaning of old age has changedindeed, it is a life stage
still in process, its boundaries unclear. When he came into office at the age of sixty-four,
George [ H. W.] Bush did not seem like an old man. Yet when Franklin Roosevelt died
at the same age, he did seem to be old.
President Bush illustrates why gerontologists in recent years have had to revise
the meaning of old. He is a good example of what they have termed the young old
or the new elders; the social historian Peter Laslett uses the term the third age.
Whatever it is called, it represents a new stage of life created by the extension of the life
course in industrialized countries. Recent decades have witnessed the first generations
of people who live past sixty-five and remain healthy, vigorous, alert, and, mostly due to
retirement plans, financially independent. These people are pioneers on the frontier of
age, observed the journalist Frances Fitzgerald, in her study of Sun City, a retirement
community near Tampa, Florida, people for whom society had as yet no set of expecta-
tions and no vision.
The meaning of the later stages of life remains unsettled. Just after gerontologists
had marked off the young oldpeople who seemed more middle-aged than oldthey
had to devise a third category, the oldest old, to describe the fastest-growing group in
the population, people over eighty-five. Many if not most of these people are like Titho-
nus, the mythical figure who asked the gods for eternal life but forgot to ask for eternal
youth as well. For them, the gift of long life has come at the cost of chronic disease and
disability.
The psychological impact of this unheralded longevity revolution has largely been
ignored, except when misconstrued. The fear of age, according to Christopher Lasch, is
one of the chief symptoms of this cultures alleged narcissism. But when people expected
to die in their forties or fifties, they didnt have to face the problem of aging. Alzheimers
disease, for example, now approaching epidemic proportions, is an ironic by-product
of the extension of the average life span. When living to seventy or eighty is a realistic
prospect, it makes sense to diet and exercise, to eat healthy foods, and to make other
narcissistic investments in the self.
Further, the gift of mass longevity, the anthropologist David Plath argues, has
been so recent, dramatic, and rapid that it has become profoundly unsettling in all post
industrial societies: If the essential cultural nightmare of the nineteenth century was to
be in poverty, perhaps ours is to be old and alone or afflicted with terminal disease.
Ch-01.indd 39 7/8/2008 12:31:39 PM
40 Part I The Changing Family
Many people thus find themselves in life stages for which cultural scripts have not
yet been written; family members face one another in relationships for which tradition
provides little guidance. We are stuck with awkward-sounding terms like adult chil-
dren and . . . grandson-in-law. And when cultural rules are ambiguous, emotional
relationships can become tense or at least ambivalent.
A study of five-generation families in Germany reveals the confusion and strain that
result when children and parents are both in advanced old agefor example, a great-
great-grandmother and her daughter, who is herself a great-grandmother. Who has the
right to be old? Who should take care of whom? Similarly, Plath, who has studied the
problems of mass longevity in Japan, finds that even in that familistic society the tradi-
tional meaning of family roles has been put into question by the stretching out of the life
span. In the United States, some observers note that people moving into retirement com-
munities sometimes bring their parents to live with them. Said one disappointed retiree:
I want to enjoy my grandchildren; I never expected that when I was a grandparent Id
have to look after my parents.
R E A DI NG 4
The Family in Trouble:
Since When? For Whom?
Claude S. Fischer and Michael Hout
Thinking about the family and the religions of the book brings to mind the stories of
family trouble that fill the Bible. For example, Adam and Eve become homeless because
they irritate the Landlord, and then one of their sons kills the other. Lot, in a drunken
stupor, impregnates his daughters. Sarah is infertile into old age and in her jealousy
gets Abraham to banish his concubine and his son to the desert. The twin sons of Isaac
quarrel, and their mother connives with one to usurp the position of the other. And so
on, from Genesis to King David and beyond. Families in troubleindeed, dysfunctional
familiesare hardly new. Although in this chapter we do not deal with millennia, we do
seek to put family troubles into a historical context.
In the effort to answer the questions of why American households are changing and
what difference it makes, we see our responsibility as addressing a prior and fundamental
question: How are American forms and norms of marriage and the family changing? In
answering these questions, we shall suggest that some widespread worries about the fam-
ily today may be founded on misunderstandings.
Many misunderstandings arise from false memories about American history, mem-
ories that credit an earlier time with more settled family life. In fact, with the exception
of a brief period after World War II, Americans often fell short of their family idealthe
Ch-01.indd 40 7/8/2008 12:31:39 PM
Chapter 1 Families Past and Present 41
ideal of a happily married couple with children. Early in the twentieth century, numerous
circumstances, from premature death to infertility, interfered with reaching that ideal.
More recently, Americans have departed again from that ideal, many because they found
new options and made alternative choices, options such as living longer and choices such
as having fewer children or leaving bad marriages. How many of these choices should
be considered trouble depends on ones perspective. We can value some of them as
moral alternatives and valid aspirationsfor example, to choose the way we live and
with whom, and how to love and care responsibly for these people. Other Americans
today have departed from the family ideal less from choice and more from constraint as
a consequence of poverty and limited opportunities. In any case, the history of the family
tells a story more complex than many appreciate.
In particular, a key concern we have is that discussion of family change often misses
the questions Since when? and For whom? Consider the trend displayed in Fig-
ure 4.1: It is consistent with the descriptions of family trouble in showing that the
proportion of Americans age thirty to forty-four years who were living as single adults
rose rapidly between 1960 and 2000.
1
These Americans were not married, nor in an
extended family, but instead were living alone, or as single parents, or in a group situ-
ation, like roommates. The singles rose from 10 percent of their age group in 1960 to
30 percent in 2000. But if we look back to 1900 in Figure 4.2, we see that this recent
trend is a reversal of an older one. Moreover, if we were to correct the trend lines last
two points, 1990 and 2000, for the fact that many of these supposed single people were
actually cohabiting in a quasi-marriage, the end of the line would fall to about 20 percent,
not much different than the percentages for 1900 and 1910. Indeed, we have reason to
suspect that in 1900 some couples that reported themselves as married were, by modern
definitions, really cohabiting. In many ways, it is the middle of the last century that is
FIGURE 4.1 Percent of 30- to 44-Year-Olds Living as Singles, 1960 2000
Note: Singles are adults living alone, as single parents, or as nonrelatives in anothers household.
Source: Steven Ruggles, Matthew Sobek, Trent Alexander, Catherine A. Fitch, Ronald Goeken, Patricia Kelly
Hall, Miriam King, and Chad Ronnander, Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 3, machine-readable
database ( Minneapolis: Minnesota Population Center, 2004), available at http://www.ipums.umn.edu/usa /.
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
P
e
r
c
e
n
t
1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
Ch-01.indd 41 7/8/2008 12:31:39 PM
42 Part I The Changing Family
the aberrant period, not the last third of the century. This illustrates our concern about
the question Since when?
Next, we address the question For whom? in Figure 4.3. Here the gross pattern
displayed in Figure 4.2 is split by race, and we see a divergence between blacks and whites
from 1900 to 2000. For African Americans, the percentage of thirty- to forty-four-year-
olds living on their own went up 17 points over the century, from 25 to 42 percent, but
FIGURE 4.2 Percent of 30- to 44-Year-Olds Living as Singles, 1900 2000
Note: Singles are adults living alone, as single parents, or as nonrelatives in anothers household.
Source: Steven Ruggles, Matthew Sobek, Trent Alexander, Catherine A. Fitch, Ronald Goeken, Patricia Kelly
Hall, Miriam King, and Chad Ronnander, Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 3, machine-readable
database ( Minneapolis: Minnesota Population Center, 2004), available at http://www.ipums.umn.edu/usa /.
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
P
e
r
c
e
n
t
1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
P
e
r
c
e
n
t
1900
Blacks
Whites
1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
FIGURE 4.3 Percent of 30- to 44-Year-Olds Living as Singles, by Race, 1900 2000
Note: Singles are adults living alone, as single parents, or as nonrelatives in anothers household.
Source: Steven Ruggles, Matthew Sobek, Trent Alexander, Catherine A. Fitch, Ronald Goeken, Patricia Kelly
Hall, Miriam King, and Chad Ronnander, Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 3, machine-readable
database ( Minneapolis: Minnesota Population Center, 2004), available at http://www.ipums.umn.edu/usa /.
Ch-01.indd 42 7/8/2008 12:31:39 PM
Chapter 1 Families Past and Present 43
it only went up eight points, from 18 to 26 percent, for whites. To add a further twist
on the For whom? question, consider that the group that really expanded single living
into a lifestyle was that of elderly women: Figure 4.4 shows that the percentage of elderly
women living as singles almost doubled, from 26 percent in 1900 to 50 percent in 2000.
We have tried in this opening exercise to underline the point that simple impres-
sions of family change may miss underlying complexities. We will return to the themes of
Since when? and For whom? below. Before that, however, it is important to put those
changeschanges in living out of marriage, in unwed motherhood, and in other statuses
considered troublinginto a wider context of family change. We next discuss some of the
major and less major changes in the American family recognized by demographers.
OVERVIEW OF FAMILY CHANGES
American family life changed in many ways in the twentieth century, but the severity of
a change and the severity of the conversations about that change did not often match.
As we shall see, some of the greatest changes involved the demography of the family and
affected the elderly, while the much-discussed matters, such as family dissolution and
family intimacy, were much more stable.
Major Changes
Let us highlight the big changes in the American family over the century. The first
one to note is basic and critical: Americans live a lot longer than they used to. Figure 4.5
shows the average life expectancy of white women and men who had already made it to
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
P
e
r
c
e
n
t
1900
Blacks 3044
Women 65+
Whites 3044
1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
FIGURE 4.4 Percent of 30- to 44-Year-Olds Living as Singles, by Race, and Elderly
Women, 1900 2000
Note: Singles are adults living alone, as single parents, or as nonrelatives in anothers household.
Source: Steven Ruggles, Matthew Sobek, Trent Alexander, Catherine A. Fitch, Ronald Goeken, Patricia Kelly
Hall, Miriam King, and Chad Ronnander, Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 3, machine-readable
database ( Minneapolis: Minnesota Population Center, 2004), available at http://www.ipums.umn.edu/usa /.
Ch-01.indd 43 7/8/2008 12:31:39 PM
44 Part I The Changing Family
the age of twenty.
2
A twenty-year-old white woman in 2000 could expect seventeen more
years of life than could her ancestor in 1900; a twenty-year-old white man today could
expect thirteen years more than a twenty-year-old man a century ago. ( In addition to this
change, there was an even greater expansion in the life expectancy of infants.) There are,
as we shall see, profound implications to this greater longevity.
Add to this another major changethe reduction in the birthrate. The average num-
ber of births per woman, dated at the age she turned thirty, dropped steeply from 1900 to
the 1940s, as shown in Figure 4.6; if we could push back the view here to 1800, we would
0
50
55
60
65
70
75
80
85
Y
e
a
r
s

o
f

L
i
f
e

E
x
p
e
c
t
a
n
c
y
1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000
White Women
White Men
FIGURE 4.5 Years of Life Expected at Age 20, White Men and Women, 1900 2000
Source: National Center for Health Statistics via http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html.
0
1
2
3
4
A
v
e
r
a
g
e

B
i
r
t
h
s

p
e
r

W
o
m
a
n
1900 1920 1940
Year Women Turned 30
1960 1980 2000
FIGURE 4.6 Number of Births over a Womans Lifetime by Year of Her 30th Birthday,
for Women Born 1870 1970
Source: Steven Ruggles, Matthew Sobek, Trent Alexander, Catherine A. Fitch, Ronald Goeken, Patricia Kelly
Hall, Miriam King, and Chad Ronnander, Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 3, machine-readable
database ( Minneapolis: Minnesota Population Center, 2004), available at http://www.ipums.umn.edu/usa /.
Ch-01.indd 44 7/8/2008 12:31:40 PM
Chapter 1 Families Past and Present 45
see a tilted line starting from about seven or eight births per woman in 1800 down to about
two in 1940.
3
Again, the 1950s and early 1960s were unusual. Take out the anomaliesthe
drop in births during the Depression and World War II and the Baby Boom afterward
and we would see a smoothly declining curve from 1800 on; the last thirty years are right
on track. Women who were thirty years old around 1900 averaged four children apiece;
women who were thirty years old around 2000 averaged two children apiece.
Extensions of life and reductions in births drove two other major changes: A large
increase in the proportion of people fifty and older living in an empty nest (with just a
spouse) and an increasing proportion of elderly, Americans living alone. In 1900, about
one in four of the elderly lived in one of these two circumstances; in 2000, more than
three in four elderly people did so. These are enormous reversals in family life, shown
in Figure 4.7. Note that the biggest changes in family life, in Americans living arrange-
ments, during the twentieth century occurred for the elderly. The elderly today end their
parenting much earlier in life, they have fewer children, and they live longer than the
elderly a few generations ago. They also have more money and better health. They may
also cherish their independence more than did the elderly of earlier eras.
4
Consequently,
the elderly now live on their own instead of with their children. Ironically, during the past
thirty years, Americans have increasingly told pollsters that they think the aged should
not live independently but should live with their children, but that trend emerged only
because younger generations, not the elderly themselves, endorsed co-living.
5
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
P
e
r
c
e
n
t
1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000
White men 65+,
empty nest
White women 65+,
empty nest
White women 65+,
primary
White men 65+,
primary
FIGURE 4.7 Percent of Elderly Who Live Either as Primary Individuals (dashed
lines) or in an Empty Nest (solid lines), for White Men (diamonds) and White
Women (circles), 1900 1998
Source: Steven Ruggles, Matthew Sobek, Trent Alexander, Catherine A. Fitch, Ronald Goeken, Patricia Kelly
Hall, Miriam King, and Chad Ronnander, Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 3, machine-readable
database ( Minneapolis: Minnesota Population Center, 2004), available at http://www.ipums.umn.edu/usa /;
Current Population Survey.
Ch-01.indd 45 7/8/2008 12:31:40 PM
46 Part I The Changing Family
The next big change is the enormous increase in the proportion of married women,
and the proportion of mothers with children under six, working outside the home, shown
in Figure 4.8. In 1920, about 10 percent of married women officially worked; in 2000,
more than 60 percent did. Note that the low percentages in the early part of the century
are serious underestimates.
6
Nonetheless, the real trend is still a fundamental and
sharp change. This trend, by the way, accelerated through the 1950s without pause. This
transformation, too, had immense ramifications for our families, our children, and our
cultureramifications we have not yet fully absorbed.
These family changes, we submit, were the greatest in scale and probably in con-
sequence. But there were also other noteworthy changes.
Modest Changes
One such change is the fluctuation in the age at which Americans married. First it
dropped. American women marrying around 1900 tended to be about twenty-two years
old; those marrying around 1950 tended to be about twenty, meaning that in the 1950s,
about half of all brides were teenagers. This helps to explain the baby boom. Those mar-
rying at the end of the century averaged twenty-four years of age on their wedding day,
and a growing subgroup was marrying in their thirties.
Also, of course, the divorce rate increased. At the beginning of the century, there
was roughly one divorce issued for every ten marriages performed. By the early 1990s, it
was about one for every two, although the divorce rate has been dropping since roughly
1980.
7
This is a fivefold increase in divorce, but we do not call it a big change. One
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
P
e
r
c
e
n
t

o
f

M
a
r
r
i
e
d

W
o
m
e
n
1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000
Married, child
under 6
Married
FIGURE 4.8 Percent of Married Women (and Married Women with a Child under 6)
in the Labor Force, 1900 2000
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics and Statistical Abstracts.
Ch-01.indd 46 7/8/2008 12:31:40 PM
Chapter 1 Families Past and Present 47
reason is that rates of marriage dissolution did not change nearly as much. Early in the
century, marriages broke up because a spouse died. If one combines dissolution by death
with dissolution by divorce, the total stayed pretty constant to 1970, as rising divorce
balanced out declining mortality. By 1980, rising divorce pushed the total dissolution rate
about one-fourth over its historical level, but it has subsided some since then.
8
Another
reason we do not stress divorce is that most divorced people remarry. As we saw above,
in Figures 4.1 and 4.2, the proportion of adults living unmarried did not increase nearly
as much as the dramatic rise in the divorce rate would suggest. Many of those who do
not remarry, it turns out, cohabit instead.
The increasing delay of marriage, in turn, contributed to higher rates of premarital
sex. So, for example, about half of women who were teenagers in the 1950s were virgins
at marriage, compared with under one-third of women who were teens in the 1970s.
9

The drop in virgin brides is, in part, simply the result of a longer time between puberty,
which is now arriving earlier, and marriage, which is now arriving later. This change, by
the way, also stopped or reversed in the 1990s.
Cohabitation, both before and after the first marriage, has increased significantly in
the last few decades, as has popular tolerance of it. The proportion of American house-
holds at any one time with a cohabiting couple rose from under 1 percent in 1960 to
a still low 5 percent in 2000. More important, half of married couples now begin their
conjugal lives by cohabiting.
10
A consequence of both delaying marriage and increasing divorce is the increase in
children living with a single parent. We shall look more closely at this below, but the
simple fact is that for the first half of the century, about 5 percent of American children
were recorded as living with only a single parent, and more than 20 percent were doing
so in 2000.
Finally in this list, survey data, which do not go back further than about 1960,
show that Americans became in recent decades increasingly tolerant of these and related
changesof smaller families, of women working, of premarital sex, of cohabitation, and
of single-parent families. That is, Americans increasingly accepted wider ranges of indi-
vidual choices in how to form a family.
Minor or Minimal Changes
Many other aspects of the family changed little, as far as we can tell. Both marriage and
children continue to be valued. Americans still say they want to marry. For example, in
a 2001 Gallup survey, more than nine in ten teenagers said that they wanted to marry
and to have children, an increase over a generation.
11
Single adults age twenty through
twenty-nine fully endorsed marriage; 78 percent said that being married was a very im-
portant life goal, 88 percent said that they were confident of finding a suitable spouse
when they are ready to marry, and 88 percent answered yes when asked if there was a
unique soul mate for them out there.
12
Moreover, Americans do get married. The latest estimates are that 90 percent of
women now about forty years old have married or will eventually marry, even if later in
life. This is a marriage rate notably higher than that in the early part of the twentieth
century or, for that matter, the midnineteenth century.
13
Another indicator of how
Ch-01.indd 47 7/8/2008 12:31:40 PM
48 Part I The Changing Family
Americans value marriage is that, despite increasingly tolerating premarital sex, Ameri-
cans in recent decades have become less tolerant of extramarital sex. The thread connect-
ing American attitudes on these subjects seems to be an increasing emphasis on freedom
of choice combined with insistence on personal responsibility: Have premarital sex as you
wish, marry as you wish, but if you marry, stay faithful.
14
Finally, sociologists and historians have perused as many tea leaves as possible to
see if they can spot a trend in familial intimacy, affection, and commitment. We can make
no solid case one way or the other. What scholars can say with some confidence is that
the standards and expectations for intimacy, affection, and commitment have increased.
Whether in responses to survey data or in the complaints people list when in filing for di-
vorce, Americans during the twentieth century demanded more companionship, warmth,
and happiness in marriage.
What can we generalize about family change over the century? Here are a few
defensible statements:
Americans always preferred the household of a married couple with children.
During the twentieth century, it became increasingly possible to have such a nu-
clear family. In the earlier years, many external events blocked that goal: prema-
ture death, ill health, economic dislocation, unplanned pregnancies, and infertility.
These disturbances became less important. People have more control now. So more
people spend more of their lives in marriage than was true a few generations ago.
The second choice after a married-couple household has changed. In the first half
of the century, people who could notbecause they were spinsters or widows or
orphansbe in a married-couple household lived instead with other relatives, or in
institutional settings like poor-houses and orphanages. In recent decades, this has
changed. People have been more able and perhaps more willing to choose other
alternativesif the married-couple arrangement was not availableto live alone,
cohabit, or be a single parent.
Other values such as personal attainment and independence, especially for women,
increasingly competed with the goal of the married-couple household. Womens
alternatives have expanded. Standards for a good marriage rose, and escapes from
bad ones became easier. As a result, marriages are increasingly delayed or broken
by choice rather than by external disruptions.
One consequence of these decisions can be trouble for the children. Children in-
creasingly are living with a single parent outside a nuclear or an extended household.
This is what we will look at more closely now.
FAMILY TROUBLE: THE
SINGLE-PARENTED CHILD
It is generally understood that children have easier lives and do somewhat better when
they live with two parents instead of one.
15
Figure 4.9 shows the distribution of children,
Ch-01.indd 48 7/8/2008 12:31:40 PM
Chapter 1 Families Past and Present 49
age birth to seventeen years, by their living arrangements across the century.
16
On top,
we see the percentage who lived just with two parents and siblings (if any), the ideal
nuclear family. In 1900, about 70 percent of children lived that way; another roughly
20 percent lived in an extended family that often included both parents.
17
The propor-
tion in the nuclear family then rose to 78 percent by 1960 and then dropped down to
64 percent at the end of the century, a bit lower than it was 100 years before. ( If we add
cohabiting parents to married parents, then the 2000 figure is 66 percent.) These numbers
unfortunately do not distinguish between children living with their original parents from
those living in a stepfamily, and some literature suggests that stepparent families are less
conducive to child welfare than having both original parents.
18
The long-term data we
draw upon cannot distinguish biological from stepparents, but stepparents surely formed a
larger portion of two-parent households recently than they did in the 1950s; whether step-
parents were more common recently than in the early part of the century is not clear.
Until thirty years ago, children who were not in a nuclear family were likely to be
in extended-family households, perhaps with a grandparent, uncle, or cousinsshown in
Figure 4.9 by a dashed line. Most of those households included both the childs two par-
ents, at least early in the century, or one parent, more often now. Whether the extended
household experience was better, the same, or worse than the two-parent household
can be argued. The category of other, shown at the bottom, refers to children living
on their own or in some kind of group setting. Finally, we seealong a line connecting
circlesthe rise since 1960 in the proportion of children living with only one parent and
no other relatives besides siblings. It had been under 10 percent for most of the century,
0
20
40
60
80
100
P
e
r
c
e
n
t

o
f

C
h
i
l
d
r
e
n
1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000
Extended Family
Single Parent
Other
With Two Parents
FIGURE 4.9 Percent of Children ( Birth to Age 17), by Living Arrangement, 1900 2000
Source: Steven Ruggles, Matthew Sobek, Trent Alexander, Catherine A. Fitch, Ronald Goeken, Patricia Kelly
Hall, Miriam King, and Chad Ronnander, Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 3, machine-readable
database ( Minneapolis: Minnesota Population Center, 2004), available at http://www.ipums.umn.edu/usa /.
Ch-01.indd 49 7/8/2008 12:31:41 PM
50 Part I The Changing Family
took off in 1970, and reached 20 percent in 2000. This group and this last period is the
subject of greatest public concern.
19
The first question we have been raising is Since when? And we see here that
the when is the 1950s. Indeed, if we were to push our view before 1900 back into the
nineteenth century, we would quite likely see the bottom line, other, keep going up
and up as we move backwardbackward into the era of when children under eighteen,
even many under twelve, were sent out of their homes to be farmhands, apprentices, and
servants in other peoples homes and thus lived with neither parent nor extended kin but
with others. The 1950s may have been the decade with the least disruption to Victorian
ideals of childhood in American history:
If comparing a couple of centuries is too long a period to make the point that we
need to be specific about when, then consider the last decade alone. The proportion
of children living with fewer than two parents topped out at 32 percent in the mid-
1990s (67 percent in 1995 for blacks) and dropped to 31 percent in 2002 (61 percent for
blacks).
20
Other data also point to a recent decline in the behaviors that produce single-
parent families, such as teen pregnancy and divorce, suggesting that we may have already
seen the peak of one-parent households. So, again, we need to ask what we are using as
historical comparisons and what is a reasonable comparison. Since when?
The other question we have been asking is For whom? Figure 4.10 focuses on the
category of children living with only a single parent only or in one of those anomalous
other settings. Then Figure 4.11 shows us that the rise in such children is dispropor-
tionately among black children. The black /white differential opened up in 1940 and then
widened. Before 1940, white children were about 60 percent as likely as black children
to be in a single-parent household; by the 1990s, they were about 40 percent as likely.
21

Single parenting has become disproportionately a trouble of the black community.
0
10
20
30
50
40
P
e
r
c
e
n
t

o
f

C
h
i
l
d
r
e
n
1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000
FIGURE 4.10 Percent of Children ( Birth to Age 17), Living with One Parent Only
or in Other Nonfamily Arrangement, 1900 2000
Source: Steven Ruggles, Matthew Sobek, Trent Alexander, Catherine A. Fitch, Ronald Goeken, Patricia Kelly
Hall, Miriam King, and Chad Ronnander, Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 3, machine-readable
database ( Minneapolis: Minnesota Population Center, 2004), available at http://www.ipums.umn.edu/usa /.
Ch-01.indd 50 7/8/2008 12:31:41 PM
Chapter 1 Families Past and Present 51
Sociologists believe that the trouble for black children, which accelerated in the
1950s and 1960s, coincides with increasing difficulties of black men in northern cities,
which began with the loss of well-paying blue-collar jobs and then were compounded by
rising drug use and crime. The result is that, though blacks and whites equally value the
aspiration of getting married, blacks have become more disappointed with or even cynical
about marriage.
22
That response may have taken on a life of its own, although there were
signs in the late 1990s of marriage starting to rebound among African Americans.
Even among whites, there is a question For whom? Figure 4.12 divides white
children up by the educational level of the head of their households, information avail-
able only since 1940. ( For simplicity, the category of some college is not shown; their
children fall in between the college and high school graduates.) It shows that children of
college graduates have been affected only modestly by expanding single parenthood; the
trend is specific to those without college educations. In another approach to the same
question, David Ellwood and Christopher Jencks have shown that young white women
with relatively little education tripled their propensity to be a single parent between
the 1960s and 2000, while young white women with relatively much education saw no
change5 percent of the well-educated women were single mothers in the 1960s and
5 percent were single mothers in the 1990s.
23
As in the case of African Americans, we suspect that this pattern is connected to the
more difficult economic situation faced since the 1970s by couples with limited educa-
tions. Ironically, better-educated Americans are (slightly) more likely to resist the ideol-
ogy that says that any marriage is better than none, but they are nonetheless more likely
to achieve it.
24
Joshua Goldstein and Catherine Kenny found that these days, in a reversal
of historical patterns, college-graduate women have a better chance of marrying than do
women without a diploma.
25
0
10
20
30
50
40
P
e
r
c
e
n
t

o
f

C
h
i
l
d
r
e
n
1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000
Black
White
FIGURE 4.11 Percent of Children ( Birth to Age 17), Living with One Parent Only
or in Other Nonfamily Arrangement, by Race, 1900 2000
Source: Steven Ruggles, Matthew Sobek, Trent Alexander, Catherine A. Fitch, Ronald Goeken, Patricia Kelly
Hall, Miriam King, and Chad Ronnander, Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 3, machine-readable
database ( Minneapolis: Minnesota Population Center, 2004), available at http://www.ipums.umn.edu/usa /.
Ch-01.indd 51 7/8/2008 12:31:41 PM
52 Part I The Changing Family
For African American children, the educational pattern is somewhat different. In
Figure 4.13, we see that black children of college graduates have been less likely to be
in single-parent homes than other black children, but that the rates of all educational
groups increased steeply. The percentage of black children of college graduates who lived
in a single-parent household increased eightfold, almost 30 points, between 1940 and
2000, while the increase for white children of college graduates was threefold, 7 points.)
Conversely, Ellwood and Jencks found that the one-third most-educated black women
were not much more likely to be single parents in the late 1990s than in the late 1960s,
which contradicts the story of Figure 4.13.
26
Our data reinforce suggestions that middle-
class black families have difficulty protecting their children from the spillover of social
problems from lower-income black communities.
Economics is not all that is involved in the growth of single parenting. Changes in
the specifics of single parenthoodthe who and the whenparallel both cultural as well
as material changes; they thereby tell us something about the why. The 1960s as a cul-
tural phenomenon shaped family life through rapid ideological shifts concerning gender,
sex, and rights of personal fulfillment. That helps account for some of the timing and the
growth in single parenting even among white elites; it happened quickly around 1970,
a pattern consistent with a change in preferences. For example, in just the four years
between July 1969 and July 1973, the percentage of Americans who said that premarital
sex was wrong dropped 21 points; in the subsequent nearly three decades, it dropped
only another 9 points.
27
Yet material conditions also matter. For example, in the early 1970s, college gradu-
ates were notably more liberal on premarital sex than were high school graduates or high
school dropouts; but, as we saw, it is not the children of college graduates who ended up
in one-parent homes. At the same time, blacks attitudes about premarital sex became
0
10
20
30
50
40
P
e
r
c
e
n
t

o
f

W
h
i
t
e

C
h
i
l
d
r
e
n
1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000
Less than high school
High school
graduate
College graduate
FIGURE 4.12 Percent of White Children ( Birth to Age 17), Living with Single Parent,
by Education of Parent, 1940 2000
Source: Steven Ruggles, Matthew Sobek, Trent Alexander, Catherine A. Fitch, Ronald Goeken, Patricia Kelly
Hall, Miriam King, and Chad Ronnander, Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 3, machine-readable
database ( Minneapolis: Minnesota Population Center, 2004), available at http://www.ipums.umn.edu/usa /.
Ch-01.indd 52 7/8/2008 12:31:41 PM
Chapter 1 Families Past and Present 53
more conservative; yet it was black children who increasingly ended up in one-parent
homes.
28
We know that blacks and whites without college degrees suffered from stagnat-
ing or even declining mens incomes in this same period, even as womens earnings grew.
And we know that economically marginal men tend to leave fatherless children behind.
That economic strain must be part of the why. And it reminds us of the strains that
disrupted many families in the early part of the century.
CONCLUSION
The effort we have gone through to look at who was affected when by family troubles is
more than an accounting exercise. The numbers help us understand why these changes
occurred and, potentially, what levers of influence exist. For example, the historical data
going back to the early part of the twentieth century make it difficult to explain family
change as a linear consequence of modernity. Classic sociological theories of the family,
notably those of the 1950s, claim that the family lost its functions to the state and other
institutions and therefore became weaker. But the nonlinear changes in the family cast
doubt on such an explanation; for example, people are as or more likely to marry now as
they were a century ago. The internal variations we have tracked also lead us to question
such explanations. It is, after all, the most advantaged among us who have most embraced
nonfamilial opportunities, sending children off to college and purchasing family services
such as food, cleaning, child care, and parenting advice. Yet the most advantaged have
been the least affected by family troubles. The data also cast doubt on simple economic
explanations of family patterns. For example, the notion that people have children to serve
as their old-age insurance runs up against the contradiction that Americans indulged in a
0
10
20
30
50
40
P
e
r
c
e
n
t

o
f

B
l
a
c
k

C
h
i
l
d
r
e
n
1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000
Less than high school
High school graduate
College graduate
FIGURE 4.13 Percent of Black Children ( Birth to Age 17), Living with Single Parent,
by Education of Parent, 1940 2000
Source: Steven Ruggles, Matthew Sobek, Trent Alexander, Catherine A. Fitch, Ronald Goeken, Patricia Kelly
Hall, Miriam King, and Chad Ronnander, Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 3, machine-readable
database ( Minneapolis: Minnesota Population Center, 2004), available at http://www.ipums.umn.edu/usa /.
Ch-01.indd 53 7/8/2008 12:31:41 PM
54 Part I The Changing Family
huge baby boom just after the U.S. government set up public old-age insurance.
29
His-
tory speaks to us.
When we put family troubles in historical perspective, we learn a few broad les-
sons. One is that troubles with marriage and parenting are concentrated among Ameri-
cans with disadvantages. These Americans would live the 1950s ideal if they could, but
they often cannot. In this way, they are like many Americans a century ago, whose family
aspirations were blocked by death, disease, and disaster. Not many advantaged Americans
have such problems. As we saw, in 2000, only one in ten white children with a college-
educated parent as head of household lived in a single-parent home.
Another lesson is that, for more advantaged Americans, being unwed, childless, or
divorced is less a matter of malign fate and more a matter of new opportunities. Increas-
ing influence and improving health have made more choices more available to more
people. These people choose to delay marriage, to have fewer children, and to live apart
from those children when they age. These choices are not family troubles, except inso-
far as one assumes that people not living in a nuclear family are ipso facto troubled. To be
sure, trouble in the form of divorce or single parenting does occasionally visit such people
these days. We might best understand the family troubles that some of the advantaged
face as a by-product of cultural shifts, such as the increasing freedom that individuals have
to make personal, self-expressive choices in sex, marriage, and the family. And these are
cultural shifts we typically approve. For example, vastly more wives work than before and
vastly more Americans approve. In 1938, about one in four Americans said that it was
okay for a wife to work if her husband could support her; by the 1990s, more than three
in four did.
30
Yet such expansions of personal autonomy for the well-off can carry costs,
one of which is increasing divorce and another is increasing numbers of children being
single parented. Our moral burden, then, is to deal with the side effects, such as single
parenting, of the changes we desire such as more options for women.
Finally we learn that Americans social history is more complex and nuanced than
many a simple gloss would have it. For example, every year the Bureau of the Census
announces and newspapers report that percentage of American homes are occupied by
nuclear families. True, but what does that mean? It largely means that more homes are
occupied by still-vibrant older couples or singles whose youngest child left home before
the parents turned fifty and who have thirty years of life to go. Increasing life spans
have also meant that Americans spend more years knowing their aging parents, watch-
ing their children grow up, and sharing the company of a spouse.
31
So with regard to
family troubles, we do need to ask Since when? and For whom?
Notes
1. Our data largely come from the U.S. censuses for 1900 through 2000except for 1930, which has
only just been released. These raw files have been compiled and made available as the Integrated
Public Use Microdata Series; see Steven Ruggles, Matthew Sobek, Trent Alexander, Catherine A.
Fitch, Ronald Goeken, Patricia Kelly Hall, Miriam King, and Chad Ronnander, Integrated Public
Use Microdata Series: Version 3, machine-readable database ( Minneapolis: Minnesota Population
Center, 2004), available at http://www.ipums.umn.edu/usa/.
2. These numbers are from the National Center for Health Statistics, available at http://www
.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html.
Ch-01.indd 54 7/8/2008 12:31:42 PM
Chapter 1 Families Past and Present 55
3. That longer line is unavailable because earlier data use the number of children under five per
the number of women age fifteen to forty-four. See U.S. Census Bureau, Historical Statistics of the
United States ( Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977), 54; and subsequent
Statistical Abstracts.
4. Frances E. Kobrin, The Fall in Household Size and the Rise of the Primary Individual in the
United States since 1940, Journal of Marriage and the Family 38 ( May 1976): 23339.
5. Authors analysis of the General Social Survey (GSS) item AGED, http://csa.berkeley.edu:75o2/
archive.htm.
6. For one, many wives worked informally in family businessesfarms, in particular. Others took
in work, such as laundry, that they may not have reported. Also, we have reason to suspect that
respectable families underreported the wives work.
7. The gross divorce rate in 1979 was 5.3 per 1,000 Americans; it was 4.1 in 2000 ( http://www.cdc
.gov/nchs). Joshua R. Goldstein, The Leveling of Divorce in the United States, Demography 36
(August 1999): 40914, finds that this was a meaningful social change, not a statistical fluke.
8. These calculations are summarized in Andrew J. Cherlin, Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage, rev. ed.
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), 25. The rate of dissolution from the 1860s
through 1970 was about 33 to 34 dissolutions per 1,000 marriages; it rose to a peak of 41 around
1980 and declined to 39 by 1989.
9. Edward Laumann, John H. Gagnon, Robert T. Michael, and Stuart Michaels, The Social Organiza-
tion of Sexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 19799, 21314; see also Sandra L.
Hofferth, Joan R. Kahn, and Wendy Baldwin, Premarital Sexual Activity among American Teen-
age Women over the Past Three Decades, Family Planning Perspectives 19 ( March 1987): 46 53.
On early twentieth-century premarital sexuality, see, e.g., Daniel Scott Smith, The Dating of the
American Sexual Revolution in The American Family in Social-Historical Perspective, 2nd edition,
ed. Michael Gordon ( New York: St. Martins Press, 1978), 426 38; Amara Bachu, Trends in
Marital Status of U.S. Women at First Birth: 1930 to 1994, Current Population Reports, Special
Studies ( Washington, D.C.: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1999), 23197; and Stuart N. Seidman
and Ronald O. Rieder, A Review of Sexual Behavior in the United States, American Journal of
Psychiatry 151 ( March 1994): 330 41.
10. Lynne M. Casper and Suzanne M. Bianchi, Continuity and Change in the American Family ( Thou-
sand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 2002), chap. 1.
11. Linda Lyons, Kids and Divorce, Gallup Online, http://www.gallup.com.
12. Kelley Maybury, I Do? Marriage in Uncertain Times, Gallup Online, http://www.gallup.com.
13. Joshua R. Goldstein and Catherine T. Kenny, Marriage Delayed or Marriage Forgone? New
Cohort Forecasts of First Marriage for U.S. Women,American Sociological Review 66 (August
2001): 506 19. Goldstein and Kenny project current womens experiences into the twenty-first
century. On longer historical comparisons, see Catherine A. Fitch and Steven Ruggles, Historical
Trends in Marriage Formation: The United States 1850 1990, in The Ties That Bind: Perspectives
on Marriage and Cohabitation, ed. Linda J. Waite ( New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 2000), 5989.
The percentage of never-married women in Charleston and Boston circa 1845 was higher than
now; see Jane H. Pease and William H. Pease, Ladies, Women, and Wenches: Choice and Constraint
in Antebellum Charleston and Boston (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990).
14. On this and other attitude items, see Arland Thornton and Linda Young-Demarco, Four De-
cades of Trends in Attitudes toward Family Issues in the United States, Journal of Marriage and
the Family 63 ( November 2001): 100938.
15. Sara McLanahan, Life without Father: What Happens to the Children? Contexts 1 (spring
2002): 35 44, provides an overview. The literature is large and controversial, but we assume that,
other things being equal, a one-parent family as less desirable for children.
16. The numbers exclude from the base the few zero- to seventeen-year-olds who were in married
couples with no children householdsi.e., young brides and grooms. Other includes the very
tiny fraction who were on their own and a small percentage who were in some form of shared
quarters.
17. Census data show that 84 percent of children in 1900 lived with two parents, suggesting that
most of the children in extended households (seven of ten) had both parents there. U.S. Bureau
Ch-01.indd 55 7/8/2008 12:31:42 PM
56 Part I The Changing Family
of the Census, Historical Living Arrangements of Children, http://www.census.gov/population/
socdemo/child/p70-74/tabo2.xls.
18. E.g., Andrew J. Cherlin and Frank F. Furstenberg Jr., Stepfamilies in the United States: A Recon-
sideration, Annual Review of Sociology 20 (1994): 35981; McLanahan, Life without Father.
19. Census Bureau calculations show that the percentage of children living with one or neither parent
was 13 to 17 percent from 1900 through 1970, then rose to 31 percent by 2000. U.S. Bureau of the
Census, Historical Living Arrangements of Children; plus 2000 Current Population Survey.
20. These figures are based on slightly different data, Table CH-1: Living Arrangements of Children
under 18 Years Old: 1960 to Present, http://www.census.gov, drawn from the Current Population
Survey and more recent data from the same source. These data count children living in extended
households with a parent or two as living with a parent or both.
21. On this point, see also Fitch and Ruggles, Historical Trends, 65.
22. This summary statement is supported by the many ethnographies of poor African Americans. It
also shows up in survey data. The GSS asked unmarried people in the 1990s, If the right person
came along, would you like to be married? There was no difference between blacks and whites
(either a raw difference, or after statistical controls). Blacks were even slightly more likely to say
that a bad marriage was better than no marriage. But on questions such as whether married people
were happier than unmarried people, whether personal freedom was more important than mar-
riage, whether people who want children should wait to get married, and whether single mothers
can raise children as well as married couples, blacks were noticeably more skeptical about the
marriage option. Authors analysis of the GSS.
23. David T. Ellwood and Christopher Jencks, The Growing Differences in Family Structure: What
Do We Know? Where Do We Look for Answers? John F. Kennedy School of Government,
Harvard University, July 2001, fig. 1.
24. In GSS data, educational attainment is positively associated (controlling for race, age, and gender)
with saying that one would not marry even if the right person came along and with denying that
a bad marriage is better than no marriage (authors analysis).
25. Goldstein and Kenny, Marriage Delayed.
26. Ellwood and Jencks, Growing Differences, fig. 2.
27. In 1969, 68 percent said it was wrong for a man and a woman to have sexual relations before
marriage; in 1973, 47 percent did; in 2001, 38 percent did. Similarly, Americans ideal family size
dropped sharply in those few years. Between 1936 and 1967, the percentage of Americans who
said that three or more children was ideal ranged from 61 to 77 percent; in 1967, it was 70 percent.
But in 1973, it was 43 percent, a 27-point drop in six years. After 1973, that percentage ranged
from 28 to 42; Lydia Saad, Majority Considers Sex before Marriage Morally Okay, http://www
.gallup.com.
28. Authors analysis of the GSS item PREMARSX: Among whites under sixty-five years of age,
the percentage who said that premarital sex was not wrong at all was, in the early 1970s, 39 per-
cent for college graduates, 31 percent for high school graduates, and 25 percent for high school
dropouts. ( By the late 1990s, the percentages were virtually identical, at 51, 48, and 49.) Similarly,
white attitudes toward premarital sex became more liberal between 1970 and 2000. Among white
women under sixty-five, not wrong at all answers increased steadily from 25 percent in the early
1970s to 46 percent in the late 1990s. Conversely, black women under sixty-five hit a high point
of 54 percent not wrong at all in the late 1970s and dropped to 36 percent in the late 1990s. Yet
black rates of single-parented children increased until the mid-1990s.
29. Similarly, scholars of the fertility decline that began in the nineteenth century have found simple
economic explanations insufficient.
30. The GSS asked Americans whether the womens movement had improved, worsened, or not af-
fected the lives of particular groups. Moderate pluralities to large majorities said improved in
answers referring to questions about effects on homemakers, working-class women, professional
women, and even children. People were evenly split as to whether men benefited or lost from the
womens movement (authors analysis).
31. Susan Cotts Watkins, Jane A. Menken, and John Bongaarts, Demographic Foundations of
Family Change, American Sociological Review 52 ( June 1987): 346 58.
Ch-01.indd 56 7/8/2008 12:31:42 PM
57
2
Public Debates
and Private Lives
R E A DI NG 5
The Mommy Wars: Ambivalence,
Ideological Work, and the Cultural
Contradictions of Motherhood
Sharon Hays
I have argued that all mothers ultimately share a recognition of the ideology of intensive
mothering. At the same time, all mothers live in a society where child rearing is generally
devalued and the primary emphasis is placed on profit, efficiency, and getting ahead.
If you are a mother, both logics operate in your daily life.
But the story is even more complicated. Over half of American mothers participate
directly in the labor market on a regular basis; the rest remain at least somewhat distant
from that world as they spend most of their days in the home. One might therefore expect
paid working mothers to be more committed to the ideology of competitively maximiz-
ing personal profit and stay-at-home mothers to be more committed to the ideology of
intensive mothering. As it turns out, however, this is not precisely the way it works.
Modern-day mothers are facing two socially constructed cultural images of what
a good mother looks like. Neither, however, includes the vision of a cold, calculating
businesswomanthat title is reserved for childless career women. If you are a good
mother, you must be an intensive one. The only choice involved is whether you add the
role of paid working woman. The options, then, are as follows. On the one side there is
the portrait of the traditional mother who stays at home with the kids and dedicates
her energy to the happiness of her family. This mother cheerfully studies the latest issue
of Family Circle, places flowers in every room, and has dinner waiting when her husband
comes home. This mother, when shes not cleaning, cooking, sewing, shopping, doing
the laundry, or comforting her mate, is focused on attending to the children and ensuring
their proper development. On the other side is the image of the successful supermom.
Effortlessly juggling home and work, this mother can push a stroller with one hand and
carry a briefcase in the other. She is always properly coiffed, her nylons have no runs, her
Ch-02.indd 57 7/8/2008 12:31:55 PM
58 Part I The Changing Family
suits are freshly pressed, and her home has seen the white tornado. Her children are im-
maculate and well mannered but not passive, with a strong spirit and high self-esteem.
1
Although both the traditional mom and the supermom are generally considered
socially acceptable, their coexistence represents a serious cultural ambivalence about how
mothers should behave. This ambivalence comes out in the widely available indictments
of the failings of both groups of women. Note, for instance, the way Mecca, a welfare
mother, describes these two choices and their culturally provided critiques:
The way my family was brought up was, like, you marry a man, hes the head of the house,
hes the provider, and youre the wife, youre the provider in the house. Now these days
its not that way. Now the people that stay home are classified, quote, lazy people, we
dont like to work.
Ive seen a lot of things on TV about working mothers and nonworking mothers.
People who stay home attack the other mothers cause theyre, like, bad mothers because
they left the kids behind and go to work. And, the other ones arent working because were
lazy. But its not lazy. Its the lifestyle in the 1990s its, like, too much. Its a demanding
world for mothers with kids.
The picture Mecca has seen on television, a picture of these two images attacking each
other with ideological swords, is not an uncommon one.
It is this cultural ambivalence and the so-called choice between these paths that is
the basis for what Darnton (1990) has dubbed the mommy wars.
2
Both stay-at-home
and paid working mothers, it is argued, are angry and defensive; neither group respects
the other. Both make use of available cultural indictments to condemn the opposing
group. Supermoms, according to this portrait, regularly describe stay-at-home mothers
as lazy and boring, while traditional moms regularly accuse employed mothers of selfishly
neglecting their children.
My interviews suggest, however, that this portrait of the mommy wars is both ex-
aggerated and superficial. In fact, the majority of mothers I spoke with expressed respect
for one anothers need or right to choose whether to go out to work or stay at home with
the kids. And, as I have argued, they also share a whole set of similar concerns regarding
appropriate child rearing. These mothers have not formally enlisted in this war. Yet the
rhetoric of the mommy wars draws them in as it persists in mainstream American cul-
ture, a culture that is unwilling, for various significant reasons, to unequivocally embrace
either vision of motherhood, just as it remains unwilling to embrace wholeheartedly the
childless career woman.
3
Thus, the charges of being lazy and bored, on the one hand,
or selfish and money-grubbing, on the other, are made available for use by individual
mothers and others should the need arise.
What this creates is a no-win situation for women of child-bearing years. If a woman
voluntarily remains childless, some will say that she is cold, heartless, and unfulfilled as a
woman. If she is a mother who works too hard at her job or career, some will accuse her
of neglecting the kids. If she does not work hard enough, some will surely place her on
the mommy track and her career advancement will be permanently slowed by the claim
that her commitment to her children interferes with her workplace efficiency (Schwartz
1989). And if she stays at home with her children, some will call her unproductive and
useless. A woman, in other words, can never fully do it right.
Ch-02.indd 58 7/8/2008 12:31:56 PM
Chapter 2 Public Debates and Private Lives 59
At the same time that these cultural images portray all women as somehow less than
adequate, they also lead many mothers to feel somehow less than adequate in their daily
lives. The stay-at-home mother is supposed to be happy and fulfilled, but how can she
be when she hears so often that she is mindless and bored? The supermom is supposed
to be able to juggle her two roles without missing a beat, but how can she do either job
as well as she is expected if she is told she must dedicate her all in both directions? In
these circumstances, it is not surprising that many supermoms feel guilty about their in-
ability to carry out both roles to their fullest, while many traditional moms feel isolated
and invisible to the larger world.
Given this scenario, both stay-at-home and employed mothers end up spending a
good deal of time attempting to make sense of their current positions. Paid working moth-
ers, for instance, are likely to argue that there are lots of good reasons for mothers to work
in the paid labor force; stay-at-home mothers are likely to argue that there are lots of
good reasons for mothers to stay at home with their children. These arguments are best
understood not as (mere) rationalizations or (absolute) truths but rather as socially neces-
sary ideological work. Berger (1981) uses this notion to describe the way that all people
make use of available ideologies in their attempt to cope with the relationship between
the ideas they bring to a social context and the practical pressures of day-to-day living in it
(15). People, in other words, select among the cultural logics at their disposal in order to
develop some correspondence between what they believe and what they actually do.
4
For
mothers, just like others, ideological work is simply a means of maintaining their sanity.
The ideological work of mothers, as I will show, follows neither a simple nor a
straightforward course. First, as I have pointed out, both groups face two contradic-
tory cultural images of appropriate mothering. Their ideological work, then, includes
a recog nition and response to both portraits. This duality is evident in the fact that the
logic the traditional mother uses to affirm her position matches the logic that the super-
mom uses to express ambivalence about her situation, and the logic that the employed
mother uses to affirm her position is the same logic that the stay-at-home mother uses
to express ambivalence about hers. Their strategies, in other words, are mirror images,
but they are also incompleteboth groups are left with some ambivalence. Thus, al-
though the two culturally provided images of mothering help mothers to make sense of
their own positions, they simultaneously sap the strength of mothers by making them
feel inadequate in one way or the other. It is in coping with these feelings of inadequacy
that their respective ideological strategies take an interesting turn. Rather than taking
divergent paths, as one might expect, both groups attempt to resolve their feelings of
inadequacy by returning to the logic of the ideology of intensive mothering.
THE FRUMPY HOUSEWIFE AND THE PUSH
TOWARD THE OUTSIDE WORLD
Some employed mothers say that they go out to work for pay because they need the in-
come.
5
But the overwhelming majority also say that they want to work outside the home.
First, theres the problem of staying inside all day: I decided once I started working that
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60 Part I The Changing Family
I need that. I need to work. Because Ill become like this big huge hermit frumpy person
if I stay home. Turning into a big huge hermit frumpy person is connected to the feel-
ing of being confined to the home. Many women have had that experience at one time
or another and do not want to repeat it:
When I did stay home with him, up until the time when he was ten months old, I wouldnt
go out of the house for three days at a time. Ya know, I get to where I dont want to get
dressed, I dont care if I take a shower. Its like, what for? Im not going anywhere.
Not getting dressed and not going anywhere are also tied to the problem of not having
a chance to interact with other adults:
I remember thinking, I dont even get out of my robe. And Ive gotta stay home and
breast-feed and the only adult I hear is on Good Morning Americaand hes not even live!
And that was just for a couple of months. I dont even know what it would be like for a
couple of years. I think it would be really difficult.
Interacting with adults, for many paid working mothers, means getting a break from the
world of children and having an opportunity to use their minds:
When I first started looking for a job, I thought we needed a second income. But then
when I started working it was like, this is great! I do have a mind thats not Sesame Street!
And I just love talking with people. Its just fun, and its a break. Its tough, but I enjoyed
it; it was a break from being with the kids.
If you dont get a break from the kids, if you dont get out of the house, if you dont in-
teract with adults, and if you dont have a chance to use your mind beyond the Sesame
Street level, you might end up lacking the motivation to do much at all. This argument
is implied by many mothers:
If I was stuck at home all day, and I did do that cause I was waiting for day care, I stayed
home for four months, and I went crazy, I couldnt stand it. I mean not because I didnt
want to spend any time with her, but because wed just sit here and shed just cry all
day and I couldnt get anything done. I was at the end of the day exhausted, and feeling
like shit.
Of course, it is exhausting to spend the day meeting the demands of children. But theres
also a not too deeply buried sense in all these arguments that getting outside the home
and using ones mind fulfill a longing to be part of the larger world and to be recognized
by it. One mother made this point explicitly:
[ When youre working outside the home] youre doing something. Youre using your
mind a little bit differently than just trying to figure out how to make your day work with
your kid. Its just challenging in a different way. So theres part of me that wants to be,
like, recognized. I think maybe thats what work does, it gives you a little bit of a sense of
recognition, that you dont feel like you get [when you stay home].
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Chapter 2 Public Debates and Private Lives 61
Most employed mothers, then, say that if they stay at home theyll go stir-crazy, theyll
get bored, the demands of the kids will drive them nuts, they wont have an opportunity
to use their brains or interact with other adults, theyll feel like theyre going nowhere,
and theyll lose their sense of identity in the larger world. And, for many of these moth-
ers, all these points are connected:
Well, I think [working outside is] positive, because I feel good about being able to do the
things that I went to school for, and keep up with that, and use my brain. As they grow
older, [the children are] going to get into things that they want to get into, theyre going
to be out with their friends and stuff, and I dont want to be in a situation where my
whole life has been wrapped around the kids. Thats it. Just some outside interests so that
Im not so wrapped up in how shiny my floor is. [She laughs.] Just to kind of be out and
be stimulated. Gosh, I dont want this to get taken wrong, but I think Id be a little bit
bored. And the other thing I think of is, I kind of need a break, and when youre staying
at home its constant. Its a lot harder when you dont have family close by, [ because] you
dont get a break.
In short, paid working mothers feel a strong pull toward the outside world. They hear
the world accusing stay-at-home moms of being mindless and unproductive and of lack-
ing an identity apart from their kids, and they experience this as at least partially true.
Stay-at-home mothers also worry that the world will perceive them as lazy and
bored and watching television all day as children scream in their ears and tug at their
sleeves. And sometimes this is the way they feel about themselves. In other words, the
same image that provides working mothers with the reasons they should go out to work
accounts for the ambivalence that stay-at-home mothers feel about staying at home.
A few stay-at-home mothers seem to feel absolutely secure in their position, but
most do not.
6
Many believe that they will seek paid work at some point, and almost all
are made uncomfortable by the sense that the outside world does not value what they
do. In all cases, their expressions of ambivalence about staying at home mimic the con-
cerns of employed mothers. For instance, some women who stay at home also worry
about becoming frumpy: Im not this heavy. Im, like, twenty-seven pounds overweight.
It sounds very vain of me, in my situation. Its like, Im not used to being home all the
time, Im home twenty-four hours. I dont have that balance in my life anymore. And
some stay-at-home mothers feel as if they are physically confined inside the home. This
mother, for example, seems tired of meeting the childrens demands and feels that she is
losing her sense of self:
Theres a hard thing of being at home all the time. You have a lot of stress, because youre
constantly in the house. I think having a job can relieve some of that stress and to make it
a lot more enjoyable, to want to come home all the time. . . . My outings are [limited]. Im
excited when I have to go grocery shopping. Everything I pick is what they eat, everything
they like, or what they should eat. Me, Im just there. Im there for them. I feel that Im
here for them.
Both of these stay-at-home mothers, like over one-third of the stay-at-home mothers in
my sample, plan to go out to work as soon as they can find paid employment that offers
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62 Part I The Changing Family
sufficient rewards to compensate (both financially and ideologically) for sending the kids
to day care. Most of the remaining mothers are committed to staying at home with the
children through what they understand as formative years. The following mother shares
that commitment, while also echoing many paid working mothers in her hopes that one
day she will have a chance to be around adults and further her own growth:
Well, we could do more, wed have more money, but thats really not the biggest reason
Id go back to work. I want to do things for myself, too. I want to go back and get my
masters [degree] or something. I need to grow, and be around adults, too. I dont know
when, but I think in the next two years Ill go back to work. The formative yearstheir
personality is going to develop until theyre about five. Its pretty much set by then. So
I think its pretty critical that youre around them during those times.
One mother stated explicitly that she can hardly wait until the kids are through their
formative years:
At least talking to grown-ups is a little more fulfilling than ordering the kids around
all day. My life right now is just all theirs. Sometimes its a depressing thought because
I think, Where am I? I want my life back. . . . I mean, they are totally selfish. Its like an
ice cream. They just gobble that down and say, Let me have the cinnamon roll now.
. . . [ But] I had them, and I want them to be good people. So Ive dedicated myself
to them right now. Later on I get my life back. They wont always be these little sponges.
I dont want any deficiencywell, nobody can cover all the loopholesbut I want to be
comfortable in myself to know that I did everything that I could. Its the least I can do to
do the best I can by them.
Mothers, she seems to be saying, are like confections that the kids just gobble down
and then they ask for more.
Thus, many stay-at-home moms experience the exhaustion of meeting the demands
of children all day long, just as employed mothers fear they might. And many stay- at-
home mothers also experience a loss of self. Part of the reason they feel like they are los-
ing their identity is that they know the outside world does not recognize a mothers work
as valuable. This woman, committed to staying at home until her youngest is at least
three years old, explains:
You go through a period where you feel like youve lost all your marbles. Boy, youre not
as smart as you used to be, and as sharp as you used to be, and not as respected as you used
to be. And those things are really hard to swallow. But thats something Ive discussed with
other mothers who are willing to stay home with their kids, and weve formed a support
group where weve said, Boy, those people just dont know what theyre talking about.
Were like a support group for each other, which you have to have if youve decided to
stay at home, because you have so many people almost pushing you to work, or asking
Why dont you work? Youre not somehow as good as anybody else cause youre staying
at home; what youre doing isnt important. We have a lot of that in this society.
Another mother, this one determined to stay at home with her kids over the long haul,
provides a concrete example of the subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which society pushes
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Chapter 2 Public Debates and Private Lives 63
mothers to participate in the paid labor force, and of the discomfort such mothers experi-
ence as a result:
As a matter of fact, somebody said to me ( I guess it was a principal from one of the
schools) . . . Well, what do you do? Do you have a job? And it was just very funny to me
that he was so uncomfortable trying to ask me what it was in our society that I did. I guess
that they just assume that if youre a mom at home that it means nothing. I dont know,
I just dont consider it that way. But its kind of funny, worrying about what youre gonna
say at a dinner party about what you do.
And its not just that these mothers worry about being able to impress school principals
and people at cocktail parties, of course. The following mother worries about being in-
teresting to other women who do not have children:
I find myself, now that Im not working, not to have as much in common [with other
women who dont have children]. We dont talk that much because I dont have that much
to talk about. Like I feel Im not an interesting person anymore.
In short, the world presents, and mothers experience, the image of the lazy, mind-
less, dull housewifeand no mother wants to be included in that image.
THE TIME-CRUNCHED CAREER WOMAN
AND THE PULL TOWARD HOME
Stay-at-home mothers use a number of strategies to support their position and combat
the image of the frumpy housewife. Many moms who are committed to staying at home
with their kids often become part of formal or informal support groups, providing them
an opportunity to interact with other mothers who have made the same commitment.
Others, if they can afford the cost of transportation and child care, engage in a variety of
outside activitiesas volunteers for churches, temples, and community groups, for in-
stance, or in regular leisure activities and exercise programs. They then have a chance to
communicate with other adults and to experience themselves as part of a larger social
world (though one in which children generally occupy a central role).
But the primary way that stay-at-home mothers cope with their ambivalence is
through ideological work. Like paid working mothers, they make a list of all the good
reasons they do what they do. In this case, that list includes confirming their commitment
to good mothering, emphasizing the importance of putting their childrens needs ahead
of their own, and telling stories about the problems that families, and especially children,
experience when mothers go out to work for pay.
Many stay-at-home mothers argue that kids require guidance and should have
those cookies cooling on the kitchen counter when they come home from school:
The kids are the ones that suffer. The kids need guidance and stuff. And with two parents
working, sometimes there isnt even a parent home when they come home from school.
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64 Part I The Changing Family
And thats one thing that got me too. I want to be home and I want to have cookies on
the stove when they come home from school. Now we eat meals together all the time. Its
more of a homey atmosphere. Its more of a home atmosphere.
Providing this homey atmosphere is difficult to do if one works elsewhere all day. And
providing some period of so-called quality time in the evening, these mothers tell me, is
not an adequate substitute. One mother elaborates on this point in response to a ques-
tion about how she would feel if she was working outside the home:
Oh, guilty as anything. I know what Im like after dinner, and Im not at my best. And
neither are my kids. And if thats all the time I had with them, it wouldnt be, quote, qual-
ity time. I think its a bunch of b.s. about quality time.
And quality time, even if it is of high quality, cannot make up for childrens lack of a
quantity of time with their mothers. This argument is often voiced in connection with
the problem of paid caregiver arrangements. Most mothers, whether they work for pay
or not, are concerned about the quality of day care, but stay-at-home mothers often use
this concern to explain their commitment to staying at home. This mother, for example,
argues that children who are shuffled off to a series of day-care providers simply will not
get the love they need:
I mean, if Im going to have children I want to raise them. I feel really strongly about that.
Really strongly. I wish more people did that. Myself, I think its very underestimated the
role the mother plays with the child. I really do. From zero to three [ years], its like their
whole self-image. [ Yet, working mothers will say,] Well, okay, Ive got a caretaker now,
Well, that nanny didnt work out. So by the time the children are three years old theyve
had four or five people who have supposedly said Ill love you forever, and theyre gone.
I think thats really tough on the kids.
7
Since paid caregivers lack that deep and long-lasting love, Im told, they wont ever be as
committed to ministering to the childs needs as a mom will:
I dont think anybody can give to children what a mother can give to her own children.
I think theres a level of willingness to put up with hard days, crying days, cranky days,
whining days, that most mothers are going to be able to tolerate just a little bit more than
a caretaker would. I think theres more of a commitment of what a mother wants to give
her children in terms of love, support, values, etcetera. A caretaker isnt going to feel quite
the same way.
Stay-at-home mothers imply that all these problems of kids who lack guidance,
love, and support are connected to the problem of mothers who put their own interests
ahead of the interests of their children. A few stay-at-home mothers will explicitly argue,
as this one does, that employed mothers are allowing material and power interests to take
priority over the well-being of their kids:
People are too interested in power, they just arent interested in what happens to their
kids. You know, Fine, put them in day care. And I just feel sad. If youre so interested in
money or a career or whatever, then why have kids? Why bring them into it?
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Chapter 2 Public Debates and Private Lives 65
Putting such interests ahead of ones children is not only somehow immoral; it also pro-
duces children with real problems. The following mother, echoing many stories about
bad mothers that we have heard before, had this to say about her sister:
My sister works full-timeshes a lawyer. And her kids are the most obnoxious, whiny
kids. I cant stand it. They just hang on her. She thinks shes doing okay by them because
theyre in an expensive private school and they have expensive music lessons and they have
expensive clothes and expensive toys and expensive cars and an expensive house. I dont
know. Time will tell, I guess. But I cant believe theyre not going to have some insecuri-
ties. The thing that gets me is, they dont need it. I mean, hes a lawyer too. Basically, its
like, Well, I like you guys, but I dont really want to be there all day with you, and I dont
want to have to do the dirty work.
These are serious indictments indeed.
It is just these sorts of concerns that leave paid working mothers feeling inad-
equate and ambivalent about their position. Many of them wonder at times if their lives
or the lives of their children might actually be better if they stayed at home with the kids.
Above all, many of them feel guilty and wonder, Am I doing it right? or Have I done
all I can do? These are the mothers who, were told, have it all. It is impossible to have
it all, however, when all includes two contradictory sets of requirements. To begin to
get a deeper sense of how these supermoms do not always feel so super, two examples
might be helpful.
Angela is a working-class mother who had expected to stay home with her son
through his formative years. But after nine months she found herself bored, lonely, and
eager to interact with other adults. She therefore went out and got a full-time job as
a cashier. She begins by expressing her concern that she is not living up to the home-
making suggestions she reads in Parenting magazine, worrying that she may not be doing
it right:
I get Parenting magazine and I read it. I do what is comfortable for me and what I can do.
Im not very creative. Where they have all these cooking ideas, and who has time to do
that, except for a mother who stays home all day? Most of this is for a mother who has
five, six hours to spend with her child doing this kind of thing. I dont have time for that.
So then thats when I go back to day care. And I know that shes doing this kind of
stuff with him, teaching him things. You know, a lot of the stuff that they have is on school-
ing kinds of things, flash cards, that kind of thing. Just things that I dont do. That makes
me feel bad. Then I think, I should be doing this and Am I doing the right thing?
I know I have a lot of love for him.
Although she loves her son and believes that this is probably the most important thing,
she also feels guilty that she may not be spending a sufficient amount of time with him,
simply because she gets so tired:
I think sometimes that I feel like I dont spend enough time with him and thats my big-
gest [concern]. And when I am with him, sometimes Im not really up to being with him.
Even though I am with him, sometimes I want him to go away because Ive been work-
ing all day and Im exhausted. And I feel sometimes Ill stick him in bed early because
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66 Part I The Changing Family
I just dont want to deal with him that day. And I feel really guilty because I dont spend
enough time with him as it is. When I do have the chance to spend time with him, I dont
want to spend time with him, because Im so tired and I just want to be with myself and
by myself.
Even though Angela likes her paid work and does not want to give it up, the problems of
providing both a quantity of time and the idealized image of quality time with her child,
just like the challenge of applying the creative cooking and child-rearing ideas she finds
in Parenting magazine, haunt her and leave her feeling both inadequate and guilty.
Linda is a professional-class mother with a well-paying and challenging job that
gives her a lot of satisfaction. She spent months searching for the right preschool for her
son and is relieved that he is now in a place where the caregivers share her values. Still,
she worries and wonders if life might be better if she had made different choices:
I have a friend. Shes a very good mom. She seems very patient, and I never heard her raise
her voice. And shes also not working. She gets to stay home with her children, which is
another thing I admire. I guess I sort of envy that too. There never seems to be a time
where we can just spend, like, playing a lot. I think thats what really bothers me, that
I dont feel like I have the time to just sit down and, in a relaxing way, play with him. I can
do it, but then Im thinking Okay, well I can do this for five minutes. So thats always in
the back of my mind. Time, time, time. So I guess thats the biggest thing.
And just like your question, How many hours a day is he at preschool and how
many hours do you spend per day as the primary caregiver? just made me think, Oh
my gosh! I mean theyre watching him grow up more than I am. Theyre with him more
than I am. And that makes me feel guilty in a way, and it makes me feel sad in a way.
I mean I can just see him, slipping, just growing up before me. Maybe its that quality-
time stuff. I dont spend a lot of time, and I dont know if the time I do spend with him
is quality.
[ But] if I just stay at home, Ill kind of lose, I dont know if I want to say my sense
of identity, but I guess Ill lose my career identity. Im afraid of that I guess. . . . My friend
who stays at home, she had a career before she had her children, but I forget what it was.
So that whole part of her, I cant even identify it now.
On the one hand, Linda envies and admires stay-at-home moms and worries about not
spending enough quality time with her son, or enough play time. She is also upset that
her day-care provider spends more hours with her son each day than she can. On the
other hand, Linda worries that if she did stay at home shed lose her identity as a pro-
fessional and a member of the larger society. Time, time, time, she says, theres never
enough time to do it allor at least to do it all right.
The issue of time is a primary source of paid working mothers ambivalence about
their double shift. Attempting to juggle two commitments at once is, of course, very dif-
ficult and stressful. This mothers sense of how time pressures make her feel that she is
always moving too fast would be recognizable to the majority of paid working mothers:
I can see when I get together with my sister [who doesnt have a paid job] . . . that shes
so easygoing with the kids, and she takes her time, and when Im with her, I realize how
stressed out I am sometimes trying to get things done.
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Chapter 2 Public Debates and Private Lives 67
And I notice how much faster I move when I shop. . . . Shes so relaxed, and I think
I kind of envy that.
The problem of moving too fast when shopping is connected to the problem of moving
too fast when raising children. Many paid working mothers envy those who can do such
things at a more relaxed pace.
For a few employed mothers (two out of twenty in my sample) the problems of
quality and quantity time outweigh the rewards of paid work, and they intend to leave
their jobs as soon as they can afford to do so. This woman is one example:
I believe theres a more cohesive family unit with maybe the mother staying at home. Be-
cause a woman tends to be a buffer, mediator, you name it. She pulls the family together.
But if shes working outside the home, sometimes theres not that opportunity anymore
for her to pull everyone together. Shes just as tired as the husband would be and, I dont
know, maybe the children are feeling like theyve been not necessarily abandoned but,
well, Im sure they accept it, especially if thats the only life theyve seen. But my daughter
has seen a change, even when I was only on maternity leave. Ive seen a change in her and
she seemed to just enjoy it and appreciate us as a family more than when I was working.
So now she keeps telling me, Mom, I miss you.
When this mother hears her daughter say I miss you, she feels a tremendous pull to-
ward staying at home. And when she talks about the way a family needs a mother to bring
its members together, she is pointing to an idealized image of the family that, like quality
and quantity time, weighs heavily in the minds of many mothers.
The following paid working mother also wishes she could stay at home with the
kids and wishes she could be just like the television mom of the 1950s who bakes cookies
every afternoon. But she knows she has to continue working for financial reasons:
Yes. I want to be Donna Reed, definitely. Or maybe Beaver Cleavers mother, Jane Wyatt.
Anybody in an apron and a pretty hairdo and a beautiful house. Yes. Getting out of the
television set and making the most of reality is really what I have to do. Because Ill always
have to work.
But the majority of paid working mothers, as I have stated, not only feel they need
to work for financial reasons but also want to work, as Angela and Linda do. Nonetheless,
their concerns about the effects of the double shift on their children match the concerns
of those employed moms who wish they could stay at home as well as mimicking those
of mothers who actually do stay at home. This mother, for instance, loves her paid work
and does not want to give it up, but she does feel guilty, wondering if shes depriving her
kids of the love and stimulation they need, particularly since she does not earn enough
to justify the time she spends away:
Honestly, I dont make that much money. So that in itself brings a little bit of guilt, cause
I know I work even though we dont have to. So theres some guilt associated. If kids are
coming home to an empty house every day, theyre not getting the intellectual stimula-
tion [and] theyre not getting the love and nurturing that other mothers are able to give
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68 Part I The Changing Family
their kids. So I think in the long run theyre missing out on a lot of the love and the
nurturing and the caring.
And this mother does not want it to seem that she is putting her child second, but she
feels pressure to live up to the image of a supermom:
I felt really torn between what I wanted to do. Like a gut-wrenching decision. Like, whats
more important? Of course your kids are important, but you know, theres so many outside
pressures for women to work. Every ad you see in magazines or on television shows this
working woman whos coming home with a briefcase and the kids are all dressed and clean.
Its such a lie. I dont know of anybody who lives like that.
Theres just a lot of pressure that youre not a fulfilled woman if youre not working
outside of the home. But yet, its just a real hard choice.
This feeling of being torn by a gut-wrenching decision comes up frequently:
Im constantly torn between what I feel I should be doing in my work and spending
more time with them. . . . I think I would spend more time with them if I could. Some-
times I think it would be great not to work and be a mom and do that, and then I think,
well?
I think its hard. Because I think you do need to have contact with your kid. You
cant just see him in the morning and put him to bed at night because you work all day
long. I think thats a real problem. You need to give your child guidance. You cant leave
it to the schools. You cant leave it to churches. You need to be there. So, in some ways
Im really torn.
The overriding issue for this mother is guidance; seeing the children in the morning and
putting them to bed at night is just not enough.
This problem, of course, is related to the problem of leaving kids with a paid care-
giver all day. Paid working mothers do not like the idea of hearing their children cry
when they leave them at day care any more than any other mother does. They are, as we
have seen, just as concerned that their children will not get enough love, enough nur-
turing, enough of the right values, enough of the proper education, and enough of the
right kind of discipline if they spend most of their time with a paid caregiver. To this list
of concerns, paid working mothers add their feeling that when the kids are with a paid
caregiver all day, it feels as if someone else is being the mother. One woman (who stayed
at home until her son was two years old ) elaborates:
Well, I think its really sad that kids have to be at day care forty hours a week. Because
basically the person whos taking care of them is your day-care person. Theyre pretty
much being the mother. Its really sad that this other person is raising your child, and its
basically like having this other person adopting your child. Its awful that we have to do that.
I just think its a crime basically. I wish we didnt have to do it. I wish everybody could stay
home with their kids and have some kind of outlet. . . .
And I think having a career is really important, but I think when it comes time to
have children, you can take that time off and spend it with your kid. Because you cant go
backwards, and time does fly with them. Its so sad . . . I hear people say, Oh, my day-care
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Chapter 2 Public Debates and Private Lives 69
lady said that so-and-so walked today or used a spoon or something. I mean its just so
devastating to hear that you didnt get to see that.
Leaving ones child with a paid caregiver for hours on end is therefore a potential prob-
lem not only because that other mother may not be a good mother but also because the
real mother misses out on the joys that come from just being with the child and having
a chance to watch him or her grow. This is a heart rending issue for many mothers who
work outside the home.
Once again, the arguments used by stay-at-home mothers to affirm their com-
mitment to staying home are mimicked by the arguments paid working mothers use to
express their ambivalence about the time they spend away from their children. And again,
though the reasoning of these women is grounded in their experiences, it is also drawn
from a widely available cultural rhetoric regarding the proper behavior of mothers.
THE CURIOUS COINCIDENCE OF
PAID WORK AND THE IDEOLOGY
OF INTENSIVE MOTHERING
Both paid working moms and stay-at-home moms, then, do the ideological work of
making their respective lists of the reasons they should work for pay and the reasons
they should stay at home. Yet both groups also continue to experience and express some
ambivalence about their current positions, feeling pushed and pulled in two directions.
One would assume that they would cope with their ambivalence by simply returning
to their list of good reasons for doing what they do. And stay-at-home mothers do
just that: they respond to the push toward work in the paid labor force by arguing that
their kids need them to be at home. But, as I will demonstrate, working mothers do not
use the mirror strategy. The vast majority of these women do not respond to the pull
toward staying at home by arguing that kids are a pain in the neck and that paid work
is more enjoyable. Instead, they respond by creating a new list of all the reasons that
they are good mothers even though they work outside the home. In other words, the
ideological work meant to resolve mothers ambivalence generally points in the direc-
tion of intensive mothering.
Most paid working mothers cope with the ambivalence by arguing that their par-
ticipation in the labor force is ultimately good for their kids. They make this point in
a number of ways. For instance, one mother thinks that the example she provides may
help to teach her kids the work ethic. Another says that with the outside constraints
imposed by her work schedule, shes more organized and effective as a mom.
8
Yet
another mother suggests that her second child takes just as much time and energy away
from her first child as her career does:
I think the only negative effect [of my employment] is just [that] generally when Im over-
stressed I dont do as well as a mother. But work is only one of the things that gets me
overstressed. In fact it probably stresses me less than some other things. I think I do feel
guilty about working cause it takes time away from [my oldest daughter]. But it struck
Ch-02.indd 69 7/8/2008 12:31:57 PM
70 Part I The Changing Family
me that its acceptable to have a second child that takes just as much time away from the
other child. That Im not supposed to feel guilty about. But in some ways this [ pointing to
the infant she is holding] takes my time away from her more than my work does. Because
this is constant.
More often, however, paid working mothers share a set of more standard explana-
tions for why their labor-force participation is actually whats best for their kids. First,
just as Rachel feels that her income provides for her daughters toys, clothing, outings,
and education, and just as Jacqueline argues, I have weeks when I dont spend enough
time with them and they suffer, but those are also the weeks I bring home the biggest
paychecks, many mothers point out that their paid work provides the financial resources
necessary for the well-being of their children:
How am I supposed to send her to college without saving up? And also the money that
I make from working helps pay for her toys, things that she needs, clothes. I never have to
say, Oh, Im on a budget, I cant go buy this pair of shoes. I want the best for her.
Some mothers express a related concernnamely, what would happen to the family if
they did not have paying jobs and their husbands should die or divorce them? One
woman expressed it this way:
Well, my dad was a fireman, so I guess there was a little bit of fear, well, if anything hap-
pened to him, how are we gonna go on? And I always kind of wished that [my mother]
had something to fall back on. I think that has a lot to do with why I continue to work
after the kids. Ive always just felt the need to have something to hold on to.
The second standard argument given by employed mothers is that paid caregiver
arrangements can help to further childrens development. With respect to other peoples
kids, Im told, these arrangements can keep them from being smothered by their moth-
ers or can temporarily remove them from bad family situations. With reference to their
own children, mothers emphasize that good day care provides kids with the opportunity
to interact with adults, gives them access to new experiences and different activities,
encourages their independence, and allows them to play with other kidswhich is very
important, especially now that neighborhoods no longer provide the sort of community
life they once did:
They do say that kids in preschool these days are growing up a little more neurotic, but
I dont think that my daughter would have had a better life. In fact I think her life would
have been a thousand times worse if I was a low-income mother who stayed home and
she only got to play with the kids at the park. Because I think that preschool is really
good for them. Maybe not a holding tank, but a nice preschool where they play nice games
with them and they have the opportunity to play with the same kids over and over again.
I think thats really good for them. Back in the 1950s, everybody stayed home and there
were kids all over the block to play with. Its not that way now. The neighborhoods are
deserted during the week.
Ch-02.indd 70 7/8/2008 12:31:57 PM
Chapter 2 Public Debates and Private Lives 71
Third, several mothers tell me that the quality of the time they spend with their
kids actually seems to increase when they have a chance to be away from them for a part
of the day. Listen to these mothers:
When Im with them too long I tend to lose my patience and start yelling at them. This
way we both get out. And were glad to see each other when we come home.
If women were only allowed to work maybe ten to fifteen hours a week, they would ap-
preciate their kids more and theyd have more quality time with them, rather than having
to always just scold them.
I think I have even less patience [when I stay home with the children], because its like, Oh,
is this all there is? . . . Whereas when I go to work and come home, Im glad to see him.
You know, you hear people say that theyre better parents when they work because they
spend more quality time, all those clichs, or whatever. For me that happens to be true.
And now when I come home from work (although I wish I could get off earlier from
work), I think Im a better mom. There you go! Because when I come home from work,
I dont have all day, just being with the kids. Its just that when Im working I feel like Im
competent, Im a person!
Getting this break from the kids, a break that reinforces your feeling of competence
and therefore results in more rewarding time with your children is closely connected to
the final way paid working mothers commonly attempt to resolve their ambivalence.
Their childrens happiness, they explain, is dependent upon their own happiness as moth-
ers. One hears this again and again: Happy moms make happy children; If Im happy
in my work then I think I can be a better mom; and I have to be happy with myself in
order to make the children happy. One mother explains it this way:
In some ways working is good. Its definitely got its positive side, because I get a break.
I mean, now what Im doing [working part-time] is perfect. I go to work. I have time to
myself. I get to go to the bathroom when I need to go to the bathroom. I come home and
Im very happy to see my kids again. Whats good for the mother and makes the mother
happy is definitely good for the kids.
In all these explanations for why their participation in the paid labor force is actu-
ally good for their kids, these mothers want to make it clear that they still consider chil-
dren their primary interest. They are definitely not placing a higher value on material
success or power, they say. Nor are they putting their own interests above the interests
of their children. They want the children to get all they need. But part of what children
need, they argue, is financial security, the material goods required for proper develop-
ment, some time away from their mothers, more quality time when they are with their
mothers, and mothers who are happy in what they do. In all of these statements, paid
working mothers clearly recognize the ideology of intensive mothering and testify that
they are committed to fulfilling its requirements.
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72 Part I The Changing Family
To underline the significance of this point, let me remind the reader that these paid
working mothers use methods of child rearing that are just as child-centered, expert-
guided, emotionally absorbing, labor-intensive, and financially expensive as their stay-
at-home counterparts; they hold the child just as sacred, and they are just as likely to
consider themselves as primarily responsible for the present and future well-being of
their children. These are also the very same mothers who put a tremendous amount
of time and energy into finding appropriate paid caregiver arrangements. Yet for all
that they do to meet the needs of their children, they still express some ambivalence
about working outside the home. And they still resolve this ambivalence by returning
to the logic of intensive mothering and reminding the observer that ultimately they
are most interested in what is best for their kids. This is striking.
CONTINUING CONTRADICTIONS
All this ideological work is a measure of the power of the pushes and pulls experienced
by American mothers today. A woman can be a stay-at-home mother and claim to fol-
low tradition, but not without paying the price of being treated as an outsider in the
larger public world of the market. Or a woman can be a paid worker who participates
in that larger world, but she must then pay the price of an impossible double shift. In
both cases, women are enjoined to maintain the logic of intensive mothering. These
contradictory pressures mimic the contradictory logics operating in this society, and
almost all mothers experience them. The complex strategies mothers use to cope with
these contradictory logics highlight the emotional, cognitive, and physical toll they take
on contemporary mothers.
As I have argued, these strategies also highlight something more. The ways moth-
ers explain their decisions to stay at home or work in the paid labor force, like the pushes
and pulls they feel, run in opposite directions. Yet the ways they attempt to resolve the
ambivalence they experience as a result of those decisions run in the same direction.
Stay-at-home mothers, as I have shown, reaffirm their commitment to good mothering,
and employed mothers maintain that they are good mothers even though they work. Paid
working mothers do not, for instance, claim that child rearing is a relatively meaning-
less task, that personal profit is their primary goal, and that children are more efficiently
raised in child-care centers. If you are a mother, in other words, although both the logic
of the workplace and the logic of mothering operate in your life, the logic of intensive
mothering has a stronger claim.
This phenomenon is particularly curious. The fact that there is no way for either
type of mother to get it right would seem all the more reason to give up the logic of in-
tensive mothering, especially since both groups of mothers recognize that paid employ-
ment confers more status than motherhood in the larger world. Yet images of freshly
baked cookies and Leave It to Beaver seem to haunt mothers more often than the house-
wives problem that has no name ( Friedan 1963), and far more often than the image
of a corporate manager with a big office, a large staff, and lots of perks. Although these
mothers do not want to be defined as mere housewives and do want to achieve recog-
nition in the outside world, most would also like to be there when the kids come home
Ch-02.indd 72 7/8/2008 12:31:57 PM
Chapter 2 Public Debates and Private Lives 73
from school. Mothers surely try to balance their own desires against the requirements of
appropriate child rearing, but in the world of mothering, it is socially unacceptable for
them (in word if not in deed) to place their own needs above the needs of their children.
A good mother certainly would never simply put her child aside for her own convenience.
And placing material wealth or power on a higher plane than the well-being of children
is strictly forbidden. It is clear that the two groups come together in holding these values
as primary, despite the social devaluation of mothering and despite the glorification of
wealth and power.
The portrait of the mommy wars, then, is overdrawn. Although the ideological strat-
egies these groups use to explain their choice of home or paid work include an implicit
critique of those on the other side, this is almost always qualified, and both groups, at
least at times, discuss their envy or admiration for the others. More important, as should
now be abundantly clear, both groups ultimately share the same set of beliefs and the
same set of concerns. Over half the women in my sample explicitly state that the choice
between home and paid work depends on the individual woman, her interests, desires,
and circumstances. Nearly all the rest argue that home is more important than paid work
because children are simply more important than careers or the pursuit of financial gain.
The paid working women in my sample were actually twice as likely as their stay-at-home
counterparts to respond that home and children are more important and rewarding than
paid work.
9
Ideologically speaking, at least, home and children actually seem to become
more important to a mother the more time she spends away from them.
There are significant differences among mothersranging from individual differ-
ences to more systematic differences of class, race, and employment. But in the present
context, what is most significant is the commitment to the ideology of intensive mother-
ing that women share in spite of their differences. In this, the cultural contradictions of
motherhood persist.
The case of paid working mothers is particularly important in this regard, since
these are the very mothers who, arguably, have the most to gain from redefining mother-
hood in such a way as to lighten their load on the second shift. As we have seen, how-
ever, this is not exactly what they do. It is true, as Gerson (1985) argues, that there are
ways in which paid working mothers do redefine motherhood and lighten their loadfor
instance, by sending their kids to day care, spending less time with them than their stay-
at-home counterparts, legitimating their paid labor-force participation, and engaging
in any number of practical strategies to make child-rearing tasks less energy- and time-
consuming.
10
But, as I have argued, this does not mean that these mothers have given up
the ideology of intensive mothering. Rather, it means that, whether or not they actually
do, they feel they should spend a good deal of time looking for appropriate paid caregiv-
ers, trying to make up for the lack of quantity time by focusing their energy on providing
quality time, and remaining attentive to the central tenets of the ideology of intensive
child rearing. It also means that many are left feeling pressed for time, a little guilty, a bit
inadequate, and somewhat ambivalent about their position. These stresses and the strain
toward compensatory strategies should actually be taken as a measure of the persistent
strength of the ideology of intensive mothering.
To deepen the sense of paradox further, one final point should be repeated. There
are reasons to expect middle-class mothers to be in the vanguard of transforming ideas
Ch-02.indd 73 7/8/2008 12:31:58 PM
74 Part I The Changing Family
about child rearing away from an intensive model. First, middle-class women were his-
torically in the vanguard of transforming child-rearing ideologies. Second, while many
poor and working-class women have had to carry a double shift of wage labor and do-
mestic chores for generations, middle-class mothers have had little practice, historically
speaking, in juggling paid work and home and therefore might be eager to avoid it.
Finally, one could argue that employed mothers in the middle class have more to gain
from reconstructing ideas about appropriate child rearing than any other groupnot
only because their higher salaries mean that more money is at stake, but also because
intensive mothering potentially interferes with their career trajectories in a more dam-
aging way than is true of less high-status occupations. But, as I have suggested, middle-
class women are, in some respects, those who go about the task of child rearing with the
greatest intensity.
When womens increasing participation in the labor force, the cultural ambivalence
regarding paid working and stay-at-home mothers, the particular intensity of middle-
class mothering, and the demanding character of the cultural model of appropriate child
rearing are taken together, it becomes clear that the cultural contradictions of mother-
hood have been deepened rather than resolved. The history of child-rearing ideas dem-
onstrates that the more powerful the logic of the rationalized market became, so too did
its ideological opposition in the logic of intensive mothering. The words of contempo-
rary mothers demonstrate that this trend persists in the day-to-day lives of women.
Notes
1. It seems to me that the popular-culture images of both the traditional mother and the supermom
tend to be portraits of professional-class women; the life-styles of working-class and poor women
are virtually ignored. Hochschild (1989) does a particularly nice job of describing the image of
a professional-class supermom, an image that our society pastes on billboards and covers in
full-page ads in popular magazines: She has that working-mother look as she strides forward,
briefcase in one hand, smiling child in the other. Literally and figuratively, she is moving ahead.
Her hair, if long, tosses behind her; if it is short, it sweeps back at the sides, suggesting mobility
and progress. There is nothing shy or passive about her. She is confident, active, liberated. She
wears a dark tailored suit, but with a silk bow or colorful frill that says, Im really feminine under-
neath. She has made it in a mans world without sacrificing her femininity. And she has done this
on her own. By some personal miracle, this image suggests, she has managed to combine what
150 years of industrialization have split wide apartchild and job, frill and suit, female culture and
male (1).
2. Womens decisions to remain childless or to become stay-at-home mothers or paid working
mothers are based in social-structural circumstances. Kathleen Gersons Hard Choices: How Women
Decide about Work, Career, and Motherhood (1985) focuses precisely on this issue.
3. For discussions of this war in its various forms, see, for instance, Berger and Berger (1983); Ger-
son (1985); Ginsburg (1989); Hunter (1991, 1994); Klatch (1987); and Luker (1984).
4. The fact that people use ideological work to come to terms with their social circumstances does
not mean that peoples ideas are purely the result of their social position. An individuals ideas may
well be the reason he or she came to that position in the first place. There is, as Berger points
out, a dialectical relationship between ideas and circumstances. And neither ones ideas nor ones
position is a matter of completely free or individual choice. Both are socially shaped.
5. A full half of the paid working women in my sample were employed only part-time. Nationally,
approximately 33 percent of the married mothers employed in 1992 worked part-time; the re-
maining 67 percent worked full-time, that is, 35 hours or more per week ( Hayghe and Bianche
Ch-02.indd 74 7/8/2008 12:31:58 PM
Chapter 2 Public Debates and Private Lives 75
1994). When one adds to this reality the facts that a number of stay-at-home mothers engage in
forms of temporary or hidden paid work (such as child care for others) and that all mothers tend
to move in and out of the labor force over time, it becomes clear that there is actually a continuum
rather than a sharp divide between the statuses of paid working mothers and stay-at-home moth-
ers. Nonetheless, the mothers in my sample systematically defined themselves as either paid work-
ing mothers or stay-at-home mothers and focused on the divide rather than on the continuum, as
their arguments in this chapter make clear.
6. Over one-third of the stay-at-home mothers I talked to planned to enter the paid labor force
within the next five years, one-third were not sure if they would or not, and just under one-third
felt sure that they would stay at home for at least another five years. These figures compare with
the eighteen of twenty paid working mothers who planned to continue working outside the home;
only two hoped they would at some point be able to stay at home with the kids.
Two of the eighteen stay-at-home mothers in my sample wanted to stay home indefinitely.
Heres how one of them explained her position: I dont want to go to work. I enjoy being [at
home]. I enjoy it. I dont mind if somebody would call me a housewife or a homemaker. It doesnt
bother me. Im not a feminist. Theres no need for me to be out there. For the amount of money
I made, its not worth it. Her concluding remark is, of course, telling. But poorly paid jobs are
not the only reason that mothers want to stay home. . . . It should also be recognized that many
women want to work outside the home even if their jobs pay poorly.
7. This can be hard on a mother too. For instance: [My friend] was working full-time, and she came
to the baby-sitters, and her daughter was just kind of clinging to the baby-sitter and wouldnt
come to her. And that was it for her. She quit her job.
8. This same argument is also found in popular-press pieces such as The Managerial Mother
(Schneider 1987). Since the time of these interviews a number of the middle-class employed
mothers I know (nearly all of whom are academics) have made this same argument: that they are
more organized, efficient, and effective as moms because their paid work trains them to develop
those skills, just as their double shift forces them to be organized, efficient, and effective all the
time. In fact, many of these mothers argue that the professionalism they learn as working women
explains their intensive mothering. The problem with this explanation is that the ideology of
intensive motherhood, as I have shown, is not confined to middle-class, paid-working mothers.
Many other women argue that it is mothering itself that teaches them to be more organized, ef-
ficient, and effective as mothers and as workers.
But there is some truth in what my paid professional women friends say. Although intensive
mothering has a much broader social basis, there are reasons why middle-class mothers on the one
side, and paid working women on the other, are, in some respects, more intensive in their mother-
ing. It makes sense that women who are both middle-class and paid professionals add to this an
overlay of training in organization and focused commitment to their assigned tasks. But this only
explains differences in degree; it does not explain the larger social grounding for the ideology of
intensive mothering.
9. My sample is too small to make any definitive comment on this, but the numbers are as follows:
half of the paid working mothers in my study say that children and home are more important
for a woman than work, whereas only one-quarter of the stay-at-home mothers respond in this
way (with the remainder providing the it depends response). And, it is interesting to note,
professional-class and affluent paid-working mothers are the group most likely to say that home
and children are more important and rewarding than careers; nearly three-quarters of them re-
spond this way.
10. While the historical increase in the use of day-care facilities and alternative caregivers might be
seen as an attempt to lessen the cultural contradictions of motherhood, it should be recognized
that, historically speaking, mothers rarely did the job of raising children alone: rural families often
had live-in help and relied on older siblings to take care of the younger ones; working-class women
in urban areas also relied on older children as well as on friends and neighbors; and many upper-
class women depended upon servants, nannies, and nursemaids. Although there does seem to have
been a period during the 1950s and 1960s when families were less able to obtain and less likely to
use help in raising children, todays alternatives to exclusively maternal care are probably in large
Ch-02.indd 75 7/8/2008 12:31:58 PM
76 Part I The Changing Family
measure a simple substitute for the help that was previously available. Furthermore, it is impor-
tant to note that the expectations for the task are much higher today than they once were, that
mothers must therefore expend much time and energy seeking out and assuring the maintenance
of the proper day-care situation, and that the use of day care coexists with increased expectations
for mothers to make up for the hours their children spend under the care of others.
References
Berger, Bennett. 1981. Survival of a Counterculture. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Berger, Brigitte, and Peter Berger. 1983. The War over the Family: Capturing the Middle Ground. Garden
City, N.Y.: Anchor.
Darnton, Nina. 1990. Mommy vs. Mommy. Newsweek, June 4.
Friedan, Betty. 1963. The Feminine Mystique. New York: Dell.
Gerson, Kathleen. 1985. Hard Choices: How Women Decide about Work, Career, and Motherhood. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Ginsburg, Faye D. 1989. Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community. Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press.
Hayghe, Howard V., and Suzanne M. Bianchi. 1994. Married Mothers Work Patterns: The Job-Family
Compromise. Monthly Labor Review 117 (6):24 30.
Hochschild, Arlie, with Anne Machung. 1989. The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at
Home. New York: Viking.
Hunter, James Davison. 1991. Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. New York: Basic.
. 1994. Before the Shooting Begins: Searching for Democracy in Americas Culture War. New York:
Free Press.
Klatch, Rebecca E. 1987. Women of the New Right. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Luker, Kristin. 1984. Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Schneider, Phyllis. 1987. The Managerial Mother. Working Woman, December, 11726.
Schwartz, Felice. 1989. Management Women and the New Facts of Life. Harvard Business Review
67 (1):6577.
R E A DI NG 6
Decline of the Family: Conservative,
Liberal, and Feminist Views
Janet Z. Giele
In the 1990s the state of American families and children became a new and urgent topic.
Everyone recognized that families had changed. Divorce rates had risen dramatically.
More women were in the labor force. Evidence on rising teenage suicides, high rates of
teen births, and disturbing levels of addiction and violence had put children at risk.
Conservatives have held that these problems can be traced to a culture of tol-
eration and an expanding welfare state that undercut self-reliance and community
Ch-02.indd 76 7/8/2008 12:31:58 PM
Chapter 2 Public Debates and Private Lives 77
standards. They focus on the family as a caregiving institution and try to restore its
strengths by changing the culture of marriage and parenthood. Liberals center on the
disappearance of manual jobs that throws less educated men out of work and under-
cuts their status in the family as well as rising hours of work among the middle class
that makes stable two-parent families more difficult to maintain. Liberals argue that
structural changes are needed outside the family in the public world of employment
and schools.
The feminist vision combines both the reality of human interdependence in the
family and individualism of the workplace. Feminists want to protect diverse family forms
that allow realization of freedom and equality while at the same time nurturing the chil-
dren of the next generation.
THE CONSERVATIVE EXPLANATION:
SELFISHNESS AND MORAL DECLINE
The new family advocates turn their spotlight on the breakdown in the two-parent fam-
ily, saying that rising divorce, illegitimacy, and father absence have put children at greater
risk of school failure, unemployment, and antisocial behavior. The remedy is to restore
religious faith and family commitment as well as to cut welfare payments to unwed moth-
ers and mother-headed families.
Conservative Model
Cultural Family breakdown, Father absence,
and moral divorce, school failure, poverty,
weakening family decline crime, drug use
Cultural and Moral Weakening
To many conservatives, the modern secularization of religious practice and the decline of
religious affiliation have undermined the norms of sexual abstinence before marriage and
the prohibitions of adultery or divorce thereafter. Sanctions against illegitimacy or divorce
have been made to seem narrow-minded and prejudiced. In addition, daytime television
and the infamous example of Murphy Brown, a single mother having a child out of wed-
lock, helped to obscure simple notions of right and wrong. Barbara Dafoe Whiteheads
controversial article in the Atlantic entitled Dan Quayle Was Right is an example of
this argument.
1
Gradual changes in marriage law have also diminished the hold of tradition. Re-
strictions against waiting periods, race dissimilarity, and varying degrees of consanguin-
ity were gradually disappearing all over the United States and Europe.
2
While Mary Ann
Glendon viewed the change cautiously but relativisticallyas a process that waxed and
waned across the centuriesothers have interpreted these changes as a movement from
status to contract (i.e., from attention to the particular individuals characteristics to reli-
ance on the impersonal considerations of the market place).
3
The resulting transformation
Ch-02.indd 77 7/8/2008 12:31:58 PM
78 Part I The Changing Family
lessened the familys distinctive capacity to serve as a bastion of private freedom against
the leveling effect and impersonality of public bureaucracy.
Erosion of the Two-Parent Family
To conservatives, one of the most visible causes of family erosion was government wel-
fare payments, which made fatherless families a viable option. In Losing Ground, Charles
Murray used the rise in teenage illegitimate births as proof that government-sponsored
welfare programs had actually contributed to the breakdown of marriage.
4
Statistics
on rising divorce and mother-headed families appeared to provide ample proof that
the two-parent family was under siege. The proportion of all households headed by
married cou ples fell from 77 percent in 1950 to 61 percent in 1980 and 55 percent in
1993.
5
Rising cohabitation, divorce rates, and births out of wedlock all contributed to the
trend. The rise in single-person households was also significant, from only 12 percent
of all households in 1950 to 27 percent in 1980, a trend fed by rising affluence and the
undoubling of living arrangements that occurred with the expansion of the housing sup-
ply after World War II.
6
The growth of single-parent households, however, was the most worrisome to pol-
icymakers because of their strong links to child poverty. In 1988, 50 percent of all children
were found in mother-only families compared with 20 percent in 1950. The parental situ-
ation of children in poverty changed accordingly. Of all poor children in 1959, 73 percent
had two parents present and 20 percent had a mother only. By 1988, only 35 percent of
children in poverty lived with two parents and 57 percent lived with a mother only. These
developments were fed by rising rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births. Between
1940 and 1990, the divorce rate rose from 8.8 to 21 per thousand married women. Out-
of-wedlock births exploded from 5 percent in 1960 to 26 percent in 1990.
7
To explain these changes, conservatives emphasize the breakdown of individual and
cultural commitment to marriage and the loss of stigma for divorce and illegitimacy.
They understand both trends to be the result of greater emphasis on short-term gratifi-
cation and on adults personal desires rather than on what is good for children. A young
woman brings a child into the world without thinking about who will support it. A hus-
band divorces his wife and forms another household, possibly with other children, and
leaves children of the earlier family behind without necessarily feeling obliged to be
present in their upbringing or to provide them with financial support.
Negative Consequences for Children
To cultural conservatives there appears to be a strong connection between erosion of the
two-parent family and the rise of health and social problems in children. Parental in-
vestment in children has declinedespecially in the time available for supervision and
companionship. Parents had roughly 10 fewer hours per week for their children in 1986
than in 1960, largely because more married women were employed (up from 24 percent
in 1940 to 52 percent in 1983) and more mothers of young children (under age six) were
working (up from 12 percent in 1940 to 50 percent in 1983). By the late 1980s just over
half of mothers of children under a year old were in the labor force for at least part of
Ch-02.indd 78 7/8/2008 12:31:58 PM
Chapter 2 Public Debates and Private Lives 79
the year.
8
At the same time fathers were increasingly absent from the family because of
desertion, divorce, or failure to marry. In 1980, 15 percent of white children, 50 percent
of black children, and 27 percent of children of Hispanic origin had no father present.
Today 36 percent of children are living apart from their biological fathers compared with
only 17 percent in 1960.
9
Without a parent to supervise children after school, keep them from watching tele-
vision all day, or prevent them from playing in dangerous neighborhoods, many more
children appear to be falling by the wayside, victims of drugs, obesity, violence, suicide,
or failure in school. During the 1960s and 1970s the suicide rate for persons aged fifteen
to nineteen more than doubled. The proportion of obese children between the ages of
six and eleven rose from 18 to 27 percent. Average SAT scores fell, and 25 percent of all
high school students failed to graduate.
10
In 1995 the Council on Families in America re-
ported, Recent surveys have found that children from broken homes, when they become
teenagers, have 2 to 3 times more behavioral and psychological problems than do chil-
dren from intact homes.
11
Father absence is blamed by the fatherhood movement for
the rise in violence among young males. David Blankenhorn and others reason that the
lack of a positive and productive male role model has contributed to an uncertain mascu-
line identity which then uses violence and aggression to prove itself. Every child deserves
a father and in a good society, men prove their masculinity not by killing other people,
impregnating lots of women, or amassing large fortunes, but rather by being committed
fathers and loving husbands.
12
Psychologist David Elkind, in The Hurried Child, suggests that parents work and
time constraints have pushed down the developmental timetable to younger ages so that
small children are being expected to take care of themselves and perform at levels which
are robbing them of their childhood. The consequences are depression, discouragement,
and a loss of joy at learning and growing into maturity.
13
Reinvention of Marriage
According to the conservative analysis, the solution to a breakdown in family values is to
revitalize and reinstitutionalize marriage. The culture should change to give higher pri-
ority to marriage and parenting. The legal code should favor marriage and encourage pa-
rental responsibility on the part of fathers as well as mothers. Government should cut back
welfare programs which have supported alternate family forms.
The cultural approach to revitalizing marriage is to raise the overall priority given to
family activities relative to work, material consumption, or leisure. Marriage is seen as the
basic building block of civil society, which helps to hold together the fabric of volunteer
activity and mutual support that underpins any democratic society.
14
Some advocates
are unapologetically judgmental toward families who fall outside the two-parent mold.
According to a 1995 Newsweek article on The Return of Shame, David Blankenhorn
believes a stronger sense of shame about illegitimacy and divorce would do more than
any tax cut or any new governmental program to maximize the life circumstances of chil-
dren. But he also adds that the ultimate goal is to move beyond stigmatizing only teen-
age mothers toward an understanding of the terrible message sent by all of us when we
minimize the importance of fathers or contribute to the breakup of families.
15
Ch-02.indd 79 7/8/2008 12:31:58 PM
80 Part I The Changing Family
Another means to marriage and family revitalization is some form of taking a
pledge. Prevention programs for teenage pregnancy affirm the ideal of chastity before
marriage. Athletes for Abstinence, an organization founded by a professional basketball
player, preaches that young people should save sex for marriage. A Baptist-led national
program called True Love Waits has gathered an abstinence pledge from hundreds of
thousands of teenagers since it was begun in the spring of 1993. More than 2,000 school
districts now offer an abstinence-based sex education curriculum entitled Sex Respect.
Parents who are desperate about their childrens sexual behavior are at last seeing ways
that society can resist the continued sexualization of childhood.
16
The new fatherhood movement encourages fathers to promise that they will spend
more time with their children. The National Fatherhood Initiative argues that mens
roles as fathers should not simply duplicate womens roles as mothers but should teach
those essential qualities which are perhaps uniquely conveyed by fathersthe ability to
take risks, contain emotions, and be decisive. In addition, fathers fulfill a time-honored
role of providing for children as well as teaching them.
17
Full-time mothers have likewise formed support groups to reassure themselves that
not having a job and being at home full-time for their children is an honorable choice,
although it is typically undervalued and perhaps even scorned by dual-earner couples and
women with careers. A 1994 Barrons article claimed that young people in their twenties
(generation X) were turning away from the two-paycheck family and scaling down
their consumption so that young mothers could stay at home. Although Labor Depart-
ment statistics show no such trend but only a flattening of the upward rise of womens
employment, a variety of poll data does suggest that Americans would rather spend less
time at work and more time with their families.
18
Such groups as Mothers at Home (with
15,000 members) and Mothers Home Business Network (with 6,000 members) are try-
ing to create a sea change that reverses the priority given to paid work outside the home
relative to unpaid caregiving work inside the family.
19
Conservatives see government cutbacks as one of the major strategies for strength-
ening marriage and restoring family values. In the words of Lawrence Mead, we have
taxed Peter to pay Paula.
20
According to a Wall Street Journal editorial, the relinquish-
ment of personal responsibility among people who bring children into the world with-
out any visible means of support is at the root of educational, health, and emotional
problems of children from one-parent families, their higher accident and mortality rates,
and rising crime.
21
The new congressional solution is to cut back on the benefits to young men and
women who violate social convention by having children they cannot support.
22
Soci-
ologist Brigitte Berger notes that the increase in children and women on welfare coin-
cided with the explosion of federal child welfare programsfamily planning, prenatal and
postnatal care, child nutrition, child abuse prevention and treatment, child health and
guidance, day care, Head Start, and Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC),
Medicaid, and Food Stamps. The solution is to turn back the debilitating culture of wel-
fare dependency by decentralizing the power of the federal government and restoring the
role of intermediary community institutions such as the neighborhood and the church.
The mechanism for change would be block grants to the states which would change
the welfare culture from the ground up.
23
Robert Rector of the American Heritage
Ch-02.indd 80 7/8/2008 12:31:59 PM
Chapter 2 Public Debates and Private Lives 81
Foundation explains that the states would use these funds for a wide variety of alternative
programs to discourage illegitimate births and to care for children born out of wedlock,
such as promoting adoption, closely supervised group homes for unmarried mothers and
their children, and pregnancy prevention programs (except abortion).
24
Government programs, however, are only one way to bring about cultural change.
The Council on Families in America puts its hope in grassroots social movements to
change the hearts and minds of religious and civil leaders, employers, human service pro-
fessionals, courts, and the media and entertainment industry. The Council enunciates
four ideals: marital permanence, childbearing confined to marriage, every childs right to
have a father, and limitation of parents total work time (60 hours per week) to permit
adequate time with their families.
25
To restore the cultural ideal of the two-parent fam-
ily, they would make all other types of family life less attractive and more difficult.
ECONOMIC RESTRUCTURING: LIBERAL
ANALYSIS OF FAMILY CHANGE
Liberals agree that there are serious problems in Americas social health and the condi-
tion of its children. But they pinpoint economic and structural changes that have placed
new demands on the family without providing countervailing social supports. The econ-
omy has become ever more specialized with rapid technological change undercutting
established occupations. More women have entered the labor force as their child-free
years have increased due to a shorter childbearing period and longer lifespan. The fam-
ily has lost economic functions to the urban workplace and socialization functions to
the school. What is left is the intimate relationship between the marital couple, which,
unbuffered by the traditional economic division of labor between men and women, is
subject to even higher demands for emotional fulfillment and is thus more vulnerable to
breakdown when it falls short of those demands.
Liberal Model
Changing Changing Diverse effects
economic family and poor v. productive
structure gender roles children
The current family crisis thus stems from structural more than cultural change
changes in the economy, a pared-down nuclear family, and less parental time at home.
Market forces have led to a new ethic of individual flexibility and autonomy. More dual-
earner couples and single-parent families have broadened the variety of family forms.
More single-parent families and more working mothers have decreased the time available
for parenting. Loss of the fathers income through separation and divorce has forced
many women and children into poverty with inadequate health care, poor education, and
inability to save for future economic needs. The solution that most liberals espouse is a
government-sponsored safety net which will facilitate womens employment, mute the ef-
fects of poverty, and help women and children to become economically secure.
Ch-02.indd 81 7/8/2008 12:31:59 PM
82 Part I The Changing Family
Recent Changes in the Labor Market
Liberals attribute the dramatic changes in the family to the intrusion of the money econ-
omy rather than cultural and moral decline. In a capitalist society individual behavior
follows the market. Adam Smiths invisible hand brings together buyers and sellers who
maximize their satisfaction through an exchange of resources in the marketplace. Jobs are
now with an employer, not with the family business or family farm as in preindustrial
times. The cash economy has, in the words of Robert Bellah, invaded the diffuse per-
sonal relationships of trust between family and community members and transformed
them into specific impersonal transactions. In an agricultural economy husbands and
wives and parents and children were bound together in relationships of exchange that
served each others mutual interests. But modern society erodes this social capital of or-
ganization, trust among individuals, and mutual obligation that enhances both produc-
tivity and parenting.
26
The market has also eroded community by encouraging maximum mobility of
goods and services. Cheaper labor in the South, lower fuel prices, and deeper tax breaks
attracted first textile factories, then the shoe industry, and later automobile assembly
plants which had begun in the North. Eventually, many of these jobs left the country.
Loss of manufacturing jobs has had dramatic consequences for employment of young
men without a college education and their capacity to support a family. In the 1970s,
68 percent of male high school graduates had a full-time, year-round job compared with
only 51 percent in the 1980s. Many new jobs are located in clerical work, sales, or other
service occupations traditionally associated with women. The upshot is a deteriorating
employment picture for less well educated male workers at the same time that there are
rising opportunities for women. Not surprisingly, even more middle income men and
women combine forces to construct a two-paycheck family wage.
27
Changing Family Forms
Whereas the farm economy dictated a two-parent family and several children as the most
efficient work group, the market economy gives rise to a much wider variety of family
forms. A woman on the frontier in the 1800s had few other options even if she were
married to a drunken, violent, or improvident husband. In todays economy this woman
may have enough education to get a clerical job that will support her and her children
in a small apartment where the family will be able to use public schools and other public
amenities.
28
Despite its corrosive effect on family relations, the modern economy has also been
a liberating force. Women could escape patriarchal domination; the young could seek
their fortune without waiting for an inheritance from their eldersall a process that a
century ago was aligned with a cultural shift that Fred Weinstein and Gerald Platt termed
the wish to be free.
29
Dramatic improvements took place in the status of women as they
gained the right to higher education, entry into the professions, and the elective fran-
chise.
30
Similarly, children were released from sometimes cruel and exploitive labor and
became the object of deliberate parental investment and consumption.
31
Elders gained
pensions for maintenance and care that made them economically independent of their
Ch-02.indd 82 7/8/2008 12:31:59 PM
Chapter 2 Public Debates and Private Lives 83
adult children. All these developments could be understood as part of what William J.
Goode has referred to as the world revolution in family patterns which resulted in lib-
eration and equality of formerly oppressed groups.
32
The current assessment of change in family forms is, however, mostly negative be-
cause of the consequences for children. More parental investment in work outside the
family has meant less time for children. According to liberals, parents separate or di-
vorce or have children outside of marriage because of the economic structure, not be-
cause they have become less moral or more selfish. Young women have children out of
wedlock when the young men whom they might marry have few economic prospects and
when the women themselves have little hope for their own education or employment.
33

Change in the family thus begins with jobs. Advocates of current government programs
therefore challenge the conservatives assertion that welfare caused the breakup of two-
parent families by supporting mothers with dependent children. According to William
Julius Wilson, it is partly the lack of manual labor jobs for the would-be male bread-
winner in inner-city Chicagothe scarcity of marriageable maleswhich drives up the
illegitimacy rate.
34
Among educated women, it is well known that the opportunity costs of foregone
income from staying home became so high during the 1950s and 1960s that ever increas-
ing numbers of women deserted full-time homemaking to take paid employment.
35
In
the 1990s several social scientists have further noted that Richard Easterlins predic-
tion that women will return to the home during the 1980s never happened. Instead,
women continued in the labor force because of irreversible normative changes surround-
ing womens equality and the need for womens income to finance childrens expensive
college education.
36
Moreover, in light of globalization of the economy and increasing
job insecurity in the face of corporate downsizing, economists and sociologists are ques-
tioning Gary Beckers thesis that the lower waged worker in a household (typically the
woman) will tend to become a full-time homemaker while the higher waged partner
becomes the primary breadwinner. Data from Germany and the United States on the
trend toward womens multiple roles suggests that uncertainty about the future has made
women invest more strongly than ever in their own careers. They know that if they drop
out for very long they will have difficulty reentering if they have to tide over the family
when the main breadwinner loses his job.
37
Consequences for Children
The ideal family in the liberal economic model, according to political philosopher Iris
Young, is one which has sufficient income to support the parents and the children and
to foster in those children the emotional and intellectual capacities to acquire such well-
paid, secure jobs themselves, and also sufficient to finance a retirement.
38
Dependent
families do not have self-sufficient income but must rely on friends, relatives, charity, or
the state to carry out their contribution to bringing up children and being good citizens.
Among liberals there is an emerging consensus that the current economic struc-
ture leads to two kinds of underinvestment in children that are implicated in their later
dependencymaterial poverty, characteristic of the poor, and time poverty, character-
istic of the middle class.
Ch-02.indd 83 7/8/2008 12:31:59 PM
84 Part I The Changing Family
Thirty years ago Daniel Patrick Moynihan perceived that material poverty and job
loss for a man put strain on the marriage, sometimes to the point that he would leave. His
children also did less well in school.
39
Rand Conger, in his studies of Iowa families who
lost their farms during the 1980s, found that economic hardship not only puts strain on
the marriage but leads to harsh parenting practices and poorer outcomes for children.
40

Thus it appears possible that poverty may not just be the result of family separation,
divorce, and ineffective childrearing practices; it may also be the cause of the irritability,
quarrels, and violence which lead to marital breakdown. Material underinvestment in
children is visible not just with the poor but in the changing ratio of per capita income
of children and adults in U.S. society as a whole. As the proportion of households with-
out children has doubled over the last century (from 30 to 65 percent), per capita in-
come of children has fallen from 71 percent of adult income in 1870 to 63 percent in 1930
and 51 percent in 1983.
41
The problem of time poverty used to be almost exclusively associated with moth-
ers employment. Numerous studies explored whether younger children did better if their
mother was a full-time homemaker rather than employed outside the home but found
no clear results.
42
Lately the lack of parental time for children has become much more
acute because parents are working a total of twenty-one hours more per week than in 1970
and because there are more single-parent families. In 1965 the average child spent about
thirty hours a week interacting with a parent, compared with seventeen hours in the
1980s.
43
Moreover, parents are less dependent on their children to provide support for
them during old age, and children feel less obligated to do so. As skilled craftsmanship,
the trades, and the family farms have disappeared, childrens upbringing can no longer be
easily or cheaply combined with what parents are already doing. So adults are no longer
so invested in childrens futures. The result is that where the social capital of group affil-
iations and mutual obligations is the lowest (in the form of continuity of neighborhoods,
a two-parent family, or a parents interest in higher education for her children), children
are 20 percent more likely to drop out of high school.
44
It is not that parents prefer their current feelings of being rushed, working too
many hours, and having too little time with their families. Economist Juliet Schor reports
that at least two-thirds of persons she surveyed about their desires for more family time
versus more salary would take a cut in salary if it could mean more time with their fami-
lies. Since this option is not realistically open to many, what parents appear to do is spend
more money on their children as a substitute for spending more time with them.
45
Fixing the Safety Net
Since liberals believe in a market economy with sufficient government regulation to
assure justice and equality of opportunity, they support those measures which will eradi-
cate the worst poverty and assure the healthy reproduction of the next generation.
46

What particularly worries them, however, is Charles Murrays observation that since
1970 the growth of government welfare programs has been associated with a rise in pov-
erty among children. Payments to poor families with children, while not generous, have
nevertheless enabled adults to be supported by attachment to their children.
47
Society is
faced with a dilemma between addressing material poverty through further government
Ch-02.indd 84 7/8/2008 12:31:59 PM
Chapter 2 Public Debates and Private Lives 85
subsidy and time poverty through policies on parental leave and working hours. It turns
out that the United States is trying to do both.
Measures for addressing material poverty would stimulate various kinds of training
and job opportunities. The Family Support Act of 1988 would move AFDC mothers off
the welfare rolls by giving them job training and requiring them to join the labor force.
Such action would bring their economic responsibility for supporting their children into
line with their parental authority. A whole program of integrated supports for health in-
surance, job training, earned income tax credits for the working poor, child support by
the noncustodial parent, and supported work is put forward by economist David Ellwood
in Poor Support.
48
An opposite strategy is to consolidate authority over children with the
states economic responsibility for their care by encouraging group homes and adoption
for children whose parents cannot support them economically.
49
Means for addressing time poverty are evident in such legislative initiatives as the
Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993. By encouraging employers to grant parental leave
or other forms of flexible work time, government policy is recognizing the value of par-
ents having more time with their children, but the beneficiaries of such change are largely
middle-class families who can afford an unpaid parental leave.
50
Another tactic is to re-
form the tax law to discourage marital splitting. In a couple with two children in which
the father earns $16,000 annually and the mother $9,000, joint tax filing gives them no
special consideration. But if they file separately, each taking one child as a dependent, the
woman will receive about $5,000 in Earned Income Tax Credit and an extra $2,000 in
food stamps.
51
Changing the tax law to remove the incentives for splitting, establishing
paternity of children born out of wedlock, and intensifying child support enforcement
to recover economic support from fathers are all examples of state efforts to strengthen
the kinship unit.
INTERDEPENDENCE: THE FEMINIST VISION
OF WORK AND CAREGIVING
A feminist perspective has elements in common with both conservatives and liberals: a
respect for the family as an institution (shared with the conservatives) and an appreciation
of modernity (valued by the liberals). In addition, a feminist perspective grapples with
the problem of womens traditionally subordinate status and how to improve it through
both a relational and an individualist strategy while also sustaining family life and the
healthy rearing of children.
52
At the same time feminists are skeptical of both conserva-
tive and liberal solutions. Traditionalists have so often relied on women as the exploited
and underpaid caregivers in the family to enable mens activities in the public realm.
Liberals are sometimes guilty of a male bias in focusing on the independent individual
actor in the marketplace who does not realize that his so-called independence, is pos-
sible only because he is actually dependent on all kinds of relationships that made possible
his education and life in a stable social order.
53
By articulating the value of caregiving along with the ideal of womens auton-
omy, feminists are in a position to examine modern capitalism critically for its effects on
Ch-02.indd 85 7/8/2008 12:31:59 PM
86 Part I The Changing Family
families and to offer alternative policies that place greater value on the quality of life and
human relationships. They judge family strength not by their form (whether they have
two-parents) but by their functioning (whether they promote human satisfaction and
development) and whether both women and men are able to be family caregivers as well
as productive workers. They attribute difficulties of children less to the absence of the
two-parent family than to low-wage work of single mothers, inadequate child care, and
inhospitable housing and neighborhoods.
Feminist Model
Lack of cooperation Families where adults Children lack
among community, are stressed and sufficient care and
family, and work overburdened attention from parents
Accordingly, feminists would work for reforms that build and maintain the social
capital of volunteer groups, neighborhoods, and communities because a healthy civil so-
ciety promotes the well-being of families and individuals as well as economic prosperity
and a democratic state. They would also recognize greater role flexibility across the life
cycle so that both men and women could engage in caregiving, and they would encourage
education and employment among women as well as among men.
Disappearance of Community
From a feminist perspective, family values have become an issue because individualism
has driven out the sense of collective responsibility in our national culture. American
institutions and social policies have not properly implemented a concern for all citizens.
Comparative research on family structure, teenage pregnancy, poverty, and child out-
comes in other countries demonstrates that where support is generous to help all fami-
lies and children, there are higher levels of health and general education and lower levels
of violence and child deviance than in the United States.
54
Liberal thinking and the focus on the free market have made it seem that citizens
make their greatest contribution when they are self-sufficient, thereby keeping them-
selves off the public dole. But feminist theorist Iris Young argues that many of the activi-
ties that are basic to a healthy democratic society (such as cultural production, caretaking,
political organizing, and charitable activities) will never be profitable in a private market.
Yet many of the recipients of welfare and Social Security such as homemakers, single
mothers, and retirees are doing important volunteer work caring for children and help-
ing others in their communities. Thus the social worth of a persons contribution is not
just in earning a paycheck that allows economic independence but also in making a social
contribution. Such caretaking of other dependent citizens and of the body politic should
be regarded as honorable, not inferior, and worthy of societys support and subsidy.
55
In fact it appears that married womens rising labor force participation from 41 per-
cent in 1970 to 58 percent in 1990 may have been associated with their withdrawal from
unpaid work in the home and community.
56
Volunteer membership in everything from
the PTA to bowling leagues declined by over 25 percent between 1969 and 1993. There is
now considerable concern that the very basis that Alexis de Tocqueville thought necessary
Ch-02.indd 86 7/8/2008 12:31:59 PM
Chapter 2 Public Debates and Private Lives 87
to democracy is under siege.
57
To reverse this trend, social observers suggest that it will
be necessary to guard time for families and leisure that is currently being sucked into the
maw of paid employment. What is needed is a reorientation of priorities to give greater
value to unpaid family and community work by both men and women.
National policies should also be reoriented to give universal support to children
at every economic level of society, but especially to poor children. In a comparison of
countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United
States ranks at the top in average male wages but near the bottom in its provision for
disposable income for children. In comparison with the $700 per month available to chil-
dren in Norway, France, or the Netherlands in 1992, U.S. children of a single nonem-
ployed mother received only slightly under $200.
58
The discrepancy is explained by very
unequal distribution of U.S. income, with the top quintile, the fortunate fifth, gain ing
47 percent of the national income while the bottom fifth receives only 3.6 percent.
59
This
sharp inequality is, in turn, explained by an ideology of individualism that justifies the
disproportionate gains of the few for their innovation and productivity and the meager
income of the poor for their low initiative or competence. Lack of access to jobs and the
low pay accruing to many contingent service occupations simply worsen the picture.
Feminists are skeptical of explanations that ascribe higher productivity to the higher
paid and more successful leading actors while ignoring the efforts and contribution of
the supporting cast. They know that being an invisible helper is the situation of many
women. This insight is congruent with new ideas about the importance social capital to
the health of a society that have been put forward recently by a number of social scien-
tists.
60
Corporations cannot be solely responsible for maintaining the web of community,
although they are already being asked to serve as extended family, neighborhood support
group, and national health service.
Diversity of Family Forms
Those who are concerned for strengthening the civil society immediately turn to the
changing nature of the family as being a key building block. Feminists worry that seem-
ingly sensible efforts to reverse the trend of rising divorce and single parenthood will
privilege the two-parent family to the detriment of women; they propose instead that
family values be understood in a broader sense as valuing the familys unique capacity for
giving emotional and material support rather than implying simply a two-parent form.
The debate between conservatives, liberals, and feminists on the issue of the two-
parent family has been most starkly stated by sociologist Judith Stacey and political phi-
losopher Iris Young.
61
They regard the requirement that all women stay in a marriage as
an invitation to coercion and subordination and an assault on the principles of freedom
and self-determination that are at the foundation of democracy. Moreover, as Christo-
pher Jencks and Kathryn Edin conclude from their study of several hundred welfare
families, the current welfare reform rhetoric that no couple should have a child unless
they can support it, does not take into account the uncertainty of life in which people
who start out married or with adequate income [do] not always remain so. In the face
of the worldwide dethronement of the two-parent family (approximately one-quarter to
one-third of all families around the globe are headed by women), marriage should not be
Ch-02.indd 87 7/8/2008 12:32:00 PM
88 Part I The Changing Family
seen as the cure for child poverty. Mothers should not be seen as less than full citizens if
they are not married or not employed (in 1989 there were only 16 million males between
the ages of 25 and 34 who made over $12,000 compared with 20 million females of the
same age who either had a child or wanted one).
62
National family policy should instead
begin with a value on womens autonomy and self-determination that includes the right
to bear children. Mother-citizens are helping to reproduce the next generation for the
whole society, and in that responsibility they deserve at least partial support.
From a feminist perspective the goal of the family is not only to bring up a healthy
and productive new generation; families also provide the intimate and supportive group
of kin or fictive kin that foster the health and well-being of every personyoung or old,
male or female, heterosexual, homosexual, or celibate. Recognition as family should
therefore not be confined to the traditional two-parent unit connected by blood, mar-
riage, or adoption, but should be extended to include kin of a divorced spouse (as Stacey
documented in her study of Silicon Valley families), same-sex partnerships, congregate
households of retired persons, group living arrangements, and so on.
63
Twenty years ago
economist Nancy Barrett noted that such diversity in family and household form was
already present. Among all U.S. households in 1976, no one of the six major types con-
stituted more than 1520 percent: couples with and without children under eighteen with
the wife in the labor force (15.4 and 13.3 percent respectively); couples with or without
children under 18 with the wife not in the labor force (19.1 and 17.1 percent); female- or
male-headed households (14.4 percent); and single persons living alone (20.6 percent).
64
Such diversity both describes and informs contemporary family values in the
United States. Each family type is numerous enough to have a legitimacy of its own, yet
no single form is the dominant one. As a result the larger value system has evolved to
encompass beliefs and rules that legitimate each type on the spectrum. The regressive al-
ternative is fundamentalism that treats the two-parent family with children as the only
legitimate form, single-parent families as unworthy of support, and the nontraditional
forms as illegitimate. In 1995 the general population appears to have accepted diversity
of family forms as normal. A Harris poll of 1,502 women and 460 men found that only
2 percent of women and 1 percent of men defined family as being about the traditional
nuclear family. One out of ten women defined family values as loving, taking care of, and
supporting each other, knowing right from wrong or having good values, and nine out
of ten said society should value all types of families.
65
It appears most Americans believe
that an Aunt Polly single-parent type of family for a Huck Finn that provides economic
support, shelter, meals, a place to sleep and to withdraw, is better than no family at all.
Amidst gradual acceptance of greater diversity in family form, the gender-role revo-
lution is also loosening the sex-role expectations traditionally associated with breadwin-
ning and homemaking. Feminists believe that men and women can each do both.
66
In
addition, women in advanced industrial nations have by and large converged upon a
new life pattern of multiple roles by which they combine work and family life. The
negative outcome is an almost universal double burden for working women in which
they spend eighty-four hours per week on paid and family work, married men spend
seventy-two hours, and single persons without children spend fifty hours.
67
The posi-
tive consequence, however, appears to be improved physical and mental health for those
women who, though stressed, combine work and family roles.
68
In addition, where a
Ch-02.indd 88 7/8/2008 12:32:00 PM
Chapter 2 Public Debates and Private Lives 89
womans husband helps her more with the housework, she is less likely to think of get-
ting a divorce.
69
The Precarious Situation of Children
The principal remedy that conservatives and liberals would apply to the problems of
children is to restore the two-parent family by reducing out-of-wedlock births, increas-
ing the presence of fathers, and encouraging couples who are having marital difficulties
to avoid divorce for the sake of their children. Feminists, on the other hand, are skeptical
that illegitimacy, father absence, or divorce are the principal culprits they are made out to
be. Leon Eisenberg reports that over half of all births in Sweden and one-quarter of births
in France are to unmarried women, but without the disastrous correlated effects observed
in the United States. Arlene Skolnick and Stacey Rosencrantz cite longitudinal studies
showing that most children recover from the immediate negative effects of divorce.
70
How then, while supporting the principle that some fraction of women should be
able to head families as single parents, do feminists analyze the problem of ill health,
antisocial behavior, and poverty among children? Their answer focuses on the lack of in-
stitutional supports for the new type of dual-earner and single-parent families that are more
prevalent today. Rather than attempt to force families back into the traditional mold,
feminists note that divorce, lone-mother families, and womens employment are on the
rise in every industrialized nation. But other countries have not seen the same devastat-
ing decline in child well-being, teen pregnancy, suicides and violent death, school failure,
and a rising population of children in poverty. These other countries have four key ele-
ments of social and family policy which protect all children and their mothers: (1) work
guarantees and other economic supports; (2) child care; (3) health care; and (4) housing
subsidies. In the United States these benefits are scattered and uneven; those who can
pay their way do so; only those who are poor or disabled receive AFDC for economic
support, some help with child care, Medicaid for health care, and government-subsidized
housing.
A first line of defense is to raise womens wages through raising the minimum wage,
then provide them greater access to male-dominated occupations with higher wages.
One-half of working women do not earn a wage adequate to support a family of four
above the poverty line. Moreover, women in low-wage occupations are subject to fre-
quent lay-offs and lack of benefits. Training to improve their human capital, provision
of child care, and broadening of benefits would help raise womens capacity to support
a family. Eisenberg reports that the Human Development Index of the United Nations
( HDI ), which ranks countries by such indicators as life expectancy, educational levels,
and per capita income, places the United States fifth and Sweden sixth in the world. But
when the HDI is recalculated to take into account equity of treatment of women, Sweden
rises to first place and the United States falls to ninth. Therefore, one of the obvious
places to begin raising childrens status is to raise the economic status and earning power
of their mothers.
71
A second major benefit which is not assured to working mothers is child care.
Among school-age children up to thirteen years of age, one-eighth lack any kind of after-
school child care. Children come to the factories where their mothers work and wait on
Ch-02.indd 89 7/8/2008 12:32:00 PM
90 Part I The Changing Family
the lawn or in the lobby until their mothers are finished working. If a child is sick, some
mothers risk losing a job if they stay home. Others are latchkey kids or in unknown cir-
cumstances such as sleeping in their parents cars or loitering on the streets. Although
60 percent of mothers of the 22 million preschool children are working, there are only
10 million child care places available, a shortfall of one to three million slots.
72
Lack of
good quality care for her children not only distracts a mother, adds to her absences from
work, and makes her less productive, it also exposes the child to a lack of attention and
care that leads to violent and antisocial behavior and poor performance in school.
Lack of medical benefits is a third gaping hole for poor children and lone-parent
families. Jencks and Edin analyze what happens to a Chicago-area working womans in-
come if she goes off welfare. Her total income in 1993 dollars on AFDC (with food
stamps, unreported earnings, help from family and friends) adds up to $12,355, in addi-
tion to which she receives Medicaid and child care. At a $6 per hour full-time job,
however, without AFDC, with less than half as much from food stamps, with an Earned
Income Tax Credit, and help from relatives, her total income would add to $20,853.
But she would have to pay for her own medical care, bringing her effective income
down to $14,745 if she found free child care, and $9,801 if she had to pay for child care
herself.
73
Some housing subsidies or low-income housing are available to low-income fami-
lies. But the neighborhoods and schools are frequently of poor quality and plagued by
violence. To bring up children in a setting where they cannot safely play with others
introduces important risk factors that cannot simply be attributed to divorce and single
parenthood. Rather than being protected and being allowed to be innocent, children must
learn to be competent at a very early age. The family, rather than being child-centered,
must be adult-centered, not because parents are selfish or self-centered but because the
institutions of the society have changed the context of family life.
74
These demands may
be too much for children, and depression, violence, teen suicide, teen pregnancy, and
school failure may result. But it would be myopic to think that simply restoring the two-
parent family would be enough to solve all these problems.
Constructing Institutions for the Good Society
What is to be done? Rather than try to restore the two-parent family as the conservatives
suggest or change the economy to provide more jobs as recommended by the liberals, the
feminists focus on the need to revise and construct institutions to accommodate the new
realities of work and family life. Such an undertaking requires, however, a broader inter-
pretation of family values, a recognition that families benefit not only their members but
the public interest, and fresh thinking about how to schedule work and family demands
of everyday life as well as the entire life cycle of men and women.
The understanding of family values has to be extended in two ways. First, American
values should be stretched to embrace all citizens, their children and families, whether
they are poor, white, or people of color, or living in a one-parent family. In 1977, Kenneth
Keniston titled the report of the Carnegie Commission on Children All Our Children.
Today many Americans still speak and act politically in ways suggesting that they disown
other peoples children as the next generation who will inherit the land and support the
Ch-02.indd 90 7/8/2008 12:32:00 PM
Chapter 2 Public Debates and Private Lives 91
economy. Yet in the view of most feminists and other progressive reformers, all these
children should be embraced for the long-term good of the nation.
75
By a commitment
to family values feminists secondly intend to valorize the family as a distinctive intimate
group of many forms that is needed by persons of all ages but especially children. To serve
the needs of children and other dependent persons, the family must be given support
and encouragement by the state to carry out its unique functions. Iris Young contends
that marriage should not be used to reduce the ultimate need for the state to serve as a
means to distribute needed supports to the families of those less fortunate.
76
Compare
the example of the GI Bill of Rights after World War II, which provided educational
benefits to those who had served their country in the military. Why should there not
be a similar approach to the contribution that a parent makes in raising a healthy and
productive youngster?
77
At the community level families should be embraced by all the institutions of the
civil societyschools, hospitals, churches, and employersas the hidden but necessary
complement to the bureaucratic and impersonal workings of these formal organizations.
Schools rely on parents for the childs school readiness. Hospitals send home patients
who need considerable home care before becoming completely well. The work of the
church is carried out and reinforced in the family; and when families fail, it is the uncon-
ditional love and intimacy of family that the church tries to replicate. Employers depend
on families to give the rest, shelter, emotional support, and other maintenance of human
capital that will motivate workers and make them productive. Increasingly, the profes-
sionals and managers in these formal organizations are realizing that they need to work
more closely with parents and family members if they are to succeed.
Feminists would especially like to see the reintegration of work and family life that
was torn apart at the time of the industrial revolution when productive work moved out
of the home and into the factory. Several proposals appear repeatedly: parental leave
(which now is possible through the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993); flexible hours
and part-time work shared by working parents but without loss of benefits and promo-
tion opportunities; home-based work; child care for sick children and after-school su-
pervision. Although some progress has been made, acceptance of these reforms has been
very slow. Parental leave is still unpaid. The culture of the workplace discourages many
persons from taking advantage of the more flexible options which do exist because they
fear they will be seen as less serious and dedicated workers. In addition, most programs
are aimed at mothers and at managers, although there is growing feeling that fathers and
hourly workers should be included as well.
78
Ultimately these trends may alter the shape of womens and mens life cycles. In-
creasingly, a new ideal for the life course is being held up as the model that society should
work toward. Lotte Bailyn proposes reorganization of careers in which young couples
trade off periods of intense work commitment with each other while they establish their
families so that either or both can spend more time at home.
79
Right now both women
and men feel they must work so intensely to establish their careers that they have too
little time for their children.
80
For the poor and untrained, the problem is the opposite:
childbearing and childrearing are far more satisfying and validating than a low-paying,
dead-end job. The question is how to reorient educators or employers to factor in time
with family as an important obligation to society (much as one would factor in military
Ch-02.indd 91 7/8/2008 12:32:00 PM
92 Part I The Changing Family
service, for example). Such institutional reorganization is necessary to give families and
childrearing their proper place in the modern postindustrial society.
CONCLUSION
A review of the conservative, liberal, and feminist perspectives on the changing nature
of the American family suggests that future policy should combine the distinctive contri-
butions of all three. From the conservatives comes a critique of modernity that recognizes
the important role of the family in maintaining child health and preventing child failure.
Although their understanding of family values is too narrow, they deserve credit for
raising the issue of family function and form to public debate. Liberals see clearly the
overwhelming power of the economy to deny employment, make demands on parents as
workers, and drive a wedge between employers needs for competitiveness and families
needs for connection and community.
Surprising although it may seem, since feminists are often imagined to be way
out, the most comprehensive plan for restoring family to its rightful place is put forward
by the feminists who appreciate both the inherently premodern nature of the family and
at the same time its inevitable interdependence with a fast-changing world economy.
Feminists will not turn back to the past because they know that the traditional family
was often a straightjacket for women. But they also know that family cannot be turned
into a formal organization or have its functions performed by government or other public
institutions that are incapable of giving needed succor to children, adults, and old people
which only the family can give.
The feminist synthesis accepts both the inherent particularism and emotional na-
ture of the family and the inevitable specialization and impersonality of the modern
economy. Feminists are different from conservatives in accepting diversity of the family
to respond to the needs of the modern economy. They are different from the liberals in
recognizing that intimate nurturing relationships such as parenting cannot all be turned
into a safety net of formal care. The most promising social policies for families and
children take their direction from inclusive values that confirm the good life and the
well-being of every individual as the ultimate goal of the nation. The policy challenge
is to adjust the partnership between the family and its surrounding institutions so that
together they combine the best of private initiative with public concern.
Notes
1. Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Dan Quayle Was Right, Atlantic Monthly (April 1993): 47. Her
chap ter in [Promises to Keep: Decline and Renewal of Marriage in America, edited by D. Popenoe,
J. B. Elsh tain, and D. Blankenhorn] on the Story of Marriage continues the theme of an erosion
of values for cultural diversity.
2. Mary Ann Glendon, Marriage and the State: The Withering Away of Marriage, Virginia Law
Review 62 ( May 1976): 663729.
3. See chapters by Milton Regan and Carl Schneider in [Promises to Keep: Decline and Renewal of Mar-
riage in America, edited by D. Popenoe, J. B. Elshtain, and D. Blankenhorn].
Ch-02.indd 92 7/8/2008 12:32:00 PM
Chapter 2 Public Debates and Private Lives 93
4. Charles A. Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy: 19501980 ( New York: Basic Books,
1984). Critics point out that the rise in out-of-wedlock births continues, even though welfare pay-
ments have declined in size over the last several decades, thereby casting doubt on the perverse
incentive theory of rising illegitimacy.
5. U.S. Bureau of the Census. Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1994, 114th ed. ( Washington,
DC: 1994), 59.
6. Suzanne M. Bianchi and Daphne Spain, American Women in Transition ( New York: Russell Sage
Foundation, 1986), 88.
7. Donald J. Hernandez, Americas Children: Resources from Family, Government, and the Economy ( New
York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1993), 284, 70. Janet Zollinger Giele, Womans Role Change and
Adaptation: 19201990, in Womens Lives through Time: Educated American Women of the Twentieth
Century, ed. K. Hulbert and D. Schuster (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 1993), 40.
8. Victor Fuchs, Are Americans Underinvesting in Children? in Rebuilding the Nest, ed. David Blan-
kenhorn, Stephen Bayme, and Jean Bethke Elshtain ( Milwaukee: Family Service America, 1990),
66. Bianchi and Spain, American Women in Transition, 141, 201, 226. Janet Zollinger Giele, Gen-
der and Sex Roles, in Handbook of Sociology, ed. N. J. Smelser ( Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publica-
tions, 1988), 300.
9. Hernandez, Americas Children, 130. Council on Families in America, Marriage in America ( New
York: Institute for American Values. 1995), 7.
10. Fuchs, Are Americans Underinvesting in Children? 61. Some would say, however, that the de-
cline was due in part to a larger and more heterogeneous group taking the tests.
11. Council on Families in America, Marriage in America, 6. The report cites research by Nicholas
Zill and Charlotte A. Schoenborn, Developmental, Learning and Emotional Problems: Health of
Our Nations Children, United States, 1988. Advance Data, National Center for Health Statistics,
Publication #120, November 1990. See also, Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur, Growing Up
with a Single Parent (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994).
12. Edward Gilbreath, Manhoods Great Awakening, Christianity Today ( February 6, 1995): 27.
13. David Elkind, The Hurried Child: Growing Up Too Fast Too Soon ( Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley,
1981).
14. Jean Bethke Elshtain, Democracy on Trial ( New York: Basic Books, 1995).
15. Jonathan Alter and Pat Wingert, The Return of Shame, Newsweek ( February 6, 1995): 25.
16. Tom McNichol, The New Sex Vow: I wont until I do, USA Weekend, March 2527, 1994, 4
ff. Lee Smith. The New Wave of Illegitimacy, Fortune (April 18, 1994): 81 ff.
17. Susan Chira, War over Role of American Fathers, New York Times, June 19, 1994, 22.
18. Juliet Schor, Consumerism and the Decline of Family and Community: Preliminary Statistics
from a Survey on Time, Money, and Values. Harvard Divinity School, Seminar on Families and
Family Policy, April 4, 1995.
19. Karen S. Peterson, In Balancing Act, Scale Tips toward Family, USA Today, January 25, 1995.
20. Lawrence Mead, Taxing Peter to Pay Paula, Wall Street Journal, November 2, 1994.
21. Tom G. Palmer, English Lessons: Britain Rethinks the Welfare State, Wall Street Journal, No-
vember 2, 1994.
22. Robert Pear, G.O.P. Affirms Plan to Stop Money for Unwed Mothers, New York Times, Janu-
ary 21, 1995, 9.
23. Brigitte Berger. Block Grants: Changing the Welfare Culture from the Ground Up, Dialogue
( Boston: Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research), no. 3, March 1995.
24. Robert Rector, Welfare, Issues 94: The Candidates Briefing Book ( Washington, DC: American
Heritage Foundation, 1994), chap. 13.
25. Council on Families in America, Marriage in America, 1316.
26. Robert Bellah, Invasion of the Money World, in Rebuilding the Nest, ed. David Blankenhorn,
Steven Bayme, and Jean Bethke Elshtain ( Milwaukee: Family Service America, 1990), 22736.
James Coleman, Foundations of Social Theory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990).
27. Sylvia Nasar, More Men in Prime of Life Spend Less Time Working, New York Times, Decem-
ber 1, 1994, Al.
Ch-02.indd 93 7/8/2008 12:32:00 PM
94 Part I The Changing Family
28. John Scanzoni, Power Politics in the American Marriage ( Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall,
1972). Ruth A. Wallace and Alison Wolf, Contemporary Sociological Theory ( Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, 1991), 176.
29. Fred Weinstein and Gerald M. Platt, The Wish to Be Free: Society, Psyche, and Value Change ( Berke-
ley, CA: University of California Press, 1969).
30. Kingsley Davis, Wives and Work: A Theory of the Sex-Role Revolution and Its Consequences,
in Feminism, Children, and the New Families, ed. S. M. Dornbusch and M. H. Strober ( New York:
Guilford Press. 1988), 6786. Janet Zollinger Giele, Two Paths to Womens Equality: Temperance, Suf-
frage, and the Origins of American Feminism ( New York: Twayne Publishers, Macmillan, 1995).
31. Vivianna A. Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children ( New York:
Basic Books, 1985).
32. William J. Goode, World Revolution in Family Patterns ( New York: The Free Press, 1963).
33. Constance Willard Williams, Black Teenage Mothers: Pregnancy and Child Rearing from Their Per-
spective ( Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1990).
34. William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
35. Jacob Mincer, Labor-Force Participation of Married Women: A Study of Labor Supply, in
Aspects of Labor Economics, Report of the National Bureau of Economic Research ( Princeton, NJ:
Universities-National Bureau Committee of Economic Research, 1962). Glen G. Cain, Married
Women in the Labor Force: An Economic Analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966).
36. Richard A. Easterlin, Birth and Fortune: The Impact of Numbers on Personal Welfare ( New York: Basic
Books, 1980). Valerie K. Oppenheimer, Structural Sources of Economic Pressure for Wives to
WorkAnalytic Framework, Journal of Family History 4, no. 2 (1979): 17799. Valerie K. Oppen-
heimer, Work and the Family: A Study in Social Demography ( New York: Academic Press, 1982).
37. Janet Z. Giele and Rainer Pischner, The Emergence of Multiple Role Patterns Among Women:
A Comparison of Germany and the United States, Vierteljahrshefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung (Ap-
plied Economics Quarterly) ( Heft 12, 1994). Alice S. Rossi, The Future in the Making, Ameri-
can Journal of Orthopsychiatry 63, no. 2 (1993): 16676. Notburga Ott, Intrafamily Bargaining and
Household Decisions ( Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1992).
38. Iris Young, Mothers, Citizenship and Independence: A Critique of Pure Family Values, Ethics
105, no. 3 (1995): 53556. Young critiques the liberal stance of William Galston, Liberal Purposes
( New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
39. Lee Rainwater and William L. Yancey, The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversy (Cam-
bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1967).
40. Glen H. Elder, Jr., Children of the Great Depression (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974).
Rand D. Conger, Xiao-Jia Ge, and Frederick O. Lorenz, Economic Stress and Marital Rela-
tions, in Families in Troubled Times: Adapting to Change in Rural America, ed. R. D. Conger and
G. H. Elder, Jr. ( New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1994), 187203.
41. Coleman, Foundations of Social Theory, 590.
42. Elizabeth G. Menaghan and Toby L. Parcel, Employed Mothers and Childrens Home Envi-
ronments, Journal of Marriage and the Family 53, no. 2 (1991): 41731. Lois Hoffman, The
Effects on Children of Maternal and Paternal Employment, in Families and Work, ed. Naomi
Gerstel and Harriet Engel Gross ( Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), 36295.
43. Juliet Schor, The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure ( New York: Basic Books,
1991). Robert Haveman and Barbara Wolfe, Succeeding Generations: On the Effects of Investments in
Children ( New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1994), 239.
44. Coleman, Foundations of Social Theory, 59697.
45. Schor, Consumerism and Decline of Family.
46. Iris Young, Mothers, Citizenship and Independence, puts Elshtain, Etzioni, Galston, and White-
head in this category.
47. Coleman, Foundations of Social Theory, 597609.
48. Sherry Wexler, To Work and To Mother: A Comparison of the Family Support Act and the
Family and Medical Leave Act ( Ph.D. diss. draft, Brandeis University, 1995). David T. Ellwood,
Poor Support: Poverty in the American Family ( New York: Basic Books, 1988).
Ch-02.indd 94 7/8/2008 12:32:00 PM
Chapter 2 Public Debates and Private Lives 95
49. Coleman, Foundations of Social Theory, 30021. Coleman, known for rational choice theory in so-
ciology, put forward these theoretical possibilities in 1990, fully four years ahead of what in 1994
was voiced in the Republican Contract with America.
50. Wexler, To Work and To Mother.
51. Robert Lerman, Marketplace, National Public Radio, April 18, 1995.
52. Karen Offen, Defining Feminism: A Comparative Historical Approach, Signs 14, no. 1 (1988):
11951.
53. Young, Mothers, Citizenship and Independence.
54. Robert N. Bellah et al., Habits of the Heart ( Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985),
25071. Gosta Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism ( Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1990). Susan Pedersen, Family, Dependence, and the Origins of the Welfare State:
Britain and France, 19141945 ( New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
55. Young, Mothers, Citizenship and Independence.
56. Giele, Womans Role Change and Adaptation presents these historical statistics.
57. Elshtain, Democracy on Trial. Robert N. Bellah et al., The Good Society ( New York: Knopf, 1991),
210. Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: Americas Declining Social Capital, Journal of Democ-
racy 4, no. 1 (1995): 6578.
58. Heather McCallum, Mind the Gap (paper presented to the Family and Childrens Policy Center
colloquium, Waltham, MA, Brandeis University, March 23, 1995). The sum was markedly better for
children of employed single mothers, around $700 per mother in the United States. But this figure
corresponded with over $1,000 in eleven other countries, with only Greece and Portugal lower than
the U.S. Concerning the high U.S. rates of teen pregnancy, see Planned Parenthood advertisement,
Lets Get Serious About Ending Teen Childbearing, New York Times, April 4, 1995, A25.
59. Ruth Walker, Secretary Reich and the Disintegrating Middle Class, Christian Science Monitor,
November 2, 1994, 19.
60. For reference to social capital, see Coleman, Foundations of Social Theory; Elshtain, Democracy on
Trial; and Putnam, Bowling Alone. For emotional capital, see Arlie Russell Hochschild, The
Managed Heart: The Commercialization of Human Feeling ( Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press, 1983). For cultural capital, see work by Pierre Bourdieu and Jurgen Habermas.
61. Judith Stacey, Dan Quayles Revenge: The New Family Values Crusaders, The Nation, July 25/
August 1, 1994, 11922. Iris Marion Young, Making Single Motherhood Normal, Dissent ( Win-
ter 1994): 8893.
62. Christopher Jencks and Kathryn Edin, Do Poor Women Have a Right to Bear Children, The
American Prospect ( Winter 1995): 4352.
63. Stacey, Dan Quayles Revenge. Arlene Skolnick and Stacey Rosencrantz, The New Crusade
for the Old Family, The American Prospect (Summer 1994): 5965.
64. Nancy Smith Barrett, Data Needs for Evaluating the Labor Market Status of Women, in Cen-
sus Bureau Conference on Federal Statistical Needs Relating to Women, ed. Barbara B. Reagan ( U.S.
Bureau of the Census, 1979), Current Population Reports, Special Studies, Series P-23, no. 83,
pp. 1019. These figures belie the familiar but misleading statement that only 7 percent of all
American families are of the traditional nuclear type because traditional is defined so narrowly
as husband and wife with two children under 18 where the wife is not employed outside the home.
For more recent figures and a similar argument for more universal family ethic, see Christine
Winquist Nord and Nicholas Zill, American Households in Demographic Perspective, working
paper no. 5, Institute for American Values, New York, 1991.
65. Tamar Levin, Women Are Becoming Equal Providers, New York Times, May 11, 1995, A27.
66. Marianne A. Ferber and Julie A. Nelson, Beyond Economic Man: Feminist Theory and Economics
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).
67. Fran Sussner Rodgers and Charles Rodgers, Business and the Facts of Family Life, Harvard
Business Review, no. 6 (1989): 199213, especially 206.
68. Ravenna Helson and S. Picano, Is the Traditional Role Bad for Women? Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology 59 (1990): 31120. Rosalind C. Barnett, Home-to-Work Spillover Revisited:
A Study of Full-Time Employed Women in Dual-Earner Couples, Journal of Marriage and the
Family 56 (August 1994): 64756.
Ch-02.indd 95 7/8/2008 12:32:01 PM
96 Part I The Changing Family
69. Arlie Hochschild, The Fractured Family, The American Prospect (Summer 1991): 10615.
70. Leon Eisenberg, Is the Family Obsolete? The Key Reporter 60, no. 3 (1995): 15. Arlene Skolnick
and Stacey Rosencrantz, The New Crusade for the Old Family, The American Prospect (Summer
1994): 5965.
71. Roberta M. Spalter-Roth, Heidi I. Hartmann, and Linda M. Andrews, Mothers, Children,
and Low-Wage Work: The Ability to Earn a Family Wage, in Sociology and the Public Agenda, ed.
W. J. Wilson ( Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1993), 31638.
72. Louis Uchitelle, Lacking Child Care, Parents Take Their Children to Work, New York Times,
December 23, 1994, 1.
73. Jencks and Edin, Do Poor Women Have a Right, 50.
74. David Elkind, Ties That Stress: The New Family in Balance ( Boston: Harvard University Press,
1994).
75. It is frequently noted that the U.S. is a much more racially diverse nation than, say, Sweden, which
has a concerted family and childrens policy. Symptomatic of the potential for race and class divi-
sion that impedes recognition of all children as the nations children is the book by Richard J.
Herrnstein and Charles A. Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life
( New York: The Free Press, 1994).
76. Young, Making Single Motherhood Normal, 93.
77. If the objection is that the wrong people will have children, as Herrnstein and Murray suggest in
The Bell Curve, then the challenge is to find ways for poor women to make money or have some
other more exciting career that will offset the rewards of having children, such as becoming the
bride of Christ or the head of a Fortune 500 corporation, to quote Jencks and Edin, Do Poor
Women Have a Right, 48.
78. Beth M. Miller, Private Welfare: The Distributive Equity of Family Benefits in America ( Ph.D.
thesis, Brandeis University, 1992). Sue Shellenbarger, Family-Friendly Firms Often Leave Fa-
thers Out of the Picture, Wall Street Journal, November 2, 1994. Richard T. Gill and T. Grandon
Gill, Of Families, Children, and a Parental Bill of Rights ( New York: Institute for American Values,
1993). For gathering information on these new work-family policies, I wish to acknowledge help
of students in my 1994 95 Family Policy Seminar at Brandeis University, particularly Cathleen
OBrien, Deborah Gurewich, Alissa Starr, and Pamela Swain, as well as the insights of two Ph.D
students, Mindy Fried and Sherry Wexler.
79. Lotte Bailyn, Breaking the Mold: Women, Men and Time in the New Corporate World ( New York: The
Free Press, 1994).
80. Penelope Leach, Children First: What Our Society Must Do and Is Doing ( New York: Random
House, 1994).
Ch-02.indd 96 7/8/2008 12:32:01 PM
97
Sex and Gender
The United States, along with other advanced countries, has experienced both a sexual
revolution and a gender revolution. The first has liberalized attitudes toward erotic be-
havior and expression; the second has changed the roles and status of women and men in
the direction of greater equality. Both revolutions have been brought about by the rapid
social changes in recent years, and both revolutions have challenged traditional concep-
tions of marriage.
The traditional idea of sexuality defines sex as a powerful biological drive continu-
ally struggling for gratification against restraints imposed by civilization. The notion of
sexual instincts also implies a kind of innate knowledge: A person intuitively knows his or
her own identity as male or female, he or she knows how to act accordingly, and he or she
is attracted to the proper sex objecta person of the opposite gender. In other words,
the view of sex as biological drive, pure and simple, implies that sexuality has a magi-
cal ability, possessed by no other capacity, that allows biological drives to be expressed
directly in psychological and social behaviors (Gagnon and Simon, 1970, p. 24).
The whole issue of the relative importance of biological versus psychological and
social factors in sexuality and sex differences has been obscured by polemics. On the one
hand, there are the strict biological determinists who declare that anatomy is destiny.
On the other hand, there are those who argue that all aspects of sexuality and sex-role
differences are matters of learning and social construction.
There are two essential points to be made about the nature-versus-nurture argu-
ment. First, modern genetic theory views biology and environment as interacting, not
opposing, forces. Second, both biological determinists and their opponents assume that
if a biological force exists, it must be overwhelmingly strong. But the most sophisticated
evidence concerning both gender development and erotic arousal suggests that physi-
ological forces are gentle rather than powerful. Despite all the media stories about a gay
gene or a gene for lung cancer, the scientific reality is more complicated. As one re-
searcher put it, the scientists have identified a number of genes that may, under certain
circumstances, make an individual more or less susceptible to the action of a variety of
environmental agents (cited in Berwick, 1998, p. 4).
In terms of scholarship, the main effect of the gender and sexual revolutions has
been on awareness and consciousness. Many sociologists and psychologists used to take
it for granted that womens roles and functions in society reflect universal physiological
and temperamental traits. Since in practically every society women were subordinate to
II
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98 Part II Sex and Gender
men, inequality was interpreted as an inescapable necessity of organized social life. Such
analysis suffered from the same intellectual flaw as the idea that discrimination against
nonwhites implies their innate inferiority. All such explanations failed to analyze the social
institutions and forces producing and supporting the observed differences.
As Robert M. Jackson points out, modern economic and political institutions have
been moving toward gender equality. For example, both the modern workplace and the
state have increasingly come to treat people as workers or voters without regard for their
gender or their family status. Educational institutions from nursery school to graduate
school are open to both sexes. Whether or not men who have traditionally run these in-
stitutions were in favor of gender inequality, their actions eventually improved womens
status in society. Women have not yet attained full quality, but in Jacksons view, the trend
in that direction is irreversible.
One reason the trend toward greater gender equality will persist is that young
people born since the 1970s have grown up in a more equal society than their parents
generation. Kathleen Gerson reports on a number of findings from her interviews with
18- to 30-year-old children of the gender revolution. She finds that young men and
women share similar hopes; both would like to be able to combine work and family life
in an egalitarian way. But they also recognize that in todays world, such aspirations will
be hard to fulfill. Jobs require long hours, and good child care options are scarce and
expensive.
In the face of such obstacles, young women and men pursue different second
choices or fall back strategies. Men are willing to fall back on a more traditional ar-
rangement where he is the main breadwinner in the family, and his partner is the main
caregiver. Young women, however, find this situation much less attractive; they are wary
of giving up their ability to support themselves and their children, should the need arise.
Gerson concludes that the lack of institutional supports for todays young families creates
tensions between partners that may undermine marriage itself.
One reason for the lack of such supports is the family-values religious conserva-
tives opposition to feminism and the gender revolution. These so-called values voters
have been credited with keeping George W. Bush and other Republicans in power in
recent years. Andrew Greeley and Michael Hout find, in their reading, that conservative
Christians are not as extreme in their views as much of the public thinks they are. For
example, they welcome the new employment possibilities for women and the improved
birth control methods of recent years. In addition, they are not as extreme as many of
the leaders that claim to represent them. But conservative Christians are not the same as
other Americans, either. They favor a soft version of patriarchy, rather than the egali-
tarian relations most people say they prefer.
In her article, Beth Bailey presents a historians overview of the most recent sexual
revolution. She finds that it was composed of at least three separate strands. First, there
has been a gradual increase, over the course of the twentieth century, in sexual imagery
and openness about sexual matters in the media and in public life generally. Second, in
the 1960s and 1970s, premarital sex, which had always been part of dating, came to in-
clude intercourse and even living together before or without marriage. The flamboyant
sex radicals of the sixties counterculture were the loudest but the least numerous part
of the sexual revolution.
Ch-03.indd 98 7/8/2008 12:32:15 PM
Part II Sex and Gender 99
Both the sexual revolution and gender revolution have reshaped the ways young
men and women get together. In their study of the current college social scene, Paula
England and Reuben J. Thomas find that the traditional date seems to be on the way
out on college campuses. A date used to mean that a man called a woman in advance
to invite her out to dinner or a movie or some other event. The tradition is not very
old, however: Dating was invented in the 1920s. Earlier, the young man would come
to court the young woman at her home while her parents looked on. When dating
replaced the home visit, the older generation was shocked.
Today, college students apply the term dating only to couples who are already
in a romantic relationship. Hanging out, often in groups, and hooking up have re-
placed the old-fashioned date. A hook-up means the couple goes off somewhere to
be by themselves. It implies that something sexual happens, but not necessarily inter-
course. England and Thomas conclude that the college sexual scene is marred by gender
inequality.
One of the reasons many people think marriage is a dying institution is due to
the growth of cohabitation in recent years. Is living together going to replace marriage
eventually? In their article here, Lynne M. Casper and Suzanne M. Bianchi look at the
demographic evidence on cohabitationhow widespread it is, who does it, and what it
means for traditional marriage. They conclude, as have other researchers, that cohabi-
tation will not replace marriage in the United States. In some European countries, living
together has become a standard living arrangement for raising children. In America,
however, people cohabit for diverse reasons. For many couples, living together is a step
on the way to a planned marriage. Some cohabit because they are uncommitted or unsure
about a future together. Young couples with low incomes may live together and put off
marriage because they feel they cant afford a wedding or a home.
Cohabitation is one aspect of a dramatic shift in the lives of young adults. As re-
cently as 1970, young people grew up quickly. The typical 21 year old was likely to be
married or engaged and settling into a job or motherhood. Now the road to adulthood
is much longer. Indeed, it has become harder to define exactly when and how a person
becomes an adult. The years between the end of adolescence and making serious com-
mitments to work and family can last until the age of 30 and even beyond. Social sci-
entists have only recently begun to study this new life stage, and it still doesnt have an
agreed-on name.
Michael J. Rosenfeld calls it the independent life stage. In his reading, Rosenfeld
argues that because of this new stage in life, parents have less control over their childrens
dating and mate selection. As a result, there has been a sharp rise in unconventional
unionsinterracial and same-sex unions.
Looking at American marriage more broadly, Andrew J. Cherlin describes the
forces, both economic and cultural, that have transformed family life in recent decades.
Economic change has made women less dependent on men; it has drawn women into the
workplace and deprived less-educated men of the blue-collar jobs that once enabled them
to support their families. Getting married and staying married have become increasingly
optional. Despite all the changes, however, Americans value marriage more than people
in other developed countries, and the two-parent family remains the most common living
arrangement for raising children.
Ch-03.indd 99 7/8/2008 12:32:15 PM
100 Part II Sex and Gender
Despite all the changes, marriage remains a cherished U.S. institution. The Census
Bureau estimates that 90 percent of Americans will marry at some point in their lives.
Very few do so expecting that the marriage will end in divorce. So what makes a marriage
break down? In her article, Arlene Skolnick shows that in recent years researchers have
found out a great deal about couple relationships, and some of the findings are contrary
to widespread assumptions. For example, happy families are not all alike. And every mar-
riage contains within it two marriagesa happy one and an unhappy one.
Laurence M. Friedman shows that the divorce revolution of the 1970swhen
many states passed no-fault divorce lawsdid not spring up suddenly out of nowhere.
Nor was it the result of feminism or any other public protest movement. In the first
half of the twentieth century, a dual system of divorce prevailed; the official law allowed
divorce only on the basis of faultone partner had to be proven guilty of adultery or
cruelty or some other offense. But most divorces were actually collusivethe result
of a deal between husbands and wives, who would concoct a storyor act one outto
permit a divorce to be granted. Legal reformers proposed no-fault divorce to remedy
what they saw as a mockery of the law.
Divorce has become a common experience for Americans. In the past decade, there
has been a backlash against divorce, especially for couples with children. The media have
featured dramatic stories about the devastating, life-long scars that parental divorce sup-
posedly inflicts on children. Legislators in some states have been considering making di-
vorce more difficult. Joan B. Kelly and Robert E. Emery review the growing social science
literature on the effects of divorce, and they offer a far more complex picture. Divorce does
increase the risk for psychological and social problems, but most children are resilient
that is, most recover from the distress of divorce and do as well as those from intact fami-
lies. Kelly and Emery discuss the factors that can protect children from the risks.
Because most divorced people remarry, more children will live with stepparents
than in the recent past. As Mary Ann Mason points out in her article, stepfamilies are a
large and growing part of American family life, but their roles in the family are not clearly
defined. Moreover, stepfamilies are largely ignored by public policymakers, and they exist
in a legal limbo. She suggests a number of ways to remedy the situation.
Despite all its difficulties, marriage is not likely to go out of style in the near future.
Ultimately we agree with Jessie Bernard (1982), who, after a devastating critique of tradi-
tional marriage from the point of view of a sociologist who is also a feminist, said:
The future of marriage is as assured as any social form can be. . . . For men and women
will continue to want intimacy, they will continue to want to celebrate their mutuality,
to experience the mystic unity which once led the church to consider marriage a sacra-
ment. . . . There is hardly any probability such commitments will disappear or that all
relationships between them will become merely casual or transient. (p. 301)
References
Bernard, Jessie. 1982. The Future of Marriage. New York: World.
Berwick, Robert C. 1998. The doors of perception. The Los Angeles Times Book Review. March 15.
Gagnon, J. H., and W. Simon. 1970. The Sexual Scene. Chicago: Aldine/Transaction.
Ch-03.indd 100 7/8/2008 12:32:15 PM
101
3 Changing Gender Roles
R E A DI NG 7
Destined for Equality
Robert M. Jackson
Over the past two centuries, womens long, conspicuous struggle for better treatment has
masked a surprising condition. Mens social dominance was doomed from the beginning.
Gender inequality could not adapt successfully to modern economic and political institu-
tions. No one planned this. Indeed, for a long time, the impending extinction of gender
inequality was hidden from all.
In the middle of the nineteenth century, few said that equality between women
and men was possible or desirable. The new forms of business, government, schools,
and the family seemed to fit nicely with the existing division between womens roles and
mens roles. Men controlled them all, and they showed no signs of losing belief in their
natural superiority. If anything, womens subordination seemed likely to grow worse as
they remained attached to the household while business and politics became a separate,
distinctively masculine, realm.
Nonetheless, 150 years later, seemingly against all odds, women are well on the way
to becoming mens equals. Now, few say that gender equality is impossible or undesirable.
Somehow our expectations have been turned upside down.
Womens rising status is an enigmatic paradox. For millennia women were sub-
ordinate to men under the most diverse economic, political, and cultural conditions.
Although the specific content of gender-based roles and the degree of inequality between
the sexes varied considerably across time and place, men everywhere held power and sta-
tus over women. Moreover, people believed that mens dominance was a natural and
unchangeable part of life. Yet over the past two centuries, gender inequality has declined
across the world.
The driving force behind this transformation has been the migration of economic
and political power outside households and its reorganization around business and po-
litical interests detached from gender. Women (and their male supporters) have fought
against prejudice and discrimination throughout American history, but social conditions
Ch-03.indd 101 7/8/2008 12:32:15 PM
102 Part II Sex and Gender
governed the intensity and effectiveness of their efforts. Behind the very visible con-
flicts between women and male-dominated institutions, fundamental processes concern-
ing economic and political organization have been paving the way for womens success.
Throughout these years, while many women struggled to improve their status and many
men resisted those efforts, institutional changes haltingly, often imperceptibly, but persis-
tently undermined gender inequality. Responding to the emergent imperatives of large-
scale, bureaucratic organizations, men with economic or political power intermittently
adopted policies that favored greater equality, often without anticipating the implica-
tions of their actions. Gradually responding to the changing demands and possibilities of
households without economic activity, men acting as individuals reduced their resistance
to wives and daughters extending their roles, although men rarely recognized they were
doing something different from their fathers generation.
Social theorists have long taught us that institutions have unanticipated conse-
quences, particularly when the combined effect of many peoples actions diverges from
their individual aims. Adam Smith, the renowned theorist of early capitalism, proposed
that capitalist markets shared a remarkable characteristic. Many people pursuing only
selfish, private interests could further the good of all. Subsequently, Karl Marx, consid-
ering the capitalist economy, proposed an equally remarkable but contradictory assess-
ment. Systems of inequality fueled by rational self-interest, he argued, inevitably produce
irrational crises that threaten to destroy the social order. Both ideas have suffered many
critical blows, but they still capture our imaginations by their extraordinary insight. They
teach us how unanticipated effects often ensue when disparate people and organizations
each follow their own short-sighted interests.
Through a similar unanticipated and uncontrolled process, the changing actions of
men, women, and powerful institutions have gradually but irresistibly reduced gender
inequality. Women had always resisted their constraints and inferior status. Over the past
150 years, however, their individual strivings and organized resistance became increas-
ingly effective. Men long continued to oppose the loss of their privileged status. Nonethe-
less, although men and male-controlled institutions did not adopt egalitarian values, their
actions changed because their interests changed. Mens resistance to womens aspirations
diminished, and they found new advantages in strategies that also benefited women.
Modern economic and political organization propelled this transformation by slowly
dissociating social power from its allegiance to gender inequality. The power over eco-
nomic resources, legal rights, the allocation of positions, legitimating values, and setting
priorities once present in families shifted into businesses and government organizations.
In these organizations, profit, efficiency, political legitimacy, organizational stability,
competitiveness, and similar considerations mattered more than male privileges vis--vis
females. Men who had power because of their positions in these organizations gradually
adopted policies ruled more by institutional interests than by personal prejudices. Over
the long run, institutional needs and opportunities produced policies that worked against
gender inequality. Simultaneously, ordinary men (those without economic or political
power) resisted womens advancements less. They had fewer resources to use against the
women in their lives, and less to gain from keeping women subordinate. Male politicians
seeking more power, businessmen pursuing wealth and success, and ordinary men pursu-
ing their self-interest all contributed to the gradual decline of gender inequality.
Ch-03.indd 102 7/8/2008 12:32:16 PM
Chapter 3 Changing Gender Roles 103
Structural developments produced ever more inconsistencies with the require-
ments for continued gender inequality. Both the economy and the state increasingly
treated people as potential workers or voters without reference to their family status. To
the disinterested, and often rationalized, authority within these institutions, sex inequal-
ity was just one more consideration with calculating strategies for profit and political
advantage. For these institutions, men and women embodied similar problems of control,
exploitation, and legitimation.
Seeking to further their own interests, powerful men launched institutional changes
that eventually reduced the discrimination against women. Politicians passed laws giving
married women property rights. Employers hired women in ever-increasing numbers.
Educators opened their doors to women. These examples and many others show power-
ful men pursuing their interests in preserving and expanding their economic and political
power, yet also improving womens social standing.
The economy and state did not systematically oppose inequality. On the contrary,
each institution needed and aggressively supported some forms of inequality, such as
income differentials and the legal authority of state officials, that gave them strength.
Other forms of inequality received neither automatic support nor automatic opposition.
Over time, the responses to other kinds of inequality depended on how well they met
institutional interests and how contested they became.
When men adopted organizational policies that eventually improved womens sta-
tus, they consciously sought to increase profits, end labor shortages, get more votes,
and increase social order. They imposed concrete solutions to short-term economic and
political problems and to conflicts associated with them. These men usually did not envi-
sion, and probably did not care, that the cumulative effect of these policies would be to
curtail male dominance.
Only when they were responding to explicitly egalitarian demands from women
such as suffrage did men with power consistently examine the implications of their ac-
tions for gender inequality. Even then, as when responding to womens explicit demands
for legal changes, most legislators were concerned more about their political interests
than the fate of gender inequality. When legislatures did pass laws responding to public
pressure about womens rights, few male legislators expected the laws could dramatically
alter gender inequality.
Powerful men adopted various policies that ultimately would undermine gender
inequality because such policies seemed to further their private interests and to address
inescapable economic, political, and organizational problems. The structure and integral
logic of development within modern political and economic institutions shaped the prob-
lems, interests, and apparent solutions. Without regard to what either women or men
wanted, industrial capitalism and rational legal government eroded gender inequality.
MAPPING GENDER INEQUALITYS DECLINE
When a band of men committed to revolutionary change self-consciously designed the
American institutional framework, they did not imagine or desire that it would lead
toward gender equality. In 1776 a small group of men claimed equality for themselves
Ch-03.indd 103 7/8/2008 12:32:16 PM
104 Part II Sex and Gender
and similar men by signing the Declaration of Independence. In throwing off British
sovereignty, they inaugurated the American ideal of equality. Yet after the success of their
revolution, its leaders and like-minded property-owning white men created a nation that
subjugated women, enslaved blacks, and withheld suffrage from men without property.
These men understood the egalitarian ideals they espoused through the culture
and experiences dictated by their own historical circumstances. Everyone then accepted
that women and men were absolutely and inalterably different. Although Abigail Adams
admonished her husband that they should remember the ladies, when these fathers
of the American nation established its most basic rights and laws, the prospect of fuller
citizenship for women was not even credible enough to warrant the effort of rejection.
These nation builders could not foresee that their political and economic institutions
would eventually erode some forms of inequality much more emphatically than had their
revolutionary vision. They could not know that the social structure would eventually
extend egalitarian social relations much further than they might ever have thought desir-
able or possible.
By the 1830s, a half-century after the American Revolution, little had changed.
In the era of Jacksonian democracy, women still could not vote or hold political office.
They had to cede legal control of their inherited property and their income to their
husbands. With few exceptions, they could not make legal contracts or escape a marriage
through divorce. They could not enter college. Dependence on men was perpetual and
inescapable. Household toil and family welfare monopolized womens time and energies.
Civil society recognized women not as individuals but as adjuncts to men. Like the de-
mocracy of ancient Athens, the American democracy limited political equality to men.
Today women enjoy independent citizenship; they have the same liberty as men
to control their person and property. If they choose or need to do so, women can live
without a husband. They can discard an unwanted husband to seek a better alternative.
Women vote and occupy political offices. They hold jobs almost as often as men do. Ever
more women have managerial and professional positions. Our culture has adopted more
affirmative images for women, particularly as models of such values as independence,
public advocacy, economic success, and thoughtfulness. Although these changes have not
removed all inequities, women now have greater resources, more choices in life, and a
higher social status than in the past.
In terms of the varied events and processes that have so dramatically changed
womens place in society, the past 150 years of American history can be divided into
three half-century periods. The era of separate spheres covers roughly 1840 1890, from the
era of Jacksonian democracy to the Gilded Age. The era of egalitarian illusions, roughly
1890 1940, extends from the Progressive Era to the beginning of World War II. The
third period, the era of assimilation, covers the time from World War II to the present
(see Table 7.1).
Over the three periods, notable changes altered womens legal, political, and eco-
nomic status, womens access to higher education and to divorce, womens sexuality, and
the cultural images of women and men. Most analysts agree that peoples legal, political,
and economic status largely define their social status, and we will focus on the changes
in these. Of course, like gender, other personal characteristics such as race and age also
define an individuals status, because they similarly influence legal, political, and eco-
nomic rights and resources. Under most circumstances, however, women and men are
Ch-03.indd 104 7/8/2008 12:32:16 PM
Chapter 3 Changing Gender Roles 105
not systematically differentiated by other kinds of inequality based on personal charac-
teristics, because these other differences, such as race and age, cut across gender lines.
Educational institutions have played an ever-larger role in regulating peoples access to
opportunities over the last century. Changes in access to divorce, womens sexuality, and
cultural images of gender will not play a central role in this study. They are important
indicators of womens status, but they are derivative rather than formative. They reveal
inequalitys burden.
TABLE 7.1 The Decline of Gender Inequality in American Society
1840 1890
The Era of
Separate
Spheres
1890 1940
The Era of
Egalitarian
Illusions
1940 1990
The Era of
Assimilation
1990 ?
Residual
Inequities
Legal and
political
status
Formal legal
equality
instituted
Formal political
equality
instituted
Formal
economic
equality
instituted
Women rare in
high political
offices
Economic
opportunity
Working-class
jobs for single
women only
Some jobs for
married women
and educated
women
All kinds of
jobs available
to all kinds
of women
Glass ceiling
and domestic
duties hold
women back
Higher
education
A few women
admitted to
public
universities and
new womens
colleges
Increasing
college; little
graduate or
professional
education
Full access at
all levels
Some
prestigious fields
remain largely
male domains
Divorce Almost none,
but available
for dire
circumstances
Increasingly
available, but
difficult
Freely
available and
accepted
Women typically
suffer greater
costs
Sexuality and
reproductive
control
Repressive
sexuality; little
reproductive
control
Positive sexuality
but double
standard;
increasing
reproductive
control
High sexual
freedom; full
reproductive
control
Sexual
harassment and
fear of rape still
widespread
Cultural
image
Virtuous
domesticity and
subordination
Educated
motherhood,
capable for
employment &
public service
Careers,
marital
equality
Sexes still
perceived as
inherently
different
Ch-03.indd 105 7/8/2008 12:32:16 PM
106 Part II Sex and Gender
The creation of separate spheres for women and men dominated the history of
gender inequality during the first period, 1840 1890. The cultural doctrine of separate
spheres emerged in the mid-nineteenth century. It declared emphatically that women
and men belonged to different worlds. Women were identified with the household and
maintenance of family life. Men were associated with income-generating employment
and public life. Popular ideas attributed greater religious virtue to women but greater
civic virtue to men. Women were hailed as guardians of private morality while men were
regarded as the protectors of the public good. These cultural and ideological inventions
were responses to a fundamental institutional transition, the movement of economic
activity out of households into independent enterprises. The concept of separate spheres
legitimated womens exclusion from the public realm, although it gave them some au-
tonomy and authority within their homes.
Womens status was not stagnant in this period. The cultural wedge driven between
womens and mens worlds obscured diverse and significant changes that did erode in-
equality. The state gave married women the right to control their property and income.
Jobs became available for some, mainly single, women, giving them some economic inde-
pendence and an identity apart from the household. Secondary education similar to that
offered to men became available to women, and colleges began to admit some women
for higher learning. Divorce became a possible, though still difficult, strategy for the first
time and led social commentators to bemoan the increasing rate of marital dissolution.
In short, womens opportunities moved slowly forward in diverse ways.
From 1890 to 1940 womens opportunities continued to improve, and many claimed
that women had won equality. Still, the opportunities were never enough to enable
women to transcend their subordinate position. The passage of the Woman Suffrage
Amendment stands out as the high point of changes during this period, yet women could
make little headway in government while husbands and male politicians belittled and
rejected their political aspirations. Women entered the labor market in ever-increasing
numbers, educated women could get white-collar positions for the first time, and em-
ployers extended hiring to married women. Still, employers rarely considered women for
high-status jobs, and explicit discrimination was an accepted practice. Although womens
college opportunities became more like mens, professional and advanced degree pro-
grams still excluded women. Married women gained widespread access to effective con-
traception. Although popular opinion expected women to pursue and enjoy sex within
marriage, social mores still denied them sex outside it. While divorce became more so-
cially acceptable and practically available, laws still restricted divorce by demanding that
one spouse prove that the other was morally repugnant. Movies portrayed glamorous
women as smart, sexually provocative, professionally talented, and ambitious, but even
they, if they were good women, were driven by an overwhelming desire to marry, bear
children, and dedicate themselves to their homes.
Writing at the end of this period, the sociologist Mirra Komarovsky captured its
implications splendidly. After studying affluent college students during World War II,
Komarovsky concluded that young women were beset by serious contradictions between
two roles. The first was the feminine role, with its expectations of deference to men and
a future focused on familial activities. The second was the modern role that partly
obliterates the differentiation in sex, presumably because the emphasis on education
Ch-03.indd 106 7/8/2008 12:32:16 PM
Chapter 3 Changing Gender Roles 107
made the universal qualities of ability and accomplishment seem the only reasonable
limitations on future activities. Women who absorbed the egalitarian implications of
modern education felt confused, burdened, and irritated by the contrary expectations
that they display a subordinate femininity. The intrinsic contradictions between these
two role expectations could only end, Komarovsky declared, when womens real adult
role was redefined to make it consistent with the socioeconomic and ideological mod-
ern society.
1
Since 1940, many of these contradictions have been resolved. At an accelerating
pace, women have continually gained greater access to the activities, positions, and sta-
tuses formerly reserved to men.
Despite the tremendous gains women have experienced, they have not achieved
complete equality, nor is it imminent. The improvement of womens status has been
uneven, seesawing between setbacks and advances. Women still bear the major respon-
sibility for raising children. They suffer from lingering harassment, intimidation, and
disguised discrimination. Women in the United States still get poorer jobs and lower
income. They have less access to economic or political power. The higher echelons of
previously male social hierarchies have assimilated women slowest and least completely.
For example, in blue-collar hierarchies they find it hard to get skilled jobs or join craft
unions; in white-collar hierarchies they rarely reach top management; and in politics the
barriers to womens entry seem to rise with the power of the office they seek. Yet when
we compare the status of American women today with their status in the past, the move-
ment toward greater equality is striking.
While women have not gained full equality, the formal structural barriers holding
them back have largely collapsed and those left are crumbling. New government poli-
cies have discouraged sex discrimination by most organizations and in most areas of life
outside the family. The political and economic systems have accepted ever more women
and have promoted them to positions with more influence and higher status. Education at
all levels has become equally available to women. Women have gained great control over
their reproductive processes, and their sexual freedom has come to resemble that of men.
It has become easy and socially acceptable to end unsatisfactory marriages with divorce.
Popular culture has come close to portraying women as mens legitimate equal. Television,
our most dynamic communication media, regularly portrays discrimination as wrong and
male abuse or male dominance as nasty. The prevailing theme of this recent period has
been womens assimilation into all the activities and positions once denied them.
This book [this reading was taken from] focuses on the dominant patterns and the
groups that had the most decisive and most public roles in the processes that changed
womens status: middle-class whites and, secondarily, the white working class. The his-
tories of gender inequality among racial and ethnic minorities are too diverse to address
adequately here.
2
Similarly, this analysis neglects other distinctive groups, especially les-
bians and heterosexual women who avoided marriage, whose changing circumstances
also deserve extended study.
While these minorities all have distinctive histories, the major trends considered
here have influenced all groups. Every group had to respond to the same changing po-
litical and economic structures that defined the opportunities and constraints for all
people in the society. Also, whatever their particular history, the members of each group
Ch-03.indd 107 7/8/2008 12:32:16 PM
108 Part II Sex and Gender
understood their gender relations against the backdrop of the white, middle-class fam-
ilys cultural preeminence. Even when people in higher or lower-class positions or people
in ethnic communities expressed contempt for these values, they were familiar with the
middle-class ideals and thought of them as leading ideas in the society. The focus on
the white middle classes is simply an analytical and practical strategy. The history of
dominant groups has no greater inherent or moral worth. Still, except in cases of open,
successful rebellion, the ideas and actions of dominant groups usually affect history
much more than the ideas and actions of subordinate groups. This fact is an inevitable
effect of inequality.
THE MEANING OF INEQUALITY
AND ITS DECLINE
We will think differently about womens status under two theoretical agendas. Either we
can try to evaluate how short from equality women now fall, or we can try to understand
how far they have come from past deprivations.
Looking at womens place in society today from these two vantage points yields
remarkably different perspectives. They accentuate different aspects of womens status
by altering the background against which we compare it. Temporal and analytical differ-
ences separate these two vantage points, not distinctive moral positions, although people
sometimes confuse these differences with competing moral positions.
If we want to assess and criticize womens disadvantages today, we usually compare
their existing status with an imagined future when complete equality reigns. Using this
ideal standard of complete equality, we would find varied shortcomings in womens sta-
tus today. These shortcomings include womens absence from positions of political or
economic power, mens preponderance in the better-paid and higher-status occupations,
womens lower average income, womens greater family responsibilities, the higher status
commonly attached to male activities, and the dearth of institutions or policies support-
ing dual-earner couples.
Alternatively, if we want to evaluate how womens social status has improved, we
must turn in the other direction and face the past. We look back to a time when women
were legal and political outcasts, working only in a few low-status jobs, and always defer-
ring to male authority. From this perspective, womens status today seems much brighter.
Compared with the nineteenth century, women now have a nearly equal legal and political
status, far more women hold jobs, women can succeed at almost any occupation, women
usually get paid as much as men in the same position (in the same firm), women have as
much educational opportunity as men, and both sexes normally expect women to pursue
jobs and careers.
As we seek to understand the decline of gender inequality, we will necessarily stress
the improvements in womens status. We will always want to remember, however, that
gender inequality today stands somewhere between extreme inequality and complete
equality. To analyze the modern history of gender inequality fully, we must be able to look
at this middle ground from both sides. It is seriously deficient when measured against full
equality. It is a remarkable improvement when measured against past inequality.
Ch-03.indd 108 7/8/2008 12:32:16 PM
Chapter 3 Changing Gender Roles 109
Notes
1. Mirra Komarovsky, Cultural Contradictions and Sex Roles, pp. 184, 189. Cf. Helen Hacker,
Women as a Minority Group.
2. For studies of these various groups see, e.g., Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter; Alfredo
Mirande and Evangelina Enriquez, La Chicana; Evelyn Nakana Glen, Issei, Nisei, War Bride; Jac-
queline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow.
References
Giddings, Paula. When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America. New
York: William Morrow, 1984.
Glen, Evelyn Nakano. Issei, Nisei, War Bride. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986.
Hacker, Helen. Women as a Minority Group. Social Forces 30 (1951): 60 69.
Jones, Jacqueline. Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the
Present. New York: Basic Books, 1986.
Komarovsky, Mirra. Cultural Contradictions and Sex Roles. American Journal of Sociology 52 (1946):
184 189.
Mirande, Alfredo, and Evangelina Enriquez. La Chicana. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979.
R E A DI NG 8
What Do Women and Men Want?
Kathleen Gerson
Young workers today grew up in rapidly changing times: They watched women march
into the workplace and adults develop a wide range of alternatives to traditional marriage.
Now making their own passage to adulthood, these children of the gender revolution
have inherited a far different world from that of their parents or grandparents. They may
enjoy an expanded set of options, but they also face rising uncertainty about whether and
how to craft a marriage, rear children, and build a career.
Considering the scope of these new uncertainties, it is understandable that social
forecasters are pondering starkly different possibilities for the future. Focusing on a com-
paratively small recent upturn in the proportion of mothers who do not hold paid jobs,
some are pointing to a return to tradition, especially among young women. Others see
evidence of a decline of commitment in the rising number of young adults who are living
outside a married relationship. However, the 120 in-depth interviews I conducted between
1998 and 2003 with young adults from diverse backgrounds make it clear that neither of
these scenarios does justice to the lessons gleaned from growing up in changing families
or to the strategies being crafted in response to deepening work /family dilemmas.
Keenly aware of the obstacles to integrating work and family life in an egalitarian
way, most young adults are formulating a complicated set of ideals and fallback positions.
Ch-03.indd 109 7/8/2008 12:32:16 PM
110 Part II Sex and Gender
Women and men largely share similar aspirations: Most wish to forge a lifelong partner-
ship that combines committed work with devoted parenting. These ideals are tempered,
however, by deep and realistic fears that rigid, time-demanding jobs and a dearth of child-
care or family-leave options block the path to such a goal. Confronted with so many
obstacles, young women and men today are pursuing fallback strategies as insurance in
the all-too-likely event that their egalitarian ideals prove out of reach.
These second-best strategies are not only different but also at odds with each other.
If a supportive, egalitarian partnership is not possible, most women prefer individual
autonomy over becoming dependent on a husband in a traditional marriage. Most men,
however, if they cant have an equal balance between work and parenting, fall back on a
neotraditional arrangement that allows them to put their own work prospects first and
rely on a partner for most caregiving. The best hope for bridging this new gender divide
lies in creating social policies that would allow new generations to create the families they
want rather than the families they believe they must settle for.
GROWING UP IN CHANGING FAMILIES
In contrast to the conventional wisdom that children are best reared in families with a
homemaking mother and bread-winning father, the women and men who grew up in
such circumstances hold divided assessments. While a little more than half thought this
was the best arrangement, a little less than half thought otherwise. When domesticity
appeared to undermine their mothers satisfaction, disturb the households harmony, or
threaten its economic security, the adult children surveyed concluded that it would have
been better if their mothers had pursued a sustained commitment to work or, in some
instances, if their parents had separated.
Many of those who grew up in a single-parent home also express ambivalence.
Slightly more than half wished their parents had stayed together, but close to half be-
lieved that a breakup, while not ideal, was better than continuing to live in a conflict-
ridden home or with a neglectful or abusive parent. The longer-term consequences of a
breakup had a crucial influence on the lessons children drew. The children whose parents
got back on their feet and created better lives developed surprisingly positive outlooks
on the decision to separate.
Those who grew up in dual-earner homes were least ambivalent about their parents
arrangements. More than three-fourths thought their parents had chosen the best option.
Having two work-committed parents not only provided increased economic resources
for the family but also promoted marriages that seemed more egalitarian and satisfying.
Yet when the pressures of parents working long hours or coping with blocked opportu-
nities and family-unfriendly workplaces took their toll, some children came to believe
that having overburdened, time-stressed caretakers offset the advantages of living in a
two-income household.
In short, the generation that grew up in this era of changing families is more fo-
cused on how well parents (and other caretakers) were able to meet the twin challenges of
providing economic and emotional support rather than on what forms households took.
Children were more likely to receive that support when their parents (or other guardians)
Ch-03.indd 110 7/8/2008 12:32:17 PM
Chapter 3 Changing Gender Roles 111
could find secure and personally satisfying jobs, high-quality child care, and a supportive
partnership that left room for a measure of personal autonomy.
NEW IDEALS, PERSISTING BARRIERS
So what do young adults want for themselves? Grappling with their own family experi-
ences has led most young women and men to affirm the intrinsic importance of family
life, but also to search for ways to combine lasting commitment with a substantial mea-
sure of independence. Whether or not their parents stayed together, the overwhelming
majority of young adults I interviewed said they hope to rear their children in the context
of a lifelong intimate bond. They have certainly not given up on the value or possibility
of commitment. It would be a mistake, however, to equate this ideal with a desire to be in
a traditional relationship. While almost everyone wants to create a lasting marriageor,
in the case of same-sex couples, a marriage-like relationshipmost also want to find
an egalitarian partnership with considerable room for personal autonomy. Not surpris-
ingly, three-fourths of those who grew up in dual-earner homes want their spouses to
share breadwinning and caretaking; but so do more than two-thirds of those from more
traditional homes, and close to nine-tenths of those with single parents. Four-fifths of
women want egalitarian relationships, but so do two-thirds of the men. Whether reared
by traditional, dual-earning, or single parents, the overwhelming majority of women and
men want a committed bond where both paid work and family caretaking are shared.
Amy, an Asian American with two working parents, and Michael, an African Ameri-
can raised by a single mother, express essentially the same hopes:
AMY: I want a 50 50 relationship, where we both have the potential of doing everything
both of us working and dealing with kids. With regard to career, if neither has flexibility,
then one of us will have to sacrifice for one period, and the other for another.
MICHAEL: I dont want the 50s type of marriage, where I come home and shes cooking.
She doesnt have to cook; I like to cook. I want her to have a career of her own. I want
to be able to set my goals, and she can do what she wants, too, because we both have this
economic base and the attitude to do it. Thats what marriage is about.
Young adults today are affirming the value of commitment while also challenging
traditional forms of marriage. Women and men both want to balance family and work in
their own lives and balance commitment and autonomy in their relationships. Yet women
and men also share a concern thatin the face of workplaces greedy for time and com-
munities lacking adequate child careinsurmountable obstacles block the path to achiev-
ing these goals.
Chris, a young man of mixed ancestry whose parents shared work and caretaking,
thus wonders: I thought you could just have a relationshipthat love and being happy
was all that was needed in lifebut Ive learned its a difficult thing. So that would be my
fear: Where am I cutting into my job too much? Where am I cutting into the relation-
ship too much? How do I divide it? And can it be done at all? Can you blend these two
parts of your world?
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112 Part II Sex and Gender
A NEW GENDER DIVIDE
The rising conflicts between family and work make equal sharing seem elusive and pos-
sibly unattainable. Most young adults have concluded that they have little choice but to
prepare for options that are likely to fall substantially short of their ideals. In the face
of these barriers, women and men are formulating differentand opposingfallback
strategies.
In contrast to the media-driven message that more women are opting for domestic
pursuits, the vast majority of women I interviewed say they are determined to seek finan-
cial and emotional self-reliance, even at the expense of a committed relationship. Most
young womenregardless of class, race, or ethnicityare reluctant to surrender their
autonomy in a traditional marriage. When the bonds of marriage are so fragile, relying
on a husband for economic security seems foolhardy. And if a relationship deteriorates,
economic dependence on a man leaves few means of escape.
Danisha, an African American who grew up in an inner-city, working-class neigh-
borhood, and Jennifer, who was raised in a middle-class, predominantly white suburb,
agree:
DANISHA: Lets say that my marriage doesnt work. Just in case, I want to establish
myself, because I dont ever want to end up, like, What am I going to do? I want to be
able to do what I have to do and still be OK.
JENNIFER: I will have to have a job and some kind of stability before considering mar-
riage. Too many of my mothers friends went for thatLet him provide everything
and theyre stuck in a very unhappy relationship, but cant leave because they cant provide
for themselves or the children they now have. So its either welfare or putting up with
somebody elses crap.
Hoping to avoid being trapped in an unhappy marriage or abandoned by an un-
reliable partner, almost three-fourths of women surveyed said they plan to build a non-
negotiable base of self-reliance and an independent identity in the world of paid work. But
they do not view this strategy as incompatible with the search for a life partner. Instead,
it reflects their determination to set a high standard for a worthy relationship. Economic
self-reliance and personal independence make it possible to resist settling for anything
less than a satisfying, mutually supportive bond.
Maria, who grew up in a two-parent home in a predominantly white, working-class
suburb and Rachel, whose Latino parents separated when she was young, share this view:
MARIA: I want to have this person to share [my] life with[someone] that youre there
for as much as theyre there for you. But I cant settle.
RACHEL: Im not afraid of being alone, but I am afraid of being with somebody whos
a jerk. I want to get married and have children, but it has to be under the right circum-
stances, with the right person.
Maria and Rachel also agree that if a worthy relationship ultimately proves out
of reach, then remaining single need not mean social disconnection. Kin and friends
Ch-03.indd 112 7/8/2008 12:32:17 PM
Chapter 3 Changing Gender Roles 113
provide a support network that enlarges and, if needed, even substitutes for an intimate
relationship:
MARIA: If I dont find [a relationship], then I cannot live in sorrow. Its not the only thing
thats ultimately important. If I didnt have my family, if I didnt have a career, if I didnt
have friends, I would be equally unhappy. [A relationship] is just one slice of the pie.
RACHEL: I can spend the rest of my life on my own, and as long as I have my sisters and
my friends, Im OK.
By blending support from friends and kin with financial self-sufficiency, most young
women are pursuing a strategy of autonomy rather than placing their own fate or their
childrens in the hands of a traditional marriage. Whether or not this strategy ultimately
leads to marriage, it appears to offer the safest and most responsible way to prepare for
the uncertainties of relationships and the barriers to mens equal sharing.
Young men, in contrast, face a different dilemma: Torn between womens pressures
for an egalitarian partnership and their own desire to succeedor at least survivein time-
demanding workplaces, they are more inclined to fall back on a modified traditionalism that
recognizes a mothers right (and need) to work but puts a mans claim to a career first.
Despite growing up in a two-income home, Andrew distinguishes between a womans
choice to work and a mans responsibility to support his family: I would like to have
it be equaljust from what I was exposed to and what attracts mebut I dont have a set
definition for what that would be like. I would be fine if both of us were working, but if
she thought, At this point in my life, I dont want to work, then it would be fine.
This model makes room for two earners, but it positions men as the breadwinning
specialists. When push comes to shove, and the demands of work collide with the needs
of children, this framework allows fathers to resist equal caretaking, even in a two-earner
context. Although Joshs mother became too mentally ill to care for her children or
herself, Josh plans to leave the lions share of caretaking to his wife:
All things being equal, it [caretaking] should be shared. It may sound sexist, but if some-
bodys going to be the breadwinner, its going to be me. First of all, I make a better salary,
and I feel the need to work, and I just think the child really needs the mother more than
the father at a young age.
Men are thus more likely to favor a fallback arrangement that retains the gender
boundary between breadwinning and caretaking, even when mothers hold paid jobs. From
young mens perspective, this modified but still gendered household offers women the chance
to earn income and establish an identity at the workplace without imposing the costs of
equal parenting on men. Granting a mothers right to work supports womens claims for
independence, but does not undermine mens claim that their work prospects should come
first. Acknowledging mens responsibilities at home provides for more involved fatherhood,
but does not envision domestic equality. And making room for two earners provides a buffer
against the difficulties of living on one income, but does not challenge mens position as the
primary earner. Modified traditionalism thus appears to be a good compromise when the
career costs of equality remain so high. Ultimately, however, mens desire to protect work
prerogatives collides with womens growing demand for equality and independence.
Ch-03.indd 113 7/8/2008 12:32:17 PM
114 Part II Sex and Gender
GETTING PAST THE WORK / FAMILY IMPASSE?
If the realities of time-demanding workplaces and missing supports for caregiving make
it difficult for young adults to achieve the sharing, flexible, and more egalitarian relation-
ships most want, then how can we get past this impasse? Clearly, most young women are
not likely to answer this question by returning to patterns that fail to speak to either their
highest ideals or their greatest fears. To the contrary, they are forming fallback strategies
that stress personal autonomy, including the possibility of single parenthood. Mens most
common responses to economic pressures and time-demanding jobs stress a different
strategyone that allows for two incomes but preserves mens claim on the most reward-
ing careers. Women and men are leaning in different directions, and their conflicting
responses are fueling a new gender divide. But this schism stems from the intensification
of long-simmering work /family dilemmas, not from a decline of laudable values.
We need to worry less about the family values of a new generation and more about
the institutional barriers that make them so difficult to achieve. Most young adults do not
wish to turn back the clock, but they do hope to combine the more traditional value of
making a lifelong commitment with the more modern value of having a flexible, egalitar-
ian relationship. Rather than trying to change individual values, we need to provide the
social supports that will allow young people to overcome work/family conflicts and realize
their most cherished aspirations.
Since a mothers earnings and a fathers involvement are both integral to the eco-
nomic and emotional welfare of children (and also desired by most women and men), we
can achieve the best family values only by creating flexible workplaces, ensuring equal eco-
nomic opportunity for women, outlawing discrimination against all parents, and building
child-friendly communities with plentiful, affordable, and high-quality child care. These
long overdue policies will help new generations create the more egalitarian partnerships
they desire. Failure to build institutional supports for new social realities will not produce
a return to traditional marriage. Instead, following the law of unintended consequences,
it will undermine marriage itself.
R E A DI NG 9
The Conservative Christian Family
and the Feminist Revolution
Andrew Greeley and Michael Hout
INTRODUCTION
The battle cry of the politically involved Conservative Christians is family values. . . .
[T]he precise meaning of that shibboleth seems rather flexible. It applies to certain forms
Ch-03.indd 114 7/8/2008 12:32:17 PM
Chapter 3 Changing Gender Roles 115
of abortion and to homosexuality but apparently not to a regular sexual partner and
cohabitation. Equally important, if not more so, are the norms, roles, and mores that
structure the daily lives of men and women. Traditional models of the proper roles of
men, and women in and out of family relationships have been recast by the womens
movement. One supposition is that the family values cry of the Christian right is
a call to resist those changes. . . . [I]n this [reading we] ask to what extent traditional
convictions about family life have survived the feminist revolutionor more accurately,
the technological and demographic changes that are articulated in the theories of the
womens movement.
Others have been over this ground before. Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher
(2000) considered it in their Case for Marriage (also see Goldschieder and Waite
1991). The specific issues of family values, religion, and feminism are central to re-
search articles by Duane Alwin (1986), John Barkowski (1997), and Clem Brooks
(2002). Of these, Brookss analysis is the most relevant for our purposes. Reviewing
data collected between 1972 and 1996, he found a steady increase in the frequency
with which people cited elements of family decline as the nations most important
problem. He considered explicit mentions of family decline itself, of course, but
included mentions of divorce, single-parent families, inadequate child rearing, and
child poverty as well. The fraction of U.S. voters mentioning any of these aspects of
family decline was tiny prior to 1984 when it was 2 percent.
1
From that low point
it increased steadily to 9.4 percent in 1996. That may sound like family decline was
still far from a burning issue. However, this is not a forced choice question. Respon-
dents can (and do) say anything that is on their minds. The sheer variety of answers
is impressive. Moreover, the increase was most intense for Conservative Protestants
and frequent churchgoers, with an added boost among Conservative Protestants who
attended church weekly. Brooks does not present the observed percentages, but the
coefficients in his model 2 imply that over 40 percent of Conservative Protestants
attending church weekly in the most recent year (1996) cited family decline as the
nations most important problem when less than 8 percent of their fellow Americans
thought it was that important. Now Conservative Protestants who attend church
weekly are but a small segment of the U.S. electorate, but their focus on the family is
both impressive and distinctive.
Soft Patriarchs, New Men by W. Bradford Wilcox (2004) explores the link be-
tween religion and family from the family rather than a political perspective. In his
comprehensive review of contemporary family ideologies and practices, he shows how
Conservative and Mainline Protestant men differ when they approach families. He
calls the conservatives soft patriarchs in deference to their aspirations to be tra-
ditional providers and beacons of virtue, but his main finding is that family trumps
patriarchy in the modern Christian household. That means that Conservative Prot-
estant fathers are more emotionally engaged with their wives and children than other
men. He labels the Mainline men new because they truly value egalitarian family
life and even though they fail to achieve it in absolute terms they do a significantly
greater share of household labor than other American men. Wilcoxs research, and
indeed most empirical work on religion and family, leads us to expect a quantitative
rather than a qualitative difference between Conservative and Mainline Protestants
gender ideologies. . . .
Ch-03.indd 115 7/8/2008 12:32:17 PM
116 Part II Sex and Gender
GENDER ROLES
From the very earliest years of the General Social Survey, the National Opinion Research
Center has asked four questions that have constituted a feminism
2
scale that was designed
in the late 1960s as a leading social indicator:
Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Women should take care of running
their homes and leave running the country to the men.
Do you approve or disapprove of a married woman earning money in business or
industry if she has a husband capable of supporting her?
If your party nominated a woman for President, would you vote for her if she were
qualified for the job?
Tell me if you agree or disagree with this statement: Most men are better suited
emotionally for politics than are most women.
In Table 9.1 we consider the average response of four Christian denominations
to these four questions in 1996 and 1998 (the most recent years all four questions were
asked).
The table demonstrates that contemporary Conservative Protestants are slightly
more likely to manifest restraint on womens involvement beyond the home while Main-
line Protestants and Catholics are more likely to support the moderate feminist posi-
tions encoded in the questions. Afro-American Protestants are moderate on three of
the four items but actually more likely than Conservative Protestants to disapprove of
married women working if their husbands are capable of supporting them. However,
TABLE 9.1 Attitudes about the Role of Women by Religion
Religion
Item/Answer
Conservative
Protestant
(%)
Afro-Amer.
Protestant
(%)
Mainline
Protestant
(%)
Catholic
(%)
Women should take care of their homes . . .
a
Disagree (%) 77 77 86 87
Married women earning money . . .
a
Approve (%) 81 73 84 83
Women for president
a
Would vote for her (%) 89 94 95 94
Most men are better suited for politics
b
Disagree 73 77 77 76
a
Source: General Social Surveys, 1996 1998.
b
Source: General Social Surveys, 2000 2004.
Note: Denominational differences significant (.05 level) for each item.
Ch-03.indd 116 7/8/2008 12:32:17 PM
Chapter 3 Changing Gender Roles 117
Conservative Protestants support the feminist position on each item by at least a two-
thirds majority. This is the theme that often recurs in the present studyConservative
Protestants are different but not all that different.
These items were hardly avant-garde when they were introduced thirty years ago
surveys generally try to avoid shocking the people they interviewand by now they bor-
der on old-fashioned. As society has outpaced the constraints of these questions, feminists
and other advocates have introduced new issues.
3
Obsolete or not, the questions do pro-
vide measures for social change across the three decades, as we see in Figure 9.1.
4
Change
is the dominant message in each figure, though the rate of increase on three of the four
items slowed in the 1990s. We should not ascribe the slowdown to its having maxed out,
either, as the woman president itemhighest from the startis the one that continued
upward until the series was discontinued.
The differences among items hint at the Conservative Protestants somewhat dif-
ferent take on gender-role equity. On three of the four itemsthe three that mention
politicsCatholics are the most liberal and Conservative Protestants the most conserva-
tive in each year. The frequency of feminist responses for both groups increased each
year from 1974 to 1992 then leveled off. The average gap between them is 15 percentage
points, and the trends neither converge nor diverge. Mainline Protestants are not statisti-
cally different from the Catholics (though slightly below) on each item. Afro-American
Protestants closely resemble the Conservative Protestants on the first item ( leave running
the country up to the men), Mainline Protestants on the third item (vote for a woman),
and split the difference on the fourth (men better suited).
These trends developed in a context in which womens public roles as elected of-
ficials, spokespersons for causes, and administrators in government, the nonprofit sec-
tor, and business all expanded exponentially. Opinions about women in public life may
have pressured some institutions to open up while the trends gave other institutions the
freedom to promote women without fear of public backlash. Yet in all these changes,
Conservative Protestant women held back. They did not go off in the opposite direction,
they kept up, but they never caught up with Catholics or Mainline Protestants. On each
of these three items about women in public life, Conservative Protestants support looks
like Catholic womens support did eight or ten years earlier.
The second questionshould women be allowed to take paying jobsdiffers from
the other three in several ways. First, it makes no mention of public life. Second, religion
did not affect answers to this question as much as the others, even in the early 1970s.
Third, Afro-American Protestants (the group with the highest married womens labor
force participation rate in the first decade of the series) changed the least. Fourth, and
most important for our purposes, the Conservative Protestants increased the most on
this item so that the gap between them and Catholics and Mainline Protestants is not
statistically (or substantively) significant after 1994.
The difference between the three public-sphere items and the private-sphere one
suggests that a significant minority of Conservative Protestants dissent from womens
growing public prominence. We would suspect partisanship if all prominent women
were Democrats. But of course they are not. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and
talk show host Ann Coulter arrived too late to affect these trends; the action here is
in the 1970s and 1980s. That was when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister of the
Ch-03.indd 117 7/8/2008 12:32:17 PM
118 Part II Sex and Gender
Women should take care of their homes
100
75
50
25
0
100
75
50
25
0
100
75
50
25
0
100
75
50
25
0
D
i
s
a
g
r
e
e

(
%
)
1972 1980 1988
Year
1996 2004
Married women earning money
A
p
p
r
o
v
e

(
%
)
1972 1980 1988
Year
1996 2004
Woman president
W
o
u
l
d

v
o
t
e

f
o
r

h
e
r

(
%
)
1972 1980 1988
Year
1996 2004
Men better suited emotionally for politics
D
i
s
a
g
r
e
e

(
%
)
1972 1980 1988
Year
1996 2004
Conservative Protestant
Afro-American Protestant
Mainline Protestant
Catholic
FIGURE 9.1 Feminism Scale Items by Year and Denomination
Note: Data-smoothed using locally estimated regression.
United Kingdom, the U.S. Senate had four Republican women; and Peggy Noonan
wrote speeches for President Reagan. One can expect therefore as this analysis proceeds
that the conservatives will lag behind the Mainline Protestants in their sympathy for the
equality of women, but not far behind.
Ch-03.indd 118 7/8/2008 12:32:18 PM
Chapter 3 Changing Gender Roles 119
WIFE AND HUSBAND
In 1996 GSS asked three questions that presented paradigms for marital relationships:
A relationship where the man has the main responsibility for providing the house-
hold income and the woman has the main responsibility for taking care of the home
and family.
OR
A relationship where the man and the woman equally share responsibility for pro-
viding the household income and taking care of the family.
Relationship in which the man and the woman do most things in their social life
together.
OR
Relationship where the man and the woman do separate things that interest them.
A relationship where the man and the woman are emotionally dependent on one
another.
OR
A relationship in which the man and the woman are emotionally independent.
The first and third pairings tap the soft patriarchy that Wilcox (2004) identified.
Both render the husband and wife dependent on one another. While a minority of Con-
servative Protestants chose the male breadwinner/female homemaker model, at 41 per-
cent it is a much more popular option for those families than for others; 24 percent of
Afro-American Protestants, 25 percent of Catholics, and 31 percent of Mainline Protes-
tants chose the breadwinner/homemaker model. Likewise a bare majority (52 percent) of
Conservative Protestants opted for emotional (inter)dependence over independence while
minorities of other faiths made that choice; 45 percent of Afro-American Protestants, 41
percent of Mainline Protestants, and 44 percent of Catholics. Differences by denomina-
tion in the middle pairing are not statistically significant.
Combining the two items that do differ into a three-point scale we discover three
things: (1) Women in all denominations opt out of the traditional model more than men
do. (2) Conservative Protestants differ from other denominations more than the other
denominations differ among themselves. (3) The EVANGELICAL scale accounts for only
28 percent of the Conservatives traditionalism.
Does the traditional paradigm interfere with marital happiness for the Conser-
vative Protestants? It would appear that it does not. Quite the contrary: 70 percent
of the Conservative Protestants who accept emotional (inter)dependence say they are
very happy as opposed to 57 percent of the conservatives who opt for the emotional
independence. Fifty-eight percent of the Mainline Protestants report very happy mar-
riages regardless of their paradigms; marital happiness does not vary by emotional
model for the Afro-American Protestants or Catholics either. In an ordered logitistic
regression analysis, both emotional (inter)dependence and Biblical literacy increase
marital happiness for Conservative Protestants.
5
In some sense, Biblical Christianity
seems to work when it underwrites the traditional martial paradigm in a community
that stresses both.
Ch-03.indd 119 7/8/2008 12:32:18 PM
120 Part II Sex and Gender
In various times since the late 1980s the National Opinion Research Center has
administered, as part of the General Social Survey, modules designed by the International
Social Survey Program, three of which were about marriage and family life. Two of the
items in the 2002 module are somewhat similar to the previous questions asked in the
1996 module.
6
When you and your spouse make decisions about choosing weekend activities, who
has the final saymostly me, mostly my spouse, sometimes me, sometimes my
spouse, we decide together.
(Same wording) Buying major things for the house.
Respondents tend to assert that these decisions are made together, regardless of
gender. Forty-two percent of the men and 46 percent of the women claim joint decisions
on weekends. And 49 percent and 53 percent say that the purchase of major things for
the house are joint decisions.
The two variables correlate at .50 so it is not unreasonable to create a factor out
of them. The emergent factor tilts in the direction of joint decisions. With the excep-
tion of Catholics, women are more likely to insist that the decisions are jointwith
the Jewish women the most likely of all. Mainline Protestants are more likely, regard-
less of gender, to report joint decisions. Fifty-eight percent of the Mainline Protestant
women report joint decisions as opposed to 51 percent of the Conservative Protestant
women, but this seven-point difference is not statistically significant. Hence whatever
paradigms might exist about marital life, they do not seem to create major differences
between Conservative and Mainline Protestants about who makes important consumer
decisions.
Matters are possibly different, however, when the issue is whether men should do
more household work (see Barkowski 1997; Wilcox 2004). Sixty-three percent of male
Conservative Protestants think that men should do housework as do women from the same
denominational background. However, 74 percent of the Mainline Protestant women
think the men should do more work. Thus there is a statistically significant difference
between the women of the two denominations with the Mainline Protestants more likely
to demand more work from their husbands. There are two possibilities: Conservative
Protestant women are less likely to complain about the lack of housework help from their
husbands or Mainline Protestants are more likely to complain.
Wilcox finds that houseworkand denominational differences in how people think
about itis one of the hinges in the family values debates. Not only is Conservative Prot-
estant theology and iconography deeply patriarchal, according to Wilcox, it is also very
sentimental. In contrast to the fire and brimstone of the fundamentalist past, contem-
porary Conservative Protestantism goes for the soft focus. Emotions are very important
(as we have just seen) and women act out their attachments to their families by keeping
order at home. In that world, it is equally incumbent on the men to appreciate the work
their wives do. Wilcox (2004, 142) points to Christian marriage counselor Gary Smalley
who advises husbands to verbalize their thoughts of appreciation. Acting out tra-
ditional domesticity helps Conservative Christians feel their Christianity because it sets
them off from the expectations of society in general and feminists in particular. Mainline
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Chapter 3 Changing Gender Roles 121
Protestants and Catholics do not think about housework as part of Christian duty and
so do not see their religious identities bound up in their daily drudgeries.
Wilcoxs interpretations are large relative to the magnitude of the differences they
are marshaled to explain (here and in his data that are drawn not only from the GSS but
also from other national surveys like the National Survey of Families and Households).
However another question may provide some insight into the issue:
Which of the following best applies to the sharing of work between you and your house-
hold partner.
I do much more than my fair share of household work.
I do a bit more than my fair share of the household work.
I do roughly my fair share of the household work.
I do a bit less than my fair share of household work.
I do much less than my fair share of household work.
Fifty-three percent of the Conservative Protestant men claim that they do at least
their fair share of household work and 62 percent of the Conservative Protestant women
argue that they do more than their fair share. Seventy percent of the Mainline men claim
at least a fair share while fifty-three percent of Mainline women claim that they do more
than their fair share. In both denominational groups men are more satisfied with them-
selves than women, and the difference between Conservative men and Mainline men is
statistically significant.
There are many possible interpretations of the finding. Conservative men might
simply be more modest in their claims, or they actually may do less of the housework
than do Mainline men. The former reading of the data seems less probable because Con-
servative women are more likely to say that they do more than their fair share of work.
Another way to measure the impact of the traditional marriage paradigm is pro-
vided by responses to a variable weve appropriately labeled MRMOM: It is not good if the
man stays home and takes care of the children and the woman goes out to work.
Thirty-five percent of Conservative Protestant men reject the Mr. Mom role as do
21 percent of the Mainline Protestant men, a difference that is statistically significant.
Twenty-seven percent of the Conservative women and 22 percent of the Mainline women
disapprove of Mr. Mom, and the difference is not significant. Two observations are in
orderConservative Protestant men are more likely to disapprove of behavior that is
at odds with traditional family paradigms than are Mainline men. Nonetheless, 40 per-
cent of them reject negative judgments about the Mr. Mom solution (the rest decline to
either agree or disagree). If some of the Conservative Protestant denominations insist
on the traditional paradigm, then that position is being eroded in the attitudes of their
membership who are increasingly likely to support more feminist positions. On the
other hand it would be wrong for those who see Conservative Protestants as enemies of
the feminist revolution to write them off as unaffected by the changes it has createdor,
more properly, the changes that are subsumed under the label feminist revolution.
On one issue of considerable importancethe joint management of family funds
( How do you or your family organize the income that one or both of you receive?) the Conserva-
tive Protestants have decisively chosen to share. Three-quarters answer that they pool the
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122 Part II Sex and Gender
money and take out what they needas do the Mainline Protestants. If the use of money
is the most serious threat to a marriageas the literature on the subject contendsthen
the joint administration of the funds (we pool the money and each takes out what we
need) is the most likely way to avoid conflicts over discrimination and one that strikes
down the traditional assumption that the man as the head of the family should make the
money decisions. The data on major purchases also confirm that married Conservative
and Mainline Protestants are alike in spending money as couples rather than spending
on one partners say-so.
Responses to a series of questions in the 1996 family module round out our
analysis:
Do you agree or disagree that
Divorce is usually the best solution when a couple cant seem to work out their
marriage problems?
When there are children in the family parents should stay together even if they
dont get along?
When there are no children, a married couple should stay together even if they
dont get along?
Working women should receive paid maternity leave when they have a baby?
Families should receive financial benefit for child care when both parents work?
Did you ever live with a partner you didnt marry?
Sometimes at work people find themselves the object of sexual advances, proposi-
tions or unwanted sexual discussions from the coworkers or supervisors. The contacts
sometimes involve physical contacts and sometimes just involve sexual conversations. Has
this ever happened to you?
Thirty-eight percent of the Conservative Protestants and 51 percent of the Main-
line Protestants opt for the divorce solution. Thirteen percent of the Conservative
Protest ants and 20 percent of the Mainline Protestants contend that parents should stay
together for the children, should there be any. The presumption in favor of the mar-
riage that apparently existed in the middle years of the last century still finds some sup-
port among the Conservative Protestants, suggesting that the traditional paradigm still
exercises some influence. Whatever the nature of the presumption there is no differ-
ence between the Conservative Protestants and the Mainline Protestants in the divorce
rate28 percent of both groups say they have been divorced.
However, Conservative Protestants are certainly on the liberal side of the maternity
leave and child care issues. Eighty-one percent support maternity leave and 45 percent
support child care programs. The comparable proportions of Mainline Protestants are 73
percent and 46 percent. One would have expected perhaps that the traditional marriage
paradigm would have inoculated Conservative Protestants against such liberal innova-
tions. However, once money becomes available for these programs, only the narrowly
ideological would turn it down for the sake of principles.
Twenty-two percent of the Conservative Protestants lived with a partner before they
were married, 17 percent of both groups with a partner they did not marry eventuallya
practice that traditionally would have earned them the name of notorious and public
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Chapter 3 Changing Gender Roles 123
fornicator. Moreover among the Conservative Protestants, living with someone they did
not eventually marry makes them much more sympathetic to abortion on demand (a
question used only in this module): a pregnant woman should be able to obtain a legal abor-
tion whatever if for any reason she does not want to have a baby. Forty-nine percent of those
who had cohabited agreed with this item as opposed to 26 percent of those who had not
cohabited.
7
Finally, 36 percent of both denominations report sexual harassment experi-
ences in the work placea quarter of the men and two-fifths of the women.
In summary, the patterns that emerge so far in this analysis of the Conservative Prot-
estant family turned up evidence of both continuity and change. The Conservatives still
tend to lean more in the direction of the traditional marriage and family relations than
anyone else. Yet they are by no means traditionalists. The forces that shaped the womens
movement have affected them, too. They may derive a spark of oppositional identity
when they defy the feminists in the sanctity of their own homes, but they also display
commitment to joint decision making. Some Conservative Protestant women would like
to see men helping more in the work of the homewhich does not mean that the men
will deliver it. In a pair of unanticipated findings we learned that Conservative Prot-
estants of both genders support maternity leaves and do not disapprove of Mr. Mom
situations.
If we had to boil the work in this section down to one finding it would be the hap-
piness result: tradition makes Conservative Protestants happy in their marriages but does
nothing for other Protestants or Catholics.
EXTENDED FAMILY
A question asked from the very beginning of the General Social Survey enables us to
measure, however crudely, the existence of extended family networks as part of the Con-
servative Christian heritage: How often do you spend a social evening with relatives?
Thirty-nine percent of the Conservative Protestants report they spend evenings
with relatives several times a week versus 31 percent of Mainline Protestants, 44 percent
of Afro-American Protestants, and 37 percent of Catholics. While there may be many
differences between Catholics and Conservative Protestants, they appear to be alike in
acting on a commitment to family. Moreover, they are also more likely to believe that
elderly people should live with their children41 percent versus 37 percent for Mainline
Protestants, 49 percent for Afro-Americans, and 48 percent for Catholics.
CONCLUSION
Conservative Protestants are not a socially isolated sect. Though they have some distinc-
tive institutions including thriving specialized media that informs and entertains on radio
and television and publishes fiction and nonfiction books, they are a fifth of American
society spread (not quite uniformly) across the whole country. As such they are subject
to the influences of the larger society just as they endeavor to move it. Conservative
Protestant families feel the same economic pressures. They have welcomed the changes
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124 Part II Sex and Gender
in employment possibilities and better fertility control that gave rise to second-wave
feminismthe womens movement of the 1970s that demanded equal partnership in
society. Are the Conservative Christians feminists? Surely some of them are. Use a broad
enough net and you might conclude that many of them are.
They are not, in other words, totally different from the rest of American society in
their family values, but not totally the same either. Wilcoxs soft patriarch model is useful.
Conservative Protestant men and women have given up the hard patriarchy of an older
generation (though they still useand advocatecorporal punishment for children) for
a still-patriarchal family life that is softened by what Swidler (2002) aptly calls talk of
love. Soft patriarchy drops what I say goes and adopts the organic solidarity of part-
nership. Spouses contribute in distinct ways but share goals and support each other in
the struggle to see their joint project through to success and happiness. It is different
than the family life found in other American homes, but neither as different as outsiders
imagine nor as different as it could be.
Notes
1. The 1980 and 1982 estimates are less than 1 percent, but Brooks cautions that the question in
those two years was different from the question used in all other years of the time series.
2. Feminist is not a popular label. Only 12 percent of the men and 28 percent of the women in the
United States apply the word to themselves5 percent of the Conservative Protestant men and
14 percent of the women.
3. The GSS Board of Overseers revised the feminism scale in the late 1990s. Only the fourth item
is part of the new feminism scale. The first three items were last asked in 1998.
4. For the purposes of presentation, the data are smoothed using locally estimated regression
methods (see Hout et al. 2001 for an exposition on these methods.)
5. Emotional (inter)dependence also helps Catholic marriages, but neither factor matters for the
marital happiness of Afro-American or Mainline Protestants.
6. The ISSP practice of limiting replication to two-thirds of a repeat study thwarts our efforts to
measure change here.
7. Readers inclined to judgmental language might infer from this finding that the experience of
fornication made one more open to abortion. We strongly caution against such an inference
since both may be related to some prior cause such as a basic rejection of certain elements of the
Conservative Christian sexual ethic.
References
Alwin, Duane F., and Robert M. Hauser. 1975. The Decomposition of Effects in Path Analysis. Ameri-
can Sociological Review 40: 37 47.
Brooks, Clem, 2002: Religious influence and the Politics of Family Decline Concern: Trends, Sources,
and U.S. Political Behavior. American Sociological Review 67: 191211.
Hout, Michael, Andrew Greeley, and Melissa J. Wilde. 2001. The Demographic Imperative in Reli-
gious Change. American Journal of Sociology 107: 468500.
Swidler, Ann. 2002. Talk of Love. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Waite, Linda J., and Maggie Gallagher, 2000. The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier,
Healthier, and Better-off Financially. New York: Doubleday.
Wilcox, W. Bradford. 2004. Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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125
4 Sexuality and Society
R E A DI NG 1 0
Sexual Revolution(s)
Beth Bailey
In 1957 Americas favorite TV couple, the safely married Ricky and Lucy Ricardo, slept
in twin beds. Having beds at all was probably progressiveas late as 1962 June and Ward
Cleaver did not even have a bedroom. Elviss pelvis was censored in each of his three ap-
pearances on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1956, leaving his oddly disembodied upper torso
and head thrashing about on the TV screen. But the sensuality in his eyes, his lips, his
lyrics was unmistakable, and his genitals were all the more important in their absence.
There was, likewise no mistaking, Mick Jaggers meaning when he grimaced ostenta-
tiously and sang Lets spend some time together on Ed Sullivan in 1967. Much of the
audience knew that the line was really Lets spend the night together, and the rest
quickly got the idea. The viewing public could see absence and hear silenceand therein
lay the seeds of the sexual revolution.
What we call the sexual revolution grew from these tensions between public and
privatenot only from tensions manifest in public culture, but also from tensions between
private behaviors and the public rules and ideologies that were meant to govern behavior.
By the 1950s the gulf between private acts and public norms was often quite wideand
the distance was crucial. People had sex outside marriage, but very, very few acknowledged
that publicly. A woman who married the only man with whom she had had premarital sex
still worried years later: I was afraid someone might have learned that we had intercourse
before marriage and Id be disgraced. The consequences, however, were not just psycho-
logical. Young women (and sometimes men) discovered to be having premarital sex were
routinely expelled from school or college; gay men risked all for engaging in consensual
sex. There were real penalties for sexual misconduct and while many deviated from the
sexual orthodoxy of the day, all but a few did so furtively, careful not to get caught.
Few episodes demonstrate the tensions between the public and private dimensions
of sexuality in midcentury America better than the furor that surrounded the publica-
tion of the studies of sexual behavior collectively referred to as the Kinsey Reports.
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126 Part II Sex and Gender
Though a dry, social scientific report, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) had sold
over a quarter of a million copies by 1953, when the companion volume on the human
female came out. The male volume was controversial, but the female volume was, in Look
magazines characterization, stronger stuff. Kinsey made it clear that he understood the
social implications of his study, introducing a section on the pre-marital coital behavior
of the female sample which has been available for this study with the following quali-
fication: Because of this public condemnation of pre-marital coitus, one might believe
that such contacts would be rare among American females and males. But this is only
the overt culture, the things that people openly confess to believe and do. Our previous
report (1948) on the male has indicated how far publicly expressed attitudes may depart
from the realities of behaviorthe covert culture, what males actually do.
Kinsey, a biologist who had begun his career with much less controversial studies
of the gall wasp, drew fire from many quarters, but throughout the criticism is evident
concern about his uncomfortable juxtaposition of public and private. What price bio-
logical science . . . to reveal intimacies of ones private sex life and to draw conclusions
from inscriptions on the walls of public toilets? said one American in a letter to the
editor of Look magazine.
Much of the reaction to Kinsey did hinge on the distance between the overt and the
covert. People were shocked to learn how many men and women were doing what they
were not supposed to be doing. Kinsey found that 50 percent of the women in his sample
had had premarital sex (even though between 80 percent and 89 percent of his sample dis-
approved of premarital sex on moral grounds), that 61 percent of college-educated men
and 84 percent of men who had completed only high school had had pre marital sex, that
over one-third of the married women in the sample had engaged in petting with more
than ten different men, that approximately half of the married couples had engaged in
oral stimulation of both male and female genitalia, and that at least 17 percent of Ameri-
can men had had some homosexual experience during their lifetimes.
By pulling the sheets back, so to speak, Kinsey had publicized the private. Many
people must have been reassured by the knowledge that they were not alone, that their
sexual behaviors were not individual deviant acts but part of widespread social trends.
But others saw danger in what Kinsey had done. By demonstrating the distance between
the overt and the covert cultures, Kinsey had further undermined what was manifestly
a beleaguered set of rules. Time magazine warned its readers against the attitude that
there is morality in numbers, the Chicago Tribune called Kinsey a menace to society,
and the Ladies Home Journal ran an article with the disclaimer: The facts of behavior re-
ported . . . are not to be interpreted as moral or social justification for individual acts.
Looking back to the centurys midpoint, it is clear that the coherence of (to use
Kinseys terms) covert and overt sexual cultures was strained beyond repair. The sexual
revolution of the 1960s emerged from these tensions, and to that extent it was not revo-
lutionary, but evolutionary. As much as anything else, we see the overt coming to terms
with the covert. But the revision of revolution to evolution would miss a crucial point.
It is not historians who have labeled these changes sexual revolutionit was people at
the time, those who participated and those who watched. And they called it that before
much of what we would see as revolutionary really emergedbefore gay liberation and
the womens movement and Alex Comforts The Joy of Sex (1972) and promiscuity and
singles bars. The term was in general use by 1963earlier than one might expect.
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Chapter 4 Sexuality and Society 127
To make any sense of the sexual revolution, we have to pay attention to the label
people gave it. Revolutions, for good or ill, are moments of danger. It matters that a
metaphor of revolution gave structure to the myriad changes taking place in American
society. The changes in sexual mores and behaviors could as easily have been cast as
evolutionarybut they were not.
Looking back, the question of whether or not the sexual revolution was revolution-
ary is not easy to answer; it depends partly on ones political (defined broadly) position.
Part of the trouble, though, is that the sexual revolution was not one movement. It was
instead a set of movements, movements that were closely linked, even intertwined, but
which often made uneasy bedfellows. Here I hope to do some untangling, laying out
three of the most important strands of the sexual revolution and showing their historical
origins, continuities, and disruptions.
The first strand, which transcended youth, might be cast as both evolutionary and
revolutionary. Throughout the twentieth century, picking up speed in the 1920s, the
1940s and the 1960s, we have seen a sexualization of Americas culture. Sexual images
have become more and more a part of public life, and sexor more accurately, the repre-
sentation of sexis used to great effect in a marketplace that offers Americans fulfillment
through consumption. Although the blatancy of todays sexual images would be shocking
to someone transported from an earlier era, such representations developed gradually
and generally did not challenge more traditional understandings of sex and of mens
and womens respective roles in sex or in society.
The second strand was the most modest in aspect but perhaps the most revolu-
tionary in implication. In the 1960s and early 1970s an increasing number of young
people began to live together without benefit of matrimony, as the phrase went at the
time. While sex was usually a part of the relationship (and probably a more important
part than most people acknowledged), few called on concepts of free love or pleasure
but instead used words like honesty, commitment, and family. Many of the young
people who lived together could have passed for young marrieds and in that sense were
pursuing fairly traditional arrangements. At the same time, self-consciously or not, they
challenged the tattered remnants of a Victorian epistemological and ideological system
that still, in the early 1960s, fundamentally structured the public sexual mores of the
American middle class.
The third strand was more self-consciously revolutionary, as sex was actively claimed
by young people and used not only for pleasure, but also for power in a new form of
cul tural politics that shook the nation. As those who threw themselves into the youth
revolution (a label that did not stick) knew so well, the struggle for Americas future
would take place not in the structure of electoral politics, but on the battlefield of cul-
tural meaning. Sex was an incendiary tool of a revolution that was more than political.
But not even the cultural revolutionaries agreed on goals, or on the role and meaning of
sex in the revolution.
These last two strands had to do primarily with young people, and that is signifi-
cant. The changes that took place in Americas sexual mores and behaviors in the sixties
were experienced and def ined as revolutionary in large part because they were so closely
tied to youth. The nations young, according to common wisdom and the mass media,
were in revolt. Of course, the sexual revolution was not limited to youth, and sex was
only one part of the revolutionary claims of youth. Still it was the intersection of sex and
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128 Part II Sex and Gender
youth that signaled danger. And the fact that these were often middle-class youths, the
ones reared in a culture of respectability (told that a single sexual misstep could jeop-
ardize their bright futures), made their frontal challenges to sexual mores all the more
inexplicable and alarming.
Each of these strands is complex, and I make no pretense to be exhaustive. Thus,
rather than attempting to provide a complete picture of changes in behaviors or ideolo-
gies, I will examine several manifestations of seemingly larger trends. The sexualization
of culture (the first strand) is illustrated by the emergence of Playboy and Cosmo maga-
zines. For the modest revolutionaries (the second strand), I look to the national scan-
dal over a Barnard College juniors arrangement in 1968 and the efforts of University
of Kansas students to establish a coed dormitory. Finally, the cultural radicals (the third
strand) are represented by the writings of a few counterculture figures.
By focusing on the 1960s, we lose much of the sexual revolution. In many ways,
the most important decade of that revolution was the 1970s, when the strands of the
1960s joined with gay liberation, the womens movement, and powerful assertions of
the importance of cultural differences in America. Yet, by concentrating on the early
years of the sexual revolution, we see its tangled rootsthe sexual ideologies and be-
haviors that gave it birth. We can also understand how little had been resolvedeven
begunby the end of the 1960s.
BEFORE THE REVOLUTION:
YOUTH AND SEX
Like many of the protest movements that challenged American tranquility in the sixties,
the sexual revolution developed within the protected space and intensified atmosphere
of the college campus. An American historian recalls returning to Harvard University in
1966 after a year of postgraduate study in England. Off balance from culture shock and
travel fatigue, he entered Harvard Yard and knew with absolute certainty that he had
missed the sexual revolution. One can imagine a single symbolic act of copulation sig-
naling the beginning of the revolution (it has a nicely ironic echo of the shot heard round
the world). The single act and the revolution complete in 1966 are fanciful constructions;
not everything began or ended at Harvard even in those glory years. But events there
and at other elite colleges and universities, if only because of the national attention they
received, provide a way into the public intersections of sex, youth and cultural politics.
Harvard had set a precedent in student freedom in 1952, when girls (the contem-
porary term) were allowed to visit in Harvard mens rooms. The freedom offered was
not supposed to be sexualor at least not flagrantly so. But by 1963 Dean Jon Monro
complained that he was badly shaken up by some severe violations, for a once pleasant
privilege had come to be considered a license to use the college rooms for wild par-
ties or sexual intercourse. The controversy went public with the aid of Time magazine,
which fanned the flames by quoting a seniors statement that morality is a relative concept
projecting certain mythologies associated with magico-religious beliefs. The Parietals
Committee of the Harvard Council for Undergraduate Affairs, according to the Boston
Herald, concluded that if these deep emotional commitments and ties occasionally lead
to sexual intercourse, surely even that is more healthy than the situation a generation ago
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Chapter 4 Sexuality and Society 129
when nice girls were dated under largely artificial circumstances and sexual needs were
gratified at a brothel. Both justifications seemed fundamentally troubling in different
ways, but at least the controversy focused on men. The sexual double standard was strong.
When the spotlight turned on women, the stakes seemed even higher.
The media had a field day when the president of Vassar College, Sarah Blanding,
said unequivocally that if a student wished to engage in premarital sex she must with-
draw from the college. The oft-quoted student reply to her dictum chilled the hearts of
middle-class parents throughout the country: If Vassar is to become the Poughkeepsie
Victorian Seminary for young Virgins, then the change of policy had better be made
explicit in admissions catalogs.
Such challenges to authority and to conventional morality were reported to eager
audiences around the nation. None of this, of course, was new. National audiences had
been scandalized by the panty raid epidemic of the early 1950s, the antics and pet-
ting parties of college youth had provided sensational fodder for hungry journalists in
the 1920s. The parentsand grandparentsof these young people had chipped away
at the system of sexual controls themselves. But they had not directly and publicly de-
nied the very foundations of sexual morality. With few exceptions, they had evaded the
controls and circumvented the rules, climbing into dorm rooms through open windows,
signing out to the library and going to motels, carefully maintaining virginity in the
technical sense while engaging in every caress known to married couples. The evasions
often succeeded, but that does not mean that the controls had no effect. On the contrary,
they had a great impact on the ways people experienced sex.
There were, in fact, two major systems of sexual control, one structural and one
ideological. These systems worked to reinforce one another, but they affected the lives
of those they touched differently.
The structural system was the more practical of the two but probably the less suc-
cessful. It worked by limiting opportunities for the unmarried to have intercourse. Par-
ents of teenagers set curfews and promoted double dating, hoping that by preventing
privacy they would limit sexual exploration. Colleges, acting in loco parentis, used several
tactics: visitation hours, parietals, security patrols, and restrictions on students use of
cars. When Oberlin students mounted a protest against the colleges policy on cars in
1963, one male student observed that the issue was not transportation but privacy: We
wouldnt care if the cars had no wheels, just so long as they had doors.
The rules governing hours applied only to women and, to some extent, were meant
to guarantee womens safety by keeping track of their comings and goings. But the larger
rationale clearly had to do with sexual conduct. Men were not allowed in womens rooms
but were received in lounges or date rooms, where privacy was never assured. By setting
curfew hours and requiring women to sign out from their dormitories, indicating who
they were with and where they were going, college authorities meant to limit possibilities
for privacy. Rules for men were not deemed necessarybecause of a sexual double stan-
dard, because mens safety and well-being seemed less threatened in general, and because
the colleges and universities were primarily concerned with controlling their own popula-
tions. If women were supervised or chaperoned and in by 11:00 P.M., the men would not
have partnersat least, not partners drawn from the population that mattered.
Throughout the 1950s, the structural controls became increasingly complex; by the
early 1960s they were so elaborate as to be ludicrous. At the University of Michigan in
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130 Part II Sex and Gender
1962, the student handbook devoted nine of its fifteen pages to rules for women. Cur-
fews varied by the night of the week, by the students year in college, and even, in some
places, by her grade point average. Students could claim Automatic Late Permissions
(ALPs) but only under certain conditions. Penalties at Michigan (an institutional version
of grounding) began when a student had eleven late minutesbut the late minutes
could be acquired one at a time throughout the semester. At the University of Kansas in
the late 1950s, one sorority asked the new dean of women to discipline two women who
had flagrantly disregarded curfew. The dean, investigating, discovered that the women in
question had been between one and three minutes late signing in on three occasions.
The myriad of rules, as anyone who lived through this period well knows, did not
prevent sexual relations between students so much as they structured the times and places
and ways that students could have sexual contact. Students said good-nights on the porches
of houses, they petted in dormitory lounges while struggling to keep three feet on the floor
and clothing in some semblance of order, and they had intercourse in cars, keeping an eye
out for police patrols. What could be done after eleven could be done before eleven, and
sex need not occur behind a closed door and in a bedbut this set of rules had a profound
impact on the ways college students and many young people, living in their parents homes
experienced sex.
The overelaboration of rules, in itself, offers evidence that the controls were be-
leaguered. Nonetheless, the rules were rarely challenged frontally and thus they offered
some illusion of control. This system of rules, in all its inconsistency, arbitrariness, and
blindness, helped to preserve the distinction between public and private, the coexistence
of overt and covert, that defines midcentury American sexuality.
The ideological system of controls was more pervasive than the structured sys-
tem and probably more effective. This system centered on ideas of difference: men and
women were fundamentally different creatures, with different roles and interests in sex.
Whether one adopted a psychoanalytic or an essentialist approach, whether one looked
to scholarly or popular analysis, the final conclusion pointed to difference. In sex (as in
life), women were the limit setters and men the aggressors.
The proper limits naturally depended on ones marital status, but even within mar-
riage sex was to be structured along lines of difference rather than of commonality. Mar-
ital advice books since the 1920s had the importance of female orgasm, insisting that men
must satisfy their wives, but even these calls for orgasm equality posited male and female
pleasure as competing interests. The language of difference in postwar America, which
was often quite extreme, can be seen as a defensive reaction to changing gender roles in
American society.
One influential psychoanalytic study, provocatively titled Modern Woman: The Lost
Sex, condemned women who tried to be men and argued the natural difference between
men and women by comparing their roles in sexual intercourse. The womans role is pas-
sive, the authors asserted. [Sex] is not as easy as rolling off a log for her. It is easier. It is
as easy as being the log itself. She cannot fail to deliver a masterly performance, by doing
nothing whatever except being duly appreciative and allowing nature to take its course. For
the man, in contrast, sexuality is overt, apparent and urgent, outward and ever-present,
fostered by psychological and physiological pressures toward orgasm. Men might experi-
ment sexually with few or no consequences and no diminution of pleasure. Women, on
the other hand, could not: The strong desire for children or lack of it in a woman has a
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Chapter 4 Sexuality and Society 131
crucial bearing on how much enjoyment she derives from the sexual act. . . . Women can-
not make . . . pleasure an end in itself without inducing a decline in the pleasure.
These experts argued from a psychoanalytic framework, but much less theoreti-
cal work also insisted on the fundamental difference between men and women, and on
their fundamentally different interests in sex. Texts used in marriage courses in American
high schools and college typically included chapters on the difference between men and
womenand these difference were not limited to their reproductive systems.
Women did in fact have a different and more imperative interest in controlling
sex than men, for women could become pregnant. Few doctors would fit an unmarried
woman with a diaphragm, though one might get by in the anonymity of a city with a
cheap gold ring from a drugstore or by pretending to be preparing for an impending
honeymoon. Relying on the ubiquitous condom in the wallet was risky and douching
(Coca-Cola had a short-lived popularity) even more so. Abortion was illegal, and though
many abortions took place, they were dangerous, expensive, and usually frightening and
degrading experiences. Dependable and available birth control might have made a differ-
ence (many could later attribute the sexual revolution to the pill), but sexual be haviors
and sexual mores were not based simply on the threat of illegitimate pregnancy. Kinsey
found that only 44 percent of the women in his sample said that they restricted their pre-
marital coitus because of fear of pregnancy, whereas 80 percent cited moral reasons.
Interestingly, 44 percent of the sample also noted their fear of public opinion.
Women who were too free with sexual favors could lose value and even threaten
their marriageability. In this society, a womans future socioeconomic status depended
primarily on her husbands occupation and earning power. While a girl was expected to
pet to be popular, girls and women who went too far risked their futures. Advice
books and columns from the 1940s and 1950s linked girls and womens value to their
virtue, arguing in explicitly economic terms that free kisses destroyed a womans
value in the dating system: The boys find her easy to afford. She doesnt put a high value
on herself. The exchange was even clearer in the marriage market. In chilling language,
a teen adviser asked: Who wants second hand goods?
It was not only the advisers and experts who equated virtue and value. Fifty percent
of the male respondents in Kinseys study wanted to marry a virgin. Even though a rela-
tively high percentage of women had intercourse before marriage, and a greater number
engaged in petting, most of these women at least expected to marry the man, and many
did. Still, there might be consequences. Elaine Tyler May, who analyzed responses to
a large, ongoing psychological study of married couples in the postwar era, found that
many couples struggled with the psychological burdens of premarital intimacy for much
of their married lives. In the context of a social /cultural system that insisted that nice
girls dont, many reported a legacy of guilt or mistrust. One woman wrote of her hus-
band: I think he felt that because we had been intimate before marriage that I could be
as easily interested in any man that came along.
Of course, sexual mores and behaviors were highly conditioned by the sexual dou-
ble standard. Lip service was paid to the ideal of male premarital chastity, but that ideal
was usually obviated by the notion, strong in peer culture and implicity acknowledged in
the larger culture, that sexual intercourse was a male rite of passage. Middle-class boys
pushed at the limits set by middle-class girls but they generally looked elsewhere for
experience. A man who went to high school in the early 1960s (and did not lose his
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132 Part II Sex and Gender
virginity until his first year of college) recalls the system with a kind of horror: You slept
with one kind of woman, and dated another kind, and the women you slept with, you
didnt have much respect for, generally.
The distinction was often based on classmiddle-class boys and men had sex with
girls and women of the lower classes, or even with prostitutes. They did not really expect
to have intercourse with a woman of their own class unless they were to be married.
Samuel Hynes, in his memoir of coming of age as a navy flier during World War II,
de scribes that certain knowledge: There were nice girls in our lives, too. Being middle-
class is more than a social station, its kind of destiny. A middle-class boy from Minne-
apolis will seek out nice middle-class girls, in Memphis or anywhere else, will take them
out on middle-class dates and try to put their hand inside their middle-class underpants.
And he will fail. It was all a story that had already been written.
Dating, for middle-class youth, was a process of sexual negotiation. Good girls
had to keep their virginity yet still contend with their own sexual desires or with boys
who expected at least some petting as a return on the cost of the date. Petting was vir-
tually universal in the world of heterosexual dating. A 1959 Atlantic article, Sex and the
College Girl, described the ideal as having done every possible kind of petting without
actually having intercourse.
For most middle-class youth in the postwar era, sex involved a series of skirmishes
that centered around lines and boundaries: kissing, necking, petting above the waist, pet-
ting below the waist, petting through clothes, petting under clothes, mild petting, heavy
petting. The progression of sexual intimacy had emerged as a highly ordered system.
Each act constituted a stage, ordered in a strict hierarchy (first base, second base, and so
forth), with vaginal penetration as the ultimate step. But in their attempts to preserve
technical virginity, many young people engaged in sexual behaviors that, in the sexual hi-
erarchy of the larger culture, should have been more forbidden than vaginal intercourse.
One woman remembers: We went pretty far, very far; everything but intercourse. But
it was very frustrating. . . . Sex was out of the question. I had it in mind that I was going
to be a virgin. So I came up with oral sex. . . . I thought I invented it.
Many young men and women acted in defiance of the rules, but that does not make
the rules irrelevant. The same physical act can have very different meanings depending
on its emotional and social /cultural contexts. For Americas large middle class and for
all those who aspired to respectability in the pre-revolutionary twentieth century, sex
was overwhelmingly secret or furtive. Sex was a set of acts with high stakes and possibly
serious consequences, acts that emphasized and reinforced the different roles of men
and women in American society. We do not know how each person felt about his or her
private acts, but we do know that few were willing or able to publicly reject the system
of sexual controls.
The members of the generation that would be labeled the sixties were revolu-
tionary in that they called fundamental principles of sexual morality and control into
question. The system of controls they had been inherited and lived within was based on
a set of presumptions rooted in the previous century. In an evolving set of arguments and
actions (which never became thoroughly coherent or unified), they rejected a system of
sexual controls organized around concepts of difference and hierarchy.
Both systems of controlthe structural and the ideologicalwere firmly rooted in a
Victorian epistemology that had, in most areas of life, broken down by the early twentieth
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Chapter 4 Sexuality and Society 133
century. This system was based on a belief in absolute truth and a passion for order and
control. Victorian thought, as Joseph Singal has argued persuasively, insisted on pre-
serving absolute standards based on a radical dichotomy between that which was deemed
human and that regarded as animal. On the human side were all forces of civilization;
on the animal, all instincts, passions, and desires that threatened order and self-control.
Sex clearly fell into the latter category. But the Victorian romance was not restricted to
human versus animal, civilized versus savage. The moral dichotomy fostered a tendency
to see the world in polar terms. Thus we find rigid dichotomous pairs not only of good
and evil, but of men and women, body and soul, home and world, public and private.
Victorian epistemology, with its remarkably comfortable and comforting certain-
ties and its stifling absolutes, was shaken by the rise of a new science that looked to dy-
namic process and relativism instead of the rigid dichotomies of Victorian thought. It
was challenged from within by those children of Victorianism who yearned to smash
the glass and breathe freely, as Jackson Lears argued in his study of antimodernism. And
most fundamentally, it was undermined by the realities of an urban industrial society.
American Victorian culture was, as much as anything, a strategy of the emerging middle
classes. Overwhelmed by the chaos of the social order that had produced them and that
they sought to manage, the middling classes had attempted to separate themselves from
disorder and corruption. This separation, finally, was untenable.
The Victorian order was overthrown and replaced by a self-consciously modern
culture. One place we point to demonstrate the decline of Victorianism is the change in
sexual manners and mores in the early twentieth century. Nonetheless, sex may be the
place that Victorian thought least relinquished its hold. This is not to say that prudish-
ness reignedthe continuity is more subtle and more fundamental. Skirts rose above the
knee, couples dated and petted, sexologists and psychologists acknowledged that women
were not naturally passionless, and the good judge Ben Lindsey called for the com-
panionate marriage. But the systems of control that regulated and structured sex were
Victorian at their core, with science replacing religion to authorize absolute truth, and
with inflexible bipolar constructions somewhat reformulated but intact. The system of
public controls over premarital sex was based on rigid dichotomous pairings: men and
women, public and private. This distinction would be rejectedor at least recastin the
cultural and sexual struggles of the sixties.
REVOLUTIONARIES
All those who rejected the sexual mores of the postwar era did not reject the fundamental
premises that gave them shape. Playboy magazine played an enormously important (if
symbolic) role in the sexual revolution, or at least in preparing the ground for the sexual
revolution. Playboy was a mens magazine in the tradition of Esquire (for which its founder
had worked briefly) but laid claim to a revolutionary stance partly by replacing Esquires
airbrushed drawings with airbrushed flesh.
Begun by Hugh Hefner in 1953 with an initial print run of 70,000, Playboy passed
the one million circulation mark in three years. By the mid-1960s Hefner had amassed
a fortune of $100 million, including a lasciviously appointed forty-eight-room mansion
staffed by thirty Playboy bunnies (fuck like bunnies is a phrase we have largely left
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134 Part II Sex and Gender
behind, but most people at the time caught the allusion). Playboy clubs, also staffed by
large-breasted and long-legged women in bunny ears and cottontails, flourished through-
out the country. Though Playboy offered quality writing and advice for those aspiring to so-
phistication, the greatest selling point of the magazine was undoubtedly its illustrations.
Playboy, however, offered more than masturbatory opportunities. Between the pages
of coyly arranged female bodiesmore, inscribed in the coyly arranged female bodies
flourished a strong and relatively coherent ideology. Hefner called it a philosophy and
wrote quite a few articles expounding it (a philosophy professor in North Carolina took
it seriously enough to describe his course as philosophy from Socrates to Hefner).
Hefner saw his naked women as a symbol of disobedience, a triumph of sexuality,
an end of Puritanism. He saw his magazines as an attack on our ferocious anti-sexuality,
our dark antieroticism. But his thrust toward pleasure and light was not to be under-
taken in partnership. The Playboy philosophy according to Hefner, had less to do with
sex and more to do with sex roles. American society increasingly blurred distinctions be-
tween the sexes . . . not only in business, but in such diverse realms as household chores,
leisure activities, smoking and drinking habits, clothing styles, upswinging homosexual-
ity and the sex-obliterating aspects of togetherness, concluded the Playboy Panel in
June 1962. In Part 19 of his extended essay on the Playboy philosophy, Hefner wrote:
PLAYBOY stresses a strongly heterosexual concept of societyin which the separate
roles of men and women are clearly defined and compatible.
Read without context, Hefners call does not necessarily preclude sex as a common
interest between men and women. He is certainly advocating heterosexual sex. But the
models of sex offered are not partnerships. Ever innovative in marketing and design,
Playboy offered in one issue a special coloring book section. A page featuring three ex-
cessively voluptuous women was captioned Make one of the girls a blonde. Make one of
the girls a brunette. Make one of the girls a redhead. It does not matter which is which.
The girls haircolors are interchangeable. So are the girls.
Sex, in the Playboy mode, was a contestnot of wills, in the model of the male
seducer and the virtuous female, but of exploitative intent, as in the playboy and the
would-be wife. In Playboys world, women were out to ensnare men, to entangle them in a
web of responsibility and obligation (not the least of which was financial). Barbara Ehren-
reich has convincingly argued that Playboy was an integral part of a male-initiated revolu-
tion in sex roles, for it advocated that men reject burdensome responsibility (mainly in
the shape of wives) for lives of pleasure through consumption. Sex, of course, was part
of this pleasurable universe. In Playboy, sex was located in the realm of consumption, and
women were interchangeable objects, mute, making no demands, each airbrushed beauty
supplanted by the next months model.
It was not only to men that sexual freedom was sold through exploitative visions.
When Helen Gurley Brown revitalized the traditional womens magazine that was Cos-
mopolitan in 1965, she compared her magazine to Playboyand Cosmo did celebrate the
pleasures of single womanhood and sexual and material consumerism. But before
Brown ran Cosmo, she had made her contribution to the sexual revolution with Sex and
the Single Girl, published in May 1962. By April 1963, 150,000 hard-cover copies had
been sold, garnering Brown much media attention and a syndicated newspaper column,
Woman Alone.
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Chapter 4 Sexuality and Society 135
The claim of Sex and the Single Girl was, quite simply, nice, single girls do. Browns
radical message to a society in which twenty-three-year-olds were called old maids was
that singleness is good. Marriage, she insisted, should not be an immediate goal. The Sin-
gle Girl sounds like the Playboys dream, but she was more likely a nightmare revisited.
Marriage, Brown advised, is insurance for the worst years of your life. During the best
years you dont need a husband. But she quickly amended that statement: You do need
a man every step of the way, and they are often cheaper emotionally and more fun by the
dozen. That fun explicitly included sex, and on the womans terms. But Browns celebra-
tion of the joys of single life still posed men and women as adversaries. She need never
be bored with one man per lifetime, she enthused. Her choice of partners is endless
and they seek her . . . Her married friends refer to her pursuers as wolves, but actually
many of them turn out to be lambsto be shorn and worn by her.
Browns celebration of the single girl actually began with a success storyher
own. I married for the first time at thirty-seven. I got the man I wanted, begins Sex
and the Single Girl. Browns description of that union is instructive: David is a motion
picture producer, forty-four, brainy, charming and sexy. He was sought after by many a
Hollywood starlet as well as some less flamboyant but more deadly types. And I got him!
We have two Mercedes-Benzes, one hundred acres of virgin forest near San Francisco,
a Mediterranean house overlooking the Pacific, a full-time maid and a good life.
While Brown believes her body wants to is a sufficient reason for a man to have
an affair, she is not positing identical interests of men and women in sex. Instead, she
asserts the validity of womens interestsinterests that include Mercedes-Benzes, full-
time maids, lunch (Anyone can take you to lunch. How bored can you be for an hour?),
vacations, and vicuna coats. But by offering a female version of the Playboy ethic, she
greatly strengthened its message.
Unlike the youths who called for honesty, who sought to blur the boundaries between
male and female, Playboy and Cosmo offered a vision of sexual freedom based on difference
and deceit, but within a shared universe of an intensely competitive market economy. They
were revolutionary in their claiming of sex as a legitimate pleasure and in the directness
they brought to portraying sex as an arena for struggle and exploitation that could be en-
joined by men and women alike (though in different ways and to different ends). Without
this strand, the sexual revolution would have looked very different. In many ways Playboy
was a necessary condition for revolution, for it linked sex to the emerging culture of
consumption and the rites of the marketplace. As it fed into the sexual reconfigurations of
the sixties, Playboy helped make sex moreor lessthan a rite of youth.
In the revolutionary spring of 1968, Life magazine looked from the student pro-
tests at Columbia across the street to Barnard College: A sexual anthropologist of some
future century, analyzing the pill, the drive-in, the works of Harold Robbins, the Tween-
Bra and all the other artifacts of the American Sexual Revolution, may consider the case
of Linda LeClair and her boyfriend, Peter Behr, as a moment in which the morality of
an era changed.
The LeClair affair, as it was heralded in newspaper headlines and syndicated col-
umns around the country, was indeed such a moment. Linda LeClair and Peter Behr
were accidental revolutionaries, but as Life not so kindly noted history will often have
its little joke. And so it was this spring when it found as its symbol of the revolution a
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136 Part II Sex and Gender
champion as staunch, as bold and as unalluring as Linda LeClair. The significance of
the moment is not to be found in the actions of LeClair and Behr, who certainly lacked
revolutionary glamour despite all the headlines about Free Love, but in the contest
over the meaning of those actions.
The facts of the case were simple. On 4 March 1968 the New York Times ran an
article called An Arrangement: Living Together for Convenience, Security, Sex. ( The
piece ran full-page width; below it appeared articles on How to Duck the Hemline
Issue and A Cooks Guide to the Shallot.) An arrangement, the author informs us,
was one of the current euphemisms for what was otherwise known as shacking up or,
more innocuously, living together. The article, which offers a fairly sympathetic por-
trait of several unmarried student couples who lived together in New York City, features
an interview with Barnard sophomore, Susan, who lived with her boyfriend Peter in
an off campus apartment. Though Barnard had strict housing regulations and parietals
(the curfew was midnight on weekends and ten oclock on weeknights, and students were
meant to live either at home or in Barnard housing), Susan had received permission
to live off campus by accepting a job listed through Barnards employment office as a
live-in maid. The job had, in fact, been listed by a young married woman who was a
good friend of Susans.
Not surprisingly, the feature article caught the attention of Barnard administrators,
who had little trouble identifying Susan as Linda LeClair. LeClair was brought before
the Judiciary Councilnot for her sexual conduct, but for lying to Barnard about her
housing arrangements. Her choice of roommate was certainly an issue; if she had been
found to be living alone or, as one Barnard student confessed to the Times, with a female
cat, she would not have been headline-worthy.
Linda, however, was versed in campus politics, and she and Peter owned a mimeo-
graph machine. She played it both ways, appearing for her hearings in a demure, knee-
length pastel dress and churning out pamphlets on what she and Peter called A Victorian
Drama. She and Peter distributed a survey on campus, garnering three hundred replies,
most of which admitted to some violation of Barnards parietals or housing regulations.
Sixty women were willing to go public and signed forms that read: I am a student of
Barnard College and I have violated the Barnard Housing Regulations. . . . In the interest
of fairness I request that an investigation be made of my disobedience.
Linda LeClair had not done anything especially unusual, as several letters from
alumnae to Barnards president, Martha Peterson, testified. But her case was a symbol of
change, and it tells us much about how people understood the incident. The presidents
office received over two hundred telephone calls (most demanding LeClairs expulsion)
and over one hundred letters; editorials ran in newspapers, large and small, throughout
the country. Some of the letters were vehement in their condemnation of LeClair and of
the college. Francis Beamen of Needham, Massachusetts, suggested that Barnard should
be renamed BARNYARD; Charles Orsinger wrote (on good quality letterhead), If
you let Linda stay in college, I can finally prove to my wife with a front page news
story about that bunch of glorified whores going to eastern colleges. An unsigned letter
began: SUBJECT: Barnard Collegeand the kow-tow to female students who practice
prostitution, PUBLICLY!
Though the term alley cat cropped up more than once, a majority of the letters
were thoughtful attempts to come to terms with the changing morality of Americas
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Chapter 4 Sexuality and Society 137
youth. Many were from parents who understood the symbolic import of the case. Over-
whelmingly, those who did not simply rant about whoredom structured their comments
around concepts of public and private. The word flaunt appeared over and over in the let-
ters to President Peterson. Linda was flaunting her sneering attitude; Linda and Peter
were openly flaunting their disregard of moral codes; they were openly flaunting rules
of civilized society. Mrs. Bruce Bromley, Jr., wrote her first such letter on a public issue
to recommend, Do not let Miss LeClair attend Barnard as long as she flaunts immoral-
ity in your face. David Abrahamson, M.D., identifying himself as a former Columbia
faculty member, offered any help in this difficult case. He advised President Peterson,
Undoubtedly the girls behavior must be regarded as exhibitionism, as her tendency is
to be in the limelight which clearly indicates some emotional disturbance or upset.
The public-private question was the issue in this casethe letter writers were cor-
rect. Most were willing to acknowledge that mistakes can happen; many were willing
to allow for some discreet sex among the unmarried young. But Linda LeClair claimed
the right to determine her own private life; she rejected the privatepublic dichotomy
as it was framed around sex, casting her case as an issue of individual right versus institu-
tional authority.
But public response to the case is interesting in another way. When a woman wrote
President Peterson that it is time for these young people to put sex back in its proper
place, instead of something to be flaunted and William F. Buckley condemned the de-
linquency of this pathetic little girl, so gluttonous for sex and publicity, they were not
listening. Sex was not what Linda and Peter talked about. Sex was not mentioned. Secu-
rity was, and family. Peter is my family, said Linda. Its a very united married type
of relationshipits the most important one in each of our lives. And our lives are very
much intertwined.
Of course they had sex. They were young and in love, and their peer culture ac cepted
sex within such relationships. But what they claimed was partnershipa partnership that
obviated the larger cultures insistence on the difference between men and women. The
letters suggesting that young women would welcome a strong rule against living with
men to protect them against doing that made no sense in LeClairs universe. When she
claimed that Barnards rules were discriminatory because Columbia men had no such
rules, that Barnard College was founded on the principle of equality between women and
men, and asked, If women are able, intelligent people, why must we be supervised and
curfewed? she was denying that men and women had different interests and needs. Just
as the private-public dichotomy was a cornerstone of sexual control in the postwar era, the
much-touted differences between men and women were a crucial part of the system.
Many people in the 1960s and 1970s struggled with questions of equality and differ-
ence in sophisticated and hard-thought ways. Neither Peter Behr nor Linda LeClair was
especially gifted in that respect. What they argued was commonplace to thema natural
language and set of assumptions that nonetheless had revolutionary implications. It is
when a set of assumptions becomes natural and unself-conscious, when a language ap-
pears in the private comments of a wide variety or people that it is worth taking seriously.
The unity of interests that Behr and LeClair called upon as they obviated the male-female
dichotomy was not restricted to students in the progressive institutions on either coast.
In 1969 the administration at the University of Kansas ( KU ), a state institu-
tion dependent on a conservative, though populist, legislature for its funding, attempted
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138 Part II Sex and Gender
to establish a coed dormitory for some of its scholarship students. KU had tried coed
living as an experiment in the 1964 summer session and found students well satisfied,
though some complained that it was awkward to go downstairs to the candy machines
with ones hair in curlers. Curlers were out of fashion by 1969, and the administration
moved forward with caution.
A survey on attitudes toward coed housing was given to those who lived in the
scholarship halls, and the answers of the men survive. The results of the survey go against
conventional wisdom about the provinces. Only one man (of the 124 responses recorded)
said his parents objected to the arrangement (Pending further discussion, he noted).
But what is most striking is the language in which the men supported and opposed the
plan. As a stereotypical answer, one man wrote, I already am able to do all the role-
playing socially I need, and see communication now as an ultimate goal. A sophomore
who listed his classification as both soph. and 4-F I hope responded: I believe that
the segregation of the sexes is unnatural. I would like to associate with women on a basis
other than dating roles. This tradition of segregation is discriminatory and promotes in-
equality of mankind. One man thought coed living would make the hall more homey.
Another said it would be more humane. Many used the word natural. The most elo-
quent of the sophomores wrote: [It would] allow them to meet and interact with one an-
other in a situation relatively free of sexual overtones; that is, the participating individuals
would be free to encounter one another as human beings, rather than having to play the
traditional stereotyped male and female roles. I feel that coed living is the only feasible
way to allow people to escape this stereotypical role behavior.
The student-generated proposal that went forward in December 1970 stressed
these (as they defined them) philosophical justifications. The system would NOT be an
arrangement for increased boy-meets-girl contact or for convenience in finding dates,
the committee insisted. Instead, coed living would contribute to the development of
each resident as a full human being. Through interpersonal relationships based on
friendship and cooperative efforts rather than on the male/female roles we usually play
in dating situations students would try to develop a human concern that transcends
membership in one or the other sex.
While the students disavowed boy-meets-girl contact as motivation, no one
seriously believed that sex was going to disappear. The most cogently stated argument
against the plan came from a young man who insisted: [ You] cant ignore the sexual over-
tones involved in coed living, after all, sex is the basic motivation for your plan. ( I didnt
say lust, I said sex). Yet the language in which they framed their proposal was significant:
they called for relationships (including sexual) based on a common humanity.
Like Peter Behr and Linda LeClair, these students at the University of Kansas were
attempting to redefine both sex and sex roles. Sex should not be negotiated through the
dichotomous pairings of male and female, public and private. Instead, they attempted to
formulate and articulate a new standard that looked to a model of togetherness un-
dreamed of and likely undesired by their parents. The Life magazine issue with which this
essay began characterized the sexual revolution as dull. Love still makes the world
go square, the author concluded, for the revolutionaries he interviewed subscribed to a
philosophy less indebted to Playboy than Peanuts, in which sex is not so much a pleasure
as a warm puppy. To his amusement, one California girl told him: Besides being my
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Chapter 4 Sexuality and Society 139
lover, Bob is my best friend in all the world, and a young man insisted, We are not
sleeping together, we are living together.
For those to whom Playboy promised revolution, this attitude was undoubtedly
tame. And in the context of the cultural revolution taking place among Americas youth,
and documented in titillating detail by magazines such as Life, these were modest revo-
lutionaries indeed, seeming almost already out of step with their generation. But the
issue, to these dull revolutionaries, as to their more flamboyant brothers and sisters,
was larger than sex. They understood that the line between public and private had utility;
that the personal was political.
In 1967, The Summer of Love
It was a holy pilgrimage, according to the Council for a Summer of Love. In the streets
of Haight-Ashbury, thousands and thousands of pilgrims acted out a street theater of
costumed fantasy, drugs and music and sex that was unimaginable in the neat suburban
streets of their earlier youth. Visionaries and revolutionaries had preceded the deluge;
few of them drowned. Others did. But the tide flowed in the vague countercultural yearn-
ings, drawn by the pop hit San Francisco ( Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair) and
its promise of a love-in, by the pictures in Life magazine or in Look magazine or in
Time magazine, by the proclamations of the underground press that San Francisco would
be the love-guerilla training school for drop-outs from mainstream America . . . where
the new world, a human world of the 21st century is being constructed. Here sexual
freedom would be explored; not cohabitation, not arrangements, not living together
in ways that looked a lot like marriage except for the lack of a piece of paper that symbol-
ized the sanction of the state. Sex in the Haight was revolutionary.
In neat suburban houses on neat suburban streets, people came to imagine this new
world, helped by television and by the color pictures in glossy-paper magazines (a joke
in the Haight told of bead-wearing Look reporters interviewing bead-wearing Life re-
porters). Everyone knew that these pilgrims represented a tiny fraction of Americas
young, but the images reverberated. America felt itself in revolution.
Todd Gitlin, in his soul-searching memoir of the sixties, argues the cultural signifi-
cance of the few:
Youth culture seemed a counterculture. There were many more weekend dope-smokers
than hard-core heads; many more readers of the Oracle than writers for it; many more
co-habitors than orgiasts; many more turners-on than droppers-out. Thanks to the sheer
number and concentration of youth, the torrent of drugs, the sexual revolution, the trau-
matic war, the general stampede away from authority, and the trend-spotting media, it was
easy to assume that all the styles of revolt and disaffection were spilling together tributar-
ies into a common torrent of youth and euphoria, life against death, joy over sacrifice, now
over later, remaking the whole bleeding world.
Youth culture and counterculture, as Gitlin argues so well, were not synonymous,
and for many the culture itself was more a matter of lifestyle than revolutionary intent.
But the strands flowed together in the chaos of the age, and the few and the marginal
provided archetypes that were read into the youth culture by an American public that
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140 Part II Sex and Gender
did not see the lines of division. Hippies, yippies, flippies, said Mayor Richard Daley
of Chicago. Free Love, screamed the headlines about Barnards Linda LeClair.
But even the truly revolutionary youths were not unified, no more on the subject of
sex than on anything else. Members of the New Left, revolutionary but rarely counter-
cultural, had sex but did not talk about it all the time. They consigned sex to a relatively
private sphere. Denizens of Haight-Ashbury lived a Dionysian sexuality, most looking
nowhere but to immediate pleasure. Some political-cultural revolutionaries, however,
claimed sex and used it for the revolution. They capitalized on the sexual chaos and fears
of the nation, attempting to use sex to politicize youth and to challenge Amerika.
In March 1968 the Sun, a Detroit peoples paper put out by a community of art-
ists and lovers (most notably John Sinclair of the rock group MC5), declared a Total
Assault on the Culture. Sinclair, in his editorial statement, disavowed any prescriptive
intent but informed his readers: We have found that there are three essential human
activities of the greatest importance to all persons, and that people are well and healthy
in proportion to their involvement in these activities: rock and roll, dope, and fucking in
the streets. . . . We suggest the three in combination, all the time.
He meant it. He meant it partly because it was outrageous, but there was more
to it. Fucking helps you escape the hangups that are drilled into us in this weirdo
countryit negates private lives, feels good, and so destroys an economy of pain
and scarcity. Lapsing into inappropriately programmatic language, Sinclair argued:
Our position is that all people must be free to fuck freely, whenever and wherever they
want to, or not to fuck if they dont wannain bed, on the floor, in the chair, on the
streets, in the parks and fields, back seat boogie for the high school kids sing the Fugs
who brought it all out in the open on stage and on records, fuck whoever wants to fuck
you and everybody else do the same. Americas silly sexual mores are the end-product
of thousands of years of deprivation and sickness, of marriage and companionship based
on the ridiculous misconception that one person can belong to another person, that
love is something that has to do with being hurt, sacrificing, holding out, teardrops
on your pillow, and all that shit.
Sinclair was not alone in his paean to copulation. Other countercultural seekers believed
that they had to remake love and reclaim sex to create community. These few struggled,
with varying degrees of honesty and sincerity, over the significance of sex in the beloved
community.
For others, sex was less a philosophy than a weapon. In the spring of 1968, the
revolutionary potential of sex also suffused the claims of the Yippies as they struggled
to stage a Festival of Life to counter the Death Convention in Chicago. How can
you separate politics and sex? Jerry Rubin asked with indignation after the fact. Yippies
lived by that creed. Sex was a double-edged sword, to be played two ways. Sex was a lure
to youth; it was part of their attempt to tap the youth market, to sell a revolutionary
consciousness. It was also a challenge, flaunted in the face (as it were) of America.
The first Yippie manifesto, released in January 1968, summoned the tribes of Chi-
cago. It played well in the underground press, with its promise of 50,000 of us dancing
in the streets, throbbing with amplifiers and harmony . . . making love in the parks. Sex
was a politics of pleasure, a politics of abundance that made sense to young middle-class
whites who had been raised in the world without limits that was postwar America.
Ch-04.indd 140 7/8/2008 12:32:33 PM
Chapter 4 Sexuality and Society 141
Sex was also incendiary, and the Yippies knew that well. It guaranteed attention.
Thus the top secret plans for the convention that Abbie Hoffman mimeographed and
distributed to the press promised a barbecue and lovemaking by the lake, followed by Pin
the Tail on the Donkey, Pin the Rubber on the Pope, and other normal and healthy
games. Grandstanding before a crowd of Chicago reporters, the Yippies presented a city
official with an official document wrapped in a Playboy centerfold inscribed, To Dick
with love, the Yippies. The Playboy centerfold in the Yippies hands was an awkward
nexus between the old and the new sexuality. As a symbolic act, it did not proffer freedom
so much as challenge authority. It was a sign of disrespectto Mayor Richard Daley and
to straight America.
While America was full of young people sporting long hair and beads, the com-
mitted revolutionaries (of cultural stripe) were few in number and marginal at best. It
is telling that the LeClair affair could still be a scandal in a nation that had weathered
the Summer of Love. But the lines were blurred in sixties America. One might ask with
Todd Gitlin, What was marginal anymore, where was the mainstream anyway? when
the Beatles were singing, Why Dont We Do It in the Road?
CONCLUSION
The battles of the sexual revolution were hard fought, its victories ambiguous, its out-
come still unclear. What we call the sexual revolution was an amalgam of movements that
flowed together in an unsettled era. They were often at odds with one another, rarely
well thought out, and usually without a clear agenda.
The sexual revolution was built on equal measures of hypocrisy and honesty, equal-
ity and exploitation. Indeed, the individual strands contain mixed motivations and ideo-
logical charges. Even the most heartfelt or best intentions did not always work out for
the good when put into practice by mere humans with physical and psychological frail-
ties. As we struggle over the meaning of the revolution and ask ourselves who, in fact,
won, it helps to untangle the threads and reject the conflation of radically different im-
pulses into a singular revolution.
R E A DI NG 1 1
The Decline of the Date and the Rise
of the College Hook Up
Paula England and Reuben J. Thomas
In 2002, an undergraduate student came to the first authors (Englands) office and said
that he wanted to do a research paper on why students on campus didnt date much any-
more. She said, amazed, They dont?A query in a large class that afternoon confirmed
Ch-04.indd 141 7/8/2008 12:32:33 PM
142 Part II Sex and Gender
that dates arent very common. Students said that people mostly hang out with friends or
hook up. Being over 50, England had never heard of a hook up! The students said they
believed that dating was still common on other campuses, but thought something unique
made it rare on their campus. A graduate student, recently graduated from a small liberal
arts college, supplied the information that students at her alma mater also thought that
their school was unique in how dead the old-fashioned date was. A colleague at a large
state university said the same thing was going on there. It seemed a national trend, but
we could find few studies on the phenomenon.
1
Intrigued by this social change, in 2005, the two of us, England (a professor of
sociology) and Thomas (a doctoral student working as her research assistant), set out to
study the college hook up scene. We used the medium-sized private university where we
work as a case study.
We had over 615 students answer an on-line survey with closed-ended questions
amenable to statistical analysis. We had a team of students do in-depth qualitative inter-
views with 270 fellow undergraduate students. In this article, we present the first report
of findings from this study.
2
Here we only describe the undergraduate, heterosexual
scene; we hope in future studies to also explore what is happening with gay, lesbian, and
bisexual students and with graduate students. Based on talking to students and faculty
on many campuseslarge state universities, private universities, and small collegeswe
believe that the demise of the date and the rise of the hook up is a national trend, prob-
ably starting in the 1980s, and that something similar to what we describe in this article
is happening on many campuses.
IS THE TRADITIONAL DATE DYING?
The traditional date started with a man asking a woman at least several days in advance
if she wanted to go to a movie, dinner, a concert, a dance, a party, or some other event.
Dating isnt ancient, however; it was an invention of the 1920s and was helped along by
the invention of the automobile and commercial spots, like movie theatres, where youth
could go.
3
Before that, young men often had to court women in their homes under
the supervision of parents. At first the practice of dating outraged the older generation,
who had grown up in the Victorian era with the previous courtship pattern. After the
advent of dating as a social form, dates were the pathway into romantic relationships,
but not every date involved serious romantic interest on either side. Sometimes he just
wanted someone to take to the dance, or she thought it would be fun to go to the party.
Dates were a way to get to know each other, although the gender norms of the 1950s and
1960s worked against male and female college students having as much in common as
1. Glenn and Marquant, 2001; Paul et al., 2000; Armstrong, 2005.
2. While we will provide statistics, the reader should remember that this was not a probability sample, so we
cannot say that it is representative of the Universitys population. And, while we know similar trends are ap-
parent on other campuses, they may be somewhat different in the patterns described here. We especially suspect
that patterns are different when college students live with their parents.
3. Bailey, 1998.
Ch-04.indd 142 7/8/2008 12:32:33 PM
Chapter 4 Sexuality and Society 143
they do today. If you wanted sex, except for the unusual pick up or one night stand
situation, dates were pretty much the only way to move in that direction. In the 1950s
and before, the social norm was that sexual intercourse was to be reserved for marriage.
Of course, the norm was sometimes violated, but usually not until the couple planned to
get married. If the woman got unexpectedly pregnant (birth control was harder to obtain
then, especially for single people), a shot gun marriage might ensue. Thus, dates were
sometimes casual, sometimes led to serious relationships and even marriage. Sometimes
they involved something physicalmaking out or more, but not always.
Today, on college campuses, the students in our study told us, the traditional date
is nearly dead. Either male or female students sometimes invite a date to a fraternity,
sorority, athletic team, or dorm event. Those are dates, but somehow they arent seen
as real dates in the traditional sense. In fact, students tend to use the term dating to
refer to the activities of couples who have already decided that they are in an exclusive
romantic relationship.
In our survey, we asked students how many dates they had been on since they came
to college with someone they werent already in a relationship with, excluding dorm or
Greek events. Although the average student in the survey had been in college two years
already, over half of both the men and women had been on fewer than five dates. Twenty-
one percent of the men and 32% of the women hadnt been on any dates. Only 7% had
been on more than 10. But when we asked how many dates they had been on since com-
ing to college with someone they were in an exclusive relationship with, the numbers
were much higher. About 30% of each sex had been on none, but 45% had been on more
than 10, showing that dating is much more common after than before exclusive relation-
ships are formed. As one male student told us, So theres no such thing as causally going
out to . . . gauge the other person. . . . I mean you can hang out. . . . But were only dat-
ing once weve decided we like each other . . . and want to be in a relationship.
THE HOOK UP
What is a hook up? Two people are hanging out in the dorm or see each other at a
party, start talking or dancing, and, sometime during the evening, go somewhere private
(often a dorm room or apartment), and something sexual happens. Often they have been
drinking. Hooking up with someone doesnt necessarily imply an interest in a relation-
ship, although sometimes it leads to relationships; in this way the hook up is similar to
the old-fashioned date.
We asked students in the survey how many hook ups they had been on. A little
more than 20% had never been on one. A quarter had hooked up at least once but
no more than 4 times. About 20% had had 510 hookups, and over a third had hooked
up more than 10 times.
We asked questions to get an in-depth portrait of each respondents most recent
hook up. About half (47%) started at a party. Fraternities often host such parties, but
dorm or house parties are also common. About a quarter (23%) started when two people
were hanging out in the dorm. Others started at bars or miscellaneous settings.
Students make jokes about random hook ups, where the two had never met before
that night, but these are unusual on our campus. Only 14% said they didnt know the
Ch-04.indd 143 7/8/2008 12:32:34 PM
144 Part II Sex and Gender
person they hooked up with before that night, at least a little. Over half said they knew the
person moderately or very well. In fact, slightly over half of those reporting on a recent
hook up said they had hooked up with this same person before.
4
Interviews revealed that
sometimes a sequence of multiple hook ups ultimately leads to an exclusive relationship.
Other times, people become what some call friends with benefitstwo people who
regularly have sex together but do not define themselves as boyfriend and girlfriend.
Hook ups often follow lots of drinking. We asked respondents how many drinks
(beers, glasses of wine, shots, mixed drinks, or malt liquors) they had had the night of the
hook up. Men averaged 5 and women 3 drinks. Because we had asked them their weight,
we were able to apply a formula used by the U.S. Department of Transportation to esti-
mate blood alcohol content. Almost half (46%) reported drinking little enough that they
were not significantly impaired. Thirteen percent were impaired but under the legal limit.
Another 13% were over the legal limit with a blood alcohol content between .08 and .12.
Finally, 28% were extremely drunk, with a blood alcohol content estimated at .12 or over.
In the qualitative interviews, students talked about the role of alcohol two ways. Some-
times they said being drunk caused them to do things they wish they hadnt afterwards
going farther sexually than is consistent with their values, or just getting so drunk that
they got sick and were miserable. Other times they admitted that they liked being under
the influence because it took away inhibitions and helped them do things they wanted to
but were too self-conscious to do sober.
As students use the term, a hook up implies that something sexual happened, but not
necessarily that you had sex, by which students mean sexual intercourse. Oral sex is not
seen as having sex, something that surprises many over-50 adults. We gave students a
checklist and asked them to check any of the specific sexual behaviors they had engaged
in on their most recent hook up since they came to college, whether with a person from
their school or not. We categorized all hook ups according to how far things went sexu-
ally. About a third (34%) of hook ups involved no more than kissing and some touching
that didnt involve genitals. Nineteen percent involved hand stimulation of one or both
persons genitals, but nothing more (we considered oral sex or vaginal or anal intercourse
to be more). Twenty-two percent involved oral sex, but not intercourse. About the same
number, 23%, involved sexual intercourse.
5
(See Figure 11.1.) In the cases where things
stopped with oral sex, 49% of the time it was mutual, but where it was not, it was much
more often the young men than women receiving oral sex (37% versus 14% of the oral
sex cases).
4. This was coded from the qualitative interviews where we asked the story about how the hook up with this
person came about. The question wasnt asked in the survey.
5. Hook ups are classified by assuming a hierarchy where kissing and nongenital touching is first, hand
stimulation of genitals next, oral sex next, and intercourse going farthest. ( Vaginal and anal intercourse are
classified together, although there were only two cases of anal sex reported among heterosexual hook ups.) A
hook up is classified according to the highest point on this hierarchy that occurred. For example, if a couple
kissed, one stimulated the others genitals by hand, and they had oral sex, it would be classified in the oral sex
category. Considering oral sex as going farther than hand stimulation of genitals is somewhat arbitrary. We
made this decision because often mouth-genital contact is considered more intimate than hand-genital contact,
and because our data show that oral sex more often leads to orgasm and hand stimulation is rarely conducted
to the point of orgasm (see Figure 11.2). Hook ups were classified into oral and hand stimulation categories
irrespective of which partner was performing or receiving the stimulation.
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Chapter 4 Sexuality and Society 145
WHERE DO RELATIONSHIPS COME FROM?
If hook ups dont imply interest in a relationship, where do relationships come from on
campus today? In the era of the date, while most dates didnt lead to exclusive relation-
ships, nonetheless, most exclusive relationships came through dates. Now that the date
is on the wane, are there no relationships? To the contrary, we found that many students
form exclusive relationships. We asked on the survey if students had ever been in a re-
lationship that lasted at least six months that started since they came to college. Over a
third (36% of men and 40% of women) said yes. If we included relationships with a fellow
high school student that lasted into their college years, the percent was even higher.
How do relationships get started? In the qualitative interviews, we asked students
the story of how their relationships started and then coded the data for whether a date
or a hook up (if either) came first. About a third started with a traditional date. But 44%
had one or more hook ups first; sometimes this was followed by some dating before
things were really defined as exclusive or official. As one woman said,
In . . . the college hook up culture, it tends to start with . . . a crush already there. . . .
Then . . . alcohol or the party setting . . . helps bring it together and people tend
to . . . hook up, and if theyre really into each other . . . that first hook up tends to lead
straight into . . . more intense dating which can qualify as relationships. . . .
One male respondent reflected on this sequence: A lot of my guy friends arent looking
for relationships . . . but when they meet those girls, its often been within the group
0
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
Kissing and
Non-Genital
Touching
Hand
Stimulating
Genitals
Oral
Sex
Intercourse
34%
19%
22%
23%
Levels of Sexual Behavior
FIGURE 11.1 Percent of Hook Ups Involving Levels of Sexual Behavior
Higher categories may have also included behaviors lower on the list but not vice versa.
Ch-04.indd 145 7/8/2008 12:32:34 PM
146 Part II Sex and Gender
of friends. . . . And then . . . you try to hook up with them. And then you can start dat-
ing. . . . Another guy said, For a time it was more like a regular hook up and then
we . . . started getting attracted to each other and our relationship actually ended up
happening.
The remainder of the pathways into relationships were variedincluding cases
where students went almost seamlessly from meeting or being friends to falling for each
other and being an exclusive couple without anything in between that they defined as a
hook up. As one woman said, We met my sophomore year through a friend, and then
hed just come up and talk to me . . . And we were . . . friends for, like, almost a year before
we started dating. A man said: We had to hang out because we were in the show, and
so we became really good friends, and then there was just a point where we realized we
were dating. . . .
Relationships were often made official or exclusive via the talkwhere one of
the two people sought to define the relationship more clearly. Some students call this
a DTR or define the relationship talk. Others just call it the talk. Students told us
these talks are often initiated after several hook ups by the woman who wants to know
where she stands with the guy. Guys then can agree that they are in a relationship or
say that they really dont want to go beyond hooking upwe heard quite a few reports
of the latter happening. One woman talked about wanting to find out where she stood,
but hesitating: I feel like its . . . the stereotypical girl thing to do, like . . . the guy feels
like the girl is boxing him into a relationship, and I dont want to be . . . that girl. . . . If
we continue to see each other . . . I probably will bring it up eventually . . .
But sometimes the beginning of a relationship is more ambiguous. One woman
said, We had been hooking up for a year and a half before finally he said that he loved
me. And so then I was like Well I guess that means that were going out, right? And he
said Yeah. We never . . . had . . . the relationship defining talk.
Relationships include doing things together, dating, and usually having sex. Just
over three-quarters of our respondents said that they had had intercourse when describ-
ing a current or most recent relationship that lasted at least 6 months. Nonetheless, it
is notable that a quarter had been in a relationship for 6 months and had not had inter-
course. Obviously, some groups of students, for reasons either of religious belief or just
wanting to take it slow, do not consider relationships to imply sex.
GENDER AND THE HOOK UP
When norms about what is permissive sexually liberalize, is this a form of womens lib-
eration or not? Feminists still debate this question. On first glance it seems obviousif
it is accepted (at least in some groups) for women to do more sexually, but they retain
the choice to say no, it must be an expansion of their freedom and a victory from a
feminist point of view. In one sense this is true. Consider a young woman who hooked
up and had oral sex with two or more guys in a year, ended up in a relationship with one
of them, had sex with him, broke up with him, and had sex with another partner before
marrying him. In 1960 she would have been strongly stigmatized in most social circles.
Today, while some groups (often those taking a conservative interpretation of Christian,
Jewish, Islamic, or other religions) are very much against sex before marriage, in many
Ch-04.indd 146 7/8/2008 12:32:34 PM
Chapter 4 Sexuality and Society 147
social circles, this young womans behavior would be unremarkable. Cultural changes
have given women the option of more sexual behavior than in the past. Options have
thereby increased for men too; when good girls wouldnt even think of performing oral
sex on the first date (and the hook up didnt exist), men were much less likely to have
easily accessible sexual satisfaction.
Equal Opportunity Orgasms?
We asked respondents whether they had an orgasm on their most recent hook up, and
whether they thought their partner did. Whether we use womens or mens report, about
40% say the man had an orgasm. But a much lower percent of women had an orgasm,
even by mens report, but it also appears that men often think the woman has an orgasm
when she doesnt! Men reported that their female partners had an orgasm in 30% of the
most recent hook ups, but only 14% of the women reported an orgasm.
If we believe each genders report of their own orgasm, hook ups involve orgasm for
men twice as often as for women. The orgasm disparity is much worse than [the] sex gap
in pay in the labor market; women have less than half the orgasms of men on hook ups,
but women earn more than three-quarters as much as men!
6
Why does this gap exist? One
reason is probably that women are receiving less genital stimulation conducive to orgasm
than men in hook ups. For example, in hook ups involving oral sex but no intercourse,
men had over two and a half times the probability of receiving unreciprocated oral sex than
women did. (As mentioned above, where couples stopped with oral sex, 49% of the time
it was mutual, 37% only the man received it, and only 14% of the time only the women
received it.)
Sometimes the disparity is because women are uncomfortable receiving oral
sex outside a relationship. One male respondent described it this way: I think that
girls dont go into a situation expecting that the first time, [that] the guy is gonna go
down . . . they feel thats a bigger deal. . . . The female feels a little more protective of
herself. . . . Whereas, the guy . . . theres no shame in . . . having the girl have her
hand down your pants. . . .
Other times, the problem is that men are unwilling or unskilled at performing
cunnilingus. One female respondent complained: He did that thing where . . . they put
their hand on the top of your head . . . and I hate that! . . . Especially cause there was
not an effort made to, like, return that favor. One woman complained about the inequity
in emphasis on female pleasure, saying, Most usually guys dont give me head. Usually
I give them head. . . . And that sucks. Another said:
He wanted me to go down on him . . . which you know I had no problem, I actually
rather enjoyed. . . . And then we finish . . . I dont want to say my turn, but. . . . Next
morning . . . he turns over and . . . wants to start making out again. . . . So Im gonna
assert my wants this time. . . . Im taking his hand and trying to move it down there and
he goes for maybe for thirty seconds and then stops . . . and he expects me to repeat the
night before. . . . I was, like, Im sorry.
6. Institute for Womens Policy Research, 2005. In 2004, among U.S. full-time, year-round workers, womens
median annual earnings was $31,223, 76.5% of mens median, which was $40,798. These figures include only
full-time, year-round workers, but are not adjusted for differences in years of experience or occupation.
Ch-04.indd 147 7/8/2008 12:32:34 PM
148 Part II Sex and Gender
We see the orgasm gap as well when we look at reports of orgasm within specific
types of hook ups. For example, in the fifth of hook ups involving intercourse, women
and men agree that men have an orgasm more than 80% of the time, but, by womens
report these hook ups lead to her orgasm only a third of the time. (Men, however, report
that their female intercourse partner orgasmed 70% of the time.) In hook ups where he
received oral sex, men and women agree that he has an orgasm about 80% of the time,
but in hook ups where he performs oral sex on her, only 30% of the women who had such
hook ups said they had orgasm (men estimate women had orgasms in 61% of these). Thus,
by anyones report, women have substantially fewer orgasms than men. (See Figure 11.2,
which uses respondents reports of their own orgasms.)
If we believe womens reports of their own orgasms, men are vastly overestimating
the frequency of their partners orgasms (see Figure 11.3). Why might this be? A number
of women talked about faking orgasms to shore up the guys ego. So, in some cases, men
may be receiving misleading information. One man, in the dark about whether a woman
hes had sex with several times has an orgasm says, Im just not really sure. But she makes
a lot of noises . . . so I think Im doing the right thing. . . .
Reputations and the Double Standard
In qualitative interviews, students often talked about how women get a bad reputation
among men and womenif they hook up too much, or with too many men who know
0
20%
40%
60%
80%
10%
30%
50%
70%
90%
100%
All
Hook Ups
Hand Stimulating
Genitals
Oral
Sex
Intercourse
14%
38%
17% 17%
32%
84%
90%
32%
Women Men
FIGURE 11.2 Percent of Men and Women Reporting Having an Orgasm in Hook Ups
Involving Various Sexual Behaviors
Statistics include only mens report of mens orgasm and womens report of womens orgasm. Womens
orgasm for hook ups involving oral sex include only those where she received oral sex, whether he did or not,
and exclude those involving intercourse. Mens orgasm for hook ups involving oral sex include only those
where he received oral sex, whether she did or not, and exclude those involving intercourse. Analogously,
hook ups involving hand stimulation of her genitals may or may not involve her hand stimulation of his
genitals, and vice versa, but both exclude any involving intercourse or oral sex.
Ch-04.indd 148 7/8/2008 12:32:34 PM
Chapter 4 Sexuality and Society 149
each other, or have sex too easily. Men who do the same thing sometimes get a bad
reputation among women, but it doesnt last as long, they said. Meanwhile, men gain
status from talking to other men about their exploits. It would seem more consistent
with equal opportunity feminism if both men and women both got an equally bad
(or elevated) reputation for the same behavior, or if neither got a bad reputation at all.
The double standard is an area where cultural changes have not liberated women much
at all.
One male respondent reflected on the double standard, saying, I definitely see
some girls out there just wanting to hook up. The interviewer asked And . . . those
girls, . . . are they treated differently? He reflected, Sometimes theyre called
slutty. . . . I guess its . . . less stigmatic for a guy to go out and be, like, Im gonna go
get some ass than for a girl. . . . I mean not myself. . . . Women are sexual creatures
too; they can do what they want. But . . . theres still that . . . preserve the women at-
titude, or denounce them. . . . He continues: Theres a lot of times where they . . . see
this girl and go . . . theres no way I can date her, but . . . shes hot for a hook up. One
woman talked about the stigma of being seen coming home from a hook up, saying,
Then I take the ultimate walk of shame home at 10:00 in the morning. . . . As people
are going to class, Im walking in heels and a dress, completely hung-over, makeup
smeared.
The double standard came out in survey responses as well. Asked whether they had
ever hooked up with someone and then respected the person less because of hooking up
0
20%
40%
60%
80%
10%
30%
50%
70%
90%
100%
All
Hook Ups
She Received
Hand Stimulating
Genitals
She Received
Oral Sex
Intercourse
14%
30%
17%
32% 32%
65%
32%
Her report His report
76%
FIGURE 11.3 Mens and Womens Perceptions of the Womans Orgasm in Hook Ups
Involving Various Sexual Behaviors
Statistics for hook ups involving oral sex for her may or may not include oral sex for him, and vice versa, but
both exclude those including intercourse. Analogously, hook ups involving hand stimulation of her genitals
may or may not involve her hand stimulation of his genitals, and vice versa, but both exclude any involving
intercourse or oral sex. Numbers are percent of hook ups in which women reported to have orgasms.
Ch-04.indd 149 7/8/2008 12:32:34 PM
150 Part II Sex and Gender
with the respondent, 37% of the men said yes (compared to only 27% of the women).
Asked if they ever thought someone they hooked up with had respected them less after
the hook up, 51% of the women said yes (but only 25% of men).
Relational versus Recreational Sex
A national study of adults a decade ago found that most respondents of both sexes think
sex should be limited to relationships, but more men than women thought casual sex
is okay.
7
In our study, women showed more interest in turning hook ups into relation-
ships than men, and more women wanted to limit sexual intercourse to relationships.
For example, asked to agree or disagree with the statement that they would not have
sex with someone unless they were in love with the person, 62% of the women agreed
or strongly agreed, but only 36% of the men. This may reflect that women have inter-
nalized different values than men. Or it may be because women are subjected to more
judgmentthe double standard discussed aboveif they are sexual too easily. One
woman reflected: Thats not something that Id ever thought that a decent person should
do. . . . I wanted to think that we had a relationship . . . but, it really wasnt . . . because
we didnt actually see each other except when we were hooking up.
Gender differences in relational orientation may also reflect differences [in] how
much women have been socialized to have skills at intimate relationships. Whatever the
source, if women want relationships more than men, it puts men in a stronger bargain-
ing position about starting relationships.
8
One female respondent described hanging
out in a fraternity and hearing guys tease brothers who were too into their relationships,
saying There are two girls in that relationship. The implication seemed to be that
real men are not supposed to care about relationships. Of course there were cases
of women just wanting casual hook ups too. But the sentiments of the woman below
were expressed by many more women than men. Asked how she felt after a hook up,
she said:
Fricken sweet! I was so happy . . . with the new prospect. . . . I dont . . . know where
this relationship will go . . . , how serious it would be. But . . . I heard from his friend
that he usually doesnt pursue people . . . so . . . the fact that hes called me up a bunch
. . . bodes well.
Another woman said, He calls me like everyday. . . . Hopefully its something more than
a hook up. One man described a mismatch in relational interest: Im still interested in
pursuing her in the purely physical manner but definitely nothing emotional or romantic,
where she might be interested in something emotional or romantic.
7. Michael et al., 1995.
8. One might think that an analogous thing would be true about sex. If men want sex before there is really a
relationship, and women dont, women are in a sense empowered in the area of sex because they can get what
they want. There is some truth to this, but the cost of having sex earlyor of just hooking up too much absent
intercourseis greater for women than for men. This is not only because of the risk of pregnancy, but also
because of the double standard that means women get a bad reputation more than men for the same behavior.
Ch-04.indd 150 7/8/2008 12:32:35 PM
Chapter 4 Sexuality and Society 151
WHAT HAS CHANGED?
9
The 1960s and 1970s are known for both the sexual revolution and changes in gender
inequality. Both of these affected the path of change in romantic and sexual behavior.
The advent and legalization of the birth control pill in the 1960s, and the legalization
of abortion with a Supreme Court decision in 1973 made it possible to have sex without
fear of having an unwanted birth. Ideas that women should be free to choose careers
even in traditionally male fieldsmay have spilled over into the idea that women as
well as men had a right to sexual freedom. Whereas the norm had been that sex was
reserved for marriage, and some groups still uphold this view, the dominant view came
to be that sex was okay in an exclusive romantic relationship, whether or not it led to
marriage. That view was popular among the cohorts in college in the 1970s. Indeed,
there was some movement toward acceptance of sex in even casual relationships. But,
then the pendulum swung back, and the government began promoting abstinence-
only sex education programs in public schools. ( By contrast, in Europe students are
taught about and offered contraceptives.) The AIDS epidemic increased fear about
casual sex.
Whether because of conservative backlash, fear of AIDS, or because the culture
was simply not going to accept casual sex as mainstream, a curious thing happened.
Oral sex, which used to be less common, and practiced largely by couples who were
already having intercourse, came to be seen as much less serious or intimate. Oral sex
then became accepted in the younger generation in relatively casual relationships, such
as hook ups, while intercourse was retained as something many save for relationships. As
one male respondent put it, There are all these little lines . . . gradations, then theres
a BIG . . . line between oral sex and intercourse.
People are marrying later, and this, too, probably contributed to the rise of the
hook up. Average age at first marriage in the U.S. at the turn of the 21st century was just
over 25 for women and 27 for men, up about 4 years from 1960.
10
In our sample, most
said they wanted to marry and said they thought it would be at ages even older than these
current national averages. With fewer marrying right after college, there is less rush to
settle into a relationship. Of course, the increased acceptance of cohabitation and easier
availability of sex outside marriage may have contributed to putting marriage off longer.
In the 1950s and 1960s, one thing pushing young people into marriage earlier was that
it was controversial to have sex or live together before marriage.
In sum, among college students traditional dating is on the wane. The hook up is
more common. With handgenital stimulation and oral sex fairly easily available through
hook ups, and friendship easily available in coed dorms, many men see little reason to
ask women on formal dates, to the lament of some women. One might have thought
that the gender revolution would lead to women asking men out on dates. Instead, the
9. The data from our study deal only with the present, not how we got here over the past several decades. In
this section, we use our knowledge of the history of recent decades to speculate on how the changes leading to
the present situation happened.
10. Caplow et al., 2000, Chapter 4.
Ch-04.indd 151 7/8/2008 12:32:35 PM
152 Part II Sex and Gender
date has almost died. The term dating has come to refer more to couples already in an
exclusive relationship.
Hook up culture disadvantages women who want relationships before any sexual
contact, because the hook up, defined by some sexual activity, is the main pathway into
relationships today. Hook up culture hasnt gotten rid of relationships, which remain
quite common. Some relationships start with an old-fashioned traditional date. But more
common is relationships that start with a series of hook ups, sometimes preceded by
friendship and hanging out.
One might have thought the gender revolution would lead to equality in con-
cern for male and female sexual pleasure, or to equal treatment of mens and womens
sexual experiences in forming reputations. But it did not. The sexual double standard and
practices that prioritize mens over womens sexual pleasure have not changed much. In
the past, men could have sex outside marriage with less loss to reputation than women
experienced. Today, in most social circles, neither men nor women are expected to be
virgins at marriage. But women get a bad reputation more readily than men from having
sex with or hooking up with too many people. Hook up sex does not seem to be equal
opportunity when it comes to orgasm; women have orgasms less frequently than men. It
appears that equal opportunity for women has gone farther in the educational and career
world than in the college sexual scene.
References
Armstrong, Elizabeth A., Laura Hamilton, and Brian Sweeney. 2005. Sexual Assault on Campus: A Gen-
der Structure Explanation of Party Rape. Unpublished paper, Indiana University.
Bailey, Beth. 1988. From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988.
Caplow, Theodore, Louis Hicks, and Ben J. Wattenberg. 2000. The First Measured Century: An Illustrated
Guide to Trends in America, 19002000. Washington D.C.: American Enterprise Institute.
Glenn, Norval and Elizabeth Marquardt. 2001. Hooking Up, Hanging Out, and Hoping for Mr. Right:
College Women on Dating and Mating Today. New York: Institute for American Values, 2001.
Institute for Womens Policy Research. 2005. The Gender Wage Ratio. Washington D.C.: IWPR. Accessed
9-10-05 at www.iwpr.org.
Robert T. Michael, John H. Gagnon, Edward O. Laumann, and Gina Kolata. 1995. Sex in America:
A Definitive Survey. New York: Little Brown.
Paul, Elizabeth L., Brian McManus, and Allison Hayes. 2000. Hook Ups: Characteristics and Cor-
relates of College Students Spontaneous and Anonymous Sexual Experiences. Journal of Sex
Research 37, 1: 76 88.
Ch-04.indd 152 7/8/2008 12:32:35 PM
153
5 Courtship and Marriage
R E A DI NG 1 2
Cohabitation
Lynne M. Casper and Suzanne M. Bianchi
Shacking up. Living in sin. Living together. Persons of the opposite sex sharing living
quarters. Doubling up. Sleeping together. All of these expressions have been used to de-
scribe the living arrangement that demographers refer to as cohabitation. Some of these
terms are more value laden than others, and the one an individual chooses to describe
this living arrangement can say a great deal about how he or she views unmarried sexual
partners. Although cohabitation can refer to same-sex couples, most of the demographic
research conducted to date has been concerned with opposite-sex partners.
The increase in heterosexual cohabitation that has accompanied the delay in mar-
riage and increase in divorce is one of the most significant changes in family life to take
place in the latter half of the 20th century (Seltzer 2000; Smock 2000). Some observers
believe that the increase in cohabitation has eroded commitment to marriage and tra-
ditional family life (e.g., Waite and Gallagher 2000). One of the best examples of this
view is presented in a report titled Should We Live Together? What Young Adults Need to
Know About Cohabitation Before Marriage, published by the National Marriage Project
( Popenoe and Whitehead 1999). This controversial report paints an overwhelmingly
negative picture of cohabitation, asserting that cohabiting unions tend to weaken the
institution of marriage and pose clear and present dangers to women and children.
Most adults in the United States eventually marry: 91 percent of women ages 45 to
54 in 1998 had been married at least once (Bianchi and Casper 2000:15), and an estimated
88 percent of women in younger cohorts are likely to marry eventually (Raley 2000). But
the meaning and permanence of marriage may be changing as cohabitation increases.
Marriage used to be the demographic event that almost exclusively marked the
formation of a new household, the beginning of sexual relations, and the birth of a child.
Marriage also typically implied that each partner had one sexual partner and identified
the two individuals who would parent any child born of the union. The increasing social
acceptance of cohabitation outside marriage has meant that these linkages can no longer
Ch-05.indd 153 7/8/2008 12:33:02 PM
154 Part II Sex and Gender
be assumed. Also, what it means to be married or single is changing as the personal
lives of unmarried couples come to resemble those of their married counterparts in some
ways but not in others (Seltzer 2000; Smock 2000).
Cohabiting and marital relationships have much in common: coresidence; emo-
tional, psychological, and sexual intimacy; and some degree of economic interdepen-
dence. But the two relationships differ in other important ways. Marriage is a relationship
between two people of opposite sexes that adheres to legal, moral, and social rules, a
social institution that rests upon common values and shared expectations for appropri-
ate behavior within the partnership (Nock 1998). Society upholds and enforces ap-
propriate marital behavior both formally and informally. In contrast, there is no widely
recognized social blueprint or script for the appropriate behavior of cohabitors, or for
the behavior of the friends, families, and other individuals and institutions with whom
they interact. There is no common term in use for referring to ones nonmarital live-in
lover, whereas the terms spouse, husband, and wife are institutionalized. Most important,
there is far greater societal acceptance of marriageand far more ambivalence about
cohabitationas a desirable adult relationship for the rearing of children.
We begin this chapter with the intriguing story of the growth in cohabitation in
the latter decades of the 20th century. Tracking trends in cohabitation has been difficult
because until recently there was no direct measurement of the numbers of unmarried
partners living together. Until the late 1980s, when national surveys began the routine
collection of information on cohabitation, researchers relied on indirect estimates to
document the increase in cohabitation. The 198788 National Survey of Families and
Households (NSFH) collected the first cohabitation histories. The 1990 Census was the
first census enumeration that included unmarried partner among a list of categories
from which a respondent could choose in identifying his or her household relationship.
Beginning in 1995, the Current Population Survey (CPS) also included the category
unmarried partner as a possible response to the household relationship question, and
the National Survey of Family Growth began to obtain detailed data on cohabitation.
In the discussion that follows, we use CPS data and indirect estimates to examine
the growth in cohabitation since the late 1970s. In an effort to understand more about
the meaning of cohabitation, we review relevant research on this topic, compare cohab-
itors with married and single people, and examine how cohabitors view themselves. We
also investigate whether cohabitors are becoming more like married people over time
as cohabitation becomes a more common experience and gains wider social acceptance.
We describe the linkages between cohabitation and other demographic events and the
potential positive and negative consequences they engender. We conclude the chapter
with a discussion of what demographers know about cohabitation and what this implies
for the future of marriage and family life in the United States.
WHO COHABITS AND HOW HAS
THIS CHANGED OVER TIME?
Unmarried heterosexual cohabitation began to capture national attention during and
after the period of well-publicized student unrest on college campuses in the late 1960s
Ch-05.indd 154 7/8/2008 12:33:02 PM
Chapter 5 Courtship and Marriage 155
and early 1970s. The image of the time was of sexually promiscuous college students
experimenting with new family forms by living with their boyfriends or girlfriends rather
than marrying, often trying to keep their arrangements secret from their disapproving
parents. In the 1970s, Paul Glick and Arthur Norton (1977) of the U.S. Census Bureau
were the first to use information on household composition from the decennial census
and CPS to define cohabitors as persons of the opposite sex sharing living quarters, or
POSSLQs for short.
Figure 12.1 shows changes in cohabitation using a modified version of the indirect
POSSLQ measure (Casper and Cohen 2000). The proportion of unmarried women who
were cohabiting tripled, from 3 percent to 9 percent, between 1978 and 1998. Increases
were similar among unmarried menfrom 5 percent to nearly 12 percentwith men
more likely than women to cohabit, both in 1978 and in 1998.
These estimates of cohabitation may seem low, especially considering the height-
ened concern of some observers that cohabitation is eroding commitment to marriage
and family life. The rates are low, in part, because they represent only those who are co-
habiting at a given point in time. A much larger proportion of people have ever cohab-
ited, and the likelihood of cohabiting appears to be increasing over time. Only 8 percent
of first marriages in the late 1960s were preceded by cohabitation, compared with 49 per-
cent in 198586 ( Bumpass 1990) and 56 percent by the early to mid-1990s (Bumpass
Total
7
3
9
White
7
3
10
Black
5
4
6
Hispanic
7
4
9
Women
Total
9
5
12
White
9
4
12
Black
11
7
12
Hispanic
8
5
10
Men
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
P
e
r
c
e
n
t
1988 1978 1998
FIGURE 12.1 Percentages of Unmarried Men and Women Cohabiting, by Race and
Gender: 19781998
Race/ethnicity categories are white, non-Hispanic; black, non-Hispanic; and Hispanic.
Source: Current Population Survey, March supplements, 1978, 1988, 1998.
Ch-05.indd 155 7/8/2008 12:33:02 PM
156 Part II Sex and Gender
and Lu 2000). Thus, young couples today are more likely to begin their coresidential
relationships in cohabitation than in marriage.
Why has cohabitation increased so much? A number of factors, including increased
uncertainty about the stability of marriage, the erosion of norms against cohabitation
and sexual relations outside of marriage, the availability of reliable birth control, and the
weakening of religious and other normative constraints on individuals family decisions,
seem to be ending the taboo against living together without marrying. For example, by
the mid-1990s, a majority of high school seniors thought that living together prior to
marriage was a good idea (Axinn and Thornton 2000).
Some argue that cohabitation reduces the costs of partnering, especially if one is
uncertain about a potential mate, and allows a couple to experience the benefits of an
intimate relationship without committing to marriage ( Willis and Michael 1994). If a
cohabiting relationship is not successful, one can simply move out; if a marriage is not
successful, one suffers through a sometimes lengthy and messy divorce.
Meanwhile, the development of effective contraceptives has given childbearing-age
couples greater freedom to engage in sexual intercourse without the risk of unwanted preg-
nancy. The availability of reliable birth control has increased the prevalence of premarital
sex. As premarital sex has become more common, it has become more widely accepted, and
so has living with a partner before marriage (Bumpass and Sweet 1989a). Widespread avail-
ability of contraception also makes it easier to avoid unwanted pregnancy if one chooses to
live with a partner after separation or divorce from a previous marriage.
Shifting norms mean that adults today are more likely to believe that cohabitation
and divorce are acceptable and less likely to believe that marriage is a lifelong commit-
ment than was true in the past ( Thornton 1989; Thornton and Freedman 1983). Thus
the normative barrier that once discouraged cohabitation has begun to wither away.
Increasingly, American values have shifted from those favoring family commitment and
self-sacrifice to those favoring self-fulfillment, individual growth, and personal freedom
(Lasch 1979; Lesthaeghe 1995; McLanahan and Casper 1995).
Early estimates suggested that college students were in the vanguard of attitudi-
nal and behavior changes that fostered the growth in cohabitation. Glick and Norton
(1977:34), for example, highlighted the fact that a greater proportion of unmarried than
married couples (8 percent versus 5 percent) included two partners who were college
students and that, in 1970, one-fourth of unmarried couples had at least one partner who
was enrolled in college. Subsequent research, however, has documented that cohabitation
is a behavior that is prevalent among less educated individuals. Larry Bumpass and James
Sweet (1989b), in discussing the first direct estimates of cohabitation, note: Contrary
to a common view of cohabitation as college student behavior, education is strongly and
negatively related to rates of cohabitation before first marriage. The highest rates are
found among the least educated (p. 622).
CPS trends, based on indirect estimates, indicate that about 16 percent of men
who cohabit are college graduates; this figure has remained quite stable over time (see
Table 12.1). Among women, the estimate in 1998 was 17 percent, up from 13 percent in
1978 and 1988. Other estimates of the likelihood that an individual will ever cohabit sug-
gest that increases in the rates of cohabitation continue to be greater for those with only a
high school education than for those with a college education (Bumpass and Lu 2000).
Ch-05.indd 156 7/8/2008 12:33:02 PM
Chapter 5 Courtship and Marriage 157
Who cohabits defies stereotypes in other ways as well. For example, increasingly,
cohabitation is not a phenomenon confined to early adulthood. Although more than
60 percent of cohabiting men and almost two-thirds of women in unmarried partnerships
were under age 35 in 1978, these proportions have declined. In 1998, a relatively high
percentage of cohabitors were in their mid-30s or older (almost 50 percent of men and
more than 40 percent of women in 1998). As age at first marriage increases, the aver-
age age of cohabitors also appears to be increasing. In addition, living together without
marrying is common after first marriages end as well as before they begin. In 1998,
45 percent of the men and 51 percent of the women in heterosexual unmarried couples
had been previously married, with the vast majority either separated or divorced.
One of the biggest compositional shifts that is occurring among unmarried couples
is the increase in the presence of children in these households, either children born to
the couple or those that one of the partners has from a prior relationship. In 1978, about
28 percent of cohabitor households included children under age 18 (see Table 12.1). By
1998, the proportion had increased to 37 percent. About two-fifths of all children spend
at least some years during their childhoods living with a parent and the parents unmar-
ried partner, according to recent estimates by Bumpass and Lu (2000:35). This percent-
age is high both because of the popularity of cohabitation after separation and divorce,
where children from a prior marriage may be present, and because more births outside
marriage are to mothers who are living with their partners.
The proportion of births to unmarried mothers who are actually living with their
partners (often their childrens fathers) increased from 29 percent in the mid-1980s to
near 40 percent in the mid-1990s (Bumpass and Lu 2000:35). In some European coun-
tries, most notably Scandinavian countries, cohabitation increasingly seems to function
as a substitute for marriage, with couples unlikely to marry before the birth of their
children. In the United States, the likelihood of marriage with the birth of a child is de-
clining but seems to be a far smaller component of the increase in children in cohabiting
unions than in Europe.
As more women spend time in cohabiting relationships, the time at risk of a preg-
nancy while a women is living with an unmarried partner goes up. Most of the increase
in births to cohabitors (as much as 70 percent) is due to this factor (Raley 2001). Co-
habiting women who become pregnant have become a little less likely to marry before
the birth, and single women who become pregnant have become more likely to move in
with the father of the child rather than remain single or marry. Yet these two changes
in behaviorstaying in a cohabiting arrangement rather than marrying if one becomes
pregnant or moving in with a partner rather than marrying if one becomes pregnant
while singleaccount for only about 10 percent of the increase in births to cohabiting
women (Raley 2001:66).
The increased recognition that many unmarried couples are raising children is
leading to greater attention to the ways in which childrens lives may be affected by the
marital status of their parents. For example, children born to unmarried couples have a
higher risk of experiencing their parents separation than do children born to married
couples (Bumpass, Raley, and Sweet 1995). The ties that bind fathers to their children
may also be weaker in cohabiting than in marital relationships: After parents separate,
children whose parents never married see their fathers less often and are less likely to be
Ch-05.indd 157 7/8/2008 12:33:02 PM
158 Part II Sex and Gender
financially supported by their fathers than are children born to married parents (Cooksey
and Craig 1998; Seltzer 2000). . . .
COHABITATION AND MARRIAGE
Much of the demographic research on cohabitation has been oriented around one ques-
tion: How similar is (heterosexual) cohabitation to marriage? Economic theorists often
TABLE 12.1 Presence of Children, Age, and Marital Status
among Unmarried Couples: 19781998 (in percentages)
All Couples
1978 1988 1998
Age
Men
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0
1524 21.2 18.2 15.1
2534 40.3 40.5 37.2
35+ 38.5 41.3 47.7
Women
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0
1524 35.5 25.8 21.8
2534 29.9 39.4 34.4
35+ 34.6 34.8 43.8
Marital status
Men
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0
Separated/divorced 46.9 45.3 42.2
Widowed 6.5 3.3 3.2
Never married 46.7 51.4 54.6
Women
Total 100.0 100.0 100.0
Separated/divorced 39.3 44.2 44.9
Widowed 15.1 8.0 5.7
Never married 45.7 47.9 49.4
Children in the household 27.6 33.8 37.1
College graduates
Men 15.8 16.0 16.3
Women 13.4 13.3 17.1
Unmarried partners estimated with adjusted POSSLQ measure (see Cas-
per and Cohen 2000).
Source: Current Population Survey, March supplements, 1978, 1988, 1998.
Ch-05.indd 158 7/8/2008 12:33:02 PM
Chapter 5 Courtship and Marriage 159
view marriage as an institution in which individual goals are replaced by altruism and the
subordination of self-interest in favor of goals that benefit the family (e.g., Becker 1991).
Married couples supposedly maximize benefits for their families by specializing in dif-
ferent activitieswives tend to specialize in homemaking and husbands tend to special-
ize in breadwinning. This gender role difference has meant that women tend to seek
spouses with higher education and earnings than themselvesmen who would be good
breadwinners. Men, by contrast, tend to look for women who will be good mothers and
homemakers.
Evidence suggests that cohabitation may attract individuals who value more egali-
tarian, less specialized, gender roles. Gender-differentiated roles are not absent from
cohabiting unions; for example, cohabiting couples with higher-earning male ( but not
female) partners are the ones that proceed more quickly to marriage (Sanchez, Man-
ning, and Smock 1998). Yet research has found that cohabiting relationships endure
longer when partners employment patterns and earnings are more similar than different
(Brines and Joyner 1999). Cohabiting couples also tend to divide housework in a more
egalitarian fashion than do married couples (South and Spitze 1994), and cohabitors are
less likely to espouse traditional gender roles (Clarkberg, Stolzenberg, and Waite 1995;
Lesthaeghe and Surkyn 1988).
Cohabitation may also be especially attractive to those with more individualistic,
more materialistic, and less family-oriented outlooks on life. Cohabitors are more likely
than others to believe that individual freedom is important in a marriage ( Thomson
and Colella 1992). Men and women are more likely to choose cohabitation as their first
union if it is important to them to have lots of money in life (Clarkberg et al. 1995).
Women who value their careers are more likely than other women to cohabit for their
first union, whereas those who think that finding the right person to marry and having a
happy family life is important are more likely than others to begin their first union with
marriage (Clarkberg et al. 1995).
Cohabitors are also more accepting of divorce. They are less likely than mar-
ried persons to disapprove of divorce (Lesthaeghe and Surkyn 1988), with those who
disapprove of divorce more likely to begin their first union with marriage (Axinn and
Thornton 1992). Children of divorced parents are more likely to cohabit than are chil-
dren of married parents (Cherlin, Kiernan, and Chase-Lansdale 1995), in part because
people whose mothers divorced tend to hold attitudes that are more approving of cohabi-
tation (Axinn and Thornton 1996).
To the extent that cohabitation is an incomplete institution lacking clear norma-
tive standards (Nock 1995), it may provide a more comfortable setting than marriage for
less conventional couples. Perhaps the strongest indicator of this is the higher percentage
of cohabiting than married couples who cross the racial divide in their partnerships (see
Table 12.2). Cohabiting couples are more than twice as likely to be of different races than
married couples13 percent compared with 5 percent. About half of interracial cohabit-
ing couples are made up of a white woman and a man of another race (data not shown).
Schoen and Weinick (1993) argue that because cohabiting relationships tend to be
short-term relationships, cohabiting partners are less concerned with the ascribed char-
acteristics of their partners than are the partners in married couples. Half of all cohabita-
tions last a year or less; only about one-sixth of cohabitations last at least 3 years, and only
Ch-05.indd 159 7/8/2008 12:33:03 PM
160 Part II Sex and Gender
one-tenth last 5 years or more ( Bumpass and Lu 2000). Thus an individuals choosing a
partner of the same age, race, and religion as him- or herself is not as important in cohabi-
tation as it is in marriage, because cohabitation does not necessarily entail a long-term
commitment or the accompanying normative standards such a relationship implies.
It is much more common in cohabiting than in marital relationships for the female
partner to be older and better educated than her male partner (see Table 12.2). Women
are more than 2 years older than their partners in 24 percent of unmarried couples but
in only 12 percent of married couples, and women have a higher educational level in
21 percent of cohabiting couples compared with only 16 percent of married couples.
The data displayed in Table 12.2 support the notion that cohabiting couples are
more egalitarian in terms of their labor force participation and earnings. Almost four out
of five cohabiting couples have both partners employed, compared with only three in five
married couples. Men tend to work more hours than their partners in cohabiting and
marital relationships, but womens hours of employment exceed their partners hours in a
greater percentage of cohabiting (24 percent) than married (16 percent) couples. When
employed, women and men have earnings that are closer to equality in cohabiting than
in married couples; women in cohabiting couples contribute 41 percent of the couples
annual earnings, compared with 37 percent, on average, for married women.
Some of the differences shown in Table 12.2 reflect the fact that unmarried couples
tend to be younger, on average, than married couples, and younger generations have
more egalitarian attitudes toward the labor force roles of men and women and are more
likely to choose partners with different racial backgrounds. However, the evidence in
Table 12.2, combined with the attitudinal and family background differences between
unmarried and married couples noted in other research, suggests that cohabitation pro-
vides a living arrangement that suits couples who may be somewhat uncertain about
TABLE 12.2 Characteristics of Cohabiting and Married Couples: 1998
Cohabiting Married
Total number of couples (thousands) 3,142 54,317
% of couples in which
Woman is of different race/ethnicity than man 13 5
Woman is at least 2 years older than man 24 12
Woman has more education than man 21 16
Both man and woman worked for pay 77 60
Woman worked more hours
a
24 16
Womans contribution to couples 1997
income (% of total income)
b
41 37
a
Woman worked more hours than her partner in the preceding year.
b
Calculated for couples in which both partners were employed.
A cohabiting couple is defined as an unmarried couple who maintains a household together.
Race/ethnicity categories are white, non-Hispanic; black, non-Hispanic; and Hispanic.
Source: Current Population Survey, March supplement, 1998.
Ch-05.indd 160 7/8/2008 12:33:03 PM
Chapter 5 Courtship and Marriage 161
whether their partnerships can be sustained over the long term. These may be couples
who must work out issues that surround partnering across racial lines, couples who defy
patterns that are considered normal in the larger society (such as when an older
woman partners with a younger man or a more educated woman partners with a less
educated mate), or couples for whom an equal economic partnership is a priority and
who may be concerned that marriage will propel them into a gendered division of labor
that will make it difficult to sustain their egalitarianism. . . .
CONCLUSION
Cohabitation has increased dramatically over a relatively short period of time, raising
concerns about the effects of this new family form on the institutions of marriage and the
family in the United States. Currently, the majority of individuals live with partners be-
fore they marry. Hence the lines that differentiate marriage from being single have faded
over time. The effects of cohabitation on the institution of marriage are likely to vary
according to how cohabitors view their relationships. Some cohabitors have definite plans
to marry their partners and end up doing so, whereas others live together in relationships
of convenience with low levels of commitmentthese couples often separate.
Not only is cohabitation increasing among people who have not entered a first
marriage, it is also slowing the rate of remarriage after divorce or separation. Almost one-
half of those cohabiting at any given point in time are doing so after rather than before
a first marriage. In part due to the role cohabitation is playing after marriages end, the
characteristics of cohabitors are changing. Compared with 20 years ago, more of them
are older than age 35 and more cohabiting households include children. And, although
cohabitation was initially linked to experimentation among college students, its increase
has been widespread and its popularity today is as great or greater among those with less
education.
As cohabitation continues to increase and to become more normative, will it replace
marriage as the preferred living arrangement for raising children in the United States, as
it seems to have done in some countries, most notably Sweden? The answer still seems
to be no. Although unmarried partners do not necessarily rush to marry if the woman
becomes pregnant, and single women who become pregnant may move in with their
partners rather than marry them, these behaviors are still not widespread in the United
States, at least not among the majority white population. And only 1 in 10 cohabitors
believes that the cohabiting relationship is a substitute for marriage. The largest factor
explaining why more births occur in cohabiting relationships today than two decades ago
is merely that so many more people cohabit before and after marriage. What this means,
however, is that a significant percentage of the babies born to unmarried mothers
perhaps as large a proportion as 40 percentactually begin life residing with both par-
ents, who live together but are not married.
Demographers are only beginning to study the heterogeneity of cohabiting relation-
ships. New estimates suggest that about 4 percent of cohabiting couples are in same-sex
relationships. One-fifth of lesbian-couple and about 5 percent of gay-couple households
include children, often from one partners previous heterosexual union. Heterosexual
Ch-05.indd 161 7/8/2008 12:33:03 PM
162 Part II Sex and Gender
cohabitation is on the rise among all racial groups, although estimates of the prevalence
among different groups vary by whether the percentages are calculated for all adults,
unmarried adults, or all unions. Blacks have a high portion of all unions that are unmar-
ried partnerships, but black unmarried women have relatively low rates of living with
partners. The gender gap in rates of cohabitation is greatest for blacks because black
unmarried men have rates of partnering as great as or greater than other racial groups.
Also, more unmarried than married heterosexual couples are mixed-race couples.
Cohabiting couples defy gender stereotypes more often than do married couples:
Womens and mens labor force roles are more similar and the womans age, education,
and hours of market work more often exceed the mans in cohabiting than in marital
unions. Partly this is because cohabitors are younger than married couples and younger
cohorts have more gender-egalitarian attitudes. Yet cohabitation also seems to be chosen
as a first relationship more often by women who value career goals than by other women
and by couples who either value an equal economic partnership or defy gender stereotypes
in other ways (such as having a female partner who is older than the male partner).
Although researchers have been preoccupied with comparisons of cohabitation to
marriage (or, in some cases, to singlehood), the reality is that cohabitation is serving a
diverse set of couples with an array of reasons for living together rather than marrying.
About one-half of cohabitors indicate strong intentions to marry their partners, and 1 in
10 claims that the unmarried partnership is a substitute for marrying. The remainder
seem uncertain about their compatibility with their current partners, their future plans,
and/or marriage as an institution. Not surprisingly, whether cohabitors marry, break up,
or continue living together as unmarried couples varies by how they see their relation-
ships. And partners often disagree on the quality of the relationship, with the partnership
more likely to dissolve if the woman is unhappy and more likely to continue as a cohabita-
tion but not proceed to marriage if the man is unhappy.
Finally, although one might think that couples living together before or instead of
marrying should make marriages more stable, because partners can discover irreconcil-
able differences before they tie the knot, one of the strongest findings is that those who
cohabit prior to marriage divorce more often than those who do not. The debate is over
whether living together makes such couples more irreverent toward the institution of
marriage or whether they have characteristics and attitudes that are more accepting of
divorce in the first place. The evidence to date suggests it is more the latter than the
former, and the question is whether cohabitation will become less selective of certain
types of individuals. If living together is increasingly what one does before marrying or
remarrying, and as marital partnerships change as well, those who cohabit may become
less distinct from those who marry. On economic dimensions such as labor force partici-
pation and earnings, married and unmarried partners seem less differentiated today than
they were 20 years ago. Still, among whites, educational attainment may be diverging
between the two groups. How cohabitation alters the future of marriage will ultimately
rest on whether unmarried cohabiting couples are increasingly a distinct group of persons
who doubt the possibility of long-term commitment or are merely couples captured at
different points in their relationships than those who have married, but who nonetheless
continue to aspire to the goal of committed family life.
Ch-05.indd 162 7/8/2008 12:33:03 PM
Chapter 5 Courtship and Marriage 163
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R E A DI NG 1 3
Alternative Unions and
the Independent Life Stage
Michael J. Rosenfeld
Veronica is a white woman, born in the 1950s, and raised in an all-white staunchly con-
servative town fifty miles outside of New York City. Veronica had so little exposure to
blacks that she can remember very distinctly the black nurse who came to take care of
her mother.
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Chapter 5 Courtship and Marriage 165
I think I was probably about seven, and I remember distinctly, in fact we laugh about it
now, being in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet, and my dad was shaving. And I looked
up at him and I asked him if the nurse had a black bottom [laughs] . . .
Karl is a black man, born in the early 1950s and raised in inner-city Detroit. Karls
father was a janitor, and Karls mother was a housekeeper, occupations that were domi-
nated by blacks in those days. Karls parents found an integrated public school for Karl
and his siblings to attendthe school started out as mostly white, but ended up being
mostly black. After high school Karl joined the Air Force, and, the Air Force helped
pay for his college education. After his time in the armed forces was over, in the late
1970s Karl became a restaurant manager for a restaurant in a big East Coast city. Karl
remembers:
The elementary school was great; I remember very vividly, it was a wonderful time of my
life. I remember the teachers to this day and they had great influences on me. My parents
always pushed education. My sister graduated from the state university, and all my siblings
are educated, had college degrees. Um . . . I remember high school as being kind of tense
because it was during that time period, junior high, high school, semi-tense, because that
was during the civil rights riots and those kinds of things. . . .
Three generations ago, Karl and Veronica might never have met. Karls parents had
sought integrated schools for their children, but Veronicas family had chosen the most
segregated community and therefore the most segregated school system they could find.
In the postcivil rights era, blacks in the United States have generally had a preference for
racial integration, whereas whites have generally resisted integration.
1
In the 1940s, few
young adults went to college. By the 1970s, however, even socially conservative families
sent their daughters to college. Veronicas family sent her to a private Catholic college,
in a nearby East Coast city, to study nursing. The college was carefully selected to be
socially conservative and nearly all white. In order to pay the bills, Veronica looked for a
part-time job. Karls restaurant happened to be hiring. Veronica started working for Karl,
and she turned out to be the most reliable worker in the restaurant. Karl and Veronica
were often at the restaurant together, closing up after everyone else had gone home.
They fell in love. Karl asked Veronica to marry him.
Veronica said, No. She knew her family would not approve. Karl moved to Califor-
nia and said that he would wait for her. Veronica dated other men, but did not find anyone
she liked as much as Karl. Finally she moved to California to be with him. Veronica says:
When I came to California, Karl and I lived together [laughs] and we had two phones. So
when the one phone rang we knew that it was my mother. And Karl put up with it for a
long time until finally hes like, Enough is enough. If you love me you need to tell your
parents; you need to come forward. And I kept promising him I would and I never did, I
dont think, until I got pregnant. . . . And he told me, you need to go. . . . And then I knew
that if I could just give my parents time they would come around. Because I wasnt pre-
judiced and I knew in my heart I wasnt prejudiced, and I knew my parents couldnt have
been prejudiced because then I probably would have been prejudiced. I mean that was my
rationale over the whole thing. . . .
Ch-05.indd 165 7/8/2008 12:33:03 PM
166 Part II Sex and Gender
So Karl put me on a plane to send me to tell them that I was pregnant and we were
getting married. . . . And my mother said, Oh great, I hope you choose not to have chil-
dren; that wouldnt be fair for the children. So then I clammed completely and didnt say
anything. And then she looked at my little brother and said, How do you feel about hav-
ing a black brother-in-law? My poor twelve-year-old brother just sat there and got these
big, watery eyes, and he didnt know what to say; I felt so bad for him.
And then I guess we didnt really discuss it any more. But when I came back my
parents were calling me, telling me that I was making a mistake, telling me that my
mother was having a nervous breakdown and that it was gonna be all my fault. And then
my father would call and say hes coming out with a gun and hes gonna shoot Karl and
hes gonna shoot me. My father said hed end up in jail and everybody would be happy
then. He was so upset that my mother was upset. My mother was worse I guess. . . . But
in the meantime Karl and I went ahead with the wedding. And we went to Tahoe and got
married, and they refused to come. My sister came, however, she was kind of wishy, washy
about the whole thing. But we had a wonderful wedding. . . . There were probably about
twenty-five people there I guess.
Over the years, Karl and Veronica had three children. As the years passed, Veron-
icas mother, and then father, came to visit the family in California. Everyone is cordial.
Karl and Veronica have visited Veronicas parents, but after twenty years of marriage Karl
has still never set foot in Veronicas parents house.
Karl and Veronicas story is an essentially modern story that could not have hap-
pened the same way fifty years earlier. In an earlier time, Veronica would have been
meeting and dating men while living with her parents. If Veronica had been living with
her parents when she met Karl, she would probably have known that the relationship was
impossible. If she had gotten involved with Karl anyway, her parents would have found
out fairly early in the relationship, and they would have been in a much stronger position
to prevent the marriage. Prior to World War II, few American women attended college,
and most who did lived at home.
Veronicas nursing degree gave her confidence that she could find work and sup-
port herself anywhere in the United States. Karl also had a college degree, and he had
experience in the armed forces. Education and valuable labor market skills gave Karl and
Veronica confidence that they could support themselves if they had to. But even with
good education and labor market skills, Karl knew that Veronica would never marry him
if her parents were anywhere nearby. So Karl moved to California without knowing a
single person west of the Mississippi. Once Veronica and Karl were living together in
California, thousands of miles from either ones family of origin, the power dynamic was
different. The physical reality of distance mediates and moderates the power and con-
sequences of interpersonal relationships. Even when Veronicas father threatened to kill
them, the psychological impact of the threat, though still strong, was tempered by the
practical reality of physical distance.
GEOGRAPHIC MOBILITY
Geographic mobility is crucial to people in nontraditional unions. Nontraditional and
transgressive unions are nontraditional and transgressive precisely because many parents
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Chapter 5 Courtship and Marriage 167
and extended families will not accept them. In the era of the independent life stage, not
only do young people meet potential mates far beyond the watchful eyes of their parents,
but young people with some education or labor market skills also have the option of mov-
ing far from home if the home environment becomes hostile.
Table 13.1 shows the geographic mobility of different types of young U.S.-born
couples. Geographically mobile couples live in a different state from the birth states
of one or both partners. Non-mobile couples live in the birth state of both partners.
In 1990, 48.1 percent of young same-race married couples were mobile, meaning that
slightly more than half (100 percent 48.1 percent = 51.9 percent) lived in the birth state
of both spouses. In 2000, only 46.6 percent of the young same-race married couples were
geographically mobile, a slight decline from 1990, indicating that despite the increasing
opportunity for young Americans to move, there is some slight evidence for an increas-
ing rootedness of Americans to the places they grew up.
2
I use the state where a person was born as a proxy for where the family roots are,
and where the extended family lives. Lifetime interstate mobility is a crude (but the
best available in the census) measure of distance from family and community of origin.
Many kinds of geographic mobility may intervene between birth and union formation;
families can and do make interstate moves together. Furthermore, interstate geographic
mobility fails to capture mobility within states, such as mobility from suburbs or rural
areas to the urban centers in the same state, a kind of mobility that nontraditional
couples are especially likely to make.
Because the census is a cross-sectional (rather than longitudinal) survey, it is im-
possible to determine which individuals lived with their parents prior to mate selection.
Once the young adults are married or cohabiting, nearly all couples live in a different
TABLE 13.1 Geographic Mobility for Young Couples by Type of Couple, 19902000
1990 2000
Type of Couple
Percent
movers
Odds ratio
compared
with (1)
Percent
movers
Odds ratio
compared
with (1)
(1) Heterosexual, same-race, married 48.1 46.6
(2) Heterosexual, same-race, cohabit 50.7 1.11*** 46.9 1.01
(3) Heterosexual, interracial,
married and cohabit
59.1 1.56*** 58.4 1.61***
(4) Same-sex, cohabit 67.5 2.24*** 51.7 1.23***
(5) Same-sex, interracial, cohabit 74.4 3.13*** 64.1 2.05***
*p < .05 **p < .01 ***p < .001, two-tailed test.
Note: All couples are U.S.-born and ages 2029. Geographically mobile couples live in a different US. state than
the birth state of one or both partners. Adjusted estimate for same-sex couples in 2000 (discarding dual marital
status recodes): geographic mobility is 55.9% for all same-sex couples, 71.7% for interracial same-sex couples.
Source: Weighted 1990 and 2000 5% microdata via IPUMS.
Ch-05.indd 167 7/8/2008 12:33:03 PM
168 Part II Sex and Gender
household from their parents (roughly 99 percent do so) so that living with parents
cannot be used to differentiate between union types. Couples who are embedded in the
social world of their parents tend to live near the parents, whereas couples whose union
transgresses against the values of their parents tend to live farther away.
If geographic mobility is an important catalyst for nontraditional unions, then we
would expect to find that nontraditional unions are more geographically mobile than
traditional same-race married couples. Furthermore, the more transgressive and nontra-
ditional the couple is, the more geographically mobile the couple should be. Table 13.1
provides strong evidence to support the hypothesis of a correlation between geographic
mobility and nontraditional unions.
Heterosexual same-race cohabiting couples were more geographically mobile than
same-race heterosexual married couples in 1990 (50.7 percent compared with 48.1 per-
cent), but in 2000 the heterosexual same-race cohabiting couples were only very slightly
more mobile (46.9 percent compared with 46.6 percent). The narrowing gap in geo-
graphic mobility between same-race heterosexual couples who cohabit and who marry
is evidence that cohabitation has lost most of the social stigma that it used to have.
3

Cohabitation is not a particularly visible form of nontraditional union because strangers
cannot tell whether a couple is married or not.
When I compare percentages, I use the odds ratio to make comparisons.
4
The
odds ratio compares each groups mobility percentage with the mobility percentage of
the traditional heterosexual same-race married couples. If the odds ratio is not signifi-
cantly different from 1 that means the geographic mobility of the group cannot be dis-
tinguished from the geographic mobility of traditional couples with statistical certainty.
An odds ratio of significantly greater than 1 indicates that the geographic mobility of the
nontraditional couples is significantly greater than the geographic mobility of traditional
couples in the same census year. According to Table 13.1, in 1990 and 2000 every type
of nontraditional couple had significantly greater geographic mobility than heterosexual
same-race married couples (that is, odds ratios significantly greater than 1) except for
heterosexual same-race cohabiting couples in 2000 (odds ratio of 1.01).
The census allows for a dizzying number of different racial, ethnic, and ancestry cat-
egories. For practical purposes, I collapse the Census Bureaus racial and Hispanic catego-
ries into four: (1) non-Hispanic white; (2) non-Hispanic black; (3) Hispanic; and (4) Asians
and all others. Couples whose races are different (according to the four broad categories)
are interracial.
5
I use race in a broad sense to encompass both traditional racial categories
(black, white, Asian) and the ethnic category Hispanic. Hispanicnon-Hispanic white
couples are the largest group among the interracial (as I have defined the category) couples,
followed by Asian-white and black-white couples. Heterosexual interracial couples in 1990
had 1.56 times higher odds of geographic mobility than same-race married couples.
6
Same-sex cohabiting couples (67.5 percent mobility) were more geographically
mobile than interracial couples in 1990 (but less mobile in 2000), whereas couples that
were interracial and same-sex were the most geographically mobile in 1990 and 2000
(74.4 percent and 64.1 percent mobility, respectively).
7
The more couples transgress
against

traditional family norms, the more likely it is that their families of origin will be
hostile or reject them completely, and the more likely the couples are to want to relocate
to someplace far away.
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Chapter 5 Courtship and Marriage 169
In 1990, same-sex couples had an average geographic mobility of 67.5 percent,
implying an odds of mobility more than twice as high as same-race married couples.
Between 1990 and 2000, the geographical mobility of same-sex couples declined sharply
(whether one uses the full sample or the adjusted sample for 2000). Young gay couples
in 2000 were only slightly more geographically mobile than the comparison category of
young heterosexual same-race married couples. To the extent that comparisons can be
made between the 1990 and 2000 samples of same-sex couples, the pattern of sharply
declining relative geographic mobility is consistent with rapidly increasing acceptance
of gay couples by their parents and extended families.
The different union types in 1990 and 2000 can be ranked by geographic indepen-
dence and, therefore, by implied nonconformity to prevailing norms of union formation,
race, and heterosexuality. According to Table 13.1, heterosexual same-race cohabitation
was slightly nonconformist in 1990, but it became conformist in terms of geographic
mobility by 2000. Interracial unions were moderately non-conformist in 1990 and 2000.
Same-sex couples were the most geographically independent in 1990, but only moderately
more geographically independent than traditional married couples in 2000. Interracial
same-sex couples, facing both the stigma of interraciality and the stigma of homosexual-
ity, were by far the most geographically mobile couples in 1990 and in 2000.
Union formation can occur before or after geographic mobility. Either order of
events can be consistent with the rise of the independent life stage, and both patterns
emerge from my in-depth interviews with interracial and same-sex couples. Karl and Ve-
ronica (the couple I described at the beginning of the [reading]) met when Veronica was
living on her own, but not far geographically from her parents. Karl moved to California in
order to induce Veronica to move and separate herself from the influence of her parents.
Sometimes the geographic movers moved first and then met their future partners.
This order of events is consistent with the idea that geographic mobility is inherent in
the independent life stage and, furthermore, that travel away from home exposes young
adults to new kinds of social situations and new kinds of potential partners. Young adults
living away from home are able to nurture a relationship before they have to disclose the
relationship to their parents.
Alternatively, some respondents met their future partners in their home states be-
fore moving. In this second order of events, the independent life stage is a potential
outlet, a possibility that couples may turn to if their choice of partners results in parental
or familial disapproval or sanction. Even when young adults meet their partners close to
home, the ability to move far away and to start a new life far from home is an important
option that was previously less available. Parental authority and control is diminished
because young adults know they can move away. In premodern times, parental authority
was heightened by the lack of external options; banishment from ones family and com-
munity of origin was tantamount to banishment from organized society.
8
Notes
1. Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the
Underclass (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993).
Ch-05.indd 169 7/8/2008 12:33:04 PM
170 Part II Sex and Gender
2. Claude Fischer, Ever More Rooted Americans (The Survey Research Center, University of
CaliforniaBerkeley, 2000). . . . There was a dramatic rise in interstate mobility for young U.S.-
born persons between 1940 and 1970, followed by a modest decline from 1970 to 1980. Geo-
graphic mobility for young adults was relatively flat from 1980 to 2000; see Michael J. Rosenfeld
and Byung-Soo Kim, The Independence of Young Adults and the Rise of Interracial and Same-
Sex Unions, American Sociological Review 70, no. 4 (2005): 541562. In other words, the rise of
nontraditional unions from 1980 to 2000 cannot be due to a general increase in geographic mobil-
ity alone because geographic mobility was not generally increasing during this period. Residential
independence of young adults increased from 1980 to 2000, age at marriage increased, womens
labor force participation increased, and educational attainment increased . . . but geographic mo-
bility did not increase from 1980 to 2000. I suspect that the young adults use geographic mobility
selectively. For young adults who need to put distance between themselves and their communi-
ties of origin, geographic mobility is an increasingly available option. For young adults who have
traditional heterosexual partners, proximity to community of origin is more valuable now than it
used to be because both husbands and wives have careers, and therefore the potential value of the
extended family to provide free child care was more valuable in 2000 than it was in 1980.
3. Larry L. Bumpass, Whats Happening to the Family? Interactions between Demographic and
Institutional Change, Demography 27, no. 4 (1990): 483 498.
4. If P
1
is a probability, the odds are P
1
/(1 P
1
). When comparing two percentages, one generates the
odds from both percentages and then takes the ratio of the two, or odds ratio = [P
2
/(1 P
2
)]/[P
1
/
(1 P
1
)]. The odds take into account the fact that 100 percent is the maximum for population per-
centages. One cannot generate a population percentage that is twice as much as 51 percent, but one
can always double the odds, or triple the odds, and so on. The odds ratio has a variety of useful fea-
tures, including the fact that the natural logarithm of the odds ratio is normally distributed if samples
are large enough. See Alan Agresti, Categorical Data Analysis (New York: John Wiley, 1990).
5. Collapsing the ethno-racial groups into one dimension is fairly typical in the intermarriage lit-
erature. See Zhenchao Qian, Breaking the Racial Barriers: Variations in Interracial Marriage
between 1980 and 1990, Demography 34 (1997): 263276. For data from the 2000 census, I put
the small percentage of multiracial persons in the residual all other category. In the census ques-
tionnaire, Hispanicity is a separate category from race. Researchers usually refer to Hispanics
in the United States as an ethnic group rather than as a race, to emphasize that the social barri-
ers between Hispanics and non-Hispanics have usually been more flexible than the social barriers
between whites and blacks or between whites and Asians. See Frank D. Bean and Marta Tienda,
The Hispanic Population of the United States (New York: Russell Sage, 1987); Michael J. Rosenfeld,
Measures of Assimilation in the Marriage Market: Mexican Americans 19701990, Journal of
Marriage and the Family 64 (2002): 152162. Laws against racial intermarriage in the United
States usually specified that only intermarriages between whites and blacks, or sometimes between
whites and Asians or whites and Native Americans were illegal; see Rachel Moran, Interracial In-
timacy: The Regulation of Race and Romance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). Mexican
Americans, the largest Hispanic group in the United States, have usually been considered racially
white in the U.S. courts if not in everyday U.S. social interactions; see Ian F. Haney Lpez, White
by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York: New York University Press, 1996).
6. [.591/(1 .591)]/[.481/(1 .481)] = 1.56. Table 13.1 compares the percentage of geographically
mobile couples across five different kinds of couples. One could just as easily compare the percent-
age of geographic movers and geographic stayers who belong to each of the five couple types. For
instance, in 2000, among the 2 million geographically mobile young couples, 66.5 percent were
heterosexual same-race married couples, whereas 0.69 percent were same-sex cohabiting couples.
Among the 2.2 million young couples living in the birth state of both partners, 70.3 percent were
heterosexual same-race married couples whereas 0.31 percent were same-sex cohabiting couples.
This presentation of the data appears different from Table 13.1, but it conveys the same informa-
tion, that is, same-sex couples make up a higher percentage of the movers (0.69 percent) than the
stayers (0.31 percent) (authors tabulation from census microdata, same source as Table 13.1). As
in Table 13.1, all couples were composed of individuals born in the United States, ages twenty to
twenty-nine at the time of the census. The key point is that alternative unions are associated with
geographic mobility. The tables make no distinction as to the causal direction of the correlation,
Ch-05.indd 170 7/8/2008 12:33:04 PM
Chapter 5 Courtship and Marriage 171
that is, whether the formation of alternative unions causes geographic mobility or whether geo-
graphic mobility leads to the formation of alternative unions. The census data and the ethnographic
interviews each provide evidence for both causal directions. In fact, one can reproduce the same
odds ratios as in Table 13.1, starting with the percentages of movers and stayers that belong to each
couple type and treating the couple types two at a time. The reason is that the odds ratio is a sym-
metric measure of the relationship between two variables. See Agresti, Categorical Data Analysis.
7. For a recent quantitative study of geographic mobility and other distinguishing sociodemographic
factors of gays and lesbians, see Esther D. Rothblum and Rhonda Factor, Lesbians and Their
Sisters as a Control Group: Demographic and Mental Health Factors, Psychological Science 12,
no. 1 (2001): 63 69.
8. For instance, Massachusetts passed the Banishment Act in 1778, which ordered that those who
were banished and returned without approval were subject to death.
R E A DI NG 1 4
American Marriage in the Early
Twenty-First Century
Andrew J. Cherlin
The decline of American marriage has been a favorite theme of social commentators,
politicians, and academics over the past few decades. Clearly the nation has seen vast
changes in its family systemin marriage and divorce rates, cohabitation, childbearing,
sexual behavior, and womens work outside the home. Marriage is less dominant as a
social institution in the United States than at any time in history. Alternative pathways
through adulthoodchildbearing outside of marriage, living with a partner without ever
marrying, living apart but having intimate relationshipsare more acceptable and fea-
sible than ever before. But as the new century begins, it is also clear that despite the jere-
miads, marriage has not faded away. In fact, given the many alternatives to marriage now
available, what may be more remarkable is not the decline in marriage but its persistence.
What is surprising is not that fewer people marry, but rather that so many still marry and
that the desire to marry remains widespread. Although marriage has been transformed,
it is still meaningful. In this [reading] I review the changes in American marriage, dis-
cuss their causes, compare marriage in the United States with marriage in the rest of the
developed world, and comment on how the transformation of marriage is likely to affect
American children in the early twenty-first century.
CHANGES IN THE LIFE COURSE
To illuminate what has happened to American marriage, I begin by reviewing the great
demographic changes of the past century, including changes in age at marriage, the share
of Americans ever marrying, cohabitation, nonmarital births, and divorce.
Ch-05.indd 171 7/8/2008 12:33:04 PM
172 Part II Sex and Gender
Recent Trends
Figure 14.1 shows the median age at marriagethe age by which half of all marriages
occurfor men and women from 1890 to 2002. In 1890 the median age was relatively
high, about twenty-six for men and twenty-two for women. During the first half of
the twentieth century the typical age at marriage droppedgradually at first, and then
precipitously after World War II. By the 1950s it had reached historic lows: roughly
twenty-three for men and twenty for women. Many people still think of the 1950s as
the standard by which to compare todays families, but as Figure 14.1 shows, the 1950s
were the anomaly: during that decade young adults married earlier than ever before or
since. Moreover, nearly all young adultsabout 95 percent of whites and 88 percent of
African Americanseventually married.
1
During the 1960s, however, the median age at
marriage began to climb, returning to and then exceeding that prevalent at the start of
the twentieth century. Women, in particular, are marrying substantially later today than
they have at any time for which data are available.
What is more, unmarried young adults are leading very different lives today than
their earlier counterparts once did. The late-marrying young women and men of the
early 1900s typically lived at home before marriage or paid for room and board in some-
one elses home. Even when they were courting, they lived apart from their romantic
interests and, at least among women, the majority abstained from sexual intercourse
until they were engaged or married. They were usually employed, and they often turned
over much of their paycheck to their parents to help rear younger siblings. Few went to
college; most had not even graduated from high school. As recently as 1940, only about
one-third of adults in their late twenties had graduated from high school and just one in
sixteen had graduated from college.
2
Todays unmarried young adults are much more likely to be living independently,
in their own apartments. Five out of six young adults graduate from high school, and
about one-third complete college.
3
They are more likely than their predecessors to spend
28
27
26
25
24
23
22
21
20
A
g
e

(
y
e
a
r
s
)
1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2002
Men
Women
FIGURE 14.1 Median Age at Marriage, 18902002
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Estimated Median Age at First Marriage, by Sex: 1890 to Present,
2003, www.census.gov/population/socdemo/hh-fam/tabMS-2.pdf (accessed July 23, 2004).
Ch-05.indd 172 7/8/2008 12:33:04 PM
Chapter 5 Courtship and Marriage 173
their wages on themselves. Their sexual and intimate lives are also very different from
those of earlier generations. The vast majority of unmarried young adults have had sexual
intercourse. In fact, most women who married during the 1990s first had intercourse five
years or more before marrying.
4
About half of young adults live with a partner before marrying. Cohabitation is
far more common today than it was at any time in the early- or mid-twentieth century
(although it was not unknown among the poor and has been a part of the European
family system in past centuries). Cohabitation today is a diverse, evolving phenomenon.
For some people, it is a prelude to marriage or a trial marriage. For others, a series of
co habiting relationships may be a long-term substitute for marriage. ( Thirty-nine per-
cent of cohabiters in 1995 lived with children of one of the partners.) It is still rare in the
United States for cohabiting relationships to last longabout half end, through marriage
or a breakup, within a year.
5
Despite the drop in marriage and the rise in cohabitation, there has been no ex-
plosion of nonmarital births in the United States. Birth rates have fallen for unmarried
women of all reproductive ages and types of marital status, including adolescents. But
because birth rates have fallen faster for married women than for unmarried women, a
larger share of women who give birth are unmarried. In 1950, only 4 percent of all births
took place outside of marriage. By 1970, the figure was 11 percent; by 1990, 28 percent;
and by 2003, 35 percent. In recent years, then, about one-third of all births have been
to unmarried womenand that is the statistic that has generated the most debate.
6
Of
further concern to many observers is that about half of all unmarried first-time mothers
are adolescents. Academics, policymakers, and private citizens alike express unease about
the negative consequences of adolescent childbearing, both for the parents and for the
children, although whether those consequences are due more to poverty or to teen child-
bearing per se remains controversial.
When people think of nonmarital or out-of-wedlock childbearing, they picture
a single parent. Increasingly, however, nonmarital births are occurring to cohabiting
couplesabout 40 percent according to the latest estimate.
7
One study of unmarried
women giving birth in urban hospitals found that about half were living with the fathers
of their children. Couples in these fragile families, however, rarely marry. One year after
the birth of the child, only 15 percent had married, while 26 percent had broken up.
8
Marriage was not an option for lesbians and gay men in any U.S. jurisdiction until
Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage in 2004. Cohabitation, however, is common
in this group. In a 1992 national survey of sexual behavior, 44 percent of women and
28 percent of men who said they had engaged in homosexual sex in the previous year re-
ported that they were cohabiting.
9
The Census Bureau, which began collecting statistics
on same-sex partnerships in 1990, does not directly ask whether a person is in a romantic
same-sex relationship; rather, it gives people the option of saying that a housemate is
an unmarried partner without specifying the nature of the partnership. Because some
people may not wish to openly report a same-sex relationship to the Census Bureau,
it is hard to determine how reliable these figures are. The bureau reports, however,
that in 2000, 600,000 households were maintained by same-sex partners. A substantial
share33 percent of female partnerships and 22 percent of male partnershipsreported
the presence of children of one or both of the partners.
10
Ch-05.indd 173 7/8/2008 12:33:04 PM
174 Part II Sex and Gender
As rates of entry into marriage were declining in the last half of the twentieth cen-
tury, rates of exit via divorce were increasingas they have been at least since the Civil
War era. At the beginning of the twentieth century, about 10 percent of all marriages
ended in divorce, and the figure rose to about one-third for marriages begun in 1950.
11

But the rise was particularly sharp during the 1960s and 1970s, when the likelihood that
a married couple would divorce increased substantially. Since the 1980s the divorce rate
has remained the same or declined slightly. According to the best estimate, 48 percent
of American marriages, at current rates, would be expected to end in divorce within
twenty years.
12
A few percent more would undoubtedly end in divorce after that. So it is
accurate to say that unless divorce risks change, about half of all marriages today would
end in divorce. ( There are important class and racial-ethnic differences, which I will
discuss below.)
The combination of more divorce and a greater share of births to unmarried
women has increased the proportion of children who are not living with two parents.
Figure 14.2 tracks the share of children living, respectively, with two parents, with one
parent, and with neither parent between 1968 and 2002. It shows a steady decline in
the two-parent share and a corresponding increase in the one-parent share. In 2002, 69
percent of children were living with two parents, including families where one biological
(or adoptive) parent had remarried. Not counting step- or adoptive families, 62 percent,
according to the most recent estimate in 1996, were living with two biological parents.
13

Twenty-seven percent of American children were living with one parent; another 4 per-
cent, with neither parent.
14
Most in the latter group were living with relatives, such as
grandparents.
Where do all these changes leave U.S. marriage patterns and childrens living ar-
rangements in the early twenty-first century? As demographers have noted, many of
the above trends have slowed over the past decade, suggesting a quieting of family
change.
15
Marriage remains the most common living arrangement for raising children.
100
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
P
e
r
c
e
n
t
1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000
Two parents
One parent
Neither parent
FIGURE 14.2 Living Arrangements of U.S. Children, 19682002
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Living Arrangements of U.S. Children under 18 Years Old: 1960 to
Present, 2003, www.census.gov/population/socdemo/hh-fam/tabCH-1.pdf (accessed July 23, 2004).
Ch-05.indd 174 7/8/2008 12:33:04 PM
Chapter 5 Courtship and Marriage 175
At any one time, most American children are being raised by two parents. Marriage,
however, is less dominant in parents and childrens lives than it once was. Children are
more likely to experience life in a single-parent family, either because they are born to
unmarried mothers or because their parents divorce. And children are more likely to
experience instability in their living arrangements as parents form and dissolve mar-
riages and partnerships. Although children are less likely to lose a parent through death
today than they once were, the rise in nonmarital births and in divorce has more than
compensated for the decline in parental death.
16
From the adult perspective, the overall
drop in birth rates and the increases in nonmarital childbearing and divorce mean that,
at any one time, fewer adults are raising children than in the past.
Class and Racial-Ethnic Divergence
To complete this portrait of American marriage one must take note of class and racial-
ethnic variations, for the overall statistics mask contrasting trends in the lives of children
from different racial-ethnic groups and different social classes. In fact, over the past few
decades, the family lives of children have been diverging across class and racial-ethnic
lines.
17
A half-century ago, the family structures of poor and non-poor children were
similar: most children lived in two-parent families. In the intervening years, the increase
in single-parent families has been greater among the poor and near-poor.
18
Women at all
levels of education have been postponing marriage, but less-educated women have post-
poned childbearing less than better-educated women have. The divorce rate in recent
decades appears to have held steady or risen for women without a college education but
fallen for college-educated women.
19
As a result, differences in family structure accord-
ing to social class are much more pronounced than they were fifty years ago.
Consider the share of mothers who are unmarried. Throughout the past half-
century, single motherhood has been more common among women with less education
than among well-educated women. But the gap has grown over time. In 1960, 14 percent
of mothers in the bottom quarter of the educational distribution were unmarried, as
against 4.5 percent of mothers in the top quartera difference of 9.5 percentage points.
By 2000, the corresponding figures were 43 percent for the less-educated mothers and
7 percent for the more educateda gap of 36 percentage points.
20
Sara McLanahan ar-
gues that societal changes such as greater opportunities for women in the labor market,
a resurgence of feminist ideology, and the advent of effective birth control have encour-
aged women to invest in education and careers. Those who make these investments tend
to delay childbearing and marriage, and they are more attractive in the marriage market.
21

Put another way, women at the top and bottom of the educational distribution may be
evolving different reproductive strategies. Among the less educated, early childbearing
outside of marriage has become more common, as the ideal of finding a stable marriage
and then having children has weakened, whereas among the better educated, the strategy
is to delay childbearing and marriage until after investing in schooling and careers.
One result of these developments has been growth in better-educated, dual-earner
married-couple families. Since the 1970s these families have enjoyed much greater in-
come growth than have breadwinner-homemaker families or single-parent families.
What we see today, then, is a growing group of more fortunate children who tend to
Ch-05.indd 175 7/8/2008 12:33:05 PM
176 Part II Sex and Gender
live with two parents whose incomes are adequate or ample and a growing group of less
fortunate children who live with financially pressed single parents. Indeed, both groups
at the extremesthe most and the least fortunate childrenhave been expanding over
the past few decades, while the group of children in the middle has been shrinking.
22
The family lives of African American children have also been diverging from those
of white non-Hispanic children and, to a lesser extent, Hispanic children. African Ameri-
can family patterns were influenced by the institution of slavery, in which marriage was
not legal, and perhaps by African cultural traditions, in which extended families had
more influence and power compared with married couples. As a result, the proportion of
African American children living with single parents has been greater than that of white
children for a century or more.
23
Nevertheless, African American women married at an
earlier age than did white women through the first half of the twentieth century.
24
But since the 1960s, the decline of marriage as a social institution has been more
pronounced among African Americans than among whites. The best recent estimates
suggest that at current rates only about two-thirds of African American women would
be expected ever to marry.
25
Correspondingly, the share of African American children
born outside of marriage has risen to 69 percent.
26
In fact, about three-fifths of Afri-
can American children may never live in a married-couple family while growing up, as
against one-fifth of white children.
27
The greater role of extended kin in African Ameri-
can families may compensate for some of this difference, but the figures do suggest a
strikingly reduced role of marriage among African Americans.
The family patterns of the Hispanic population are quite diverse. Mexican Ameri-
cans have higher birth rates than all other major ethnic groups, and a greater share
of Mexican American births than of African American births is to married women.
28

Moreover, Mexican American families are more likely to include extended kin.
29
Con-
sequently, Mexican Americans have more marriage-based, multigenerational households
than do African Americans. Puerto Ricans, the second largest Hispanic ethnic group
and the most economically disadvantaged, have rates of nonmarital childbearing second
only to African Americans.
30
But Puerto Ricans, like many Latin Americans, have a
tradition of consensual unions, in which a man and woman live together as married but
without approval of the church or a license from the state. So it is likely that more Puerto
Rican single mothers than African American single mothers are living with partners.
EXPLAINING THE TRENDS
Most analysts would agree that both economic and cultural forces have been driving the
changes in American family life over the past half-century. Analysts disagree about the
relative weight of the two, but I will assume that both have been important.
Economic Influences
Two changes in the U.S. labor market have had major implications for families.
31
First,
demand for workers increased in the service sector, where women had gained a foothold
earlier in the century while they were shut out of manufacturing jobs. The rising demand
Ch-05.indd 176 7/8/2008 12:33:05 PM
Chapter 5 Courtship and Marriage 177
encouraged women to get more education and drew married women into the work-
forceinitially, those whose children were school-aged, and later, those with younger
children. Single mothers had long worked, but in 1996 major welfare reform legislation
further encouraged work by setting limits on how long a parent could receive public as-
sistance. The increase in womens paid work, in turn, increased demand for child care
services and greatly increased the number of children cared for outside their homes.
The second work-related development was the decline, starting in the 1970s, in
job opportunities for men without a college education. The flip side of the growth of the
service sector was the decline in manufacturing. As factory jobs moved overseas and
industrial productivity increased through automated equipment and computer-based
controls, demand fell for blue-collar jobs that high schooleducated men once took in
hopes of supporting their families. As a result, average wages in these jobs fell. Even
during the prosperous 1990s, the wages of men without a college degree hardly rose.
32

The decline in job opportunities had two effects. It decreased the attractiveness of non-
college-educated men on the marriage marketmade them less marriageable in Wil-
liam Julius Wilsons termsand thus helped drive marriage rates down among the less
well educated.
33
It also undermined the single-earner family wage system that had been
the ideal in the first half of the twentieth century and increased the incentive for wives
to take paying jobs.
Cultural Developments
But economic forces, important as they were, could not have caused all the changes
in family life noted above. Declines in the availability of marriageable men, for exam-
ple, were not large enough to account, alone, for falling marriage rates among African
Americans.
34
Accompanying the economic changes was a broad cultural shift among
Americans that eroded the norms both of marriage before childbearing and of stable,
lifelong bonds after marriage.
Culturally, American marriage went through two broad transitions during the
twentieth century. The first was described famously by sociologist Ernest Burgess as
a change from institution to companionship.
35
In institutional marriage, the family
was held together by the forces of law, tradition, and religious belief. The husband was
the unquestioned head of the household. Until the late nineteenth century, husband and
wife became one legal person when they marriedand that person was the husband.
A wife could not sue in her own name, and her husband could dispose of her property
as he wished. Until 1920 women could not vote; rather, it was assumed that almost all
women would marry and that their husbands votes would represent their views. But as
the forces of law and tradition weakened in the early decades of the twentieth century, the
newer, companionate marriage arose. It was founded on the importance of the emotional
ties between wife and husbandtheir companionship, friendship, and romantic love.
Spouses drew satisfaction from performing the social roles of breadwinner, homemaker,
and parent. After World War II, the spouses in companionate marriages, much to every-
ones surprise, produced the baby boom: they had more children per family than any other
generation in the twentieth century. The typical age at marriage fell to its lowest point
since at least the late nineteenth century, and the share of all people who ever married
Ch-05.indd 177 7/8/2008 12:33:05 PM
178 Part II Sex and Gender
rose. The decade of the 1950s was the high point of the breadwinner-homemaker, two-,
three-, or even four-child family.
Starting around 1960, marriage went through a second transition. The typical age
at marriage returned to, and then exceeded, the high levels of the early 1900s. Many
young adults stayed single into their mid- to late twenties or even their thirties, some
completing college educations and starting careers. Most women continued working for
pay after they married. Cohabitation outside marriage became much more acceptable.
Childbearing outside marriage became less stigmatized. The birth rate resumed its long
decline and sank to an all-time low. Divorce rates rose to unprecedented levels. Same-sex
partnerships found greater acceptance as well.
During this transition, companionate marriage waned as a cultural ideal. On the
rise were forms of family life that Burgess had not foreseen, particularly marriages in
which both husband and wife worked outside the home and single-parent families that
came into being through divorce or through childbearing outside marriage. The roles
of wives and husbands became more flexible and open to negotiation. And a more indi-
vidualistic perspective on the rewards of marriage took root. When people evaluated how
satisfied they were with their marriages, they began to think more in terms of develop-
ing their own sense of self and less in terms of gaining satisfaction through building a
family and playing the roles of spouse and parent. The result was a transition from the
companionate marriage to what we might call the individualized marriage.
36
THE CURRENT CONTEXT OF MARRIAGE
To be sure, the companionate marriage and the individualized marriage are what
sociologists refer to as ideal types. In reality, the distinctions between the two are less
sharp than I have drawn them. Many marriages, for example, still follow the compan-
ionate ideal. Nevertheless, as a result of the economic and cultural trends noted above,
marriage now exists in a very different context than it did in the past. Today it is but
one among many options available to adults choosing how to shape their personal lives.
More forms of marriage and more alternatives to it are socially acceptable. One may fit
marriage into life in many ways: by first living with a partner, or sequentially with several
partners, without explicitly considering whether to marry; by having children with ones
eventual spouse or with someone else before marrying; by (in some jurisdictions) marry-
ing someone of the same gender and building a shared marital world with few guidelines
to rely on. Within marriage, roles are more flexible and negotiable, although women still
do more of the household work and childrearing.
The rewards that people seek through marriage and other close relationships have
also shifted. Individuals aim for personal growth and deeper intimacy through more open
communication and mutually shared disclosures about feelings with their partners. They
may insist on changes in a relationship that no longer provides them with individualized
rewards. They are less likely than in the past to focus on the rewards gained by fulfill-
ing socially valued roles such as the good parent or the loyal and supportive spouse. As
a result of this changing context, social norms about family and personal life count for
less than they did during the heyday of companionate marriage and far less than during
Ch-05.indd 178 7/8/2008 12:33:05 PM
Chapter 5 Courtship and Marriage 179
the era of institutional marriage. Instead, personal choice and self-development loom
large in peoples construction of their marital careers.
But if marriage is now optional, it remains highly valued. As the practical impor-
tance of marriage has declined, its symbolic importance has remained high and may even
have increased.
37
At its height as an institution in the mid-twentieth century, marriage
was almost required of anyone wishing to be considered a respectable adult. Having
children outside marriage was stigmatized, and a person who remained single through
adulthood was suspect. But as other lifestyle options became more feasible and accept-
able, the need to be married diminished. Nevertheless, marriage remains the preferred
option for most people. Now, however, it is not a step taken lightly or early in young
adulthood. Being ready to marry may mean that a couple has lived together to test
their compatibility, saved for a down payment on a house, or possibly had children to
judge how well they parent together. Once the foundation of adult family life, marriage
is now often the capstone.
Although some observers believe that a culture of poverty has diminished the
value of marriage among poor Americans, research suggests that the poor, the near-poor,
and the middle class conceive of marriage in similar terms. Although marriage rates are
lower among the poor than among the middle class, marriage as an ideal remains strong
for both groups. Ethnographic studies show that many low-income individuals subscribe
to the capstone view of marriage. In a study of low-income families that I carried out
with several collaborators, a twenty-seven-year-old mother told an ethnographer:
38
I was poor all my life and so was Reginald. When I got pregnant, we agreed we would
marry some day in the future because we loved each other and wanted to raise our child
together. But we would not get married until we could afford to get a house and pay all
the utility bills on time. I have this thing about utility bills. Our gas and electric got turned
off all the time when we were growing up and we wanted to make sure that would not
happen when we got married. That was our biggest worry. . . . We worked together and
built up savings and then we got married. Its forever for us.
The poor, the near-poor, and the middle class also seem to view the emotional rewards of
marriage in similar terms. Women of all classes value companionship in marriage: shared
lives, joint childrearing, friendship, romantic love, respect, and fair treatment. For exam-
ple, in a survey conducted in twenty-one cities, African Americans were as likely as non-
Hispanic whites to rate highly the emotional benefits of marriage, such as friendship, sex
life, leisure time, and a sense of security; and Hispanics rated these benefits somewhat
higher than either group.
39
Moreover, in the fragile families study of unmarried low-
and moderate-income couples who had just had a child together, Marcia Carlson, Sara
McLanahan, and Paula England found that mothers and fathers who scored higher on
a scale of relationship supportiveness were substantially more likely to be married one
year later.
40
Among the items in the scale were whether the partner is fair and willing
to compromise during a disagreement, expresses affection or love, encourages or
helps, and does not insult or criticize. In a 2001 national survey of young adults aged
twenty to twenty-nine conducted by the Gallup Organization for the National Marriage
Project, 94 percent of never-married respondents agreed that when you marry, you want
Ch-05.indd 179 7/8/2008 12:33:05 PM
180 Part II Sex and Gender
your spouse to be your soul mate, first and foremost. Only 16 percent agreed that the
main purpose of marriage these days is to have children.
41
As debates over same-sex marriage illustrate, marriage is also highly valued by les-
bians and gay men. In 2003 the Massachusetts Supreme Court struck down a state law
limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples, and same-sex marriage became legal in May
2004 (although opponents may eventually succeed in prohibiting it through a state con-
stitutional amendment). Advocates for same-sex marriage argued that gay and lesbian
couples should be entitled to marry so that they can benefit from the legal rights and
protections that marriage brings. But the Massachusetts debate also showed the symbolic
value of marriage. In response to the courts decision, the state legislature crafted a plan
to enact civil unions for same-sex couples. These legally recognized unions would have
given same-sex couples most of the legal benefits of marriage but would have withheld
the status of being married. The court rejected this remedy, arguing that allowing civil
unions but not marriage would create a stigma of exclusion, because it would deny to
same-sex couples a status that is specially recognized in society and has significant so-
cial and other advantages. That the legislature was willing to provide legal benefits was
not sufficient for the judges, nor for gay and lesbian activists, who rejected civil unions
as second-class citizenship. Nor would it be enough for mainstream Americans, most of
whom are still attached to marriage as a specially recognized status.
PUTTING U.S. MARRIAGE
IN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
How does the place of marriage in the family system in the United States compare with
its place in the family systems of other developed nations? It turns out that marriage in
the United States is quite distinctive.
A Greater Attachment to Marriage
Marriage is more prevalent in the United States than in nearly all other developed West-
ern nations. Figure 14.3 shows the total first marriage rate for women in the United
States and in six other developed nations in 1990. (Shortly after 1990, the U.S. gov-
ernment stopped collecting all the information necessary to calculate this rate.) The
total first marriage rate provides an estimate of the proportion of women who will ever
marry.
42
It must be interpreted carefully because it yields estimates that are too low if
calculated at a time when women are postponing marriage until older ages, as they were
in 1990 in most countries. Thus, all the estimates in Figure 14.3 are probably too low.
Nevertheless, the total first marriage rate is useful in comparing countries at a given
time point, and I have selected the nations in Figure 14.3 to illustrate the variation in
this rate in the developed world. The value of 715 for the United Statesthe highest of
any countryimplies that 715 out of 1,000 women were expected to marry. Italy had a
relatively high value, while France and Sweden had the lowest. In between were Britain,
Canada, and Germany.
Ch-05.indd 180 7/8/2008 12:33:05 PM
Chapter 5 Courtship and Marriage 181
Not only is marriage stronger demographically in the United States than in other
developed countries, it also seems stronger as an ideal. In the World Values Surveys con-
ducted between 1999 and 2001, one question asked of adults was whether they agreed
with the statement, Marriage is an outdated institution. Only 10 percent of Americans
agreeda lower share than in any developed nation except Iceland. Twenty-two percent
of Canadians agreed, as did 26 percent of the British, and 36 percent of the French.
43

Americans seem more attached to marriage as a norm than do citizens in other developed
countries.
This greater attachment to marriage has a long history. As Alexis de Tocqueville
wrote in the 1830s, There is certainly no country in the world where the tie of mar-
riage is more respected than in America or where conjugal happiness is more highly or
worthily appreciated.
44
Historian Nancy Cott has argued that the nations founders
viewed Christian marriage as one of the building blocks of American democracy. The
marriage-based family was seen as a mini-republic in which the husband governed with
the consent of the wife.
45
The U.S. government has long justified laws and policies that
support marriage. In 1888, Supreme Court justice Stephen Field wrote, marriage, as
creating the most important relation in life, as having more to do with the morals and
civilization of a people than any other institution, has always been subject to the control
of the legislature.
46
The conspicuous historical exception to government support for marriage was the
institution of slavery, under which legal marriage was prohibited. Many slaves nevertheless
500
600
700
525
625
725
550
650
750
575
675
United
States
715
Italy
670
Germany
639
Canada
631
Britain
618
France
563
Sweden
557
M
a
r
r
i
a
g
e

p
e
r

1
,
0
0
0

W
o
m
e
n
FIGURE 14.3 Total First Marriage Rates of Women, Selected European and English-
Speaking Countries, 1990
Sources: Alain Monnier and Catherine de Guibert-Lantoine, The Demographic Situation of Europe and
Developed Countries Overseas: An Annual Report, Population; An English Selection 8 (1996 ): 23550; U.S.
National Center for Health Statistics, Advance Report of Final Marriage Statistics, 1989 and 1990,
Monthly Vital Statistics Report 43, no. 12, supp. (Government Printing Office, 1995).
Ch-05.indd 181 7/8/2008 12:33:05 PM
182 Part II Sex and Gender
married informally, often using public rituals such as jumping over a broomstick.
47
Some
scholars also think that slaves may have retained the kinship patterns of West Africa,
where marriage was more a process that unfolded over time in front of the community
than a single event.
48
The prospective husbands family, for example, might wait until the
prospective wife bore a child to finalize the marriage.
The distinctiveness of marriage in the United States is also probably related to
greater religious participation. Tocqueville observed, there is no country in the world
where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in
America.
49
That statement is still true with respect to the developed nations today:
religious vitality is greatest in the United States.
50
For instance, in the World Values
Surveys, 60 percent of Americans reported attending religious services at least monthly,
as against 36 percent of Canadians, 19 percent of the British, and 12 percent of the
French.
51
Americans look to religious institutions for guidance on marriage and family
life more than do the citizens of most Western countries. Sixty-one percent of Americans
agreed with the statement, Generally speaking, do you think that the churches in your
country are giving adequate answers to the problems of family life? Only 48 percent of
Canadians, 30 percent of the British, and 28 percent of the French agreed.
52
Moreover, family policies in many European nations have long promoted births,
whereas American policies generally have not. This emphasis on pronatalism has been
especially prominent in France, where the birth rate began to decline in the 1830s, de-
cades before it did in most other European nations.
53
Since then, the French government
has been concerned about losing ground in population size to potential adversaries such
as Germany.
54
(The Germans felt a similar concern, which peaked in the Nazis prona-
talist policies of the 1930s and early 1940s.)
55
As a result, argues one historian, French
family policy has followed a parental logic that places a high priority on supporting
parents with young childreneven working wives and single parents.
56
These policies
have included family allowances prorated by the number of children, maternity insur-
ance, and maternity leave with partial wage replacement. In contrast, policies in Britain
and the United States followed a male breadwinner logic of supporting married couples
in which the husband worked outside the home and the wife did not.
57
Pronatalist pres-
sure has never been strong in the United States, even though the decline in the U.S.
birth rate started in the early 1800s, because of the nations openness to increasing its
population through immigration.
More Transitions Into and Out of Marriage
In addition to its high rate of marriage, the United States has one of the highest rates of
divorce of any developed nation. Figure 14.4 displays the total divorce rate in 1990 for
the countries shown in Figure 14.3. The total divorce rate, which provides an estimate of
the number of marriages that would end in divorce, has limits similar to those of the total
marriage rate but is likewise useful in international comparisons.
58
Figure 14.4 shows
that the United States had a total divorce rate of 517 divorces per 1,000 marriages, with
just over half of all marriages ending in divorce. Sweden had the second highest total
divorce rate, and other Scandinavian countries had similar levels. The English-speaking
Ch-05.indd 182 7/8/2008 12:33:06 PM
Chapter 5 Courtship and Marriage 183
countries of Britain and Canada were next, followed by France and Germany. Italy had
a very low level of predicted divorce.
Both entry into and exit from marriage are indicators of what Robert Schoen has
called a countrys marriage metabolism: the number of marriage- and divorce-related
transitions that adults and their children undergo.
59
Figure 14.5, which presents the
sum of the total first marriage rate and the total divorce rate, shows that the United
States has by far the highest marriage metabolism of any of the developed countries in
question.
60
Italy, despite its high marriage rate, has the lowest metabolism because of
its very low divorce rate. Sweden, despite its high divorce rate, has a lower metabolism
than the United States because of its lower marriage rate. In other words, what makes
the United States most distinctive is the combination of high marriage and high divorce
rateswhich implies that Americans typically experience more transitions into and out
of marriages than do people in other countries.
A similar trend is evident in movement into and out of cohabiting unions. Whether
in marriage or cohabitation, Americans appear to have far more transitions in their live-in
relationships. According to surveys from the mid-1990s, 5 percent of women in Sweden
had experienced three or more unions (marriages or cohabiting relationships) by age thir-
ty-five. In the rest of Europe, the comparable figure was 1 to 3 percent.
61
But in the United
States, according to a 1995 survey, 9 percent of women aged thirty-five had experienced
50
250
450
100
300
500
150
350
550
200
400
United
States
517
Italy
80
Germany
270
Canada
384
Britain
425
France
321
Sweden
441
D
i
v
o
r
c
e
s

p
e
r

1
,
0
0
0

M
a
r
r
i
a
g
e
s
FIGURE 14.4 Total Divorce Rates, Selected European and English-Speaking
Countries, 1990
Sources: Monnier and de Guibert-Lantoine, The Demographic Situation of Europe and the Developed
Countries Overseas (see Figure 14.3); U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, Advance Report of Final
Divorce Statistics, 1989 and 1990, Monthly Vital Statistics Report 43, no. 9, supp. (Government Printing
Office, 1995).
Ch-05.indd 183 7/8/2008 12:33:06 PM
184 Part II Sex and Gender
three or more unions, nearly double the Swedish figure and far higher than that of other
European nations.
62
By 2002, the U.S. figure had climbed to 12 percent.
63
No other com-
parable nation has such a high level of multiple marital and cohabiting unions.
American children are thus more likely to experience multiple transitions in living
arrangements than are children in Europe. Another study using the same comparative
data from the mid-1990s reported that 12 percent of American children had lived in three
or more parental partnerships by age fifteen, as against 3 percent of children in Sweden,
which has the next highest figure.
64
As transitions out of partnerships occur, children ex-
perience a period of living in a single-parent family. And although American children,
in general, are more likely to live in a single-parent family while growing up than are
children elsewhere, the trend differs by social class. As Sara McLanahan shows in a com-
parison of children whose mothers have low or moderate levels of education, American
children are much more likely than those in several European nations to have lived with
a single mother by age fifteen. The cross-national difference is less pronounced among
children whose mothers are highly educated.
65
Also contributing to the prevalence of single-parent families in the United States
is the relatively large share of births to unmarried, noncohabiting womenabout one in
five.
66
In most other developed nations with numerous nonmarital births, a greater share
of unmarried mothers lives with the fathers of their children. In fact, the increases in
nonmarital births in Europe in recent decades largely reflect births to cohabiting couples
rather than births to single parents.
67
As noted, the United States is seeing a similar trend
toward births to cohabiting couples, but the practice is still less prevalent in the United
States than in many European nations.
700
900
1,100
750
950
1,150
800
1,000
1,250
850
1,050
1,200
United
States
1,232
Italy
750
Germany
909
Canada
1,015
Britain
1,043
France
884
Sweden
998
M
a
r
r
i
a
g
e

M
e
t
a
b
o
l
i
s
m

p
e
r

1
,
0
0
0

W
o
m
e
n
FIGURE 14.5 Marriage Metabolism, Selected European and English-Speaking
Countries, 1990
Sources: See Figures 14.3 and 14.4.
Ch-05.indd 184 7/8/2008 12:33:06 PM
Chapter 5 Courtship and Marriage 185
Greater Economic Inequality
Children in the United States experience greater inequality of economic well-being than
children in most other developed nations. One recent study reported that the gap be-
tween the cash incomes of childrens families in the lowest and highest 10 percent was
larger in the United States than in twelve other developed countries.
68
The low rank-
ing of the United States is attributable both to the higher share of births to single par-
ents and to the higher share of divorce. But even when the comparison is restricted to
children living in single-parent families, children in the United States have the lowest
relative standard of living. For example, one comparative study reported that 60 percent
of single-mother households in the United States were poor, as against 45 percent in
Canada, 40 percent in the United Kingdom, 25 percent in France, 20 percent in Italy,
and 5 percent in Sweden.
69
The differences are caused by variations both in the income
earned by single parents and in the generosity of government cash transfers. In other
words, having a high share of single-parent families predisposes the United States to
have a higher poverty rate, but other countries compensate better for single parenthood
through a combination of social welfare spending and supports for employed parents,
such as child care.
More Controversy over Gay and Lesbian Partnerships
Other developed countries tend to be more open to gay and lesbian partnerships than is
the United States. Two European nations, Belgium and the Netherlands, have legalized
same-sex marriage. By 2005, courts in seven Canadian provinces had ruled that laws
restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples were discriminatory, and the Canadian fed-
eral government had introduced a bill to legalize gay marriage nationwide. Many other
developed nations, including all the Scandinavian countries and Germany, have amended
their family laws to include legal recognition of same-sex partnerships.
70
France enacted its somewhat different form of domestic partnership, the pacte civil
de solidarit (PACS), in 1999. Originally conceived in response to the burden placed on
gay couples by the AIDS epidemic, the 1999 legislation was not restricted to same-sex
partnerships.
71
In fact, it is likely that more opposite-sex partners than same-sex partners
have chosen this option.
72
The PACS does not provide all the legal benefits of marriage.
It is a privately negotiated contract between two persons who are treated legally as indi-
viduals unless they have children. Even when they have children, the contract does not
require one partner to support the other after a dissolution, and judges are reluctant to
award joint custody. Moreover, individuals in a same-sex PACS do not have the right to
adopt children or to use reproductive technology such as in vitro fertilization.
For the most part, the issue of marriage has been less prominent in European
than in North American debates about same-sex partnerships. To this point, no serious
movement for same-sex marriage has appeared in Britain.
73
The French debate, con-
sistent with the nations child-oriented social policies, has focused more on the kinship
rights and relationships of the children of the partners than on whether the legal form
of partnership should include marriage.
74
In 2004, the mayor of Bogles, France, created
a furorsimilar to that seen in the United States following the granting of marriage
Ch-05.indd 185 7/8/2008 12:33:06 PM
186 Part II Sex and Gender
licenses in San Franciscoby marrying a gay couple. But marriage remains less central
to the politics of same-sex partnerships in France and elsewhere in Europe than it is in
North America.
MARRIAGE TRANSFORMED
Marriage remains an important part of the American family system, even if its dominance
has diminished. Sentiment in favor of marriage appears to be stronger in the United
States than elsewhere in the developed world, and the share of adults who are likely
to marry is higheras is, however, their propensity to get divorced. Increasingly, gay
and lesbian activists are arguing, with some success, that they, too, should be allowed
to marry. Even poor and near-poor Americans, who are statistically less likely to marry,
hold to marriage as an ideal. But the contemporary ideal differs from that of the past in
two important ways.
The Contemporary Ideal
First, marriage is now more optional in the United States than it has ever been. Until
recently, family formation rarely occurred outside of marriage. Now, to a greater extent
than ever before, one can choose whether to have children on ones own, in a cohabiting
relationship, or in a marriage. Poor and working-class Americans have radically separated
the timing of childbearing and marriage, with many young adults having children many
years before marrying. At current rates, perhaps one-third of African Americans will
never marry. To be sure, some of the increase in seemingly single-parent families reflects
a rise in the number of cohabiting couples who are having children, but these cohabit-
ing relationships often prove unstable. How frequently the option of marriage becomes
a reality depends heavily on ones race, ethnicity, or social class. African Americans and
less well-educated Americans, for example, still value marriage highly but attain it less
frequently than whites and better-educated Americans.
Second, the rewards of marriage today are more individualized. Being married is
less a required adult role and more an individual achievementa symbol of successful
self-development. And couples are more prone to dissolve a marriage if their individual-
ized rewards seem inadequate. Conversely, marriage is less centered on children. Today,
married couples in the United States are having fewer children than couples have had at
any time in the nations history except during the Great Depression.
The changes in marriage, however, have not been solely cultural in origin. It is
still the norm that a man must be able to provide a steady income to be seen as a good
prospect for marriage. He no longer need earn all the familys income, but he must make
a substantial, stable contribution. As the labor market position of young men without a
college education has eroded, their attractiveness in the marriage market has declined.
Many of their potential partners have chosen to have children outside marriage early in
adulthood rather than to wait for the elusive promise of finding a spouse. Moreover, the
introduction of the birth control pill and the legalization of abortion have allowed young
women and men to become sexually active long before they think about marriage.
Ch-05.indd 186 7/8/2008 12:33:06 PM
Chapter 5 Courtship and Marriage 187
When the American family system is viewed in international perspective, it is most
distinctive for the many transitions into and out of marital and cohabiting unions. Ameri-
cans are more likely to experience multiple unions over the course of their lives than are
Europeans. Moreover, cohabiting relationships in the United States still tend to be rather
short, with a median duration (until either marriage or dissolution) of about one year.
The median duration of cohabiting unions is about four years in Sweden and France
and two or more years in most other European nations.
75
All this means that American
children probably face greater instability in their living arrangements than children any-
where else in the developed world. Recent research has suggested that changes in family
structure, regardless of the beginning and ending configurations, may cause problems
for children.
76
Some of these apparent problems may reflect preexisting family difficul-
ties, but some cause-and-effect association between instability and childrens difficulties
probably exists. If so, the increase in instability over the past decades is a worrisome trend
that may not be receiving the attention it deserves.
Positive Developments
This is not to suggest that all the trends in marriage in America have been harmful to
children. Those who live with two parents or with one well-educated parent may be
doing better than comparable children a few decades ago. As noted, income growth has
been greater in dual-career families, and divorce rates may have fallen among the college
educated. In addition, the time spent with their parents by children in two-parent families
has gone up, not down, and the comparable time spent by children with single parents
has not changed, even though mothers work outside the home has increased.
77
Work-
ing mothers appear to compensate for time spent outside the home by cutting back on
housework and leisureand, for those who are married, relying on modest but notice-
able increases in husbands houseworkto preserve time with children.
78
Meanwhile, the decline in fertility means that there are fewer children in the home
to compete for their parents attention. Middle-class parents engage in an intensive chil-
drearing style that sociologist Annette Lareau calls concerted cultivation: days filled
with organized activities and parent-child discussions designed to enhance their chil-
drens talents, opinions, and skills.
79
While some social critics decry this parenting style,
middle-class children gain skills that will be valuable to them in higher education and in
the labor market. They learn how to communicate with professionals and other adults
in positions of authority. They develop a confident style of interaction that Lareau calls
an emerging sense of entitlement, compared with an emerging sense of constraint
among working-class and lower-class youth.
MARRIAGE AND PUBLIC POLICY
Because marriage has been, and continues to be, stronger in the United States than in
much of Europe, American social welfare policies have focused more on marriage than
have those of many European countries. That emphasis continues. George W. Bushs
administration advocates marriage-promotion programs as the most promising way to
Ch-05.indd 187 7/8/2008 12:33:06 PM
188 Part II Sex and Gender
assist families. No European country has pursued a comparable policy initiative. More-
over, the issue of gay marriage has received more attention in the United States than in
most of Europe. This greater emphasis on marriage in public policy reflects the history
and culture of the United States. Policies that build on and support marriage are likely to
be popular with American voters because they resonate with American values. Europes
more generous public spending on children, regardless of their parents marital status,
is rooted in concerns about low population growth that have never been strong in the
United States. Such public spending on single-parent families also reflects the lesser
influence of religion in Europe. So it is understandable that American policymakers wish-
ing to generate support for new family policy initiatives might turn to marriage-based
programs.
Yet the relatively high value placed on marriage in the United States coexists with
an unmatched level of family instability and large numbers of single-parent families.
This, too, is part of the American cultural heritage. The divorce rate appears to have been
higher in the United States than in most of Europe since the mid-nineteenth century.
80
This emblematic American pattern of high marriage and divorce rates, cohabiting
unions of short duration, and childbearing among unpartnered women and men makes
it unrealistic to think that policymakers will be able to reduce rates of multiple unions
and of single parenthood in the United States to typical European levels. Consequently,
a family policy that relies too heavily on marriage will not help the many children des-
tined to live in single-parent and cohabiting-parent familiesmany of them economi-
cally disadvantagedfor some or all of their formative years. Only assistance directed
to needy families, regardless of their household structure, will reach them. Such policies
are less popular in the United States, as the widespread disdain for cash welfare and the
popularity of the 1996 welfare reform legislation demonstrate. Moreover, some American
policymakers worry that programs that support all parents without regard to partnership
status may decrease peoples incentive to marry.
81
The dilemma for policymakers is how
to make the trade-off between marriage-based and marriage-neutral programs. A careful
balance of both is needed to provide adequate support to American children.
Notes
1. W. C. Rodgers and A. Thornton, Changing Patterns of First Marriage in the United States,
Demography 22 (1985): 26579; Joshua R. Goldstein and Catherine T. Kenney, Marriage Delayed
or Marriage Forgone? New Cohort Forecasts of First Marriage for U.S. Women, American
Sociological Review 66 (2001): 50619.
2. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Percent of People 25 Years Old and Over Who Have Completed
High School or College, by Race, Hispanic Origin and Sex: Selected Years 1940 to 2002, 2003,
table A-2, www.census.gov/population/socdemo/education/tabA-2.pdf (accessed June 24, 2004).
3. Ibid.
4. U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, Fertility, Family Planning, and Womens Health:
New Data from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth, Vital and Health Statistics 23, no. 19
(1997), available at www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_23/sr23 019.pdf (accessed July 13, 2004).
5. Larry L. Bumpass and Hsien-Hen Lu, Trends in Cohabitation and Implications for Childrens
Family Contexts in the United States, Population Studies 54 (2000): 29 41. They note that 49 per-
cent of women aged thirty to thirty-four years old in the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth
reported ever cohabiting.
Ch-05.indd 188 7/8/2008 12:33:07 PM
Chapter 5 Courtship and Marriage 189
6. U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, Number and Percent of Births to Unmarried Women,
by Race and Hispanic Origin: United States, 194099, Vital Statistics of the United States, 1999,
vol. 1, Natality, table 1-17 (available at www.cdc.gov/nehs/data/statab/t99lxl7.pdf [accessed Janu-
ary 12, 2005]); and U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, Births: Preliminary Data for
2002, National Vital Statistics Report 53, no. 9, www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr53/nvsr53_09.
pdf (accessed January 12, 2005). For 2003, the figures were 34.6 percent overall, 23.5 percent for
non-Hispanic whites, 68.5 percent for non-Hispanic blacks, and 45 percent for Hispanics.
7. Ibid.
8. Marcia Carlson, Sara McLanahan, and Paula England, Union Formation in Fragile Families,
Demography 41 (2004): 23761.
9. Dan Black and others, Demographics of the Gay and Lesbian Population in the United States:
Evidence from Available Systematic Data, Demography 37 (2000): 13954.
10. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Married-Couple and Unmarried-Partner Households: 2000 (Gov-
ernment Printing Office, 2003).
11. Andrew Cherlin, Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage (Harvard University Press, 1992).
12. Matthew Bramlett and William D. Mosher, Cohabitation, Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage in the
United States, series 22, no. 2 (U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, Vital and Health Statis-
tics, 2002), available at www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_23/sr23_022.pdf (accessed June 2003).
13. U.S. Bureau of the Census. Detailed Living Arrangements of Children by Race and Hispanic Ori-
gin, 1996, 2001, www.census.gov/population/socdemo/child/p70-74/tab0l.pdf (accessed June 28,
2004). The data are from the 1996 Survey of Income and Program Participation, wave 2.
14. Some of the one-parent families contain an unmarried cohabiting partner, whom the Census Bu-
reau normally does not count as a parent. According to the 1996 estimates cited in the previous
note, about 2.5 percent of children live with a biological or adoptive parent who is cohabiting.
15. Lynne Casper and Suzanne M. Bianchi, Continuity and Change in the American Family ( Thousand
Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 2002).
16. David Ellwood and Christopher Jencks, The Uneven Spread of Single-Parent Families: What
Do We Know? Where Do We Look for Answers? in Social Inequality, edited by Kathryn M.
Neckerman (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2004), pp. 3118.
17. Sara McLanahan, Diverging Destinies: How Children Are Faring under the Second Demo-
graphic Transition, Demography 41 (2004): 60727.
18. Ellwood and Jencks, The Uneven Spread of Single-Parent Families (see note 16).
19. Steven P. Martin, Growing Evidence for a Divorce Divide? Education and Marital Dissolution
Rates in the U.S. since the 1970s, Working Paper on Social Dimensions of Inequality ( New York:
Russell Sage Foundation, 2004).
20. McLanahan, Diverging Destinies (see note 17).
21. Ibid.
22. Isabel Sawhill and Laura Chadwick, Children in Cities: Uncertain Futures (Brookings, 1999); and
Donald J. Hernandez, Americas Children: Resources from Family, Government, and Economy (New
York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1993).
23. S. Philip Morgan and others, Racial Differences in Household and Family Structure at the Turn
of the Century, American Journal of Sociology 98 (1993): 798828.
24. Cherlin, Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage (see note 11).
25. Goldstein and Kenney, Marriage Delayed or Marriage Forgone? (see note 1).
26. U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, Births: Preliminary Data (see note 6).
27. Bumpass and Lu, Trends in Cohabitation (see note 5).
28. U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, Revised Birth and Fertility Rates for the 1990s and
New Rates for the Hispanic Populations, 2000 and 2001: United States, National Vital Statistics
Reports 51, no. 12 (Government Printing Office, 2003); and U.S. National Center for Health
Statistics, Births: Final Data for 2000, National Vital Statistics Report 50, no. 5 (Government
Printing Office, 2002).
29. Frank D. Bean and Marta Tienda, The Hispanic Population of the United States (New York: Russell
Sage Foundation, 1987).
30. U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, Births: Final Data for 2000 (see note 28).
Ch-05.indd 189 7/8/2008 12:33:07 PM
190 Part II Sex and Gender
31. McLanahan, Diverging Destinies (see note 17).
32. Elise Richer and others, Boom Times a Bust: Declining Employment among Less-Educated Young Men
(Washington: Center for Law and Social Policy, 2003); available at www.clasp.org/DMS/Docu-
ments/1058362464.08/Boom_Times.pdf (accessed July 13, 2004).
33. William J. Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy (Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1987).
34. Robert D. Mare and Christopher Winship, Socioeconomic Change and the Decline in Mar-
riage for Blacks and Whites, in The Urban Underclass, edited by Christopher Jencks and Paul
Peterson (Brookings, 1991), pp. 175202; and Daniel T. Lichter, Diane K. McLaughlin, and
David C. Ribar, Economic Restructuring and the Retreat from Marriage, Social Science Research
31 (2002): 23056.
35. Ernest W. Burgess and Harvey J. Locke, The Family: From Institution to Companionship (New York:
American Book Company, 1945).
36. Andrew J. Cherlin, The Deinstitutionalization of American Marriage, Journal of Marriage and
the Family 66 (2004): 84861.
37. Ibid.
38. Linda Burton of Pennsylvania State University directed the ethnographic component of the study.
For a general description, see Pamela Winston and others, Welfare, Children, and Families:
A Three-City Study Overview and Design, 1999, www.jhu.edu\~welfare\overviewanddesign.pdf
(accessed July 10, 2004).
39. M. Belinda Tucker, Marital Values and Expectations in Context: Results from a 21-City Survey,
in The Ties That Bind: Perspectives on Marriage and Cohabitation, edited by Linda J. Waite (New
York: Aldine de Gruyter, 2000), pp. 16687.
40. Carlson, McLanahan, and England, Union Formation (see note 8).
41. Barbara Dafoe Whitehead and David Popenoe, Who Wants to Marry a Soul Mate? in The State
of Our Unions, 2001, The National Marriage Project, Rutgers University, pp. 616, 2001, available
at marriage.rutgers.edu/Publications/SOOU/NMPAR200l.pdf (accessed February 12, 2004).
42. The estimate assumes that the age-specific marriage rates in the year of calculation (in this case,
1990) will remain unchanged in future years. Since this assumption is unrealistic, the total mar-
riage rate is unlikely to predict the future accurately. But it does demonstrate the rate of marriage
implied by current trends.
43. Ronald Inglehart and others, Human Beliefs and Values: A Cross-Cultural Soureebook Based on the
19992002 Values Surveys (Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 2004).
44. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 1 (New York: Knopf, Everymans Library, 1994),
p. 304.
45. Nancy Cott, Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation ( Harvard University Press, 2000).
46. Quoted in ibid., pp. 10203.
47. Herbert G. Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 17501925 (New York: Pantheon,
1976).
48. Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women and the Family from Slavery to the
Present (New York: Basic Books, 1985).
49. Tocqueville, Democracy in America (see note 44), p. 303.
50. Grace Davie, Patterns of Religion in Western Europe: An Exceptional Case, in The Black-
well Companion to the Sociology of Religion, edited by Richard K. Fenn (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001),
pp. 264 78; and Seymour Martin Lipset, American Exceptionalism Reaffirmed, Tocqueville
Review 10 (1990): 335.
51. Inglehart and others, Human Beliefs and Values (see note 43).
52. Ibid.
53. See the discussion in Ron J. Lesthaeghe, The Decline of Belgian Fertility, 18001970 (Princeton
University Press, 1977), p. 304.
54. Alisa Klaus, Depopulation and Race Suicide: Maternalism and Pronatalist Ideologies in France
and the United States, in Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of the Welfare
State, edited by Seth Koven and Sonya Michel (New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 188212.
55. Paul Ginsborg, The Family Politics of the Great Dictators, in Family Life in the Twentieth Cen-
tury, edited by David I. Kertzer and Marzio Barbagli (Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 18897.
Ch-05.indd 190 7/8/2008 12:33:07 PM
Chapter 5 Courtship and Marriage 191
56. Susan Pedersen, Family, Dependence, and the Origins of the Welfare State: Britain and France, 1914 1945
(Cambridge University Press, 1993).
57. Ibid.
58. The total divorce rate is formed by summing duration-specific divorce rates prevalent in the year
of observationin this case, 1990. It therefore assumes that the duration-specific rates of 1990
will remain the same in future years. It shares the limits of the total marriage rate (see note 42).
59. Robert Schoen and Robin M. Weinick, The Slowing Metabolism of Marriage: Figures from
1988 U.S. Marital Status Life Tables, Demography 39 (1993): 737 46. Schoen and Weinick used
life table calculations to establish the marriage and divorce probabilities for American men and
women. Unfortunately, only total marriage rates and total divorce rates are available for other
countries. Consequently, I calculated a total divorce rate for the United States from published
duration-specific divorce rates for 1990. I then summed the total first marriage rate and total
divorce rate for the United States and the other countries displayed in Figure 14.4. Although this
procedure is not as accurate as using rates generated by life tables, the difference is unlikely to
alter the relative positions of the countries in the figure.
60. Strictly speaking, I should use the total divorce rate for people in first marriages (as opposed to
including people in remarriages), but the available data do not allow for that level of precision.
61. Alexia Frnkranz-Prskawetz and others, Pathways to Stepfamily Formation in Europe: Results
from the FFS, Demographic Research 8 (2003): 107 49.
62. Authors calculation from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth microdata file.
63. Authors calculation from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth microdata file.
64. Patrick Heuveline, Jeffrey M. Timberlake, and Frank F. Furstenberg Jr., Shifting Childrearing
to Single Mothers: Results from 17 Western Countries, Population and Development Review 29
(2003): 4771. The figures quoted appear in note 6.
65. McLanahan, Diverging Destinies (see note 17).
66. About one-third of all births are to unmarried mothers, and Bumpass and Lu report that about
60 percent of unmarried mothers in 1995 were not cohabiting (0.33 0.60 = 0.198). Bumpass and
Lu, Trends in Cohabitation (see note 5).
67. Kathleen Kiernan, European Perspectives on Nonmarital Childbearing, in Out of Wedlock:
Causes and Consequences of Nonmarital Fertility, edited by Lawrence L. Wu and Barbara Wolfe
(New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2001), pp. 77108.
68. Lars Osberg, Timothy M. Smeeding, and Jonathan Schwabish, Income Distribution and Pub-
lic Social Expenditure: Theories, Effects, and Evidence, in Social Inequality, edited by Kathryn
M. Neckerman (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2004), pp. 82159.
69. Poverty was defined as having a family income of less than half of the median income for all fami-
lies. Bruce Bradbury and Markus Jntti, Child-Poverty across the Industrialized World: Evidence
from the Luxembourg Income Study, in Child Well-Being, Child Poverty and Child Policy in Modern
Nations: What Do We Know? edited by Koen Vleminckx and Timothy M. Smeeding (Bristol, En-
gland: Policy Press, 2000), pp. 1132.
70. Marzio Barbagli and David I. Kertzer, Introduction, and Paulo Ronfani, Family Law in Eu-
rope, in Family Life in the Twentieth Century, edited by David I. Kertzer and Marzio Barbagli ( Yale
University Press, 2003), respectively, pp. xixliv and 114 51.
71. Claude Martin and Irne Thry, The Pacs and Marriage and Cohabitation in France, Interna-
tional Journal of Law, Policy and the Family 15 (2001): 13558.
72. Patrick Festy, The Civil Solidarity Pact (PACS) in France: An Impossible Evaluation, Popula-
tion et Socits, no. 369 (2001): 1 4.
73. John Eekelaar, The End of an Era? Journal of Family History 28 (2003): 10822.
74. Eric Fassin, Same Sex, Different Politics: Gay Marriage Debates in France and the United
States, Popular Culture 13 (2001): 21532.
75. Kathleen Kiernan, Cohabitation in Western Europe, Population Trends 96 (Summer 1999):
2532.
76. See, for example, Lawrence L. Wu and Brian C. Martinson, Family Structure and the Risk of
Premarital Birth, American Sociological Review 59 (1993): 21032, Jake M. Najman and others,
Impact of Family Type and Family Quality on Child Behavior Problems: A Longitudinal Study,
Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 36 (1997): 1357 65.
Ch-05.indd 191 7/8/2008 12:33:07 PM
192 Part II Sex and Gender
77. John F. Sandberg and Sandra D. Hofferth, Changes in Childrens Time with Parents, U.S. 1981
1997, Demography 38 (2001): 42336.
78. Suzanne M. Bianchi, Maternal Employment and Time with Children: Dramatic Change or
Surprising Continuity? Demography 37 (2000): 40114.
79. Annette Lareau, Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life (University of California Press,
2003).
80. Gren Therborn, Between Sex and Power: Family in the World, 19002000 (London: Routledge,
2004).
81. This proposition is similar to what David Ellwood has called the assistance-family structure
conundrum. David T. Ellwood, Poor Support: Poverty and the American Family (New York: Basic
Books, 1988).
R E A DI NG 1 5
Grounds for Marriage: How
Relationships Succeed or Fail
Arlene Skolnick
The home made by one man and one woman bound together until death do ye part has
in large measure given way to trial marriage.
Chauncy J. Hawkins (1907)
Marriage has universally fallen into awful disrepute.
Martin Luther (1522)
On June 2, 1986, Newsweek magazine featured a cover story that proclaimed that a woman
over 40 had a greater chance of being killed by a terrorist than of getting married. The
story, based on one study, set off a media blitz, along with a wave of alarm and anxiety
among single women. Eventually, however, after the furor died down, other researchers
pointed to serious flaws in the study Newsweek had relied on for the story. The study had
relied on trends in earlier generations of women to make predictions about the future of
unmarried women today.
In the summer of 1999, another report about the alarming state of marriage was
released (National Marriage Project Report, 1999). Exhibit A was a finding that, between
1960 and 1990, the marriage rate among young adults had gone down 23 percent. Again
a widely publicized finding had to be corrected. The problem this time was including
teenagers as young as 15 as young adults in 1960 and 1996. Teenagers were far more likely
to get married in the 1950s than the 1990s or at any previous time in American history.
The death of marriage has been proclaimed many times in American history, but in
the first years of the twenty-first century, the institution is still alive. Despite todays high
divorce rates, the rise in one-parent families, and other trends, the United States today has
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Chapter 5 Courtship and Marriage 193
the highest marriage rate among the advanced industrial countries. The Census Bureau
estimates that about 90 percent of Americans will eventually marry.
The combination of both high marriage and high divorce rates seems paradoxical,
but actually represents two sides of the same coin: the importance of the emotional re-
lationship between the partners. Marriage for love was not unknown in earlier eras, but
other, more practical considerations usually came firsteconomic security, status, and
the interests of parents and kin.
Even in the 1950s, the heyday of the marital togetherness ideal, researchers found
that so-called empty shell or disengaged marriages were widespread. Such couples
lived under one roof, but seemed to have little or no emotional connection to one an-
other. Some of these spouses considered themselves happily married, but others, particu-
larly women, lived in quiet desperation.
Couples today have much higher expectations. Between the 1950s and the 1970s,
American attitudes toward marriage changed dramatically as part of what has been called
a psychological revolutiona transformation in the way people look at marriage, par-
enthood, and their lives in general ( Veroff, Donvan, and Kulka, 1981). In 1957, people
judged themselves and their partners in terms of how well the partners fulfilled their
social roles in marriage. Is he a good provider? Is she a good homemaker?
By the 1970s, people had become more psychologically oriented, seeking emotional
warmth and intimacy in marriage. Why the change? The shift is linked to higher educa-
tional levels. In the 1950s, the psychological approach to relationships was found among
the relatively few Americans who had been to college. By the 1970s the psychological ap-
proach to marriage and family life had become, as the authors put it, common coin.
In an era when divorce has lost its stigma and remaining married has become as
much a choice as getting married in first place, its not surprising that a loving and re-
warding relationship has become the gold standard for marital success. Although they
know the statistics, few if any couples go to the altar expecting that their own relation-
ship will break down. How do relationships become unhappy? What is the process that
transforms happy newlyweds into emotional strangers? In the rest of this paper, I discuss
my own research on marriage in the context of what others have been learning in answer
to these questions.
THE STUDY OF MARRIAGE
PAST AND PRESENT
In recent years, there have been great advances in the study of couple relationships. Until
the 1970s there were many studies of what was called marital adjustment, happiness,
success, or satisfaction. This research was usually based on large surveys in which
peoples ratings of their own marital happiness were correlated with other character-
istics. The best-established correlates were demographic factors, such as occupation,
education, income, age at marriage, religious participation, and the like. There was little
theorizing about why these links might exist.
The use of self-reported ratings to study marriage came under a lot of criticism.
Some researchers argued that the concept of marital happiness was hopelessly vague;
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194 Part II Sex and Gender
others questioned the validity of simply asking people to rate their own marriages. But
there were deeper problems with these earlier studies. Even the best self-report measure
can hardly capture what goes on in the private psychosocial theater of married life.
In the 1970s, a new wave of marital research began to breach the wall of marital
privacy. Psychologists, clinicians, and social scientists began to observe families interact-
ing with one another in laboratories and clinics, usually through one-way mirrors. The
new technology of videotaping made it possible to preserve these interactions for later
analysis. Behavioral therapists and researchers began to produce a literature describ-
ing the behavior of happy and unhappy couples. At the same time, social psychologists
began to study close relationships of various kinds.
During this period I began my own research into marriage, using couples who had
taken part in the longitudinal studies carried out at the Institute of Human Development
(IHD) at the University of California at Berkeley. One member of the couple had been
part of the study since childhood, and had been born either in 1921 or 1928. Each spouse
had been interviewed in depth in 1958, when the study members were 30 or 37 years old.
They were interviewed again in 1970 and 1982.
Despite the richness of the longitudinal data, it did not include observations of the
spouses interacting with one another, a method of research that did not come on the scene
until the study was decades old. On the other hand, few of the new observational studies
of marriage have included the kind of in-depth material on the couples lives as did the
longitudinal study. It seemed to me that the ideal study of marriage, assuming cost was not
an issue, would include both observational and interview data as well as a sort of ethnog-
raphy of the couples lives at home. A few years ago, I was offered the opportunity to be
involved in a small version of such a project in a study of the marriages of police officers.
I will discuss this study later on.
The new wave of research has revealed a great deal about the complex emotional
dynamics of marriage, and perhaps most usefully, revealed that some widespread beliefs
about couple relations are incorrect. But there is still a great deal more to learn. There
is as yet no grand theory of marriage, no one royal road to understanding marriage, no
one size fits all prescriptions for marital success. But we have gained some important
insights to marital (and marriage-like) relationships. And there seems to be a striking
convergence of findings emerging from different approaches to studying couples. Here
are some of these insights.
For Better and For Worse
The sociologist Jesse Bernard argued that every marriage contains two marriages, the
husbands and the wifes (1972), and that his is better than hers. Bernards claims have
been controversial, but in general, her idea that husbands and wives have different per-
spectives on their marriage has held up over time.
But apart from gender differences, marital relationships also seem to divide in two
another way: every marriage contains within it both a good marriage and bad marriage.
Early studies of marital quality assumed that all marriages could be lined up along a single
dimension of satisfaction, adjustment or happinesshappy couples would be at one end of
the scale, unhappy ones at the other, and most couples would fall somewhere in between.
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Chapter 5 Courtship and Marriage 195
More recently, marriage researchers have found that that you need two separate
dimensions to capture the quality of a relationship, a positive dimension and a nega-
tive one. The key to marital happiness is the balance between the good marriage and the
bad one. The finding emerges in different ways in studies using different methods.
In my own research, I came across this same good marriage-bad marriage phe-
nomenon among the Berkeley longitudinal couples (Skolnick, 1981). First, we identified
couples ranging from high and low in marital satisfaction based on ratings of the mar-
riage each spouse had made, combined with ratings made by clinical interviewers who
had seen each separately. Later we examined transcripts of the clinical interviews to see
how people who had scored high or low on measures of marital quality described their
marriages. In the course of the interview, each person was asked about his or her satisfac-
tions and dissatisfactions in the relationship.
Surprisingly, looking only at statements about dissatisfaction, it was hard to tell
the happily married from their unhappy counterparts. None of the happy spouses were
without some complaints or irritations. One husband went on at length at what a terrible
homemaker his wife was. The wife in one of the most highly rated marriages reported
having silent argumentsperiods of not speaking to one anotherwhich lasted about
a week. People always say you should talk over your differences, the wife said, but it
doesnt work in our family.
Only in descriptions of the satisfactions of the marriage did the contrast emerge. The
happy couples described close, affectionate, and often romantic relationships. One man
remarked after almost 30 years of marriage, I still have stars in my eyes. A woman said,
I just cant wait for him to get home every night; just having him around is terrific.
The most systematic evidence for this good marriage/bad marriage model emerges
from the extensive program of studies of marital interaction carried out by Gottman,
Levenson, and associates (1992, 1998). Their research is based on videotaped observa-
tions of couple discussions in a laboratory setting. These intensive studies not only record
facial expressions, gestures, and tone of voice, but also monitor heart rates and other
physiological indicators of stress.
Surprisingly, these studies do not confirm the widespread notion that anger is the
great destroyer of marital relationships. Among the indicators that do predict marital
distress and eventual divorce are high levels of physiological arousal, that is stress, as
couples interact with one another, a tendency for quarrels to escalate in intensity, and
a tendency to keep the argument going even after the other person has tried to make
up and end it.
As noted earlier, the key factor in the success of a marriage is not the amount of
anger or other negative emotion in the relationshipno marriage always runs smoothly
and cheerfullybut the balance between positive and negative feelings and actions. In-
deed, Gottman gives a precise estimate of this ratio in successful marriagesfive to one.
In other words, the good marriage has to be five times better than the bad marriage
is bad.
It seems as if the good marriage acts like a reservoir of positive feelings that can
keep arguments from escalating out of control. In virtually every marriage and family,
emotional brushfires are constantly breaking out. Whether these flare-ups develop into
major bonfires depends on the balance between the good marriage and the bad one.
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196 Part II Sex and Gender
Gottman identifies a set of four behavioral patterns, that he calls the four horse-
men of the apocalypse; they constitute a series of escalating signs of marital breakdown.
These include: criticism (not just complaining about a specific act, but denouncing the
spouses whole character); contempt (insults, name calling, mockery); then defensiveness
(each spouse feeling hurt, mistreated and misunderstood by the other); and finally, stone-
walling (one or both partners withdraws into silence and avoidance).
Tolstoy Was Wrong: Happy Marriages Are Not All Alike
The most common approach to understanding marriage, as we have seen, is to correlate
ratings of marital happiness with other variables. But focusing on variables masks an
enormous amount of individual variation. Some studies over the years, however, have
looked at differences among marriages at a given level of satisfaction. Among the first was
a widely cited study published in 1965. John Cuber and Peggy Harroff interviewed 437
successful upper-middle-class men and women about their lives and marriages. These
people had been married for at least 15 years to their original spouses, and reported
themselves as being satisfied with their marriages. Yet the authors found enormous varia-
tion in marital style among these stable, contented upscale couples.
Only one out of six marriages in the sample conformed to the image of what mar-
riage is supposed to bethat is, a relationship based on strong emotional bonds of love
and friendship. The majority of others, however, did not fit the ideal model. Some cou-
ples were conflict habituated, the bickering, battling spouses often portrayed in plays,
movies, and television. Yet they were content with their marriages and did not define
their fighting as a problem.
A second group of couples were in devitalized marriages; starting out in close,
loving relationships, they had drifted apart over the years. In the third passive conge-
nial type of relationship, the partners were never in love or emotionally close in the
first place. Marriage for these couples was a comfortable and convenient lifestyle, leaving
them free to devote their energy to their careers or other interests.
The most recent studies of marital types come from the research of John Gottman
and his colleagues, described earlier. Along with identifying early warning signs of later
marital trouble and divorce, Gottman also observed that happy, successful marriages
were not all alike. Moreover, he also found that much of the conventional wisdom about
marriage is misguided.
For example, marital counselors and popular writings on marriage often advocate
what Gottman calls a validation or active-listening model. They recommend that
when couples have a disagreement, they should speak to one another as a therapist speaks
to a client. For example, a wife is supposed to state her complaints directly to the hus-
band, in the form of I statements, for example, I feel youre not doing your share of
the housework. Then he is supposed to calmly respond by paraphrasing what she has
said, and empathize with her feelings, Sounds like youre upset about this.
To their surprise, Gottman and his colleagues found that very few couples actually
fit this therapeutically approved, validating model of marriage. Like Cuber and Har-
roff, they found that people can be happily married even if they fight a lot; Gottman calls
these volatile marriages. At the opposite extreme, were avoidant couples, who did
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Chapter 5 Courtship and Marriage 197
not argue or even talk about their conflicts. These happily married couples also defied
conventional wisdom about the importance of communication in marriage.
In my own study, I too found a great deal of variation among the longitudinal
couples. Apart from the deep friendship that typified all the happy couples they differed
in many other ways. Some spent virtually 24 hours a day together, others went their own
ways, going off to parties or weekends alone. Some were very traditional in their gender
patterns, others egalitarian. Some were emotionally close to their relatives, some were
distant. Some had a wide circle of friends, some were virtual hermits.
They could come from happy or unhappy families. The wife in one of the happi-
est marriages had a very difficult relationship with her father; she grew up hating men
and planned never to marry. Her husband also grew up in an unhappy home where the
parents eventually divorced. In short, if the emotional core of marriage is good, it seems
to matter very little what kind of lifestyle the couple chooses to follow.
Marriage Is a Movie, Not a Snapshot
The ancient Greek philosopher Heroclitis once said that you can never step into the
same river twice, because it is always moving. The same is true of marriage. A variety
of studies show that over a relatively short period of time, marriages and families can
change in the ways they interact and in their emotional atmosphere. In studies of police
officer couples, to be described in more detail below, the same marriage could look very
different from one laboratory session to the next, depending on how much stress the of-
ficer had experienced on each day.
The IHD longitudinal studies made it possible to follow the same couples over
several decades. Consider the following examples, based on the first two adult follow-ups
around 1960 and the early 1970s (Skolnick, 1981):
Seen in 1960, when they were in their early 30s, the marriage of Jack and Ellen did
not look promising. Jack was an aloof husband and uninvolved father. Ellen was over-
whelmed by caring for three small children. She had a variety of physical ailments, and
needed a steady dose of tranquilizers to calm her anxieties. Ten years later, however, she
was in good health and enjoying life. She and Jack had become a warm, loving couple.
Martin and Julia were a happily married couple in 1960. They had two children
they adored, an active social life, and were fixing up a new home they had bought. Martin
was looking forward to a new business venture. A decade later, Martin had developed a
severe drinking problem that had disrupted every aspect of their relationship. Thinking
seriously about divorce, Julia said it all had started when the business had started to fail
and ultimately went bankrupt.
Perhaps the most striking impression from following these marriages through long
periods of time is the great potential for change in intimate relationships. Those early
interviews suggest that many couples had what would today be called dysfunctional
marriages. At the time, it seemed to the spouses, as well as to the interviewers, that the
source of the trouble was psychological problems in the husband or wife or both, or else
that they were incompatible.
For some couples, such explanations were valid: at later interviews the same emo-
tional or personality difficulties were clear. Some people, however, had divorced and
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198 Part II Sex and Gender
married again to people with whom they were a better fit. One man who had seemed
emotionally immature all his life finally found happiness in his third marriage. He mar-
ried a younger woman who was both nurturing to him and yet a psychological age
mate, as he put it.
Although close to a third of the IHD marriages eventually did end in divorce, all the
IHD couples were married years before the divorce revolution of the 1970s made divorce
legally easier to obtain, as well as more common and socially acceptable. Many unhappy
couples remained married long enough to outgrow their earlier difficulties, or advance
past the circumstances that were causing the difficulties in the first place. Viewed from a
later time, marital distress at one period or stage in life seemed to be rooted in situational
factors: problems at work, trouble with in-laws or money, bad housing, or too many babies
too close together. In the midst of these strains, however, it was easy to blame problems
on a husbands or a wifes basic character. Only later, when the situation had changed, did
it seem that there was nothing inherently wrong with the couples relationship.
The Critical Events of a Marriage May Not Be
inside the Marriage
The longitudinal data, as noted above, revealed a striking amount of change for better or
worse depending on a large variety of life circumstances. While the impact of such ex-
ternal factors remains a relatively understudied source of marital distress, there has been
growing interest in the impact of work and working conditionsespecially job stresson
family life. One of the most stressful occupations, police work, also suffers from very high
rates of divorce, domestic violence, and alcoholism. In 1997, Robert Levenson and I took
part in collaboration between the University of California and a West Coast urban police
department (Levenson, Roberts, and Bellows, 1998; Skolnick, 1998). We focused on job
stress and marriage. This was a small, exploratory study, using too few coupleseleven
for statistical analysis, but it yielded some striking preliminary findings.
Briefly, Levensons part of the study looked at the impact of stress on couple inter-
action in the laboratory. His procedures called for each spouse to keep a stress diary every
day for 30 days. Once a week for four weeks, the couples came to the laboratory at the
end of the work day, after eight hours of being apart. Their interaction was videotaped,
and physiological responses of each spouse were monitored continuously.
In my part of the project, we used an adaptation of the IHD clinical interview with
officers and their wives in their homes. ( The sample did not include female officers or
police couples.) The aim was to examine their perceptions of police work and its impact
on their marriages, their general life circumstances, and the sources of stress and support
in their lives. I discovered that these officers and their wives were making heroic efforts
to do well in their work and family lives against enormous odds. The obvious dangers
and disasters police must deal with are only part of the story; sleep deprivation, frustra-
tion with the department bureaucracy, and inadequate equipment were some of the other
factors adding up to an enormous stress.
In spite of their difficult lives, these couples seemed to have good, well-functioning
marriages, at home and in the laboratory, except on high stress days. Levensons study
was able to examine the direct effects of different levels of stress on the face-to-face
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Chapter 5 Courtship and Marriage 199
inter action of these couplessomething that had not been done before. The findings
were striking. Variations in the husbands work stress had a marked impact on both
couple interaction and the physiological indicators of emotional arousal.
More surprising, it was not just the police officer who showed evidence of stress,
but the partner as well. Even before either partner had said a word, while they were just
sitting quietly, both the officer and the spouse showed signs of physiological arousal. In
particular, there was a kind of paralysis of the positive emotion system in both partners
(Levenson, Roberts, and Bellows, 1998). Looking at the videotapes, you didnt need the
physiological measures to see what was going on. The husbands restless agitation was
clear, as was the wifes tense and wary response to it. The wives seemed frozen in their
seats, barely able to move. In fact, just watching the couples on videotape is enough to
make a viewer also feel tense and uneasy.
Recall that these couples did not look or act this way on the days they were not
under high job stress. However, on high stress days, the couples were showing the same
warning signs that Gottman and Levenson had found in their earlier studies to be pre-
dictors of divorce. The paralysis of the positive emotion system means that the good
aspects of the marriage were unavailable just when they were most needed. Repeated
often enough, such moments can strain even a good marriage; they create an emotional
climate where tempers can easily flare, hurtful things may be said, and problems go
unsolved. Police work may be an extreme example of a high-pressure occupation, but it
is far from the only one. Whats the difference between a stressed-out business execu-
tive and a stressed-out police officer? asked a New York columnist not long ago, after a
terrible case of domestic violence in a police family. The officer, he went on, brings
home a loaded gun.
CAN MARRIAGE BE SAVED?
The notion that marriage is a dying institution is remarkably persistent among the
American public. Politicians and social critics, particularly conservative ones, insist that
divorce, cohabitation, single parenthood, and other recent trends signal moral decline
and the unraveling of the social fabric. Some family scholars agree with these pessimistic
conclusions. Others argue that marriage and the family are not collapsing but simply
becoming more diverse.
A third possibility is that American families are passing through a cultural lag, a
difficult in-between period, as they adapt to new social and economic conditions. While
a rapidly changing world outside the home has moved towards greater gender equality,
the roles of men and women inside the home have changed relatively little. Across the
twentieth century, schools, businesses, the professions, and other institutions have be-
come increasingly neutral about gender. Moreover, legal and political trends in modern
democracies have undermined the legitimacy of gender and other forms of caste-like
inequality, at least in principle.
To be sure, we have not yet achieved full equality. But we have become used to see-
ing women in the workplace, even in such formerly all-male institutions as the police, the
military, the Congress, and the Supreme Court. The family remains the one institution
Ch-05.indd 199 7/8/2008 12:33:08 PM
200 Part II Sex and Gender
still based on separate and distinct roles for men and women. Despite the vast social and
economic changes that have transformed our daily lives, the old gender roles remain
deeply rooted in our cultural assumptions and definitions of masculinity and femininity.
At the same time, a more equal or symmetrical model of marriage is struggling to be
born. Surveys show that most Americans, especially young people, favor equal rather
than traditional marriage.
But the transition to such a model has been difficult, even for those committed to
the idea of equal partnerships. The difficulties of raising children, and mens continuing
advantages in the workplace, make it hard for all but the most dedicated couples to live
up to their own ideals.
Adding to the difficulties are the economic shifts of recent yearsgrowing eco-
nomic inequality, the demise of the well-paying blue-collar job, and the end of the stable
career of the 1950s organization man. The long hours and working weeks that have
replaced the nine-to-five corporate workplace take their toll on relationships.
Traditionally, marriage has always been linked to economic opportunitya young
man had to be able to support a wife to be considered eligible to marry. The high rates
of marriage in the 1950s were sustained in part by rising wages and a relatively low cost
of living; the average 30-year-old man could afford to buy an average-priced house for
less than 20 percent of his salary. Today, marriage is becoming something of a luxury
item, a form of having available mainly to those already enjoying economic advantages
(Furstenberg, 1996). The vast majority of low income men and women would like the
luxury model, but feel they cant afford it.
Inside marriage, conflicts stemming from gender issues have become the leading
cause of divorce (Nock, 1999). Studies of couples married since the 1970s reveal the dy-
namics of these conflicts. Arlie Hochchild, for example, has found that the happiest mar-
riages are those where the husband does his share of the second shift, the care of home
and children. Another recent study shows that todays women also expect their husbands
to do their share of the emotional work of marriagemonitoring and talking about the
relationship itself; this marital work ethic has emerged in middle class couples married
since the 1970s, in response to easy and widespread divorce (Hackstaff, 2000).
Dominance is another sore point in many of todays marriages. Gottman and his
colleagues (1998) have found that a key factor in predicting marital happiness and divorce
is a husbands willingness to accept influence from his wife; but to many men, the loss of
dominance in marriage doesnt feel like equality, it feels more like a shift in power that
leaves their wives dominant over them. Studies of battered women show that domestic
violence may be the extreme form of this common problemthe mans attempt to assert
what he sees as his prerogative to dominate and control his partner.
Still, change is happening, even while men lag behind in the gender revolution.
Todays men no longer expect to be waited on in the home the way their grandfathers
were by their grandmothers. Middle class norms demand a more involved kind of father
than those of a generation ago. The sight of a man with a baby in his arms or on his back
is no longer unusual.
In sum, marriage today is passing through a difficult transition to a new economy
and a new ordering of gender relations. Those who sermonize about family values
need to recall that the family is also about bread and butter issues and back up their
Ch-05.indd 200 7/8/2008 12:33:08 PM
Chapter 5 Courtship and Marriage 201
words with resources. And while some people believe that equality and stable marriage
are incompatible, the evidence seems so far to show the opposite. As one therapist and
writer puts it:
The feminist revolution of this century has provided the most powerful challenge to tradi-
tional patterns of marriage. Yet paradoxically, it may have strengthened the institution by
giving greater freedom to both partners, and by allowing men to accept some of tradition-
ally female values. (Rubenstein, 1990)
References
Bernard, J. 1972. The Future of Marriage. New York: Bantam Books.
Furstenberg, F. 1996. The future of marriage. American Demographics ( June): 34 40.
Gottman, J. M. and R. W. Levenson. 1992. Marital processes predictive of later dissolution: behavior,
physiology and health. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 63:22133.
Gottman, J. M., J. Coan, S. Carrere, and C. Swanson. 1998. Predicting marital happiness and stability
from newlywed interactions. Journal of Marriage and the Family 60:522.
Hackstaff, K. 2000. Marriage in a Culture of Divorce. Boston: Beacon Press.
Levenson, R. W., N. Roberts, and S. Bellows. 1998. Report on police marriage and work stress study.
Unpublished paper, University of California, Berkeley.
National Marriage Project. 1999. Report on Marriage. Rutgers University.
Nock, S. L. 1999. The problem with marriage. Society 36, No. 5 ( July/August).
Rubinstein, H. 1990. The Oxford Book of Marriage. New York: Oxford University Press.
Skolnick, A. 1981. Married lives: longitudinal perspectives on marriage. In Present and Past in Middle
Life, edited by D. H. Eichorn, J. A. Clausen, N. Haan, M. P. Honzik, and P. H. Mussen, 269298.
New York: Academic Press.
. 1993. His and her marriage in longitudinal perspective. In Feminine/Masculine: Gender and Social
Change. Compendium of Research Summaries. New York: The Rockefeller Foundation.
. 1998. Sources and processes of police marital stress. Paper presented at National Conference on
Community Policing. November. Arlington, Va.
Veroff, J. G., E. Douvan, and R. A. Kulka. 1981. The Inner American: A Self-Portrait from 19571976.
New York: Basic Books.
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203
Divorce and Remarriage
R E A DI NG 1 6
Divorce: The Silent Revolution
Laurence M. Friedman
In the first half of the twentieth century . . . [t]he vast majority of divorces were in fact
collusive; they resulted from a deal between husband and wife. ( Whether the deal was
really consensualthat is, a bargain between equals, between two people who both
wanted a divorceis . . . another question.) Collusive divorces were, strictly speaking,
illegal. . . . But the official law was a living lie. In Illinois, for example, if the court found
that the parties colluded, no divorce shall be decreed, according to the statute. This
was . . . standard doctrine. But according to a study published in the 1950s, almost all
divorce cases in Illinois were actually collusivethey came about as a result of agree-
ment by the parties to the divorce as such. The testimony in these cases was usually
cut and dried. The typical plaintiff complained of cruelty: her husband beat her, slapped
her, abused her. As the author of the study remarked sarcastically, the number of cruel
spouses in Chicago . . . who strike their marriage partners in the face exactly twice . . . is
remarkable. To back up her story, the plaintiff almost always brought along her mother
or a sister or brother.
1
Deep into the twentieth century, the formal law, stubbornly insisted that an agree-
ment between husband and wife that suit shall be brought and no defense entered was
unacceptable; and such a case had to be dismissed. The policy of our law favors mar-
riage, and disfavors divorce, as a New Jersey judge put it in 1910.
2
In Indiana as late as
the 1950s, according to the law, if the defendant failed to make an appearance, the judge
was supposed to notify the prosecutor, and the duty of the prosecutor was to enter and
defend the case; this was also to happen if the judge suspected any sort of collusion. But
these were empty strictures. In practice, almost all cases in Indiana were still uncontested,
no defense was made by anybody, the prosecutor never intervened, and plaintiffs could
have their divorce virtually for the asking.
3
In New York, where adultery was the only
practical grounds for divorce, a bizarre form of collusion was commonplace. The hus-
band would check into a hotel. A woman hired to play his lover would join him in the
6
Ch-06.indd 203 7/8/2008 12:33:21 PM
204 Part II Sex and Gender
room. Both of them would take off some or all of their clothes. A study of 500 divorce
cases conducted in the 1930s actually counted how often the man was nude (23), in a
nightgown (8), in B.V.D. or underwear (119) or in pajamas (227). The woman was nude
more often (55 times); in a nightgown 126 times; in a kimono 68 times. At this point
of undress, a maid would arrive with towels, or a bellboy with a telegram. Suddenly, a
photographer would burst into the room and take pictures. Then the man would pay
the woman; she then thanked him and left. The photographs would be shown in court
as evidence of adultery.
4
In England, too, adultery was the only grounds for divorce
before 1938; and, as in New York, hotel evidence of this phony type was used in many
cases.
5
There were occasional scandals and crackdowns, but the system always went back
to normal, after some decent interval.
In the nineteenth century, the British government had been less complacent about
collusion than the states. Divorce was socially unacceptable, especially for the lower
orders. In 1860, only three years after the divorce law was passed, a new statute created
the office of the Queens Proctor. This officer had the duty of sniffing out collusion and
protecting the interests of society in divorce cases. The point was to prevent consensual
divorce. On the whole, the experiment did not succeed.
6
The rigid class system of the
British did provide some support for a tough regime of divorce; but slowly, the same
forces that overwhelmed American divorce overwhelmed the British system as well.
What seems clear is that everywhere in the developed world there was a tremen-
dous, pent-up demand for divorcea powerful force that simply had to find an outlet.
Change or reform remained difficult, if not impossible; respectable society (and legisla-
tures frightened of some of their voters) simply did not permit easy divorce. The result
was the dual systemcollusion and migratory divorce. Another outlet for the divorce
demand, at least in New York state, was annulment. In New York, the law, as we have
seen, was unusually severe, allowing divorce only for adultery. As a result, New York be-
came the annulment capital of the United States. An annulled marriage, legally speaking,
never existed. It was dead from the start because of some grave impediment or fraud. In
most states, annulments were much less common than divorces. They were used mostly
by Roman Catholics, whose church did not recognize divorce. In San Mateo County,
California, in the 1950s, 12 percent of the petitions to end a marriage were petitions for
annulment; in the period 18901910, only 1 or 2 percent of such petitions in Alameda
County, California, were petitions for annulment.
7
But in New York the situation was entirely different. Annulments were exceedingly
common. The New York statute allowed annulment of a marriage if the consent of one
party was obtained by force, duress, or fraud or if one of the parties was physically
incapable of entering into the marriage state or was a lunatic.
8
There was nothing
unusual about this statute. But in most states, the courts interpreted annulment laws
rather strictly. Fraud was not easy to prove. Joel Bishop, writing in the late nineteenth
century, found annulment cases inherently embarrassing (and not numerous).
9
It is
one thing to want to get rid of a spouse, quite another to accuse that spouse of fraud (or
even worse, of total impotence or frigidity). In New York, however, the courts stretched
the concept of fraud almost beyond recognition, and in general they opened up the
legal grounds of annulment to an astonishing degree. By 1950, in ten counties in New
York, there were more annulments than divorces; for the state as a whole, there were
Ch-06.indd 204 7/8/2008 12:33:22 PM
Chapter 6 Divorce and Remarriage 205
two-thirds as many annulments as decrees of divorce.
10
To be sure, the appellate courts
were not always willing to grant annulments in dubious cases. The case law was quite
involute and complex.
11
Loretta Coiley Pawloski failed to get an annulment for fraud
against her husband, Alex John; she claimed he lied about his name and told her he was
German when in fact he was Polish. Loretta did not care much for Polish people.
They had been married over twenty years. This fraud, even if proven, did not go to
the essence of the marriage contract, said the court.
12
Still, it says something that Loretta even thought she had a chance at annulment.
In most states, her claim would have gotten exactly nowhere. And in many other cases,
the New York appellate courts were more willing to discover fraud and other impedi-
ments. In a 1923 case, James Truiano told Florence Booth, a schoolteacher, that he was
a U.S. citizen; in fact he was not. The court granted an annulment.
13
And a young man
was able to get an annulment in 1935, when he claimed that his (foreign) wife married
him only to get his money, as part of a scheme of European nobility to inveigle
wealthy Americans into marriage. The man, said the court, was unaccustomed to deal-
ing with the workings of a shrewd and cunning European mind; he had been deceived
and defrauded. The marriage was duly wiped off the books.
14
Most annulment cases,
one must remember, were never appealed. They began and ended in the trial courts.
They were just as consensual as the thousands of divorces in other states. The New York
annulment statistics speak for themselves on this point.
Contemporary Chile is another jurisdiction where annulments have been terrifi-
cally and abnormally common. Chile, until 2004, was the only major Western country
that still did not recognize absolute divorce. ( In that year, the legislature finally enacted
such a law.)
15
Annulment was an obvious escape hatch. People used all sorts of tricks and
stratagems . . . in their quest for an annulment. In both Chile and New York state, the of-
ficial law said one thing, and the ordinary lower-level courts did something quite different.
Both jurisdictions were trapped in a situation of historic stalemate.
The stalemate, however, came to an end in New York, and in the United States
in general, in the second half of the twentieth century. Up to that point, official reform
was slow and difficult. But underneath, the dual system was simply rotting away. Divorce
became more and more common. Its stigma slowly evaporated. As a judge in Chicago put
it around 1950, most people thought divorce was nobodys business, except that of the
man and woman in question. Getting a divorce was, or should be, like getting a marriage
license: a couple was entitled to a marriage license for a certain fee and a blood test, and
nothing else. Why not make getting a divorce equally easy? This judge thought Holly-
wood was to blame for the change in attitudes, for the loss of scandal and shame.
16

This was surely giving Hollywood too much credit (or blame). Movie stars got divorces,
of course, but the movies themselves were quite skittish on the subject; indeed, for a while
in the 1930s and 1940s they almost never dealt with divorce at all.
17
The judge might
even have been somewhat off base in his reading of general public opinion. But there is
no doubt that the winds were shifting; even the official law began to evolve, though in a
rather gingerly way. New Mexico was bolder than most states: from 1933 on, its divorce
statute specifically listed incompatibility as grounds for divorce.
18
Incompatibility
means basically that two people do not and cannot get along. As far as traditional divorce
law was concerned, this was rank heresy.
Ch-06.indd 205 7/8/2008 12:33:22 PM
206 Part II Sex and Gender
New Mexico was unusual. But in a fair number of states, the law began to ease the
path to divorce in a different way. Divorce became available, even without grounds, if
the couple had been separated for a specific number of yearsfrom two to ten, depend-
ing on the state. By 1950, about twenty states had a provision of this sort. In Arizona,
Idaho, Kentucky, and Wisconsin, the period was five years; in Rhode Island, it was ten; in
Arkansas and Nevada, it was three years; in Louisiana and North Carolina, two years.
19

These statutes, too, were heretical. They plainly recognized that some marriages were
dead and gone. It was only decent to give them a proper burial and let people get on
with their lives. In fact, in many of these states few couples took advantage of this device.
Why wait two, five or ten years when a few harmless lies could bring about a divorce
right away?
20
In many states, a spouse was entitled to a divorce if the other spouse had become
incurably insane or the like. Sometimes the statute required actual confinement in an
insane asylumfor five years in Vermont and Kansas.
21
A spouse also commonly had the
right to a divorce if the other spouse was in prison on a felony charge. These seem fairly
obvious grounds; but in fact they contradicted the theory of traditional marriagethe
promise to cleave together in sickness and in health; in good times and in bad. Cancer or
heart disease were never grounds for divorce. Why then insanity? or imprisonment, for a
crime not committed against the spouse? Neither of these was technically desertion. But
from the standpoint of the sane spouse, or the spouse not in prison, the marriage was a
hollow shell and a daily frustration.
There were a few cracks in the armor at the level of appellate courts. In California, a
1952 case, De Burgh v. De Burgh,
22
was an important sign of oncoming change. Daisy and
Albert De Burgh were suffering through what was obviously a rotten marriage. Albert
beat her, bragged about his other women, was often drunk, was lavish with waiters but
stingy with Daisy. This was her story. His story was different. He claimed she was spread-
ing lies about him; she was trying to ruin him in business and wreck his reputation, send-
ing letters to partners and associates, accusing him of dishonesty and homosexuality.
Under standard legal doctrine, if both parties were cruel or otherwise at fault, there could
be no divorce. The Superior Court, accordingly, denied the divorce and dismissed the
case. The California Supreme Court reversed. The family, wrote Justice Roger Traynor,
is the core of our society, and the state should foster and preserve marriage. But when
a marriage has failed, and the family has ceased to be a unit, the couple should be able
to end it through divorce. The evidence in the case showed a total and irremedial break-
down of the marriage. Traynor sent the case back to trial; the trial judge was instructed
to determine whether the legitimate objects of matrimony have been destroyed and
whether the marriage could be saved. Theoretically, the judge had the power to deny
the divorce; but Traynors words made that very unlikely.
In the last third of the twentieth century, what Herbert Jacob has called a silent
revolution finally destroyed the dual system.
23
The silent revolution refers to the pas-
sage of no-fault divorce laws. Jacob called this revolution a silent one because, though
it seemed like a radical change, it was accomplished with little discussion and even less
controversy. It was as if no-fault crept into the law like a thief in the night. Technocrats
drafted the laws, and they were adopted almost without serious debate. A system that had
lasted a century vanished in the twinkling of an eye.
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Chapter 6 Divorce and Remarriage 207
Socially, if not legally, the old system had simply rotted away. In the age of indi-
vidualism and the sexual revolution, in the age of the enthronement of choice, people
felt there was no point saving marriages that no longer satisfied either husband or wife
or both. They had a right to a divorce whenever the marriage just didnt work out.
Demand for recognition of this social fact finally overwhelmed the forces that held tradi-
tional views. And, of course, nobody ever really liked the collusive system. It was corrupt,
dirty, and expensive. It demeaned everybody involved in the processlawyers, judges,
and the parties to the divorce themselves.
What came out of California was the so-called no-fault divorce. No-fault divorce
is not consensual divorce; it goes far beyond that. It is really unilateral divorce, divorce
at will, divorce when either partner, husband or wife, wants a divorce and asks for it.
Under a no-fault system, there are absolutely no defenses to an action for divorce. There
are no longer any grounds for divorce. No-fault reconstructs divorce in the image of
marriage; marriage and divorce become parallel, legally speaking. For a marriage to take
place, two people have to agree to get married. Breach of promise has been abolished.
Both the man and the woman have a veto, then; each one has a right to back out of mar-
riage, up to the very moment when someone pronounces them man and wife. In movie
after movieThe Graduate is one of the best knownsomebody in fact does pull out in
the very shadow of the altar. Under no-fault, this veto power continues after marriage.
Either partner can decide if the marriage goes on or comes to an end. Either one can
break the marriage off, at any time, for any reasonor for no reason at all. This is the
practical meaning of a no-fault systemthe way it actually operates.
The first no-fault divorce law took effect in California in 1970. The old grounds
for divorce were eliminated, except for two: total insanity, and irreconcilable differences,
which have caused the irremediable breakdown of the marriage.
24
Interestingly, the ex-
perts and jurists who wrote the reports and drafted the law never intended a no-fault sys-
tem. They wanted to get rid of the old dual system; they wanted to clean house, eliminate
hypocrisy and fraud, end the dirty business of collusion, and allow consensual divorce
divorce by mutual agreement. This was already the living law, and they wanted to make
it official. They never intended to make divorce easy or automatic, and certainly not
unilateral. Marriages were a good thing, they felt; and if at all possible, marriages should
be saved. They wanted, for example, a system of marriage counseling. They wanted the
courts to mend sick marriages and, if possible, cure them. Their notion was to give more
power and resources to family courts; couples in trouble could find help, advice, and per-
haps a certain amount of therapy.
25
Herma Hill Kay, a scholar and expert in family law
active in the reform movement, suggested remodeling family court in the image of juve-
nile court. Husband and wife would meet with a counselor; they would explore together
whether the marriage could be saved. An important role would be played by professional
caseworkers, psychiatrists, and experienced supervisors. There would be no coercion.
Ultimately, the court would decide whether the legitimate objects of matrimony have
been destroyed.
26
None of Kays proposals, as it turned out, would actually stir into life.
Still, the original California law, taken literally, contemplated something other than
what actually happened. The law asked a question of fact: are there irreconcilable dif-
ferences, and has the marriage completely broken down? Presumably, it would be up
to a judge to decide this factual question. But almost immediately the law came to mean
Ch-06.indd 207 7/8/2008 12:33:22 PM
208 Part II Sex and Gender
something radically different. It took on a life of its own. Divorce became simply auto-
matic. Judges never inquired into reasons; they never actually asked whether a marriage
had irretrievably broken down, or broken down at all. They merely signed the papers.
What is more, the no-fault revolution swept the country. State after state adopted a
no-fault statuteor, more accurately, a statute that turned out to mean no-fault. The
details varied from state to state, but almost everywhere no-fault made its mark on the
statute book. Some states, like California, were pure no-fault statesin Rhode Island,
for example, divorce was to be decreed, irrespective of the fault of either party, on
the ground of irreconcilable differences which have caused the irremediable breakdown
of the marriage.
27
In some states, the legislature simply added no-fault to the list of
grounds, even though this was in a way illogical, since no-fault meant that the grounds
were no longer important.
28
Utah and Tennessee, for example, added irreconcilable
differences to their list. In Ohio, what was added was incompatibility, unless denied by
either party.
29
But in most states, divorce became automatic, just as in California. Either
party could end the marriage. Judges never did any looking, questioning, or counseling.
They became a rubber stamp, nothing more.
To be sure, tough issues of property rights and custody of children remained to
plague family law. Many hotly contested cases turned on these issues. They provide
plenty of business for divorce lawyers. But the divorce itself was no longer something to
fight and contest. No-fault is the epitome of what used to be called easy divorce. In
fact, divorce is almost never easy, psychologically speaking. But no-fault made the legal
part of it much less painfuland cheaper, too. This is especially true if the duration of
the marriage was short, no children were born, and there either was no money to divide
or no argument about how to divide it. Divorce can even be, for some people, a do-it-
yourself project. Nowadays one can buy books that tell readers how to get rid of a spouse
in ten easy lessons, without paying for the time and services of a lawyer.
Changes in sexual mores, in the social meaning of marriage and divorce, and in
the relationship of men and women underlay the no-fault movement. These factors
were more or less common to all developed countries. All of them have moved in the
same direction. Some countries in Europe and Latin Americathose that are strongly
Catholic by traditionresisted divorce altogether. Italy, Spain, and Ireland for a long
time had no laws allowing absolute divorce at all (they did recognize legal separation,
however). Gordon Ireland and Jesus de Galindez surveyed divorce laws in the countries
of the Western hemisphere just after the end of the Second World War.
30
At that time,
there was still no such thing as absolute divorce in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia,
and Paraguay. Divorce had had a long history in some of the republics of Latin America;
in others it had come only laterin Uruguay, for example, in 1907, and in Bolivia only
in 1932. With the exception of Chile (where absolute divorce, as we saw, was not legally
available until 2004), every Latin American country by 2000 had provisions for breaking
the bonds of matrimony. Brazil adopted a divorce law in 1977. Strongly Catholic coun-
tries in Europe, too, eventually came to adopt divorce laws, though often in the teeth of
furious opposition. Italy began to allow divorce in 1970; Spain did so in 1981, after the
end of the Franco regime. Divorce is now available in Ireland as well.
Moreover, many countries have modified their laws along paths roughly similar to
that of the United States. Brazil, as mentioned, had no divorce at all until 1977; and its
first divorce law was quite restrictive (for example, no one was allowed to get divorced
Ch-06.indd 208 7/8/2008 12:33:22 PM
Chapter 6 Divorce and Remarriage 209
twice). In 1992, however, a more modern, consensual divorce law was enacted.
31
In some
countriesFrance, for exampledivorce by mutual consent has become available, along
with a no-fault system (if the couple had a long-time separation). Germany in the late
1970s adopted a no-fault system; divorce is available whenever the marriage has simply
broken down. Sweden, too, has a no-fault system.
32
Most countries have not gone to the
same extreme as the United States. But even so conservative a state as Switzerland has
liberalized its divorce laws. A new law, in force as of 2000, allowed for divorce by mutual
agreement of the parties; and either party can ask for divorce after four years of separa-
tion. The law in Austria is quite similar: a couple can get a divorce after six months of
separation, if both declare that their marriage has broken down.
33
In England, despite
waves of reform, it is still the law as of 2003 that a divorce is allowed only if a marriage
has irretrievably broken down. In practice, however, as Stephen Cretney has put it,
divorce is readily and quickly available if both parties agree; and even if one does not,
the marriage is basically over. After all, there is no point denying that the marriage has
broken down if one party firmly asserts that it has.
34
Divorce rates have also risen in
almost all Western countries. The ropes that bind married people together have gotten
weaker; for millions, they are altogether gone.
Notes
1. Maxine B. Virtue, Family Cases in Court (1956), pp. 9091.
2. The case is Sheehan v. Sheehen, 77, N. J. Eq. 411, 77 A. 1063 (Ct. of Chancery of N. J., 1910).
3. Virtue, Family Cases, pp. 118, 140.
4. The study is reported in a note, Collusive and Consensual Divorce and the New York Anomaly,
Col. L. Rev. 36:1121, 1131 (1936); see Lawrence M. Friedman, A Dead Language: Divorce Law
and Practice before No-Fault, Va. L. Rev. 86:1497, 15121513 (2000).
5. Colin S. Gibson, Dissolving Wedlock (1994), pp. 96 97.
6. On the Queens Proctor, see Wendie Ellen Schneider, Secrets and Lies: The Queens Proctor and
Judicial Investigation of Party-Controlled Narratives, Law and Social Inquiry 27:449 (2002). The
situation in Canada in the first part of the twentieth century was also complex. There was probably
plenty of collusion, but the courts were less willing to close their eyes to it. As in England, the
kings proctor was an official who acted on behalf of the state in divorce cases, snooping about
to see if there was conniving or colluding. In Nova Scotia, this official was called a watching
counsel. These busybodies appear to have been at least somewhat effective. See James G. Snell,
In the Shadow of the Law: Divorce in Canada, 19001939 (1991), pp. 104 106.
7. I am indebted to Albert Lopez for the figures on San Mateo County. For Alameda County, see
Joanna Grossman and Chris Guthrie, The Road Less Taken: Annulment at the Turn of the
Century, Am. J. of Legal History 40:307 (1996).
8. Thompsons Laws of New York (1939), Part 2, N.Y. Civil Practice Act, sec. 1137, 1139, 1141.
9. Bishop, New Commentaries, vol. 1, p. 193.
10. Paul H. Jacobson, American Marriage and Divorce (1959), p. 113.
11. See William E. Nelson, The Legalist Reformation: Law, Politics, and Ideology in New York, 19201980
(2001), pp. 5154, 231236.
12. Pawloski v. Pawloski, 65 N.Y.S. 2d 413 (Sup. Ct., Cayuga County, 1946).
13. Truiano v. Truiano, 121 Misc. Rep. 635, 201 N.Y.S. 573 (Sup. Ct., Special Term, Warren County,
1923). In fairness to Florence, it has to be said that under a federal statute at the time of the mar-
riage, she would have lost her citizenship (and taken on her husbands citizenship). This would
have cost her her job. After the couple separated, the law was changed, in 1922, under the Married
Womens Citizenship Act, 42 Stat. 1021 (act of Sept. 12, 1922). This was in effect at the time of
the Truiano annulment case; but this fact, said the court, cannot relieve defendant of the fraud, or
Ch-06.indd 209 7/8/2008 12:33:22 PM
210 Part II Sex and Gender
cause denial to the plaintiff of the relief which she asks, since she would not have married James
had she known of his blemish.
14. Ryan v. Ryan, 156 Misc. 251, 281 N.Y.S. 709 (Sup. Ct., Spec. Term, N.Y. County, 1935).
15. Jen Ross, Separate Ways: Divorce to Become Legal, Washington Post, Mar. 30, 2004, p. C1.
Malta apparently still does not allow absolute divorce.
16. Cited in Virtue, Family Cases, pp. 145146.
17. Michael Asimow, Divorce in the Movies: From the Hays Code to Kramer vs. Kramer, Legal
Studies Forum 24:221 (2000).
18. Act of March 3, 1933, ch. 62, sec. 1.
19. J. Herbie DiFonzo, Beneath the Fault Line: The Popular and Legal Culture of Divorce in Twentieth-
Century America (1997), pp. 7879.
20. Friedman, A Dead Language, p. 1497.
21. Vt. Laws 1933, ch. 140, sec. 3117; Genl Stats. Kansas 1935, sec. 601501 (11).
22. 39 Cal. 2d 858, 250 P 2d 598 (1952).
23. Herbert Jacob, Silent Revolution: The Transformation of Divorce Law in the United States (1988).
24. Cal. Civ. Code, sec. 4506.
25. See DiFonzo, Beneath the Fault Line, pp. 112137.
26. Herma Hill Kay, A Family Court: The California Proposal, Cal. L. Rev. 56:1205, 1230 (1968).
27. Rhode Island Rev. Stats., sec. 15-5-3.1.
28. Jacob, Silent Revolution, p. 102.
29. Utah Code Ann. (1998), sec. 30-3-1; Tenn. Code sec. 36- 4-101. Ohio Rev. Code (2000), sec.
3105.01.
30. Gordon Ireland and Jesus de Galindez, Divorce in the Americas (1947).
31. I am indebted to Eliane B. Junqueiro for this information about Brazil. See also Eliane B. Jun-
queiro, Brazil: The Road of Conflict Bound for Total Justice, in Lawrence M. Friedman and
Rogelio Perez-Perdomo, eds., Legal Culture in the Age of Globalization: Latin America and Latin
Europe (2003), pp. 64, 74 75.
32. Mary Ann Glendon, Abortion and Divorce in Western Law. American Failures, European Challenges
(1987), pp. 7176.
33. For Switzerland, see Andrea Bchler, Family Law in Switzerland: Recent Reforms and Future
Issuesan Overview, European J. of Law Reform 3:275, 279 (2001); for Austria, see Monika Hin-
teregger, The Austrian Matrimonial Lawa Patchwork Pattern of History, European J. of Law
Reform 3:199, 212 (2001).
34. Stephen Cretney, Family Law in the Twentieth Century: A History (2003), p. 391.
R E A DI NG 1 7
Childrens Adjustment Following
Divorce: Risk and Resilience Perspectives
Joan B. Kelly and Robert E. Emery
Parental divorce has been viewed for 40 years as the cause of a range of serious and en-
during behavioral and emotional problems in children and adolescents. Divorced families
have been widely portrayed by the media, mental health professionals, and conservative
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Chapter 6 Divorce and Remarriage 211
political voices as seriously flawed structures and environments, whereas, historically,
married families were assumed to be wholesome and nurturing environments for chil-
dren ( Popenoe, Elshtain, & Blankenhorn, 1996; Whitehead, 1998). Although, on aver-
age, children fare better in a happy two-parent family than in a divorced family, two
essential caveats that distinguish our position from the stereotypical view are under-
scored. First, unfortunately, many two-parent families do not offer a happy environment
for parents or for children (e.g., Cummings & Davies, 1994; Amato, Loomis, & Booth,
1995). Second, although there are differences in the average psychological well-being
of children from happy married families and divorced families, it also is true that the
majority of children from divorced families are emotionally well-adjusted (Amato, 1994,
2001; Hetherington, 1999).
A continuing stream of sophisticated social science and developmental research
has contributed a more complex understanding of factors associated with childrens
positive outcomes and psychological problems in the context of both marriage and
divorce. As a result, most social scientists relinquished a simplistic view of the impact
of divorce more than a decade ago. Research demonstrating that childrens behavioral
symptoms and academic problems could be identified, in some instances, for a number
of years before their parents divorces was particularly important in facilitating this
conceptual shift ( Block, Block, & Gjerde, 1986; Cherlin et al., 1991). However, com-
pelling stories of negative outcomes for children of divorce continued to be reported
by the media in the past decade, stimulated in part by a 10-year longitudinal study of
divorced families that emphasized the enduring psychological damage for children of
divorce ( Wallerstein & Blakeslee, 1989). More recently, two longitudinal studies that
report quite different long-term outcomes for children and young adults ( Hethering-
ton & Kelly, 2002; Wallerstein, Lewis, & Blakeslee, 2000) have interested the media in
taking a more discriminating look at divorce research, although the preference in the
media for drama and simple dichotomous answers remain evident (e.g., Time Magazine,
September 25, 2000).
We believe that social science researchers need to look more closely at the varied
evidence on children and divorce within and across disciplines and across methodologi-
cal approaches. Among the basic empirical issues of concern are (a) the confounding of
correlation with cause such that any psychological problems found among children from
divorced families often are portrayed as consequences of divorce, whereas both logic
and empirical evidence demonstrate otherwise; (b) the overgeneralization of results from
relatively small, unrepresentative, often highly select samples, most notably clinical or
troubled samples as in the widely discussed work of Wallerstein; (c) the too ready ac-
ceptance of the null hypothesis of no differences in the face of limited and sometimes
superficial assessment, particularly in large, often representative samples; and (d) the
failure to distinguish between normative outcomes and individual differences in drawing
implications for practice and policy, for example, by noting that the majority of children
from divorced families are not at risk and that family processes after divorce are strong
predictors of risk versus resilience. These methodological considerations are of vital im-
portance for the conduct of research, and they point to an interpretation of empirical
findings that offers a more nuanced and, we think, more complete understanding of the
psychological meaning of divorce for children.
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212 Part II Sex and Gender
Here we review the empirical research literature on the adjustment of children of
divorce from the perspective of the stressors that divorce generally presents for children,
the type and extent of risk observed in divorced children when compared with those in
still married families, and factors that have been demonstrated to ameliorate risk for chil-
dren during and after divorce. A third dimension of childrens postdivorce outcomes, that
of painful memories and experiences, is distinguished from the presence of pathology,
and some of the differences and controversies between quantitative and clinical research
reports regarding longer-term adjustment are highlighted.
STRESSORS OF THE DIVORCE PROCESS
More than two decades ago, divorce was reconceptualized as a process extending over
time that involved multiple changes and potential challenges for children, rather than as
a single event ( Hetherington, 1979; Wallerstein & Kelly, 1980). The number, severity,
and duration of separation and divorce-engendered stressors were observed to vary from
child to child, from family to family, and over time. The nature of the initial separation,
parental adjustment and resources, parental conflict and cooperation, repartnering of one
or both parents, stability of economic resources, and childrens own individual resources
are central to how these stressors affect childrens short- and longer-term reactions and
outcomes. It is anticipated that unalleviated and multiple stressors encumber childrens
attempts to cope with divorce and are more likely to result in increased risk and psycho-
logical difficulties over time.
Stress of the Initial Separation
Independently of the longer-term consequences of divorce, the initial period following
separation of parents is quite stressful for the vast majority of children and adolescents
( Hetherington, 1979; Wallerstein & Kelly, 1980). For some children, their stress predates
separation because of chronic high conflict and or violence in the marriage. However, the
majority of children seem to have little emotional preparation for their parents separation,
and they react to the separation with distress, anxiety, anger, shock, and disbelief ( Het-
herington, Cox, & Cox, 1982; Wallerstein & Kelly). In general, these crisis- engendered
responses diminish or disappear over a period of 1 or 2 years ( Hetherington & Clingem-
peel, 1992; Wallerstein & Kelly).
Complicating childrens attempts to cope with the major changes initiated by sepa-
ration, most children are inadequately informed by their parents about the separation
and divorce. They are left to struggle alone with the meaning of this event for their lives,
which can cause a sense of isolation and cognitive and emotional confusion ( Dunn, Da-
vies, OConnor, & Sturgess, 2001; Smart & Neale, 2000; Wallerstein & Kelly, 1980). The
majority of parents fail to communicate their thoughts with each other regarding effec-
tive custody and access arrangements for their children ( Kelly, 1993), and they seem even
less able or willing to provide important information to their children about immediate
and far-reaching changes in family structure, living arrangements, and parent-child rela-
tionships. In one study of parent-child communications about divorce, 23% of children
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Chapter 6 Divorce and Remarriage 213
said no one talked to them about the divorce, and 45% said they had been given abrupt
one- or two-line explanations ( Your dad is leaving). Only 5% said they had been fully
informed and encouraged to ask questions ( Dunn et al.).
Intensifying childrens stress is the abrupt departure of one parent, usually the fa-
ther, from the household. In the absence of temporary court orders, some children do not
see their nonresident parents for weeks or months. For those children with strong at-
tachments to caring parents, the abrupt and total absence of contact is quite distressing
and painful ( Wallerstein & Kelly, 1980). Those children who have legal or informal
permission to see nonresident parents must begin to deal with the logistics and emotions
of transitioning between two households. They must integrate and adapt to unfamiliar
schedules and physical spaces imposed on them often without consultation ( Kelly, 2002;
McIntosh, 2000; Smart, 2002; Smart & Neale, 2000), as well as decide what clothes, toys,
and resource materials should be with them in each household. They also must shift from
one psychological space to another, in which parents may have different rules and levels
of anger toward the other parent (Smart). Children must adapt to unaccustomed absences
from both parents without the ability to communicate on an at-will basis. Visiting ar-
rangements that are not developmentally attuned to childrens developmental, social, and
psychological needs also may be a stressor, particularly for very young children who lack
the cognitive, language, and emotional maturity to ask questions about, understand, and
cope with the large changes in their lives ( Kelly & Lamb, 2000).
Parental Conflict
A major stressor for children is persistent conflict between parents following separa-
tion and divorce ( Emery, 1982; Johnston, 1994; Johnston & Roseby, 1997). Children in
divorcing families have widely varying histories of exposure to marital conflict and vio-
lence. Although it often is assumed that parents in high-conflict marriages continue their
conflict after separation and divorce, predivorce conflict is far from perfect as a predictor
of the amount of postdivorce conflict ( Booth & Amato, 2001). Between 2025% of chil-
dren experience high conflict during their parents marriage ( Booth & Amato; Hether-
ington, 1999), and some of these couples reduce their conflict once separated or divorced,
whereas others continue to remain entrenched in conflict patterns. Approximately one
quarter of divorced parents report low marital conflict ( Booth & Amato; Hetherington,
1999; Wallerstein & Kelly, 1980). In some of these families, intense anger and conflict
is ignited by the separation itself and the impact of highly adversarial legal processes
( Johnston & Campbell, 1988; Kelly, 2002; Kelly & Johnston, 2001; Wallerstein & Kelly).
Thus, some children will be burdened by continuing or intensified conflict, whereas oth-
ers will experience significantly less conflict on a daily basis.
Although the association between intense marital conflict and childrens poor ad-
justment has been repeatedly demonstrated, findings from studies of the impact of post-
divorce conflict and childrens adjustment have been mixed. Booth and Amato (2001)
reported no association between postdivorce conflict and later adjustment in young adults.
Others have found that marital conflict is a more potent predictor of postdivorce adjust-
ment than is postdivorce conflict ( Booth & Amato; Buehler et al., 1998; Kline, Johnston,
& Tschann, 1990), whereas Hetherington (1999) found that postdivorce conflict had
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214 Part II Sex and Gender
more adverse effects than did conflict in the married families. The varied findings may
reflect the use of different measures of conflict and adjustment, a failure to differenti-
ate between types of conflict after divorce, parental styles of conflict resolution, and the
extent of direct exposure of the child to anger and conflict.
High conflict is more likely to be destructive postdivorce when parents use their
children to express their anger and are verbally and physically aggressive on the phone or
in person ( Buchanan, Maccoby, & Dornbusch, 1991; Johnston, 1994). Parents who ex-
press their rage toward their former spouse by asking children to carry hostile messages,
by denigrating the other parent in front of the child, or by prohibiting mention of the
other parent in their presence are creating intolerable stress and loyalty conflicts in their
children. Not surprisingly, such youngsters were more depressed and anxious when com-
pared with high-conflict parents who left their children out of their angry exchanges ( Bu-
chanan et al.). When parents continued to have conflict but encapsulated their conflict
and did not put their children in the middle, their children did not differ from children
whose parents had low or no conflict ( Buchanan et al.; Hetherington, 1999). Although
high conflict postdivorce is generally assumed to be a shared interaction between two
angry, culpable parents, our clinical, mediation, and arbitration experience in high con-
flict post-divorce cases indicates that it is not uncommon to find one enraged or defiant
parent and a second parent who no longer harbors anger, has emotionally disengaged,
and attempts to avoid or mute conflict that involves the child.
Diminished Parenting after Divorce
A related stressor for children is the impact of inept parenting both prior to and fol-
lowing divorce. Whereas intense marital conflict by itself has modest negative effects
on childrens adjustment, the negative impact of high conflict on childrens adjustment
is substantially mediated through significant problems in the parenting of both moth-
ers and fathers. In particular, mothers in high-conflict marriages are reported to be less
warm, more rejecting, and use harsher discipline, and fathers withdraw more from and
engage in more intrusive interactions with their children compared with parents in low-
conflict marriages ( Belsky, Youngblade, Rovine, & Volling, 1991; Cummings & Davies,
1994; Hetherington, 1999; Krishnakumar & Buehler, 2000). Further, living with a de-
pressed, disturbed, or character-disordered parent after divorce clearly places children at
risk and is associated with impaired emotional, social, and academic adjustment ( Emery,
Waldron, Kitzmann, & Aaron, 1999; Hetherington, 1999; Kalter, Kloner, Schreiser, &
Okla, 1989; Kline et al., 1990). After divorce, there are few opportunities for competent
nonresident parents to buffer the more pernicious effects of behaviors of emotionally
troubled custodial parents, and the influence of the nonresident parent on childrens
adjustment diminishes over time ( Hetherington, 1999).
Coupled with this is the frequent deterioration in the parenting of both custodial
and nonresident parents in the first several years after separation ( Hetherington et al.,
1982; Wallerstein & Kelly, 1980). Parents are preoccupied with their own emotional
responses to divorce, as well as the demands of integrating single parenting with work
and social needs. Not only are divorced parents more prone to emotional liability, but
depression, alcoholism, drug abuse, and psychosomatic complaints are more frequent
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Chapter 6 Divorce and Remarriage 215
compared with married parents. Some children and adolescents become the sole emo-
tional support for their distraught and needy parents ( Wallerstein & Kelly, 1980; Het-
herington, 1999). Boys appear to experience more angry exchanges and contentious
relationships with their custodial mothers compared with girls ( Hetherington, 1999).
Boys also experience a greater decline in the quality of the home environment following
separation than girls, not only because of more coercive mother-son relationships, but
also because fathers typically spend more time with their sons than with their daughters
during marriage. These emotional and physical interactions are curtailed or cease fol-
lowing separation (Mott, Kowaleski-Jones, & Menaghan, 1997). Most characteristic of
diminished parenting is that children experience less positive involvement with their
custodial parent, including less affection and time spent and more erratic and harsh dis-
cipline ( Hetherington). The childrens own increased anger and upset makes it even more
difficult for distressed single parents to maintain effective parenting practices.
Loss of Important Relationships
Children from divorced families also face the risk of longer-term erosion or loss of im-
portant relationships with close friends, extended and new family members, and, par-
ticularly, nonresident parents, who typically are their fathers. Children accustomed to
seeing their nonresident parents every day prior to separation often see them 4 days per
month following separation and divorce. For many children this may lead to a diminished
view of their fathers importance in their lives and an erosion of closeness and meaning
in these parent-child relationships (Amato, 1987; Amato & Booth, 1996; Kelly & Lamb,
2000; Thompson & Laible, 1999; Wallerstein & Kelly, 1980). Between 18% and 25% of
children have no contact with their fathers 23 years after divorce ( Braver & OConnell,
1998; Hetherington & Kelly, 2002; Maccoby & Mnookin, 1992; Seltzer, 1998).
The significant reduction in the time children spend with their nonresident par-
ents is due to a number of psychological, interparental, and institutional barriers. Many
fathers reduce their involvement or cease contact with their children following divorce
because of their own personality limitations (Arendell, 1995; Dudley, 1996; Emery, 1994;
Hetherington, 1999; Kruk, 1992; Wallerstein & Kelly, 1980). Some of these fathers were
minimally involved during marriage, whereas others become distracted by new partners
after separation. Another group of fathers describe a painful depression about the loss
of contact with their children that leads to diminished contact (Arendell; Braver et al.,
1993; Kruk; Wallerstein & Kelly). Ambiguities in the visiting parent role, including a
lack of clear definitions as to how part-time parents are to behave, and paternal role
identity issues contribute to reduced paternal involvement ( Hetherington & Stanley-
Hagan, 1997; Madden-Derdich & Leonard, 2000; Minton & Pasley, 1996; Thomp-
son & Laible, 1999). Maternal remarriage also typically diminishes contacts between
children and their fathers ( Bray & Berger, 1993; Hetherington & Clingempeel, 1992).
Adversarial processes that restrict timely and regular contacts with fathers also
limit more extensive involvement and paternal responsibility ( Emery, Laumann-Billings,
Waldron, Sbarra, & Dillon, 2001; Kelly, 1991, 1993), as do written or informal guide-
lines recommending restricted visiting plans that were based on unsubstantiated theory
(e.g., Hodges, 1991), rather than emprical research ( Kelly, 2002; Kelly & Lamb, 2000;
Ch-06.indd 215 7/8/2008 12:33:23 PM
216 Part II Sex and Gender
Lamb & Kelly, 2001; Warshak, 2000a). Considerable research has indicated that many
children, particularly boys, want more time with their fathers than is traditionally negoti-
ated or ordered; that children and young adults describe the loss of contact with a parent
as the primary negative aspect of divorce; and that children report missing their fathers
over time ( Fabricius & Hall, 2000; Healy, Malley, & Stewart, 1990; Hetherington, 1999;
Hetherington et al., 1982; Laumann-Billings & Emery, 2000; Wallerstein & Kelly, 1980).
Despite such findings, court policy and practice has been slow to change. Compared
with nonresident fathers, nonresident mothers are more likely to visit frequently, assume
more parenting functions, and less often cease contact with their children ( Depner, 1993;
Hetherington, 1999; Maccoby & Mnookin, 1992), particularly when mothers endorse
the custodial arrangement. In part, this may be related to the different role expectations
of mothers in our society.
Moving after divorce is common and may interfere substantially with the contacts
and relationships between children and their nonmoving parents ( Braver, Ellman, & Fab-
ricius, 2003; Kelly & Lamb, 2003; Warshak, 2000b). In Arizona, 30% of custodial parents
moved out of the area within 2 years after separation ( Braver et al.). In Virginia, the aver-
age distance between fathers and their children 10 years after divorce was 400 miles ( Het-
herington & Kelly, 2002). Relocations of more than 75100 miles may create considerable
barriers to continuity in father-child relationships, because distance requires more time
and expense to visit and results in the erosion of closeness in the relationships, particularly
with very young children ( Hetherington & Kelly; Kelly & Lamb). Paternal remarriage
and the demands of new children also diminish paternal commitment to the children of
the prior marriage ( Hetherington & Clingempeel, 1992; Hetherington, 1999).
Aside from the psychological and institutional barriers experienced by fathers,
maternal attitudes regarding fathers maintaining postdivorce relationships with their
children are influential. Evidence shows that mothers may function as gatekeepers to
father involvement after divorce, as they have been found to do during marriage ( Pleck,
1997). Maternal hostility at the beginning of divorce predicts less visitation and fewer
overnights 3 years later (Maccoby & Mnookin, 1992), and, according to one study,
2535% of custodial mothers interfere with or sabotage visiting ( Braver & OConnell,
1998). Maternal anger and dissatisfaction with higher levels of father contact, regardless
of conflict level, is associated with poorer adjustment in children compared with chil-
dren whose mothers were satisfied with high father involvement ( King & Heard, 1999).
In this latter study, it is difficult to know whether mothers dissatisfaction was caused
by poor fathering or by their own upset and anger with their former spouse, although
a longitudinal study found that maternal anger/hurt about the divorce and concerns
about parenting each predicted maternal perceptions of visiting problems ( Wolchik,
Fenaughty, & Braver, 1996).
Children themselves also influence the extent of paternal involvement following
divorce. Some children limit contact with nonresident parents for both developmentally
appropriate and psychologically inappropriate reasons ( Johnston, 1993). In response to
observing or hearing violence in marriages, frightened and angry children may refuse
to visit abusive parents after separation. This choice to reduce or avoid contact may
be a healthy response for children who have become realistically estranged, a choice
not possible in the married family ( Kelly & Johnston, 2001). Some youngsters avoid
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Chapter 6 Divorce and Remarriage 217
or reluctantly visit mentally ill parents or those whose disinterest, extreme narcissism,
or selfishness interferes with meaningful parent-child relationships. Still other children
refuse to visit after separation because they are alienated from a parent with whom they
previously had an adequate or better relationship (Gardner, 1998). Although Gardner
described this pathological adaptation primarily as the result of an alienating parents
efforts to sabotage the childs other parent-child relationship, a more recent formulation
portrays the behaviors of the rejected parent as contributing also to the childs alien-
ation ( Johnston, in press; Kelly & Johnston). Mostly, these children ( preadolescents and
adolescents) are responding to a complex set of factors following separation, including
the parents personality problems and parenting deficits; the hostile, polarizing, and
denigrating behaviors of the parents, which encourages alienation; the childs own psy-
chological vulnerabilities and anger; and the extreme hostility generated by the divorce
and the adversarial process ( Johnston; Kelly & Johnston).
Economic Opportunities
Whereas contradictory findings exist (e.g., Braver & OConnell, 1998), most scholars
report that divorce substantially reduces the standard of living for custodial parents
and children, and to a lesser extent, the nonresident parent ( Duncan & Hoffman, 1985).
Census bureau surveys show that one third of custodial parents entitled to support by
court order are not receiving it (San Francisco Chronicle, 2002). Although divorce has
generally been blamed for this decline in income, it also is apparent that marriages that
end in divorce are more likely to have lower incomes prior to separation compared with
parents who did not divorce in the same period (Clarke-Stewart, Vandell, McCartney,
Owen, & Booth, 2000; Pong & Ju, 2000, Sun, 2001). Divorce further accelerates the
downward standard of living. The consequences of reduced economic circumstances
may be a significant stressor for many children through disruptive changes in residence,
school, friends, and child care arrangements. Booth and Amato (2001) found that 46% of
young adults recalled moving in the year following separation, and 25% reported chang-
ing schools. On average, the women in the Virginia longitudinal study moved four times
in the first 6 years, but poorer women moved seven times ( Hetherington & Kelly, 2002).
Additionally, because child support generally is structured to pay for the basic necessities,
children may not be able to participate in sports, lessons, and organizations that brought
significant meaning to their lives prior to separation. This is particularly true if there are
limited resources, high parent conflict, and poor cooperation.
Remarriage and Repartnering
Divorce creates the potential for children to experience a continuing series of changes
and disruptions in family and emotional relationships when one or both parents intro-
duce new social and sexual partners, cohabitate, remarry, and /or redivorce. The effect of
serial attachments and losses may hinder more mature and intimate attachments as young
adults. Estimates suggest that three quarters of divorced men and two thirds of divorced
women eventually remarry ( Bumpass, Sweet, & Castro-Martin, 1990), and 50% of di-
vorced adults cohabit before remarriage, whereas others cohabit instead of remarriage.
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218 Part II Sex and Gender
It is estimated that approximately one third of children will live in a remarried or cohabi-
tating family before the age of 18 ( Bumpass, Raley, & Sweet, 1995). For some, these new
relationships are accompanied by family conflict, anger in the stepparent-child relation-
ship, and role ambiguities ( Bray, 1999; Hetherington & Clingempeel, 1992). Repartner-
ing may be most stressful and problematic for children when entered into soon after
divorce ( Hetherington & Kelly, 2002).
DIVORCE AS RISK FOR CHILDREN
A large body of empirical research confirms that divorce increases the risk for adjust-
ment problems in children and adolescents (for reviews, see Amato, 2000; Emery, 1999;
Hetherington, 1999; Kelly, 2000, McLanahan, 1999; Simons et al., 1996). Children of
divorce were significantly more likely to have behavioral, internalizing, social, and aca-
demic problems when compared with children from continuously married families. The
extent of risk is at least twice that of children in continuously married families ( Hether-
ington, 1999; McLanahan; Zill, Morrison, & Coiro, 1993). Although 10% of children
in continuously married families also have serious psychological and social problems, as
measured on objective tests, estimates are that 2025% of children from divorced fami-
lies had similar problems ( Hetherington & Kelly, 2002; Zill & Schoenborn, 1990). The
largest effects are seen in externalizing symptoms, including conduct disorders, antiso-
cial behaviors, and problems with authority figures and parents. Less robust differences
are found with respect to depression, anxiety, and self-esteem. Whereas preadolescent
boys were at greater risk for these negative outcomes than girls in several studies (see
Amato, 2001; Hetherington, 1999), no gender differences specifically linked to divorce
were found in other studies (Sun, 2001; Vandewater & Lansford, 1998). The complex
interaction between gender, age at separation, preseparation adjustment, sex of custodial
parent, quality of relationships with both parents, and extent of conflict confounds efforts
to clarify findings regarding gender.
Children in divorced families have lower academic performance and achievement
test scores compared with children in continuously married families. The differences
are modest and decrease, but do not disappear, when income and socioeconomic status
are controlled (for review, see McLanahan, 1999). Children from divorced families are
two to three times more likely to drop out of school than are children of intact families,
and the risk of teenage childbearing is doubled. However, it appears that youngsters are
already at risk for poorer educational performance and lowered expectations well before
separation. For example, the risk for school dropout is associated with poverty or low
income prior to separation, and this may be exacerbated by the further decline in eco-
nomic resources following separation ( Pong & Ju, 2000). Further, in looking at parental
resources available to children prior to separation, parents provided less financial, social,
human, and cultural capital to their children compared with parents who remained mar-
ried (Sun & Li, 2001), and parent-child relationships were less positive (Sun, 2001).
Adolescents from divorced families scored lower on tests of math and reading both prior
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Chapter 6 Divorce and Remarriage 219
to and after parental separation compared with adolescents in married families, and their
parents were less involved in their adolescents education (Sun & Li, 2002).
The increased risk of divorced children for behavioral problems is not diminished
by remarriage. As with divorce, children in stepfamily homes are twice as likely to have
psychological, behavioral, social, and academic problems than are children in nondivorced
families ( Bray, 1999; Hetherington & Kelly, 2002; Zill, 1998; Zill & Schoenborn, 1990).
Children from divorced families have more difficulties in their intimate relationships
as young adults. Compared with young adults in continuously married families, young
adults from divorced families marry earlier, report more dissatisfaction with their mar-
riages, and are more likely to divorce (Amato, 1999, 2000; Chase-Lansdale, Cherlin, &
Kierman, 1995). Relationships between divorced parents and their adult children also are
less affectionate and supportive than those in continuously married families (Amato &
Booth, 1996; Zill et al., 1993). When divorced parents denigrated the other parent in
front of the children, young adults were more likely to report angry and less close re-
lationships with the denigrating parents ( Fabricius & Hall, 2000). Somewhat surpris-
ing is the finding that young adults whose parents had low-conflict marriages and then
divorced had more problems with intimate relationships, less social support of friends
and relatives, and lower psychological well-being compared with children whose high-
conflict parents divorced ( Booth & Amato, 2001). Parents in low-conflict marriages who
divorced differed in certain dimensions, including less integration in the community and
more risky behaviors, and this may place their children at greater risk. Further research
is needed to understand the aspects of parenting and parent-child relationships in these
low-conflict marriages that negatively affect the later relationships of their offspring.
Higher divorce rates for children of divorced families compared with those in still-
married families are substantiated in a number of studies (Amato, 1996; McLanahan &
Sandefur, 1994; Wolfinger, 2000). The risk of divorce for these young adults is related
to socioeconomic factors, as well as life course decisions such as cohabitation, early mar-
riage, and premarital childbearing; attitudes toward marriage and divorce; and interper-
sonal behaviors, all of which are associated with marital instability (Amato, 1996, 2000).
The number and cumulative effect of family structure transitions is linked to the higher
probability of divorce; three or more transitions (divorce, remarriage, redivorce greatly
increase the risk of offspring divorce ( Wolfinger).
PROTECTIVE FACTORS REDUCING RISK
FOR CHILDREN OF DIVORCE
In the last decade, researchers have identified a number of protective factors that may
moderate the risks associated with divorce for individual children and that contribute
to the variability in outcomes observed in children of divorce. These include specific
aspects of the psychological adjustment and parenting of custodial parents, the type of
relationships that children have with their nonresident parents, and the extent and type
of conflict between parents.
Ch-06.indd 219 7/8/2008 12:33:24 PM
220 Part II Sex and Gender
Competent Custodial Parents and Parenting
Living in the custody of a competent, adequately functioning parent is a protective factor
associated with positive outcomes in children. Overall, one of the best predictors of chil-
drens psychological functioning in the marriage (Cummings & Davies, 1994; Keitner &
Miller, 1990) and after divorce ( Emery et al., 1999; Hetherington, 1999; Johnston, 1995;
Kalter et al., 1989; Kline et al., 1990) is the psychological adjustment of custodial parents
(usually mothers) and the quality of parenting provided by them. A particular cluster of
parenting behaviors following divorce is an important protective factor as well. When
custodial parents provide warmth, emotional support, adequate monitoring, discipline au-
thoritatively, and maintain age-appropriate expectations, children and adolescents experi-
ence positive adjustment compared with children whose divorced custodial parents are
inattentive, less supportive, and use coercive discipline (Amato, 2000; Buchanan et al., 1996;
Hetherington, 1999; Krishnakumar & Buehler, 2000; Maccoby & Mnookin, 1992).
Nonresident Parents
There is a potential protective benefit from the timely and appropriate parenting of
nonresident parents. Frequency of visits between fathers and children generally is not a
reliable predictor of childrens outcomes, because frequency alone does not reflect the
quality of the father-child relationship. In one study, boys and younger children, but not
girls or older children, were better adjusted with frequent and regular contact with their
fathers (Stewart, Copeland, Chester, Malley, & Barenbaum, 1997). In the context of low
conflict, frequent visits between fathers and children is associated with better child ad-
justment, but where interparental conflict is intense, more frequent visits were linked to
poorer adjustment, presumably because of the opportunities for more direct exposure
of the children to parental aggression and pressures (Amato & Rezac, 1994; Hethering-
ton & Kelly, 2002; Johnston, 1995).
Frequency of contact also has beneficial effects when certain features of parenting
are present in nonresident parents. A meta-analysis of 57 studies found that children who
had close relationships with their fathers benefited from frequent contacts when their
fathers remained actively involved as parents (Amato & Gilbreth, 1999). When fathers
helped with homework and projects, provided authoritative parenting, and had appro-
priate expectations for their children, the children had more positive adjustment and
academic performance than did those with less involved fathers. More paternal involve-
ment in childrens schooling was also associated with better grades and fewer repeated
grades and suspensions ( Nord, Brimhall, & West, 1997). The combination of fathers
engaging in activities with their children and providing financial support was associated
with increased probability of completing high school and entering college compared with
activities alone or activities combined with very low financial support (Menning, 2002).
Indeed, when both parents engage in active, authoritative, competent parenting, adoles-
cent boys from divorced families had no greater involvement in delinquent behavior than
did those in continuously married families (Simon et al., 1996).
New reports about joint custody, compared with sole custody, also suggest a pro-
tective effect for some children. A meta-analysis of 33 studies of sole- and joint-physical
Ch-06.indd 220 7/8/2008 12:33:24 PM
Chapter 6 Divorce and Remarriage 221
custody studies reported that children in joint-custody arrangements were better ad-
justed on multiple objective measures, including general adjustment, emotional and be-
havioral adjustment, and academic achievement compared with children in sole-custody
arrangements ( Bausermann, 2002). In fact, children in joint custody were better adjusted
regardless of the level of conflict between parents, and they did not differ in adjustment
from the children in still-married families. Although the joint-custody parents had less
conflict prior to separation and after divorce than did sole-custody parents, these dif-
ferences did not affect the advantage of joint custody. Lee (2002) also reported positive
effects of dual residence on childrens behavioral adjustment, although the effects were
suppressed by high interparental conflict and childrens sadness.
In sharp contrast to the 1980s, some findings suggest that between 35% and 40% of
children may now have at least weekly contacts with their fathers, particularly in the
first several years after divorce ( Braver & OConnell, 1998; Hetherington, 1999; Selt-
zer, 1991, 1998). This may reflect changes in legal statutes and social contexts that now
encourage shared legal decision-making, less restrictive views of paternal time with chil-
dren, and greater opportunities for interested fathers to engage more fully in active
parenting. Mothers also are more satisfied with higher levels of paternal involvement
than they were 20 years ago ( King & Heard, 1999), possibly reflecting changing cultural
and work-related trends and the increased role of the father in raising children ( Doherty,
1998; Pleck, 1997).
Diminished Conflict between Parents Following Divorce
Low parental conflict is a protective factor for children following divorce. Although we
know little about the thresholds at which conflict becomes a risk factor following divorce
in different families, some conflict appears to be normative and acceptable to the parties
( King & Heard, 1999). Young adults whose parents had low conflict during their earlier
years were less depressed and had fewer psychological symptoms compared with those
whose parents had continued high conflict (Amato & Keith, 1991; Zill et al., 1993).
When parents have continued higher levels of conflict, protective factors include a good
relationship with at least one parent or caregiver; parental warmth ( Emery & Forehand,
1994; Neighbors, Forehand, & McVicar, 1993; Vandewater & Lansford, 1998); and the
ability of parents to encapsulate their conflict ( Hetherington, 1999). Several studies
found no differences in the amount of conflict between parents in sole- or joint-custody
arrangements ( Braver & OConnell, 1998; Emery et al., 1999; Maccoby & Mnookin,
1992), although results from a meta-analysis found more conflict in sole-custody families
prior to and after divorce ( Bausermann, 2002).
Most parents diminish their conflict in the first 23 years after divorce as they be-
come disengaged and establish their separate (or remarried) lives. Studies indicate that
between 8% and 12% of parents continue high conflict 23 years after divorce ( Heth-
erington, 1999; King & Heard, 1999; Maccoby & Mnookin, 1992). The relatively small
group of chronically contentious and litigating parents are more likely to be emotionally
disturbed, character-disordered men and women who are intent on vengeance and or on
controlling their former spouses and their parenting ( Johnston & Campbell, 1988; John-
ston & Roseby, 1997). Such parents use disproportionate resources and time in family
Ch-06.indd 221 7/8/2008 12:33:24 PM
222 Part II Sex and Gender
courts, and their children are more likely to be exposed to parental aggression. When one
or both parents continue to lash out during transitions between households, mediation
experience indicates that children can be protected from this exposure through access
arrangements that incorporate transfers at neutral points (e.g., school, day care).
Related to the level of conflict between parents postdivorce is the effect of the co-
parental relationship. Research shows that between 25% and 30% of parents have a co-
operative coparental relationship characterized by joint planning, flexibility, sufficient
communication, and coordination of schedules and activities. However, more than half
of parents engage in parallel parenting, in which low conflict, low communication, and
emotional disengagement are typical features. Although there are distinct advantages of
cooperative coparenting for children, children thrive as well in parallel parenting rela-
tionships when parents are providing nurturing care and appropriate discipline in each
household ( Hetherington, 1999; Hetherington & Kelly, 2002; Maccoby & Mnookin,
1992; Whiteside & Becker, 2000).
RESILIENCE OF CHILDREN OF DIVORCE
Despite the increased risk reported for children from divorced families, the current con-
sensus in the social science literature is that the majority of children whose parents di-
vorced are not distinguishable from their peers whose parents remained married in the
longer term (Amato, 1994, 2001; Chase-Lansdale et al., 1995; Emery, 1999; Emery &
Forehand, 1994; Furstenberg & Kiernan, 2001; Hetherington, 1999; Simons et al., 1996;
Zill et al., 1993). There is considerable overlap between groups of children and adoles-
cents in married and postdivorce families, with some divorced (and remarried) children
functioning quite well in all dimensions, and some children in married families experi-
encing severe psychological, social, and academic difficulties (Amato, 1994, 2001; Het-
herington, 1999). Whereas a slight widening of the differences between children from
married and divorced families is found in studies in the 1990s, the magnitude of the
differences remains small (Amato, 2001). Both large-scale studies with nationally repre-
sentative samples and multimethod longitudinal studies using widely accepted psycho-
logical and social measures and statistics indicate that the majority of children of divorce
continue to fall within the average range of adjustment (Amato, 2001; Hetherington &
Kelly, 2002; Zill et al., 1993).
Not to minimize the stresses and risk to children that separation and divorce create,
it is important to emphasize that approximately 7580% of children and young adults do
not suffer from major psychological problems, including depression; have achieved their
education and career goals; and retain close ties to their families. They enjoy intimate re-
lationships, have not divorced, and do not appear to be scarred with immutable negative
effects from divorce (Amato, 1999, 2000; Laumann-Billings & Emery, 2000; McLana-
han, 1999; Chase-Lansdale et al., 1995). In fact, Amato (1999) estimated that approxi-
mately 42% of young adults from divorced families in his study had well-being scores
above the average of young adults from nondivorced families.
As we indicated here, the differences in childrens lives that determine their longer-
term outcomes are dependent on many circumstances, among them their adjustment
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Chapter 6 Divorce and Remarriage 223
prior to separation, the quality of parenting they received before and after divorce, and
the amount of conflict and violence between parents that they experienced during mar-
riage and after divorce. Children from high-conflict and violent marriages may derive
the most benefit from their parents divorces (Amato et al., 1995; Booth & Amato, 2001)
as a result of no longer enduring the conditions that are associated with significant ad-
justment problems in children in marriages. Once freed from intense marital conflict,
these findings suggest that parenting by custodial parents improves, although research
is needed to explain more specifically what aspects of parent-child relationships and
family functioning facilitate recovery in these youngsters. Clearly, the links between
level of marital conflict and outcomes for children are complex. For children whose par-
ents reported marital conflict in the mid-range, divorce is associated with only slightly
lower psychological well-being ( Booth & Amato, 2001). If this midrange marital con-
flict represents approximately 50% of the families that divorce, as others have found,
then the large number of resilient children seen in the years following divorce is not
surprising.
UNDERSTANDING CONTRADICTORY
FINDINGS ON ADULT CHILDREN OF DIVORCE
These broadly based findings of long-term resiliency are at odds with the 25-year longi-
tudinal study that has received wide-spread attention. In The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce
( Wallerstein et al., 2000), the authors report that children of divorce, interviewed in
young adulthood, do not survive the experience of divorce and that the negative effects
are immutable. These young adults are described as anxious, depressed, burdened, failing
to reach their potential, and fearful of commitment and failure.
What accounts for these enormously disparate findings? Many of these differences
can be traced to methodological issues and may relate as well to the clinical interpreta-
tions of participant interviews about their experiences as divorced young adults. An essen-
tial methodological concern is that this study ( Wallerstein & Kelly, 1980; Wallerstein &
Blakeslee, 1989; Wallerstein et al., 2000) was a qualitative study, used a clinical sample,
and no comparison group of married families existed from the start. The data were col-
lected in clinical interviews by experienced therapists, and no standardized or objective
measures of psychological adjustment, depression, anxiety, self-esteem, or social relation-
ships were used. The goal of the study, initiated in 1969 when information about children
of divorce was extremely limited, was to describe in detail the responses of children and
parents to the initial separation and divorce, and then to see how they fared over the first
5 years in comparison with their initial reports and behaviors ( Wallerstein & Kelly).
The parents in the original sample of 60 families had severe psychological and re-
lationship problems, suggesting that this sample of families was not normal, as has
been widely asserted by Wallerstein in the media ( Waters, 2001). Only one third of the
parents were clinically rated as functioning psychologically at an adequate or better level
during the marriage; approximately one half of the mothers and fathers were mod-
erately disturbed or frequently incapacitated by disabling neuroses and addictions,
Ch-06.indd 223 7/8/2008 12:33:25 PM
224 Part II Sex and Gender
including chronic depression, suicide attempts, alcoholism, severe relationship prob-
lems, or problems in controlling rage. Additionally, 1520% of the parents were se-
verely disturbed, including those diagnosed with severe manic depression, paranoid
ideation, and bizarre thinking and behaviors (see Wallerstein & Kelly, 1980, Appendix A,
pp. 328329). In part, the pervasive parent pathology found in the original sample may
be the basis for the descriptions presented in the 25-year follow-up of inattentive, selfish,
narcissistic, abandoning parents intent on self-gratification. In contrast, in Hethering-
tons multi-method, longitudinal studies using married families as a comparison group,
most divorced parents eventually became as competent as the still-married parents and
were caring toward their children in the years following divorce ( Hetherington, 1999;
Hetherington & Kelly, 2002).
It has been stated in the most recent report ( Wallerstein et al., 2000) and in per-
sonal interviews that the children in the original sample were carefully prescreened,
asymptomatic, and developmentally on track ( Waters, 2001, p. 50). In fact, 17% of the
children were clinically rated as having severe psychological, social, and /or developmen-
tal problems ( Wallerstein & Kelly, 1980, p. 330) and were retained in the sample. The
nonrepresentative sample of convenience was referred from a variety of sources, includ-
ing lawyers, therapists, and the court, or were self-referred. The parents participated in
a free, 6-week divorce counseling intervention from which the data were gathered (see
Kelly & Wallerstein, 1977; Wallerstein & Kelly, 1977), and the children were seen for
three to four sessions by child-trained therapists.
Objective data are limited in the 25-year report ( Wallerstein et al., 2000), and few
statistical analyses were available. The qualitative findings were presented primarily as six
composites; however, without sufficient data, it is impossible for the reader to determine
whether the composites were representative of the whole sample. With rare exception,
these composites present stark, failed outcomes. The emotional pain and failures of these
young adults has been presented in a consistently negative manner, so the overall impres-
sion is one of pervasive pathology. Based on the limited data found in the earlier follow-up,
one would expect that among the 93 young adults interviewed at the 25-year follow-up
there were some subjects without pain, anger, and depression who were enjoying success-
ful marriages and parent-child relationships. We believe that in the absence of objective
questionnaires, standardized measures, and statistical analyses, clinical research is particu-
larly vulnerable to a focus on psychopathology to the exclusion of more adaptive coping
and resilience. Certainly, the sweeping generalizations in the 25-year report that none of
these youngsters escaped the permanently damaging effects of parental divorce are not
consistent with the limited data in an endnote in The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce (2000,
p. 333), which indicates that 70% of the sample of adult children of divorce scored either
in the average or very well to outstanding range on an overall measure of psychologi-
cal well-being. Without standardized adjustment measures, it is difficult to compare these
numbers with the findings of other divorce research.
Aside from sampling and methodological concerns, another explanation for the
marked divergence in longer-term outcomes of divorce offspring may be a confusion
of pain and pathology. Like young adults participating in more objective assessments of
pain, participants in the Wallerstein study may have reported considerable distress in
Ch-06.indd 224 7/8/2008 12:33:25 PM
Chapter 6 Divorce and Remarriage 225
reflecting upon their parents divorce. However, painful reflections on a difficult past are
not the same as an inability to feel and function competently in the present.
PAINFUL MEMORIES AS LONGER-TERM
RESIDUES OF DIVORCE
A third perception of the short- and longer-term effects of divorce may be a useful com-
plement and balance to risk and resilience perspectives. Painful memories and experiences
may be a lasting residue of the divorce (and remarriage) process for many youngsters and
young adults. However, it is important to distinguish pain or distress about parental
divorce from longer-term psychological symptoms or pathology. Clearly, divorce can
create lingering feelings of sadness, longing, worry, and regret that coexist with compe-
tent psychological and social functioning. Substantial change and relationship loss, when
compounded for some by continuing conflict between parents, represents an ongoing
unpleasant situation over which the child or adolescent may have no control. Research
that includes standardized and objective measures of both psychological adjustment and
painful feelings is useful in disentangling differences in long-term outcomes reported in
young adults from divorced families. Such research may help to explain some of the ap-
parent conflict between studies using clinical and quantitative methods.
A decade after divorce, well-functioning college students reported continued pain
and distress about their parents divorces ( Laumann-Billings & Emery, 2000). Compared
with students in still-married families, they reported more painful childhood feelings and
experiences, including worry about such things as their parents attending major events
and wanting to spend more time with their fathers. They did not blame themselves for
parental divorce, and 80% thought that the divorce was right for their parents. Feelings
of loss were the most prevalent of the painful feelings, and the majority reported they
missed not having their father around. Many questioned whether their fathers loved
them. Despite these painful feelings and beliefs, these young adults did not differ on
standardized measures of depression or anxiety from a comparison sample of students in
still-married families. These findings were replicated in a second sample of low-income
young adults who were not college students. Among factors associated with more pain
among children from divorced families were living in sole mother or father custody,
rather than a shared custody arrangement, and higher levels of postdivorce parental
conflict. When childrens parents continued their high conflict, these young adults re-
ported greater feelings of loss and paternal blame and were more likely to view their
lives through the filter of divorce ( Laumann-Billings & Emery). Young adults in both
samples also reported lower levels of loss when they had lived in joint physical custody
and were less likely to see life through the filter of divorce. As would be expected, there
is no question that divorce impacted the lives of many of these young adults and that
parental attitudes and behavior affected the degree of painful feelings lingering after
divorce. Although tempting, this impact should not be confused with or portrayed as
poor psychological adjustment.
Ch-06.indd 225 7/8/2008 12:33:25 PM
226 Part II Sex and Gender
Feelings of loss also were reported by half of 820 college students a decade after di-
vorce in another study ( Fabricius & Hall, 2000). Subjects indicated that they had wanted
to spend more time with their fathers in the years after divorce. They reported that their
mothers were opposed to increasing their time with fathers. When asked which of nine
living arrangements would have been best for them, 70% chose equal time with each
parent, and an additional 30% said a substantial number of overnights with their fa-
thers, preferences that were similar in a sample of young adults in nondivorced families.
The typical amount of contact reported in this and other studies between children and
their fathers was every other weekend. One can infer from these findings that for many
years, many of these students experienced some degree of painful longing for the absent
parent that might have been alleviated with more generous visiting arrangements. An
analysis of the amount of contact and closeness to fathers indicated that with each incre-
ment of increased contact between these children and their fathers, there was an equal in-
crease in young adults reporting closeness to their fathers and a corresponding decrease
in anger toward their fathers. Further, the increased feelings of closeness toward fathers
did not diminish their reported closeness to mothers (see Fabricius, 2003). Further, in-
creasing increments of father contact were linked to incremental amounts of support
paid by fathers for their childrens college ( Fabricius, Braver, & Deneau, 2003). In fact,
students who perceived their parents as opposed to or interfering with contact with the
nonresident parent were more angry and less close to those parents than were students
who reported their parents as more supportive of contact with the nonresident parents.
Another source of pain may be the extent to which adult children feel that they had
no control over their lives following divorce. As indicated earlier, the majority of children
and adolescents are not adequately informed about the divorce and its implications for
their lives ( Dunn et al., 2001). They also are not consulted for their ideas regarding ac-
cess arrangements and how they are working for them, both emotionally and practically
( Kelly, 2002; McIntosh, 2000; Smart & Neale, 2000). The young adults cited earlier who
longed to spend increased time with their fathers either perceived that they had no con-
trol over this arrangement or in reality did not have control. In lacking a voice in these
divorce arrangements, not only did they miss their fathers over an extended period, but
they were left with lingering doubts as to whether their fathers loved them. The substan-
tial presence of involved nonresident parents in childrens lives after divorce may be an
important indicator to many children that they are valued and loved.
Transitions between two households constitute another arena where many children
do not have sufficient input and control, particularly as they move into adolescence, and
this may cause lingering angry or painful feelings. Whereas 25% of youngsters had some
to many negative feelings about transitions between households, 73% had some to many
positive feelings about the transitions. There was a significant association between posi-
tive feelings about transitions and being given a voice or role in some decision-making
about the arrangements ( Dunn et al., 2001). Although some research calls attention to
the importance of children having a voice in formulating or shaping postdivorce parent-
ing plans, there is the danger of burdening children with decisions that the adults can-
not make. Giving children the right to be heard, if not done with sensitivity and care,
may give children the responsibility for making an impossible choice between their two
parents. There is a distinction between providing children with the possibility of input
Ch-06.indd 226 7/8/2008 12:33:25 PM
Chapter 6 Divorce and Remarriage 227
regarding their access arrangements and the inherent stresses of decision-makinga
distinction with which children themselves seem quite familiar and comfortable ( Kelly,
2002; McIntosh, 2000; Smart & Neale, 2000).
IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE
AND INTERVENTIONS
There are a number of important implications for practice and intervention that derive
from this analysis of childrens adjustment following divorce. Rather than communi-
cating a global or undifferentiated view of the impact of divorce, research has begun
to identify particular factors that increase childrens risk following divorce and, equally
important, those that are protective and promote resiliency in children and adolescents.
Understanding this literature is central to promoting policies and developing and assess-
ing services that have the potential to help mitigate family problems so that adjustment
problems among children from divorced families are diminished. There are few better
examples than the importance of adopting a systems approach (including family systems
and broader social and legal systems) to helping these children. Whatever its specific
nature or focus, interventions are more likely to benefit children from divorced families
if they seek to contain parental conflict, promote authoritative and close relationships
between children and both of their parents, enhance economic stability in the postdivorce
family, and, when appropriate, involve children in effective interventions that help them
have a voice in shaping more individualized and helpful access arrangements ( Kelly,
2002).
Among the hierarchy of interventions available that strive toward some of these ends
are parent education programs for parents and children, divorce mediation, collaborative
lawyering, judicial settlement conferences, parenting coordinator or arbitration programs
for chronically litigating parents, and family and group therapy for children and parents
( Kelly, 2002). Clearly, there is a need for more research on these sorts of interventions;
at present, only mediation enjoys a solid base of research support regarding the benefits
to divorcing and divorced families ( Emery, 1994; Emery, Kitzmann, & Waldron, 1999;
Kelly, 1996, 2002). The potential benefits of mediation are substantial in both the short
term (e.g., reduced parental conflict and improved parent support and communications;
Kelly, 1996) and longer term. For example, a randomized trial of an average of 5 hours
of custody mediation led to significant and positive effects on parent-child and parent-
parent relationships 12 years later ( Emery et al., 2001), including more sustained contact
between fathers and children, compared with those in the litigation sample.
Divorce education programs for parents and children have proliferated in the United
States in the past decade, particularly those associated with family courts (Geasler & Blai-
sure, 1999). They are generally limited to one to two sessions in the court sector and four
to six sessions in the community or schools. Research on this newer preventive interven-
tion is more limited and has focused primarily on parent satisfaction and parental self-
reports of the impact of the interventions on their behavior ( Kelly, 2002). Programs that
are research-based and focused on skill development showed more promise in educating
Ch-06.indd 227 7/8/2008 12:33:25 PM
228 Part II Sex and Gender
parents and promoting change than did those that are didactic or affect-based ( Kelly,
2002). However, few studies of these programs are designed to demonstrate their efficacy
in preventing or reducing psychological or social adjustment problems for children of
divorce, or in actually modifying parental behaviors associated with poor child outcomes.
Several experimental or quasi-experimental studies of lengthier, research-based programs
designed to facilitate childrens postdivorce adjustment have been conducted that show
promising behavioral and psychological changes in both parents and children (for review,
see Haine, Sandler, Wolchik, Tein, & Dawson-McClure, 2003). The child-focused pro-
grams, incorporating aspects of risk and resiliency factors described in their article, have
demonstrated significant reductions at follow-up in child externalizing and internalizing
behaviors and child self-esteem compared with nontreatment controls. Several investi-
gations of mother-focused programs also found reductions in child psychological and
behavioral problems, improvements in mother-child relationship quality and discipline,
and changed attitudes toward father-child relationships and visiting ( Haine et al., 2003).
Few programs and research have focused on fathers to test the efficacy of providing newer
empirical information regarding the benefits of active, competent parenting among non-
resident parents, rather than the more permissive, weekend entertainment model that so
frequently emerges after divorce; however, new research is promising ( Braver, Griffin,
Cookson, Sandler, & Williams, in press).
Another important implication of these findings for practice is as a reminder to
practitioners of several seemingly obvious but easily overlooked points. Children and
young people from divorced families seen in counseling or psychotherapy are a select
group who surely differ from the general population of children of divorce. We must be
careful in generalizing to all children from those in small, unrepresentative, or clinical
samples, particularly when contributing to public education or policy. We believe that
the public education message needs to acknowledge that when divorce occurs, parents
and legal systems designed to assist families can utilize particular research knowledge and
skills to reduce the risks associated with divorce for children. Although we also wish to
promote more happy marriages, we conclude that although some children are harmed
by parental divorce, the majority of findings show that most children do well. To suggest
otherwise is to provide an inaccurate interpretation of the research findings. Further,
such misrepresentation[s] of research are potentially harmful in creating stigma, helpless-
ness, and negative expectations for children and parents from divorced families. Practi-
tioners and educators need to be reminded and remind others that the painful memories
expressed by young people from divorced families are not evidence of pathology. At the
same time, we should encourage researchers to develop objective, reliable, and valid
measures of the important struggles associated with divorce that might be apparent first
in schools or clinical practice.
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R E A DI NG 1 8
The Modern American Stepfamily:
Problems and Possibilities
Mary Ann Mason
Cinderella had one, so did Snow White and Hansel and Gretel. Our traditional cultural
myths are filled with the presence of evil stepmothers. We learn from the stories read
to us as children that stepparents, particularly stepmothers, are not to be trusted. They
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234 Part II Sex and Gender
may pretend to love us in front of our biological parent, but the moment our real parent
is out of sight they will treat us cruelly and shower their own children with kindnesses.
Few modern childrens tales paint stepparents so harshly, still the negative image of step-
parents lingers in public policy. While the rights and obligations of biological parents,
wed or unwed, have been greatly strengthened in recent times, stepparents have been
virtually ignored. At best it is fair to say that as a society we have a poorly formed concept
of the role of stepparents and a reluctance to clarify that role.
Indeed, the contrast between the legal status of stepparents and the presumptive
rights and obligations of natural parents is remarkable. Child support obligations, custody
rights, and inheritance rights exist between children and their natural parents by virtue
of a biological tie alone, regardless of the quality of social or emotional bonds between
parent and child, and regardless of whether the parents are married. In recent years policy
changes have extended the rights and obligations of natural parents, particularly in re-
gard to unwed and divorced parents, but have not advanced with regard to stepparents.
Stepparents in most states have no obligation during the marriage to support their step-
children, nor do they enjoy any right of custody or control. Consistent with this pattern,
if the marriage terminates through divorce or death, they usually have no rights to cus-
tody or even visitation, however longstanding their relationship with their stepchildren.
Conversely, stepparents have no obligation to pay child support following divorce, even
if their stepchildren have depended on their income for many years. In turn, stepchildren
have no right of inheritance in the event of the stepparents death (they are, however,
eligible for Social Security benefits in most cases).
1
Policymakers who spend a great deal of time worrying about the economic and
psychological effects of divorce on children rarely consider the fact that about 70 percent
of mothers are remarried within six years. More over, about 28 percent of children are
born to unwed mothers, many of whom eventually marry someone who is not the father
of their child. In a study including all children, not just children of divorce, it was esti-
mated that one-fourth of the children born in the United States in the early 1980s will
live with a stepparent before they reach adulthood.
2
These numbers are likely to increase
in the future, at least as long as the number of single-parent families continues to grow.
In light of these demographic trends, federal and state policies affecting families and
children, as well as policies governing private-sector employee benefits, insurance, and
other critical areas of everyday life, may need to be adapted to address the concerns of
modern stepfamilies.
In recent years stepfamilies have received fresh attention from the psychological
and social sciences but little from legal and policy scholars. We now know a good deal
about who modern stepfamilies are and how they function, but there have been few at-
tempts to apply this knowledge to policy. This [reading] first of all reviews the recent
findings on the everyday social and economic functioning of todays stepfamilies, and
then examines current state and federal policies, or lack of them in this arena. Finally, the
sparse set of current policy recommendations, including my own, are presented. These
proposals range from active discouragement of stepfamilies
3
to a consideration of step-
parents as de facto parents, with all the rights and responsibilities of biological parents
during marriage, and a limited extension of these rights and responsibilities following the
breakup of marriage or the death of the stepparent.
4
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Chapter 6 Divorce and Remarriage 235
THE MODERN STEPFAMILY
The modern stepfamily is different and more complex than Cinderellas or Snow Whites
in several important ways. First, the stepparent who lives with the children is far more
likely to be a stepfather than a stepmother, and in most cases the childrens biological
father is still alive and a presence, in varying degrees, in their lives. Today it is divorce,
rather than death, which usually serves as the background event for the formation of the
stepfamily, and it is the custodial mother who remarries (86 percent of stepchildren live
primarily with a custodial mother and stepfather),
5
initiating a new legal arrangement
with a stepfather.
6
Let us take the case of the Jones-Hutchins family. Sara was eight and Josh five when
their mother and father, Martha and Ray Jones divorced. Three years later Martha mar-
ried Sam Hutchins, who had no children. They bought a house together and the children
received health and other benefits from Sams job, since Martha was working part time
at a job with no benefits.
Theoretically, this new parental arrangement was a triangle, since Ray was still on
the scene and initially saw the children every other weekend. In most stepfamilies the non-
custodial parent, usually the father, is still alive (only in 25 percent of cases is the noncus-
todial parent dead, or his whereabouts unknown). This creates the phenomenon of more
than two parents, a situation that conventional policymakers are not well equipped to ad-
dress. However, according to the National Survey of Families and Households ( NSFH),
a nationally representative sample of families, contact between stepchildren and their
absent natural fathers is not that frequent. Contact falls into four broad patterns: roughly
one-quarter of all stepchildren have no association at all with their fathers and receive
no child support; one-quarter see their fathers only once a year or less often and receive no
child support; one-quarter have intermittent contact or receive some child support; and
one-quarter may or may not receive child support but have fairly regular contact, seeing
their fathers once a month or more. Using these data as guides to the quality and inten-
sity of the father-child relationship, it appears that relatively few stepchildren are close
to their natural fathers or have enough contact with them to permit the fathers to play a
prominent role in the childrens upbringing. Still, at least half of natural fathers do figure
in their childrens lives to some degree.
7
The presence of the noncustodial parent usually
precludes the option of stepparent adoption, a solution that would solve the legal ambigui-
ties, at least, of the stepparents role.
In size, according to the National Survey of Families and Households, modern resi-
dential stepfamilies resemble modern nondivorced families and single-parent families, with
an average of two children per family. Only families with two stepparents (the rarest type
of stepfamily, in which both parents had children from previous relationships, and both
are the custodial parents) are larger, with an average of 3.4 children per household. In part
because divorce and remarriage take time, children are older. In the NSFH households,
the youngest stepchildren in families are, on average, aged eleven, while the youngest
children in nondivorced families are six and a half.
8
There are also, of course, nonresidential stepparents (the spouses of noncustodial
parents), usually stepmothers. In our case, Ray married again, the year after Martha mar-
ried Sam. Rays new wife, Leslie, was the custodial parent of Audrey, age twelve. This
Ch-06.indd 235 7/8/2008 12:33:26 PM
236 Part II Sex and Gender
marriage complicated the weekend visits. The Jones children were resentful of their new
stepmother, Leslie, and her daughter, Audrey. Ray found it easier to see them alone, and
his visits became less frequent.
Some children may spend a good deal of time with nonresidential stepparents, and
they may become significant figures in the childrens lives, unlike Leslie in our example.
But for our purpose of reassessing the parental rights and obligations of stepparents, we
will focus only on residental stepparents, since they are more likely to be involved in the
everyday support and care of their stepchildren. Moreover, the wide variety of benefits
available to dependent children, like Social Security and health insurance, are usually
attached only to a residential stepparent.
The modern stepfamily, like those of Cinderella and Snow White, also has stresses
and strains. This was certainly true for the Jones-Hutchins family. Sara was eleven and
Josh seven when their mother married Sam. At first Sara refused to talk to Sam and turned
her face away when he addressed her. Josh was easier. He did not say much, but was will-
ing to play catch or go an on errand with Sam if encouraged by Sam to do so. Sara grew
only slightly more polite as she developed into adolescence. She spoke to Sam only if she
needed something. But, as her mother pointed out to Sam, she hardly spoke to her either.
Josh continued to be pleasant, if a little distant, as he grew older. He clearly preferred his
mothers attention.
The classic longitudinal studies by Heatherington and colleagues,
9
spanning the
past two decades, provide a rich source of information on how stepfamilies function.
Heatherington emphasizes that stepchildren are children who have experienced several
marital transitions. They have usually already experienced the divorce of their parents
(although the number whose mothers have never before wed is increasing) and a period
of life in a single-parent family before the formation of the stepfamily. In the early stages
of all marital transitions, including divorce and remarriage, child-parent relations are
often disrupted and parenting is less authoritative than in nondivorced families. These
early periods, however, usually give way to a parenting situation more similar to nuclear
families.
10
The Heatherington studies found that stepfathers vary in how enthusiastically and
effectively they parent their stepchildren, and stepchildren also vary in how willingly they
permit a parental relationship to develop. Indeed, many stepfather-stepchild relation-
ships are not emotionally close. Overall, stepfathers in these studies are most often dis-
engaged and less authoritative as compared with nondivorced fathers. The small class of
residential stepmothers exhibits a similar style.
11
Conversely, adolescent children tend to
perceive their stepfathers negatively in the early stages of remarriage, but over time, they
too become disengaged. In an interesting twist on fairy tale lore, adolescent children in
stepfamilies experience less conflict with their residential stepmothers than do children
in nondivorced families with their own mothers.
12
The age and gender of the child at the time of stepfamily formation are critical in
his or her adjustment. Early adolescence is a difficult time in which to have remarriage
occur, with more sustained difficulties in stepfather-stepchild relations than in remar-
riages where the children are younger. Young ( preadolescent) stepsons, but not necessar-
ily stepdaughters, develop a closer relationship to their stepfathers after a period of time;
this is not as likely with older children.
13
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Chapter 6 Divorce and Remarriage 237
Other researchers have found that in their lives outside the family, stepchildren do
not perform as well as children from nondivorced families, and look more like the chil-
dren from single-parent families. It seems that divorce and remarriage (or some factors
associated with divorce and remarriage) increase the risk of poor academic, behavioral,
and psychological outcomes.
14
The difficulties of the stepfamily relationship are evident in the high divorce rate of
such families. About one-quarter of all remarrying women separate from their new spouses
within five years of the second marriage, and the figure is higher for women with children
from prior relationships. A conservative estimate is that between 20 percent and 30 percent
of stepchildren will, before they turn eighteen, see their custodial parent and stepparent
divorce.
15
This is yet another disruptive marital transition for children, most of whom have
already undergone at least one divorce.
Other researchers look at the stepfamily more positively. Amato and Keith analyzed
data comparing intact, two-parent families with stepfamilies and found that while chil-
dren from two-parent families performed significantly better on a multifactored measure
of well-being and development, there was a significant overlap. A substantial number of
children in stepfamilies actually perform as well or better than children in intact two-
parent families. As Amato comments, Some children grow up in well-functioning intact
families in which they encounter abuse, neglect, poverty, parental mental illness, and pa-
rental substance abuse. Other children grow up in well-functioning stepfamilies and have
caring stepparents who provide affection, effective control and economic support.
16
Still
other researchers suggest that it may be the painful transitions of divorce and economi-
cally deprived single-parenthood which usually precede the formation of the stepfamily
that explain the poor performance of stepchildren.
17
Perhaps a fairer comparison of stepchildrens well-being is against single-parent
families. Indeed, if there were no remarriage (or first marriage, in the case of unmarried
birth mothers), these children would remain a part of a single-parent household. On most
psychological measures of behavior and achievement, stepchildren look more like children
from single-parent families than children from never-divorced families, but on economic
measures it is a different story. The National Survey of Families and Households ( NSFH)
data show that stepparents have slightly lower incomes and slightly less education than
parents in nuclear families, but that incomes of all types of married families with children
are three to four times greater than the incomes of single mothers. Custodial mothers
in stepfamilies have similar incomes to single mothers (about $12,000 in 1987). If, as
seems plausible, their personal incomes are about the same before they married as after,
then marriage has increased their household incomes more than threefold. Stepfathers
incomes are, on average, more than twice as great as their wives, and account for nearly
three-fourths of the familys income.
18
In contrast to residential stepparents, absent biological parents only rarely provide
much financial or other help to their children. Some do not because they are dead or can-
not be found; about 26 percent of custodial, remarried mothers and 28 percent of single
mothers report that their childs father is deceased or of unknown whereabouts. Yet even
in the three-quarters of families where the noncustodial parents whereabouts are known,
only about one-third of all custodial mothers (single and remarried) receive child support
or alimony from former spouses, and the amounts involved are small compared to the
Ch-06.indd 237 7/8/2008 12:33:27 PM
238 Part II Sex and Gender
cost of raising children. According to NSFH data, remarried women with awards receive
on average $1780 per year, while single mothers receive $1383. Clearly, former spouses
cannot be relied on to lift custodial mothers and their children out of poverty.
19
The picture is still more complex, as is true with all issues relating to stepfamilies.
Some noncustodial fathers, like Ray Jones in our scenario, have remarried and have
stepchildren themselves. These relationships, too, are evident in the NSFH data. Nearly
one-quarter (23 percent) of residential stepfathers have minor children from former re-
lationships living elsewhere. Two-thirds of those report paying child support for their
children.
20
In our case, Ray Jones did continue his child support payments, but he felt
squeezed by the economic obligation of contributing to two households. This is a grow-
ing class of fathers who frequently feel resentful about the heavy burden of supporting
two households, particularly when their first wife has remarried.
In sum, although we have no data that precisely examine the distribution of re-
sources within a stepfamily, it is fair to assume that stepfathers substantial contributions
to family income improve their stepchildrens material well-being by helping to cover
basic living costs. For many formerly single-parent families, stepfathers incomes pro-
vided by remarriage are essential in preventing or ending poverty among custodial moth-
ers and their children. ( The data are less clear for the much smaller class of residential
stepmothers.)
While legal dependency usually ends at eighteen, the economic resources avail-
able to a stepchild through remarriage could continue to be an important factor past
childhood. College education and young adulthood are especially demanding economic
events. The life-course studies undertaken by some researchers substantiate the inter-
personal trends seen in stepfamilies before the stepchildren leave home. White reports
that viewed from either the parents or the childs perspective, relationships over the
life-course between stepchildren and stepparents are substantially weaker than those
between biological parents and children. These relationships are not monolithic, how-
ever; the best occur when the stepparent is a male, there are no stepsiblings, the step-
parent has no children of his own, and the marriage between the biological parent and
the stepparent is intact.
21
On the other end, support relationships are nearly always cut
off if the stepparent relationship is terminated because of divorce or the death of the
natural parent.
The Jones children were fortunate. Martha and Sam enjoyed a good marriage, in
spite of the stress of stepparenting, and Sam was glad to help them with college expenses.
Their biological father, Ray, felt he had his own family to support; his stepdaughter,
Audrey, also needed money for college. As Sara grew older she grew more accepting of
Sam. And after her first child was born, she seemed happy to accept Sam as a grandfather
for her child. Josh continued on good terms with Sam.
Again, one might ask to compare these findings to single-parent households
where there are no stepparents to provide additional support. The data here are less
available. While we do know that stepchildren leave home earlier and are less likely to
attend college than children from intact families, the comparison with single-parent
families is not clear.
22
One study of perceived normative obligation to stepparents and
stepchildren suggests that people in stepfamilies have weaker, but still important, family
ties than do biological kin.
23
In terms of economic and other forms of adult support,
Ch-06.indd 238 7/8/2008 12:33:27 PM
Chapter 6 Divorce and Remarriage 239
even weak ties cannot be discounted. They might, instead, become the focus of public
policy initiatives.
STEPFAMILIES IN LAW AND PUBLIC POLICY
Both state and federal law set policies that affect stepfamilies. Overall, these policies
do not reflect a coherent policy toward stepparents and stepchildren. Two competing
models are roughly evident. One, a stranger model, followed by most states, treats the
residential stepparent as if he or she were a legal stranger to the children, with no rights
and no responsibilities. The other, a dependency model, most often followed by federal
policymakers, assumes the residential stepfather is, in fact, supporting the stepchildren
and provides benefits accordingly. But there is inconsistency in both state and federal
policy. Some states lean at times toward a dependency model and require support in
some instances, and the federal government sometimes treats the stepparent as if he or
she were a stranger to the stepchildren, and ignores them in calculating benefits.
State law governs the traditional family matters of marriage, divorce, adoption, and
inheritance, while federal law covers a wide range of programs and policies that touch on
the lives of most Americans, including stepfamilies. As the provider of benefits through
such programs as Temporary Aid for Needy Families ( TANF ) and Social Security, the
federal government sets eligibility standards that affect the economic well-being of many
stepfamilies. In addition, as the employer of the armed forces and civil servants, the fed-
eral government establishes employee benefits guidelines for vast numbers of American
families. And in its regulatory role, the federal government defines the status of stepfami-
lies for many purposes ranging from immigration eligibility to tax liability.
Not covered in this [reading] or, to my knowledge, yet systematically investigated
are the wide range of private employee benefit programs, from medical and life insurance
through educational benefits. These programs mostly take their lead from state or federal
law. Therefore, it is fair to guess that they suffer from similar inconsistencies.
State Policies
State laws generally give little recognition to the dependency needs of children who re-
side with their stepparent; they are most likely to treat the stepparent as a stranger to the
children, with no rights or obligations. In contrast to the numerous state laws obligating
parents to support natural children born out of wedlock or within a previous marriage,
only a few states have enacted statutes which specifically impose an affirmative duty on
stepparents. The Utah stepparent support statute, for example, provides simply that,
A stepparent shall support a stepchild to the same extent that a natural or adoptive par-
ent is required to support a child.
24
This duty of support ends upon the termination of
the marriage. Most states are silent on the obligation to support stepchildren.
25
A few states rely on common law, the legal tradition stemming from our English
roots. The common law tradition leans more toward a dependency model. It dictates that
a stepparent can acquire the rights and duties of a parent if he or she acts in loco parentis (in
the place of a parent). Acquisition of this status is not automatic; it is determined by the
Ch-06.indd 239 7/8/2008 12:33:27 PM
240 Part II Sex and Gender
stepparents intent. A stepparent need not explicitly state the intention to act as a parent;
he or she can manifest the requisite intent to assume responsibility by actually providing
financial support or by taking over the custodial duties.
26
Courts, however, have been
reluctant to grant in loco parental rights or to attach obligations to unwilling stepparents.
In the words of one Wisconsin court, A good Samaritan should not be saddled with the
legal obligations of another and we think the law should not with alacrity conclude that
a stepparent assumes parental relationships to a child.
27
At the extreme, once the status of in loco parentis is achieved, the stepparent stands
in the place of the natural parent, and the reciprocal rights, duties, and obligations of par-
ent and child subsist. These rights, duties, and obligations include the duty to provide
financial support, the right to custody and control of the child, immunity from suit by
the stepchild, and, in some cases, visitation rights after the dissolution of the marriage
by death or divorce.
Yet stepparents who qualify as in loco parentis are not always required to provide sup-
port in all circumstances. A subset of states imposes obligation only if the stepchild is in
danger of becoming dependent on public assistance. For example, Hawaii provides that:
A stepparent who acts in loco parentis is bound to provide, maintain, and support the step-
parents stepchild during the residence of the child with the stepparent if the legal parents
desert the child or are unable to support the child, thereby reducing the child to destitute
and necessitous circumstances.
28
Just as states do not regularly require stepparents to support their stepchildren, they
do not offer stepparents the parental authority of custody and control within the mar-
riage. A residential stepparent generally has fewer rights than a legal guardian or a foster
parent. According to one commentator, a stepparent has no authority to make decisions
about the childno authority to approve emergency medical treatment or even to sign
a permission slip for a field trip to the fire station.
29
Both common law and state statutes almost uniformly terminate the stepparent re-
lationship upon divorce or the death of the custodial parent. This means that the support
obligations, if there were any, cease, and that the stepparent has no rights to visitation or
custody. State courts have sometimes found individual exceptions to this role, but they
have not created any clear precedents. Currently only a few states authorize stepparents
to seek visitation rights, and custody is almost always granted to a biological parent upon
divorce. In the event of the death of the stepparents spouse, the noncustodial, biologi-
cal parent is usually granted custody even when the stepparent has, in fact, raised the
child. In one such recent Michigan case, Henrickson v. Gable,
30
the children, aged nine
and ten when their mother died, had lived with their stepfather since infancy and had
rarely seen their biological father. In the ensuing custody dispute, the trial court left
the children with their stepfather, but an appellate court, relying upon a state law that
created a strong preference for biological parents, reversed this decision and turned the
children over to their biological father.
Following the stranger model, state inheritance laws, with a few complex excep-
tions, do not recognize the existence of stepchildren. Under existing state laws, even a
dependent stepchild whose stepparent has supported and raised the child for many years
is not eligible to inherit from the stepparent if there is no will. California provides the
Ch-06.indd 240 7/8/2008 12:33:27 PM
Chapter 6 Divorce and Remarriage 241
most liberal rule for stepchild recovery when there is no will, but only if the stepchild
meets relatively onerous qualifications. Stepchildren may inherit as the children of a
deceased stepparent only if it is established by clear and convincing evidence that the
stepparent would have adopted the person but for a legal barrier.
31
Very few stepchil-
dren have been able to pass this test. Similarly a stepchild cannot bring a negligence suit
for the accidental death of a stepparent. In most instances, then, only a biological child
will inherit or receive legal compensation when a stepparent dies.
Federal Policies
The federal policies that concern us here are of two types: federal benefit programs
given to families in need, including TANF and Supplemental Security Income (SSI ), and
general programs not based on need, including Social Security as well as civil service and
military personnel employee benefits. Most of these programs follow the dependency
model. They go further than do most states in recognizing or promoting the actual fam-
ily relationship of residential stepfamilies. Many of them (although not all) assume that
residential stepparents support their stepchildren and accordingly make these children
eligible for benefits equivalent to those afforded to other children of the family.
Despite the fact that federal law generally recognizes the dependency of residential
stepchildren, it remains wanting in many respects. There is a great deal of inconsistency
in how the numerous federal programs and policies treat the stepparent-stepchild rela-
tionship, and the very definitions of what constitutes a stepchild are often quite different
across programs. Most of the programs strive for a dependency-based definition, such as
living with or receiving 50 percent of support from a stepparent. However, some invoke
the vague definition, actual family relationship, and some do not attempt any definition
at all, thus potentially including nonresidential stepchildren among the beneficiaries. In
some programs the category of stepchild is entirely absent or specifically excluded from
the list of beneficiaries for some programs.
Even where program rules permit benefits for dependent stepchildren as for natural
children, the benefits to stepchildren are typically severed by death or divorce.
32
While
Social Security does cover dependent stepchildren in the event of death, several pro-
grams specifically exclude stepchildren from eligibility for certain death benefits. Under
the Federal Employees Retirement System, stepchildren are explicitly excluded from
the definition of children in determining the default beneficiary, without concern for the
stepchilds possible dependency. All stepchildren are similarly excluded from eligibility
for lump-sum payments under the Foreign Service Retirement and Disability System
and the CIA Retirement and Disability program.
33
Stepchildren are even more vulnerable in the event of divorce. Here the stranger
model is turned to. As with state law, any legally recognized relationship is immediately
severed upon divorce in nearly all federal programs. The children and their stepparents
become as strangers. Social Security does not provide any cushion for stepchildren if the
deceased stepparent is divorced from the custodial parent. Under Social Security law,
the stepparent-stepchild relationship is terminated immediately upon divorce and the
stepchild is no longer eligible for benefits even if the child has in fact been dependent
on the insured stepparent for the duration of a very long marriage.
34
If the divorce were
finalized the day before the stepparents death the child would receive no benefits.
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242 Part II Sex and Gender
In sum, current federal policy goes part way toward defining the role of the step-
parent by assuming a dependency model in most programs, even when state law does not,
and providing benefits to stepchildren based on this assumption of stepparent support.
However, as described, existing federal stepparent policy falls short in several critical
areas. And state laws and policies fall far short of federal policies in their consideration
of stepfamilies, for the most part treating stepparents as strangers with regard to their
stepchildren.
NEW POLICY PROPOSALS
Proposals for policy reform regarding stepfamilies are scant in number and, so far, largely
unheard by policymakers. Most of the proposals come from legal scholars, a few from
social scientists. Stepparents have not been organized to demand reform, nor have child
advocates. All the reforms have some disagreements with the existing stranger and de-
pendency models, but few offer a completely new model.
All of the proposals I review base their arguments to a greater or lesser degree on
social science data, although not always the same data. The proposers may roughly be
divided into three camps. The first, and perhaps smallest camp, I call negativists. These
are scholars who view stepfamilies from a sociobiological perspective, and find them a
troublesome aberration to be actively discouraged. The second, and by far largest group
of scholars, I term voluntarists. This group acknowledges both the complexity and the
often distant nature of stepparent relationships, and largely believes that law and policy
should leave stepfamilies alone, as it does now. If stepparents wish to take a greater role in
their stepchildrens lives, they should be encouraged to do so, by adoption or some other
means. The third camp recognizes the growing presence of stepfamilies as an alternate
family form and believes they should be recognized and strengthened in some important
ways. This group, I call them reformists, believes the law should take the lead in provid-
ing more rights or obligations to stepparents. The few policy initiatives from this group
range from small specific reforms regarding such issues as inheritance and visitation to
my own proposal for a full-scale redefinition of stepparents rights and obligations.
The negativist viewpoint on stepparenting, most prominently represented by soci-
ologist David Popenoe, relies on a sociobiological theory of reproduction. According to
this theory, human beings will give unstintingly to their own biological children, in order
to promote their own genes, but will be far less generous to others. The recent rise in
divorce and out-of-wedlock births, according to Popenoe, has created a pattern of essen-
tially fatherless households that cannot compete with the two-biological-parent families.
Popenoe believes the pattern of stepparent disengagement revealed by many re-
searchers is largely based on this biological stinginess.
If the argument . . . is correct, and the family is fundamentally rooted in biology and at
least partly activated by the genetically selfish activities of human beings, childbearing
by non relatives is inherently problematic. It is not that unrelated individuals are unable to
do the job of parenting, it is just that they are not as likely to do the job well. Stepfamily
problems, in short, may be so intractable that the best strategy for dealing with them is to
do everything possible to minimize their occurrence.
Ch-06.indd 242 7/8/2008 12:33:27 PM
Chapter 6 Divorce and Remarriage 243
Moreover, Popenoe cites researchers on the greatly increased incidence of child
abuse by stepfathers over natural fathers, who suggest that stepchildren are not merely
disadvantaged but imperiled.
35
This argument is not so farfetched, he claims, in fact
it is the stuff of our folk wisdom. Snow White and Hansel and Gretel had it right; step-
parents are not merely uncaring, they may be dangerous.
Popenoe goes beyond the stranger model, which is neutral as to state activity, and
suggests an active discouragement of stepparent families. He believes the best way to
obstruct stepfamilies is to encourage married biological two-parent families. Premarital
and marital counseling, a longer waiting period for divorce, and a redesign of the current
welfare system so that marriage and family are empowered rather than denigrated are
among his policy recommendations. He is heartened by what he calls the new familism,
a growing recognition of the need for strong social bonds, which he believes can best be
found in the biological two-parent family.
36
The second group of scholars, whom I call voluntarists, generally believe that the
stepparent relationship is essentially voluntary and private and the stranger model most
clearly reflects this. The legal bond formed by remarriage is between man and wife
stepchildren are incidental; they are legal strangers. Stepparents may choose, or not
choose, to become more involved with everyday economic and emotional support of their
stepchildren; but the law should not mandate this relationship, it should simply reflect it.
These scholars recognize the growth of stepfamilies as a factor of modern life and neither
condone nor condemn this configuration. Family law scholar David Chambers probably
speaks for most scholars in this large camp when he says,
In most regards, this state of the law nicely complements the state of stepparent rela-
tionships in the United States. Recall the inescapable diversity of such relationships
residential and non-residential, beginning when the children are infants and when they are
teenagers, leading to comfortable relationships in some cases and awkward relationships
in others, lasting a few years and lasting many. In this context it seems sensible to permit
those relationships to rest largely on the voluntary arrangements among stepparents and
biologic parents. The current state of the law also amply recognizes our nations continu-
ing absorption with the biologic relationship, especially as it informs our sensibilities
about enduring financial obligations.
37
Chambers is not enthusiastic about imposing support obligations on stepparents,
either during or following the termination of a marriage, but is interested in promoting
voluntary adoption. He would, however, approve some middle ground where biological
parents are not completely cut off in the adoption process.
Other voluntarists are attracted by the new English model of parenting, as enacted
in the Children Act of 1989. Of great attraction to American voluntarists is the fact that
under this model a stepparent who has been married at least two years to the biologi-
cal parent may voluntarily petition for a residence order for his or her spouses child.
With a residence order the stepparent has parental responsibility toward the child until
the age of sixteen. But this order does not extinguish the parental responsibility of the
noncustodial parent.
38
In accordance with the Children Act of 1989, parents, biological
or otherwise, no longer have parental rights, they have only parental responsibilities,
and these cannot be extinguished upon the divorce of the biological parents. In England,
therefore, it is possible for three adults to claim parental responsibility. Unlike biological
Ch-06.indd 243 7/8/2008 12:33:28 PM
244 Part II Sex and Gender
parental responsibility, however, stepparent responsibility does not usually extend follow-
ing divorce. The stepparent is not normally financially responsible following divorce, but
he or she may apply for a visitation order.
The third group, whom I call reformists, believe that voluntary acts on the part of
stepparents are not always adequate, and that it is necessary to reform the law in some
way to more clearly define the rights and responsibilities of stepparents. The American
Bar Association Family Law Section has been working for some years on a proposed
Model Act to suggest legislative reforms regarding stepparents obligations to provide
child support and rights to discipline, visitation, and custody. A Model Act is not binding
anywhere; it is simply a model for all states to consider. Traditionally, however, Model
Acts have been very influential in guiding state legislative reform. In its current form,
the ABA Model Act would require stepparents to assume a duty of support during the
duration of the remarriage only if the child is not adequately supported by the custo-
dial and noncustodial parent. The issue is ultimately left to the discretion of the family
court, but the Model Act does not require that the stepparent would need to have a
close relationship with a stepchild before a support duty is imposed. The Model Act,
however, does not describe what the rule should be if the stepparent and the custodial
parent divorce.
The proposed statute is rather more complete in its discussion of stepparent visita-
tion or custody rights following divorce. It takes a two-tiered approach, first asking if the
stepparent has standing (a legal basis) to seek visitation and then asking if the visitation
would be in the best interests of the child. The standing question is to be resolved
with reference to five factors, which essentially examine the role of the stepparent in
the childs life (almost an in loco parentis question), the financial support offered by the
stepparent, and the detriment to the child from denying visitation. The court, if it finds
standing, then completes the analysis with the best interests standard of the jurisdiction.
The Model Acts section on physical custody also requires a two-tiered test, requiring
standing and increasing the burden on the stepparent to present clear and convincing
proof that he or she is the better custodial parent.
The ABA Model Act is a worthwhile start, in my opinion, but it is little more than
that. At most it moves away from a stranger model and provides a limited concept of
mandatory stepparent support during a marriage, acknowledging that stepchildren are
at least sometimes dependent. It also gives a stepparent a fighting chance for visitation
or custody following a divorce. It fails to clarify stepparents rights during the marriage,
however, and does not deal with the issue of economic support at the period of maximum
vulnerability, the termination of the marriage through death and divorce. Moreover, the
Model Act, and, indeed, all the existing reform proposals, deal only with traditional legal
concepts of parenthood defined by each state and do not consider the vast range of fed-
eral programs, or other public and private programs, that define the stepparent-stepchild
relationship for purposes of benefits, insurance, or other purposes.
I propose, instead, a new conceptualization of stepparent rights and responsibilities,
a de facto parent model, that will cover all aspects of the stepparent-stepchild relation-
ship and will extend to federal and private policy as well. My first concern in proposing
a new framework is the welfare of the stepchildren, which is not adequately dealt with in
either the stranger or the dependency model. The failure of state and, to a lesser extent,
federal policy to address coherently the financial interdependencies of step relationships,
Ch-06.indd 244 7/8/2008 12:33:28 PM
Chapter 6 Divorce and Remarriage 245
described earlier in this [reading], means that children dependent upon a residential step-
parent may not receive adequate support or benefits from that parent during the marriage,
and they may not be protected economically in the event of divorce or parental death.
The longitudinal studies of families described earlier in this [reading] suggest that
the most difficult periods for children are those of marital transition, for example, di-
vorce and remarriage. Families with a residential stepfather have a much higher family
income than mother-headed single families; indeed, their household incomes look much
like nuclear families.
39
However, research demonstrates that stepfamilies are fragile and
are more likely to terminate in divorce than biological families. The event of divorce
can quite suddenly pull the resources available for the children back to the single-parent
level. Currently children are at least financially cushioned by child support following the
divorce of their biological parents, but have no protective support following the breakup
of their stepfamily. Nor are they protected in the event of the death of the stepparent,
which is certainly another period of vulnerability (as discussed earlier, only a small minor-
ity continue to receive support from noncustodial parents).
A second reason for proposing a new framework is to strengthen the relationship
of the stepparent and stepchildren. While research generally finds that stepparents are
less engaged in parenting than natural parents, research studies do not explain the causes;
others must do so. In addition to the sociobiologists claim for stingy, genetically driven
behavior, sociologists have posited the explanation of incomplete institutionalization.
40

This theory is based on the belief that, by and large, people act as they are expected to
act by society. In the case of stepfamilies, there are unclear or absent societal norms and
standards for how to define the remarried family, especially the role of the stepparent in
relation to the stepchild.
Briefly, my new model requires, first of all, dividing stepparents into two subclasses:
those who are de facto parents and those who are not. De facto parents would be defined
as those stepparents legally married to a natural parent who primarily reside with their
stepchildren, or who provide at least 50 percent of the stepchilds financial support.
Stepparents who do not meet the de facto parent requirements would, in all important
respects, disappear from policy.
For the purposes of federal and state policy, under this scheme, a de facto parent
would be treated virtually the same as a natural parent during the marriage. The same
rights, obligations, and presumptions would attach vis--vis their stepchildren, including
the obligation of support. These rights and duties would continue in some form, based
on the length of the marriage, following the custodial parents death or divorce from the
stepparent, or the death of the stepparent. In the event of divorce the stepparent would
have standing to seek custody or visitation but the stepparent could also be obligated for
child support of a limited duration. Upon the death of a stepparent, a minor stepchild
would be treated for purposes of inheritance and benefits as would a natural child.
So far this proposal resembles the common law doctrine of in loco parentis, described
earlier, where the stepparent is treated for most purposes (except inheritance) as a parent on
the condition that he or she voluntarily agrees to support the child. In the de facto model,
however, support is mandatory, not voluntary, on the grounds both that it is not fair to
stepchildren to be treated by the law in an unequal or arbitrary manner, and that child wel-
fare considerations are best met by uniform support of stepchildren. Furthermore, in the
traditional common law in loco parentis scenario, the noncustodial parent had died, and was
Ch-06.indd 245 7/8/2008 12:33:28 PM
246 Part II Sex and Gender
not a factor to be reckoned with. Under this scheme, creating a de facto parent category for
stepparents would not invalidate the existing rights and obligations of a noncustodial bio-
logical parent. Rather, this proposal would empower a stepparent as an additional parent.
Multiple parenting and the rights and obligations of the stepparent and children
following divorce or death are controversial and difficult policy matters that require
more detailed attention than the brief exposition that can be offered here. Multiple par-
enting is the barrier upon which many family law reform schemes, especially in custody
and adoption, have foundered. It is also one of the reasons that there has been no consis-
tent effort to reformulate the role of stepparents. Working out the details is critical. For
instance, mandating stepparent support raises a central issue of fairness. If the stepparent
is indeed required to support the child, there is a question about the support obligations
of the noncustodial parent. Traditionally, most states have not recognized the stepparent
contribution as an offset to child support.
41
While this policy promotes administrative
efficiency, and may benefit some children, it may not be fair to the noncustodial par-
ent. An important advance in recognizing the existence of multiple parents in the non-
linear family is to recognize multiple support obligations. The few states that require
stepparent obligation have given limited attention to apportionment of child support
obligations, offering no clear guidelines. I propose that state statutory requirements for
stepparent obligation as de facto parents also include clear guidelines for apportionment
of child support between the noncustodial natural parent and the stepparent.
Critics of this proposal may say that if the custodial parents support is reduced,
the child will have fewer resources. For some children, this may be true, but as discussed
earlier in this [reading], only about 25 percent of all stepchildren receive child support
and the average amount is less than $2000 per year.
42
Therefore, a reduction of this small
amount of support to a minority of stepchildren would not have a large overall effect
compared with the increased resources of living with a stepparent that most stepchildren
enjoy. And, certainly, the additional safety net of protection in the event of the death of
the stepparent or divorce from the custodial parent would benefit all stepchildren. In
addition, under the de facto scheme, the reduction of the support payment for the non-
custodial parent may help to sweeten the multiple parenting relationship.
Let us apply this model to the Jones-Hutchins family introduced earlier. If Ray
Jones, the noncustodial parent, were paying $6000 a year support for his two children (on
the high end for noncustodial parents according to the National Survey for Children and
Families), his payments could be reduced by as much as half, since Sam Hutchinss income
is $50,000 per year and he has no other dependents. It should be emphasized, however,
that in most stepfamilies there would be no reduction in support, because the noncustodial
parent is paying no support. In the Jones-Hutchins family the $3000 relief would certainly
be welcome to Ray, who is also now living with and helping to support his new wifes child.
The relief would likely make him somewhat friendlier toward Sam, or at least more ac-
cepting of his role in his childrens lives. It also might make him more likely to continue
support past eighteen, since he would not feel as financially pinched over the years. More
important, while the children would lose some support, they would have the security that
if Sam died they would be legal heirs and default beneficiaries to his life insurance. They
could also ask for damages if his death were caused by negligence or work-related events.
And if he and their mother divorced, they could continue for a time to be considered
dependents on his health and other benefits and to receive support from him.
Ch-06.indd 246 7/8/2008 12:33:28 PM
Chapter 6 Divorce and Remarriage 247
Another facet of multiple parenting is legal authority. If stepparents are required to
accept parental support obligations, equal protection and fairness concerns dictate that
they must also be given parental rights. Currently, state laws, as noted earlier, recognize
only natural or adoptive parents; a stepparent currently has no legal authority over a step-
child, even to authorize a field trip. If stepparents had full parental rights, in some cases,
as when the parents have shared legal custody, the law would be recognizing the parental
rights of three parents, rather than two. While this sounds unusual, it is an accurate reflec-
tion of how many families now raise their children. Most often, however, it would be only
the custodial parent and his or her spouse, the de facto parent, who would have authority
to make decisions for the children in their home.
In the Jones-Hutchins family this policy would give Sam more recognition as a parent.
Schools, camps, hospitals, and other institutions that require parental consent or involve-
ment would now automatically include him in their consideration of the childrens inter-
ests. Since Sam is the more day-to-day parent, their biological father, Ray, may not mind
at all. If he did mind, the three of them would have to work it out (or in an extreme event,
take it to mediation or family court). In fact, since only a minority of noncustodial dads see
their children on a regular basis, three-parent decision making would be unusual.
Critics of this scheme may argue that adoption, not the creation of the legal status
of de facto parent, is the appropriate vehicle for granting a stepparent full parental rights
and responsibilities.
43
If, as discussed earlier, nearly three-quarters of stepchildren are
not being supported by their noncustodial parents, policy initiatives could be directed
to terminating the nonpaying parents rights and promoting stepparent adoption. Adop-
tion is not possible, however, unless the parental rights of the absent natural parent have
been terminateda difficult procedure against a reluctant parent. Normally, the rights
of a parent who maintains contact with his or her child cannot be terminated even if
that parent is not contributing child support. And when parental rights are terminated,
visitation rights are terminated as well in most states. It is by no means clear that it is
in the best interests of children to terminate contact with a natural parent, even if the
parent is not meeting his or her obligation to support.
44
As discussed earlier, a large per-
centage (another 25 percent or so), of noncustodial parents continue some contact with
their children, even when not paying support.
45
And while stepparent adoption should
be strongly encouraged when it is possible, this solution will not resolve the problem of
defining the role of stepparents who have not adopted.
Extending, in some form, the rights and obligations following the termination of
the marriage by divorce or death is equally problematical. Currently, only a few courts
have ruled in favor of support payments following divorce, and these have been decided
on an individual basis. Only one state, Missouri, statutorily continues stepparent support
obligations following divorce.
46
It would clearly be in the best interests of the child to
experience continued support, since a significant number of children may sink below the
poverty line upon the dissolution of their stepfamily.
47
Since the de facto model is based on dependency, not blood, a fair basis for support
following divorce or the death of the custodial parent might be to require that a steppar-
ent who qualified as a de facto parent for at least one year must contribute child support
for half the number of years of dependency until the child reached majority. If a child
resided with the stepparent for four years, the stepparent would be liable for support
for two years. If the biological noncustodial parent were still paying support payments,
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248 Part II Sex and Gender
the amount could be apportioned. While it may be said that this policy would discour-
age people from becoming stepparents by marrying, it could also be said to discourage
divorce once one has become a stepparent. Stepparents might consider working harder
at maintaining a marriage if divorce had some real costs.
Conversely, stepparents should have rights as well as responsibilities following di-
vorce or the death of the custodial parent. Divorced or widowed stepparents should be
able to pursue visitation or custody if they have lived with and supported the child for at
least one year. Once again, multiple parent claims might sometimes be an issue, but these
could be resolved, as they are now, under a primary caretaker, or a best interest standard.
The death of a stepparent is a particular period of vulnerability for stepchildren
for which they are unprotected by inheritance law. While Social Security and other
federal survivor benefits are based on the premise that a stepchild relies on the support
of the residential stepparent and will suffer the same hardship as natural children if the
stepparent dies, state inheritance laws, notoriously archaic, decree that only biology, not
dependency, counts. State laws should assume that a de facto parent would wish to have
all his dependents receive a share of his estate if he died without a will. If the step children
are no longer dependent, that assumption would not necessarily prevail. The same as-
sumption should prevail for insurance policies and compensation claims following an
accidental death. A dependent stepchild, just as a natural child, should have the right to
sue for loss of support.
On the federal front, a clear definition of stepparents as de facto parents would eliminate
the inconsistencies regarding stepparents which plague current federal policies and would
clarify the role of the residential stepparent. For the duration of the marriage, a stepchild
would be treated as a natural child for purposes of support and the receipt of federal ben-
efits. This treatment would persist in the event of the death of the stepparent. The stepchild
would receive all the survivor and death benefits that would accrue to a natural child.
48
In the case of divorce, the issue of federal benefits is more complicated. Stepchildren
and natural children should not have identical coverage for federal benefits following di-
vorce, again, but neither is it good policy to summarily cut off children who have been
dependent, sometimes for many years, on the de facto parent. A better policy is to extend
federal benefits for a period following divorce, based on a formula that matches half the
number of years of dependency, as earlier suggested for child support. For instance, if the
stepparent resided with the stepchild for four years, the child would be covered by Social
Security survivor benefits and other federal benefits, including federal employee benefits,
for a period of two years following the divorce. This solution would serve children by at
least providing a transitional cushion. It would also be relatively easy to administer. In the
case of the death of the biological custodial parent, benefits could be similarly extended,
or continued indefinitely if the child remains in the custody of the stepparent.
All other private benefits programs would similarly gain from the application of a
clear definition of the rights and obligations of residential stepparents. While these non-
governmental programs, ranging from eligibility for private health and life insurance and
annuities to access to employee child care, are not reviewed in this [reading], they almost
surely reflect the same inconsistencies or silences evident in federal and state policies.
Ultimately, state law defines most of these stepfamily relationships, and it is diffi-
cult, if not impossible to achieve uniform reform on a state-by-state basis. In England it
is possible to pass a single piece of national legislation, such as the Children Act of 1989,
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Chapter 6 Divorce and Remarriage 249
which completely redefines parental roles. In America, the process of reform is slower
and less sure. Probably the first step in promoting a new policy would be for the federal
government to insist all states pass stepparent general support obligation laws requiring
stepparents acting as de facto parents ( by my definition) to support their stepchildren as
they do their natural children. This goal could be accomplished by making stepparent
general support obligation laws a prerequisite for receiving federal welfare grants. Fed-
eral policy already assumes this support in figuring eligibility in many programs, but it
has not insisted that states change their laws. Precedent for this strategy has been set by
the Family Support Acts of 1988 in which the federal government mandated that states
set up strict child support enforcement laws for divorced parents and unwed fathers at
TANF levels in order to secure AFDC funding.
49
The second, larger step would be to
require limited stepparent support following divorce, as described previously. Once the
basic obligations were asserted, an articulation of basic rights would presumably follow.
CONCLUSION
Stepfamilies compose a large and growing sector of American families that is largely
ignored by public policy. Social scientists tell us that these families have problems.
Stepparent-stepchildren relationships, poorly defined by law and social norms, are not
as strong or nurturing as those in nondivorced families, and stepchildren do not do as
well in school and in other outside settings. Still, stepfamily relationships are important
in lifting single-parent families out of poverty. When single or divorced mothers marry,
the household income increases by more than threefold, rising to roughly the same level
as nuclear families. A substantial portion of these families experiences divorce, however,
placing the stepchildren at risk of falling back into poverty. It makes good public policy
sense then, both to strengthen these stepfamily relationships and to cushion the transi-
tion for stepchildren should the relationship end.
Notes
1. Mary Ann Mason and David Simon, The Ambiguous Stepparent: Federal Legislation in Search
of a Model, Family Law Quarterly 29:446 448, 1995.
2. E. Mavis Heatherington and Kathleen M. Jodl, Stepfamilies as Settings for Child Development,
in Alan Booth and Judy Dunn (eds.), Stepfamilies: Who Benefits? Who Does Not? ( Hillsdale, N.J.:
L. Erlbaum 1994), 55; E. Mavis Heatherington, An Overview of the Virginia Longitudinal Study
of Divorce and Remarriage: A Focus on Early Adolescence, Journal of Family Psychology 7:3956,
1993.
3. David Popenoe, Evolution of Marriage and Stepfamily Problems, in Booth and Dunn (eds.),
Stepfamilies, 328.
4. Mason and Simon, The Ambiguous Stepparent, 467 482; Mary Ann Mason and Jane Mauldon,
The New Stepfamily Needs a New Public Policy, Journal of Social Issues 52(3), Fall 1996.
5. U.S. Bureau of Census, 1989.
6. Divorce is not always the background event. An increasing, but still relatively small number of
custodial mothers have not previously wed.
7. Mason and Mauldon, The New Stepfamily, 5.
8. Ibid., 6.
9. Heatherington and Jodl, Stepfamilies, 5581.
Ch-06.indd 249 7/8/2008 12:33:28 PM
250 Part II Sex and Gender
10. Ibid., 76.
11. E. Mavis Heatherington and William Clingempeel, Coping with Marital Transitions: A Family
Systems Perspective, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 57:23, Serial
No. 227, New York: 1992; E. Thomson, Sara McLanahan, and R. B. Curtin, Family Structure,
Gender, and Parental Socialization, Journal of Marriage and the Family 54:368378, 1992.
12. Heatherington and Jodl, Stepfamilies, 69.
13. Ibid., 64 65.
14. Thomson, McLanahan, and Curtin, Family Structure, 368378.
15. L. Bumpass and J. Sweet, American Families and Households ( New York: Russell Sage Foundation,
1987), 23.
16. Paul Amato, The Implications of Research Findings on Children in Stepfamilies, in Booth and
Dunn (eds.), Stepfamilies, 84.
17. Nicholas Zill, Understanding Why Children in Stepfamilies Have More Learning and Behavior
Problems Than Children in Nuclear Families, in Booth and Dunn (eds.), Stepfamilies, 8997.
18. Mason and Mauldon, The New Stepfamily Needs a New Public Policy, 7.
19. Ibid., 8.
20. Ibid.
21. Lynn White, Stepfamilies over the Lifecourse: Social Support, in Booth and Dunn (eds.), Step-
families, 109139.
22. Ibid., 130.
23. A. S. Rossi and P. H. Rossi, Of Human Bonding: Parent-Child Relations Across the Life Course ( New
York: A. de Gruyter, 1990).
24. Utah Code Ann. 78- 45- 4.1.
25. Margaret Mahoney, Stepfamilies and the Law (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994),
13 47.
26. Miller v. United States, 123 F.2d 715, 717 (8th Cir, 1941).
27. Niesen v. Niesen, 157 N. W.2d 660 664( Wis. 1968).
28. Hawaii Revised Stat. Ann., Title 31, Sec. 577 4.
29. David Chambers, Stepparents, Biologic Parents, and the Laws Perceptions of Family after
Divorce, in S. Sugarman and H. H. Kay (eds.), Divorce Reform at the Crossroads ( New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1990), 102129.
30. Henrickson v. Gable.
31. Cal. Prob. Code, Sec. 6408.
32. Mason and Simon, The Ambiguous Stepparent: Federal Legislation in Search of a Model, 449.
33. Ibid., p. 460 466.
34. 42 U.S.C. sec. 416(e), 1994.
35. M. Daly and M. Wilson, Homicide ( New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1988), 230.
36. Barbara Whitehead, A New Familism? Family Affairs, Summer, 1992.
37. Chambers, Stepparents, Biologic Parents, and the Laws Perceptions of Family after Divorce, 26.
38. Mark A. Fine, Social Policy Pertaining to Stepfamilies: Should Stepparents and Stepchildren Have
the Option of Establishing a Legal Relationship? in Booth and Dunn (eds.), Stepfamilies, 199.
39. Mason and Mauldon, The New Stepfamily, 5.
40. Andrew Cherlin, Remarriage as an Incomplete Institution, American Journal of Sociology 84:
634 649, 1978.
41. S. Ramsey and J. Masson, Stepparent Support of Stepchildren: A Comparative Analysis of Policies
and Problems in the American and British Experience, Syracuse Law Review 36:649666, 1985.
42. Mason and Mauldon, The New Stepfamily, 7.
43. Joan Hollinger (ed.) et al., Adoption Law and Practice ( New York: Matthew Bender, 1988).
44. Katherine Bartlett, Re-thinking Parenthood as an Exclusive Status: The Need for Alternatives
When the Premise of the Nuclear Family Has Failed, Virginia Law Review 70:879903, 1984.
45. Mason and Mauldon, The New Stepfamily, 5.
46. Vernons Ann. Missouri Stats. 453.400, 1994.
47. Mason and Mauldon, The New Stepfamily, 5.
48. Mason and Simon, The Ambiguous Stepparent, 471.
49. 100 P.L. 485; 102 Stat. 2343 (1988).
Ch-06.indd 250 7/8/2008 12:33:28 PM
251
Parents and Children
No aspect of family life seems more natural, universal, and changeless than the relation-
ship between parents and children. Yet historical and crosscultural evidence reveal major
changes in conceptions of childhood and adulthood and in the psychological relationships
between children and parents. For example, the shift from an agrarian to an industrial
and then a post-industrial society over the past 200 years has revolutionized parentchild
relations and the conditions of child development.
Among the changes associated with this transformation of childhood are: the decline
of agriculture as a way of life, the elimination of child labor, the fall in infant mortality,
the spread of literacy and mass schooling, and a focus on childhood as a distinct and valu-
able stage of life. As a result of these changes, modern parents bear fewer children, make
greater emotional and economic investments in them, and expect less in return than their
agrarian counterparts. Agrarian parents were not expected to emphasize emotional bonds
or the value of children as unique individuals. Parents and children were bound together
by economic necessity: Children were an essential source of labor in the family economy
and a source of support in an old age. Today, almost all children are economic liabilities.
In addition, they now have profound emotional significance. Parents hope offspring will
provide intimacy, even genetic immortality. Although todays children have become eco-
nomically worthless, they have become emotionally priceless (Zelizer, 1985).
No matter how eagerly an emotionally priceless child is awaited, becoming a parent
is usually experienced as one of lifes major normal crises. In a classic article, Alice Rossi
(1968) was one of the first to point out that the transition to parenthood is often one of
lifes difficult passages. Since Rossis article first appeared more than three decades ago, a
large body of research literature has developed, most of which supports her view that the
early years of parenting can be a period of stress and change as well as joy.
Parenthood itself has changed since Rossi wrote. As Philip and Carolyn Cowan
observe, becoming a parent may be more difficult now than it used to be. The Cowans
studied couples before and after the births of their first children. Because of the rapid and
dramatic social changes of the past decades, young parents today are like pioneers in a new,
uncharted territory. For example, the vast majority of todays couples come to parenthood
with both husband and wife in the workforce, and most have expectations of a more egali-
tarian relationship than their own parents had. But the balance in their lives and their
relationship has to shift dramatically after the baby is born. Most couples cannot afford
the traditional pattern of the wife staying home full time, nor is this arrangement free of
strain for those who try it. Young families thus face more burdens than in the past, yet
III
Ch-07.indd 251 7/8/2008 12:34:05 PM
252 Part III Parents and Children
they lack the supportive services for new parents, such as visiting nurses, paid parental
leave, and other family policies widely available in other countries. The Cowans suggest
some newly developed ways to assist couples through this difficult transition.
After the earliest stage of parenthood, U.S. parents still struggle to find and afford
even mediocre child care. In their article, Dan Clawson and Naomi Gerstel describe child
care in Europe. Most countries provide publicly supported high quality care, but these
countries do not all follow the same model of child care. For example, some emphasize
education while others emphasize play; some rely more on professionals while others rely
on parents. These and other variations suggest that if and when the United States decides
to fund child care, it will have a variety of models to choose from.
In recent years, the role of fathers in childrens livesespecially their absencehas
become a hot-button political issue. What are the everyday realities of life with a father
in todays families? Of course there is enormous diversity among fathers and familiesin
income, ethnicity, education, personality, and so on. Nicholas Townsend has done an in-
depth ethnographic study of the meaning of fatherhood to men in one community. In his
article, he reports that to these men, fatherhood is part of a package deal. Along with
the emotional relationship between father and child, it includes the fathers relationship
with the mother, his job as a major source of support for the family, as well as providing
a home for shelter. If the father is having trouble with any aspect of this relationship, it
is likely to affect the whole package.
Worry about working mothers is only part of the more general anxiety many Amer-
icans feel about children in todays families. Usually we compare troubled images of chil-
dren now with rosy images of children growing up in past times. But as historian Steven
Mintz explains, public thinking about the history of American childhood is clouded by
a series of myths. One is the myth of a carefree childhood. We cling to a fantasy that
once upon a time childhood and youth were years of carefree adventure; however, for
most children in the past, growing up was anything but easy. Disease, family disruption,
and entering into the world of work at an early age were typical aspects of family life.
The notion of a long, secure childhood, devoted to education and free from adult-like
responsibilities, is a very recent inventionone that only became a reality for a majority
of children during the period of relative prosperity that followed World War II.
During the last quarter of the twentieth century, however, poverty and inequal-
ity grew. In addition, social mobilitythe ability of a poor child to rise into the middle
class declined. Annette Lareau began her intensive study of childrens everyday lives to
learn how inequality is passed on from one generation to the next. Her research focused
on childrearing practices among racially diverse families from poor, working-class,
and middle-class families. Her major finding was that parenting styles varied more by
class than by race. That is, while race is important in many ways, middle-class black
and white parents behaved in similar ways toward their children. Middle-class parents
used a parenting style Lareau calls concerted cultivation. Like gardeners raising prize
plants, these parents watched carefully over their childrens development. They actively
organized daily life to foster their childrens talents and skills, and involved themselves
in their childrens school experiences. In contrast, working-class and poor parents used
a style Lareau calls natural growth. They work hard to get through the day and keep
their children safe, but they expect their children to find their own recreation and they
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Part III Parents and Children 253
tend to feel alienated from and distrustful of their childrens schools. Lareau argues that
while each style has advantages and drawbacks, middle-class children develop a sense
of entitlement that helps them navigate through the educational system from grade
school through college.
Lareaus in-depth study of daily family life cast doubt on conventional wisdom about
the decline of the family. The research of Vern L. Bengston and his colleagues does
the same. Bengston and colleagues draw their findings from the University of Southern
Californias long-running study of families across three generations. What they discov-
ered about Generation Xthe roughly 50 million Americans born between 1965 and
1980will surprise many readers. The stereotype of this postbaby boom generation
portrays them as slackers and drifters, alienated from their parents and from society. In
contrast, Bengston found that Generation X youth showed higher levels of education,
career success, and self-esteem than their own parents when they were the same age.
Moreover, all three generations in the study shared similar values. The researchers con-
clude that despite the massive family and social changes since the 1960s, family bonds
across generations remain resilient.
The negative stereotypes of Generation X reflect a more general public misunder-
standing of a startling new reality: In todays post-industrial society a new stage of life
has emerged after adolescence ends. Instead of settling down into jobs, marriage, and
parenthood in their early twenties, young adults move into a lengthened period of tran-
sition that may last through their twenties and even into their thirties. This dramatic
shift in the timetables of early adulthood is rooted in the social and economic realities
of post-industrial society, especially rising educational standards and the decline of blue-
collar jobs. Nevertheless, early adulthood has become a distinct stage of life with its own
psychological profile. Jeffrey J. Arnett calls this new stage of life emerging adulthood, but
there is no agreed-upon name for it. ( Earlier in this book, in Reading 13, Michael J.
Rosenfeld labeled it the independent stage.) Arnett describes it as a unsettled period
of exploration, as young men and women try out different possibilities in work and re-
lationships. In his research Arnett finds that young adulthood is a period of instability,
focus on the self, and being in limbopast the limits of being an adolescent, but not yet
fully adult.
References
Rossi, A. 1968. Transition to parenthood. Journal of Marriage and the Family 30:26 39.
Zelizer, V. A. 1985. Pricing the Priceless Child. New York: Basic Books.
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Ch-07.indd 254 7/8/2008 12:34:05 PM
255
7 Parenthood
R E A DI NG 1 9
New Families: Modern Couples
as New Pioneers
Philip Cowan and Carolyn Pape Cowan
Mark and Abby met when they went to work for a young, ambitious candidate who was
campaigning in a presidential primary. Over the course of an exhilarating summer, they
debated endlessly about values and tactics. At summers end they parted, returned to col-
lege, and proceeded to forge their individual academic and work careers. When they met
again several years later at a political function, Mark was employed in the public relations
department of a large company and Abby was about to graduate from law school. Their
argumentative, passionate discussions about the need for political and social change grad-
ually expanded to the more personal, intimate discussions that lovers have.
They began to plan a future together. Mark moved into Abbys apartment. Abby
secured a job in a small law firm. Excited about their jobs and their flourishing relation-
ship, they talked about making a long-term commitment and soon decided to marry. After
the wedding, although their future plans were based on a strong desire to have children,
they were uncertain about when to start a family. Mark raised the issue tentatively, but felt
he did not have enough job security to take the big step. Abby was fearful of not being
taken seriously if she became a mother too soon after joining her law firm.
Several years passed. Mark was now eager to have children. Abby, struggling with
competing desires to have a baby and to move ahead in her professional life, was still hesi-
tant. Their conversations about having a baby seemed to go nowhere but were dra-
matically interrupted when they suddenly discovered that their birth control method had
failed: Abby was unmistakably pregnant. Somewhat surprised by their own reactions,
Mark and Abby found that they were relieved to have the timing decision taken out of
their hands. Feeling readier than they anticipated, they became increasingly excited as
they shared the news with their parents, friends, and coworkers.
Most chapters [in the book from which this reading is taken] focus on high-risk
families, a category in which some observers include all families that deviate from the
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256 Part III Parents and Children
traditional two-parent, nonteenage, father-at-work-mother-at-home norm. The in-
creasing prevalence of these families has been cited by David Popenoe, David Blanken-
horn, and others
1
as strong evidence that American families are currently in a state of
decline. In the debate over the state of contemporary family life, the family decline theo-
rists imply that traditional families are faring well. This view ignores clear evidence of
the pervasive stresses and vulnerabilities that are affecting most families these dayseven
those with two mature, relatively advantaged parents.
In the absence of this evidence, it appears as if children and parents in traditional
two-parent families do not face the kinds of problems that require the attention of family
policymakers. We will show that Abby and Marks life, along with those of many modern
couples forming new families, is less ideal and more subject to distress than family ob-
servers and policymakers realize. Using data from our own and others studies of partners
becoming parents, we will illustrate how the normal process of becoming a family in
this culture, at this time sets in motion a chain of potential stressors that function as risks
that stimulate moderate to severe distress for a substantial number of parents. Results
of a number of recent longitudinal studies make clear that if the parents distress is not
addressed, the quality of their marriages and their relationships with their children are
more likely to be compromised. In turn, conflictful or disengaged family relationships
during the familys formative years foreshadow later problems for the children when they
reach the preschool and elementary school years. This means that substantial numbers
of new two-parent families in the United States do not fit the picture of the ideal family
portrayed in the family decline debate.
In what follows we: (1) summarize the changing historical context that makes life
for many modern parents more difficult than it used to be; (2) explore the premises un-
derlying the current debate about family decline; (3) describe how conditions associated
with the transition to parenthood create risks that increase the probability of individual,
marital, and family distress; and (4) discuss the implications of this family strain for
American family policy. We argue that systematic information about the early years of
family life is critical to social policy debates in two ways: first, to show how existing laws
and regulations can be harmful to young families, and second, to provide information
about promising interventions with the potential to strengthen family relationships dur-
ing the early childrearing years.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT: CHANGING
FAMILIES IN A CHANGING WORLD
From the historical perspective of the past two centuries, couples like Mark and Abby are
unprecedented. They are a modern, middle-class couple attempting to create a different
kind of family than those of their parents and grandparents. Strained economic condi-
tions and the shifting ideology about appropriate roles for mothers and fathers pose new
challenges for these new pioneers whose journey will lead them through unfamiliar ter-
rain. With no maps to pinpoint the risks and hardships, contemporary men and women
must forge new trails on their own.
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Chapter 7 Parenthood 257
Based on our work with couples starting families over the past twenty years, we
believe that the process of becoming a family is more difficult now than it used to be.
Because of the dearth of systematic study of these issues, it is impossible to locate hard
evidence that modern parents face more challenges than parents of the past. Nonetheless,
a brief survey of the changing context of family life in North America suggests that the
transition to parenthood presents different and more confusing challenges for modern
couples creating families than it did for parents in earlier times.
Less Support = More Isolation
While 75 percent of American families lived in rural settings in 1850, 80 percent were
living in urban or suburban environments in the year 2000. Increasingly, new families
are created far from grandparents, kin, and friends with babies the same age, leaving
parents without the support of those who could share their experiences of the ups and
downs of parenthood. Most modern parents bring babies home to isolated dwellings
where their neighbors are strangers. Many women who stay home to care for their babies
find themselves virtually alone in the neighborhood during this major transition, a time
when we know that inadequate social support poses a risk to their own and their babies
well-being.
2
More Choice = More Ambiguity
Compared with the experiences of their parents and grandparents, couples today have
more choice about whether and when to bring children into their lives. In addition to
the fact that about 4.5 percent of women now voluntarily remain forever childless (up
from 2.2 percent in 1980), partners who do become parents are older and have smaller
familiesonly one or two children, compared to the average of three, forty years ago.
The reduction in family size tends to make each child seem especially precious, and the
decision about whether and when to become parents even more momentous. Modern
birth control methods give couples more control over the timing of a pregnancy, in
spite of the fact that many methods fail with some regularity, as they did for Mark and
Abby. Although the legal and moral issues surrounding abortion are hotly debated,
modern couples have a choice about whether to become parents, even after conception
begins.
Once the baby is born, there are more choices for modern couples. Will the
mother return to work or school, which most were involved in before giving birth,
and if so, how soon and for how many hours? Whereas only 18 percent of women
with a child under six were employed outside the home in 1960, according to the 2000
census, approximately 55 percent of women with a child under one now work at least
part time. Will the father take an active role in daily child care, and if so, how much?
Although having these new choices is regarded by many as a benefit of modern life,
choosing from among alternatives with such far-reaching consequences creates confu-
sion and uncertainty for both men and womenwhich itself can lead to tension within
the couple.
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258 Part III Parents and Children
New Expectations for Marriage = New
Emotional Burdens
Mark and Abby, like many other modern couples, have different expectations for mar-
riage than their forebears. In earlier decades, couples expected marriage to be a working
partnership in which men and women played unequal but clearly defined roles in terms
of family and work, especially once they had children. Many modern couples are trying
to create more egalitarian relationships in which men and women have more similar and
often interchangeable family and work roles.
The dramatic increase of women in the labor force has challenged old definitions
of what men and women are expected to do inside and outside the family. As women have
taken on a major role of contributing to family income, there has been a shift in ideology
about fathers greater participation in housework and child care, although the realities
of mens and womens division of family labor have lagged behind. Despite the fact that
modern fathers are a little more involved in daily family activities than their fathers
were, studies in every industrialized country reveal that women continue to carry the
major share of the burden of family work and care of the children, even when both part-
ners are employed full time.
3
In a detailed qualitative study, Arlie Hochschild notes that
working mothers come home to a second shift. She describes vividly couples struggle
with contradictions between the values of egalitarianism and traditionalism, and between
egalitarian ideology and the constraints of modern family life.
As husbands and wives struggle with these issues, they often become adversaries. At
the same time, they expect their partners to be their major suppliers of emotional warmth
and support.
4
These demanding expectations for marriage as a haven from the stresses
of the larger world come naturally to modern partners, but this comfort zone is difficult
to create, given current economic and psychological realities and the absence of helpful
models from the past. The difficulty of the task is further compounded by the fact that
when contemporary couples feel stressed by trying to work and nurture their children,
they feel torn by what they hear from advocates of a simpler, more traditional version
of family life. In sum, we see Abby and Mark as new pioneers because they are creating
a new version of family life in an era of greater challenges and fewer supports, increased
and confusing choices about work and family arrangements, ambiguities about mens and
womens proper roles, and demanding expectations of themselves to be both knowledge-
able and nurturing partners and parents.
POLITICAL CONTEXT: DOES FAMILY
CHANGE MEAN FAMILY DECLINE?
A number of writers have concluded that the historical family changes we described have
weakened the institution of the family. One of the main spokespersons for this point of
view, David Popenoe,
5
interprets the trends as documenting a retreat from the tradi-
tional nuclear family in terms of a lifelong, sexually exclusive unit, with a separate-sphere
division of labor between husbands and wives. He asserts, Nuclear units are losing
ground to single-parent families, serial and stepfamilies, and unmarried and homosexual
Ch-07.indd 258 7/8/2008 12:34:06 PM
Chapter 7 Parenthood 259
couples.
6
The main problem in contemporary family life, he argues, is a shift in which
familism as a cultural value has lost ground to other values such as individualism, self-
focus, and egalitarianism.
7
Family decline theorists are especially critical of single-parent families whether cre-
ated by divorce or out-of-wedlock childbirth.
8
They assume that two-parent families of
the past functioned with a central concern for children that led to putting childrens needs
first. They characterize parents who have children under other arrangements as putting
themselves first, and they claim that children are suffering as a result.
The primary index for evaluating the family decline is the well-being of children.
Family decline theorists repeatedly cite statistics suggesting that fewer children are being
born, and that a higher proportion of them are living with permissive, disengaged, self-
focused parents who ignore their physical and emotional needs. Increasing numbers
of children show signs of mental illness, behavior problems, and social deviance. The
remedy suggested? A social movement and social policies to promote family values that
emphasize nuclear families with two married, monogamous parents who want to have
children and are willing to devote themselves to caring for them. These are the families
we have been studying.
Based on the work of following couples starting families over the past twenty years,
we suggest that there is a serious problem with the suggested remedy, which ignores the
extent of distress and dysfunction in this idealized family form. We will show that in a
surprisingly high proportion of couples, the arrival of the first child is accompanied by
increased levels of tension, conflict, distress, and divorce, not because the parents are self-
centered but because it is inherently difficult in todays world to juggle the economic and
emotional needs of all family members, even for couples in relatively low-risk circum-
stances. The need to pay more attention to the underside of the traditional family myth is
heightened by the fact that we can now (1) identify in advance those couples most likely
to have problems as they make the transition to parenthood, and (2) intervene to reduce
the prevalence and intensity of these problems. Our concern with the state of contem-
porary families leads us to suggest remedies that would involve active support to enable
parents to provide nurturance and stability for their children, rather than exhortations
that they change their values about family life.
REAL LIFE CONTEXT: NORMAL RISKS
ASSOCIATED WITH BECOMING A FAMILY
To illustrate the short-term impact of becoming parents, let us take a brief look at Mark
and Abby four days after they bring their daughter, Lizzie, home from the hospital.
It is 3 A.M. Lizzie is crying lustily. Mark had promised that he would get up and bring the
baby to Abby when she woke, but he hasnt stirred. After nudging him several times, Abby
gives up and pads across the room to Lizzies cradle. She carries her daughter to a rocking
chair and starts to feed her. Abbys nipples are sore and she hasnt yet been able to relax
while nursing. Lizzie soon stops sucking and falls asleep. Abby broods silently, the quiet
broken only by the rhythmic squeak of the rocker. She is angry at Mark for objecting to
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260 Part III Parents and Children
her suggestion that her parents come to help. She fumes, thinking about his romantic
image of the three of them as a cozy family. Well, Lizzie and I are cozy all right, but
where is Mr. Romantic now? Abby is also preoccupied with worry. She is intrigued and
drawn to Lizzie but because she hasnt experienced the powerful surge of love that she
thinks all mothers feel, she worries that something is wrong with her. She is also anxious
because she told her boss that shed be back to work shortly, but she simply doesnt know
how she will manage. She considers talking to her best friend, Adrienne, but Adrienne
probably wouldnt understand because she doesnt have a child.
Hearing what he interprets as Abbys angry rocking, Mark groggily prepares his de-
fense about why he failed to wake up when the baby did. Rather than engaging in conversa-
tion, recalling that Abby barked at him when he hadnt remembered to stop at the market
and pharmacy on the way home from work, he pretends to be asleep. He becomes preoc-
cupied with thoughts about the pile of work he will face at the office in the morning.
We can see how two well-meaning, thoughtful people have been caught up in
changes and reactions that neither has anticipated or feels able to control. Based on our
experience with many new parent couples, we imagine that, if asked, Abby and Mark
would say that these issues arousing their resentment are minor; in fact, they feel fool-
ish about being so upset about them. Yet studies of new parents suggest that the stage is
set for a snowball effect in which these minor discontents can grow into more troubling
distress in the next year or two. What are the consequences of this early disenchant-
ment? Will Mark and Abby be able to prevent it from triggering more serious negative
outcomes for them or for the baby?
To answer these questions about the millions of couples who become first-time
parents each year, we draw on the results of our own longitudinal study of the transition
to parenthood and those of several other investigators who also followed men and women
from late pregnancy into the early years of life with a first child.
9
The samples in these
studies were remarkably similar: the average age of first-time expectant fathers was about
thirty years, of expectant mothers approximately one year younger. Most investigators
studied urban couples, but a few included rural families. Although the participants eco-
nomic level varied from study to study, most fell on the continuum from working class,
through lower-middle, to upper-middle class. In 1995 we reviewed more than twenty
longitudinal studies of this period of family life; we included two in Germany by Engfer
and Schneewind
10
and one in England by Clulow,
11
and found that results in all but two
reveal an elevated risk for the marriages of couples becoming parents.
12
A more recent
study and review comes to the same conclusion.
13
We talk about this major normative transition in the life of a couple in terms of risk,
conflict, and distress for the relationship because we find that the effects of the transition
to parenthood create disequilibrium in each of five major domains of family life: (1) the
parents sense of self; (2) parent-grandparent relationships; (3) the parent-child relation-
ships; (4) relationships with friends and work; and (5) the state of the marriage. We find
that fault lines in any of these domains before the baby arrives amplify marital tensions
during the transition to parenthood. Although it is difficult to determine precisely when
the transition to parenthood begins and ends, our findings suggest that it encompasses
a period of more than three years, from before conception until at least two years after
the first child is born. Since different couples experience the transition in different ways,
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Chapter 7 Parenthood 261
we rely here not only on Mark and Abby but also on a number of other couples in our
study to illustrate what happens in each domain when partners become parents.
Parents Sense of Self
Henry, aged 32, was doing well in his job at a large computer store. Along with Mei-Lin,
his wife of four years, he was looking forward to the birth of his first child. Indeed, the first
week or two found Henry lost in a euphoric haze. But as he came out of the clouds and went
back to work, Henry began to be distracted by new worries. As his coworkers kept remind-
ing him, hes a father now. He certainly feels like a different person, though hes not quite
sure what a new father is supposed to be doing. Rather hesitantly, he confessed his sense
of confusion to Mei-Lin, who appeared visibly relieved. Ive been feeling so fragmented,
she told him. Its been difficult to hold on to my sense of me. Im a wife, a daughter, a
friend, and a teacher, but the Mother part seems to have taken over my whole being.
Having a child forces a redistribution of the energy directed to various aspects of
parents identity. We asked expectant parents to describe themselves by making a list of
the main aspects of themselves, such as son, daughter, friend, worker, and to divide a
circle we called The Pie into pieces representing how large each aspect of self feels. Men
and women filled out The Pie again six and eighteen months after their babies were born.
As partners became parents, the size of the slice labeled parent increased markedly until it
occupied almost one-third of the identity of mothers of eighteen-month-olds. Although
mens parent slice also expanded, their sense of self as father occupied only one-third
the space of their wives. For both women and men, the partner or lover part of their
identities got squeezed as the parent aspect of self expanded.
It is curious that in the early writing about the transition to parenthood, which
E. E. LeMasters claimed constituted a crisis for a couple,
14
none of the investigators gath-
ered or cited data on postpartum depressiondiagnosed when disabling symptoms of
depression occur within the first few months after giving birth. Accurate epidemiological
estimates of risk for postpartum depression are difficult to come by. Claims about the in-
cidence in women range from .01 percent for serious postpartum psychosis to 50 percent
for the baby blues. Results of a study by Campbell and her colleagues suggest that ap-
proximately 10 percent of new mothers develop serious clinical depressions that interfere
with their daily functioning in the postpartum period.
15
There are no epidemiological
estimates of the incidence of postpartum depression in new fathers. In our study of 100
couples, one new mother and one new father required medical treatment for disabling
postpartum depression. What we know, then, is that many new parents like Henry and
Mei-Lin experience a profound change in their view of themselves after they have a baby,
and some feel so inadequate and critical of themselves that their predominant mood can
be described as depressed.
Relationships with Parents and In-Laws
Sandra, one of the younger mothers in our study, talked with us about her fear of repeating
the pattern from her mothers life. Her mother gave birth at sixteen, and told her children
repeatedly that she was too young to raise a family. Here I am with a beautiful little girl,
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262 Part III Parents and Children
and Im worrying about whether Im really grown up enough to raise her. At the same
time, Sandras husband, Daryl, who was beaten by his stepfather, is having flashbacks
about how helpless he felt at those times: Im trying to maintain the confidence I felt
when Sandra and I decided to start our family, but sometimes I get scared that Im not
going to be able to avoid being the kind of father I grew up with.
Psychoanalytically oriented writers
16
focusing on the transition to parenthood em-
phasize the potential disequilibration that is stimulated by a reawakening of intrapsychic
conflicts from new parents earlier relationships. There is considerable evidence that
having a baby stimulates mens and womens feelings of vulnerability and loss associated
with their own childhoods, and that these issues play a role in their emerging sense of self
as parents. There is also evidence that negative relationship patterns tend to be repeated
across the generations, despite parents efforts to avoid them;
17
so Sandra and Daryl have
good reason to be concerned. However, studies showing that a strong, positive couple
relationship can provide a buffer against negative parent-child interactions suggest that
the repetition of negative cycles is not inevitable.
18
We found that the birth of a first child increases the likelihood of contact between
the generations, often with unanticipated consequences. Occasionally, renewed contact
allows the expectant parents to put years of estrangement behind them if their parents
are receptive to renewed contact. More often, increased contact between the generations
stimulates old and new conflictswithin each partner, between the partners, and between
the generations. To take one example: Abby wants her mother to come once the baby
is born but Mark has a picture of beginning family life on their own. Tensions between
them around this issue can escalate regardless of which decision they make. If Abbys
parents do visit, Mark may have difficulty establishing his place with the baby. Even if
Abbys parents come to help, she and Mark may find that the grandparents need look-
ing after too. It may be weeks before Mark and Abby have a private conversation. If the
grandparents do not respond or are not invited, painful feelings between the generations
are likely to ensue.
The Parent-Child Relationship
Few parents have had adequate experience in looking after children to feel confident
immediately about coping with the needs of a first baby.
Tyson and Martha have been arguing, it seems, for days. Eddie, their six-month-old, has
long crying spells every day and into the night. As soon as she hears him, Martha moves
to pick him up. When he is home, Tyson objects, reasoning that this just spoils Eddie and
doesnt let him learn how to soothe himself. Martha responds that Eddie wouldnt be cry-
ing if something werent wrong, but she worries that Tyson may be right; after all, shes
never looked after a six-month-old for more than an evening of baby-sitting. Although
Tyson continues to voice his objections, he worries that if Martha is right, his plan may
not be the best for his son either.
To make matters more complicated, just as couples develop strategies that seem effective,
their baby enters a new developmental phase that calls for new reactions and routines.
What makes these new challenges difficult to resolve is that each parent has a set of ideas
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Chapter 7 Parenthood 263
and expectations about how parents should respond to a child, most based on experience
in their families of origin. Meshing both parents views of how to resolve basic questions
about child rearing proves to be a more complex and emotionally draining task than most
couples had anticipated.
Work and Friends
Dilemmas about partners work outside the home are particularly salient during a cou-
ples transition to parenthood.
Both Hector and Isabel have decided that Isabel should stay home for at least the first year
after having the baby. One morning, as Isabel is washing out Joss diapers and hoping
the phone will ring, she breaks into tears. Life is not as she imagined it. She misses her
friends at work. She misses Hector, who is working harder now to provide for his family
than he was before Jos was born. She misses her parents and sisters who live far away in
Mexico. She feels strongly that she wants to be with her child full time, and that she should
be grateful that Hectors income makes this possible, but she feels so unhappy right now.
This feeling adds to her realization that she has always contributed half of their family
income, but now she has to ask Hector for household money, which leaves her feeling
vulnerable and dependent.
Maria is highly invested in her budding career as an investment counselor, making
more money than her husband, Emilio. One morning, as she faces the mountain of unread
files on her desk and thinks of Lara at the child care center almost ready to take her first
steps, Maria bursts into tears. She feels confident that she and Emilio have found excellent
child care for Lara, and reminds herself that research has suggested that when mothers
work outside the home, their daughters develop more competence than daughters of
mothers who stay home. Nevertheless, she feels bereft, missing milestones that happen
only once in a childs life.
We have focused on the women in both families because, given current societal
arrangements, the initial impact of the struggle to balance work and family falls more
heavily on mothers. If the couple decides that one parent will stay home to be the primary
caretaker of the child, it is almost always the mother who does so. As we have noted, in
contemporary America, about 50 percent of mothers of very young children remain at
home after having a baby and more than half return to work within the first year. Both
alternatives have some costs and some benefits. If mothers like Isabel want to be home
with their young children, and the family can afford this arrangement, they have the op-
portunity to participate fully in the early day-to-day life of their children. This usually
has benefits for parents and children. Nevertheless, most mothers who stay home face
limited opportunities to accomplish work that leads them to feel competent, and staying
home deprives them of emotional support that coworkers and friends can provide, the
kinds of support that play a significant role in how parents fare in the early postpartum
years. This leaves women like Isabel at risk for feeling lonely and isolated from friends
and family.
19
By contrast, women like Maria who return to work are able to maintain a
network of adults to work with and talk with. They may feel better about themselves and
on track as far as their work is concerned, but many become preoccupied with worry
about their childrens well-being, particularly in this age of costly but less than ideal child
Ch-07.indd 263 7/8/2008 12:34:06 PM
264 Part III Parents and Children
care. Furthermore, once they get home, they enter a second shift in which they do the
bulk of the housework and child care.
20
We do not mean to imply that all the work-family conflicts surrounding the transi-
tion to parenthood are experienced by women. Many modern fathers feel torn about how
to juggle work and family life, move ahead on the job, and be more involved with their
children than their fathers were with them. Rather than receive a reduction in workload,
men tend to work longer hours once they become fathers, mainly because they take their
role as provider even more seriously now that they have a child.
21
In talking to more than
100 fathers in our ongoing studies, we have become convinced that the common picture
of men as resisting the responsibilities and workload involved in family life is seriously
in error. We have become painfully aware of the formidable obstacles that bar men from
assuming more active roles as fathers and husbands.
First, parents, bosses, and friends often discourage mens active involvement in the
care of their children (How come youre home in the middle of the day? Are you re-
ally serious about your work here? Shes got you baby-sitting again, huh?). Second,
the economic realities in which mens pay exceeds womens, make it less viable for men
to take family time off. Third, by virtue of the way males and females are socialized, men
rarely get practice in looking after children and are given very little support for learning
by trial and error with their new babies.
In the groups that we conducted for expectant and new parents, to which parents brought
their babies after they were born, we saw and heard many versions of the following: we
are discussing wives tendency to reach for the baby, on the assumption that their hus-
bands will not respond. Cindi describes an incident last week when little Samantha began
to cry. Cindi waited. Her husband, Martin, picked up Samantha gingerly, groped for a
bottle, and awkwardly started to feed her. Then, according to Martin, within about sixty
seconds, Cindi suggested that Martin give Samanthas head more support and prop the
bottle in a different way so that the milk would flow without creating air bubbles. Martin
quickly decided to hand the baby back to the expert and slipped into the next room to
get some work done.
The challenge to juggle the demands of work, family, and friendship presents dif-
ferent kinds of stressors for men and women, which propels the spouses even farther into
separate worlds. When wives stay at home, they wait eagerly for their husbands to return,
hoping the men will go on duty with the child, especially on difficult days. This leaves
tired husbands who need to unwind facing tired wives who long to talk to an adult who
will respond intelligibly to them. When both parents work outside the family, they must
coordinate schedules, arrange child care, and decide how to manage when their child
is ill. Parents stress from these dilemmas about child care and lack of rest often spill
over into the workdayand their work stress, in turn, gets carried back into the family
atmosphere.
22
The Marriage
It should be clearer now why we say that the normal changes associated with becom-
ing a family increase the risk that husbands and wives will experience increased marital
Ch-07.indd 264 7/8/2008 12:34:07 PM
Chapter 7 Parenthood 265
dissatisfaction and strain after they become parents. Mark and Abby, and the other cou-
ples we have described briefly, have been through changes in their sense of themselves
and in their relationships with their parents. They have struggled with uncertainties and
disagreements about how to provide the best care for their child. Regardless of whether
one parent stays home full or part time or both work full days outside the home, they
have limited time and energy to meet conflicting demands from their parents, bosses,
friends, child, and each other, and little support from outside the family to guide them
on this complex journey into uncharted territory. In almost every published study of the
transition conducted over the last four decades, mens and womens marital satisfaction
declined. Belsky and Rovine found that from 30 percent to 59 percent of the partici-
pants in their Pennsylvania study showed a decline between pregnancy and nine months
postpartum, depending on which measure of the marriage they examined.
23
In our study
of California parents, 45 percent of the men and 58 percent of the women showed de-
clining satisfaction with marriage between pregnancy and eighteen months postpartum.
The scores of approximately 15 percent of the new parents moved from below to above
the clinical cutoff that indicates serious marital problems, whereas only 4 percent moved
from above to below the cutoff.
Why should this optimistic time of life pose so many challenges for couples? One
key issue for couples becoming parents has been treated as a surefire formula for humor
in situation comedieshusband-wife battles over the who does what? of housework,
child care, and decision making. Our own study shows clearly that, regardless of how
equally family work is divided before having a baby, or of how equally husbands and wives
expect to divide the care of the baby, the roles men and women assume tend to be gender-
linked, with wives doing more family work than they had done before becoming a parent
and substantially more housework and baby care than their husbands do. Furthermore,
the greater the discrepancy between womens predicted and actual division of family tasks
with their spouses, the more symptoms of depression they report. The more traditional
the arrangementsthat is, the less husbands are responsible for family workthe greater
fathers and mothers postpartum dissatisfaction with their overall marriage.
Although theories of life stress generally assume that any change is stressful, we
found no correlation between sheer amount of change in the five aspects of family life
and parents difficulties adapting to parenthood. In general, parenthood was followed by
increasing discrepancies between husbands and wives perceptions of family life and their
descriptions of their actual family and work roles. Couples in which the partners showed
the greatest increase in those discrepanciesmore often those with increasingly tradi-
tional role arrangementsdescribed increasing conflict as a couple and greater declines
in marital satisfaction.
These findings suggest that whereas family decline theorists are looking at statistics
about contemporary families through 1950 lenses, actual families are responding to the
realities of life in the twenty-first century. Given historical shifts in mens and womens
ideas about family roles and present economic realities, it is not realistic to expect them
to simply reverse trends by adopting more traditional values and practices. Contempo-
rary families in which the parents arrangements are at the more traditional end of the
spectrum are less satisfied with themselves, with their relationships as couples, and with
their role as parents, than those at the more egalitarian end.
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266 Part III Parents and Children
DO WE KNOW WHICH FAMILIES
WILL BE AT RISK?
The message for policymakers from research on the transition to parenthood is not only
that it is a time of stress and change. We and others have found that there is predictability
to couples patterns of change: this means that it is possible to know whether a couple is
at risk for more serious problems before they have a baby and whether their child will
be at risk for compromised development. This information is also essential for purposes
of designing preventive intervention. Couples most at risk for difficulties and troubling
outcomes in the early postpartum years are those who were in the greatest individual
and marital distress before they became parents. Children most at risk are those whose
parents are having the most difficulty maintaining a positive, rewarding relationship as
a couple.
The Baby-Maybe Decision
Interviews with expectant parents about their process of making the decision to have a
baby provide one source of information about continuity of adaptation in the family-
making period. By analyzing partners responses to the question, How did the two of
you come to be having a baby at this time? we found four fairly distinct types of decision
making in our sample of lower-middle- to upper-middle-class couples, none of whom
had identified themselves as having serious relationship difficulties during pregnancy:
(1) The Planners50 percent of the couplesagreed about whether and when to have
a baby. The other 50 percent were roughly evenly divided into three patterns: (2) The
Acceptance of fate couples15 percenthad unplanned conceptions but were pleased
to learn that they were about to become parents; (3) The Ambivalent couplesanother
15 percentcontinually went back and forth about their readiness to have a baby, even
late in pregnancy; and (4) The Yes-No couplesthe remaining 15 percentclaimed not
to be having relationship difficulties but nonetheless had strong disagreements about
whether to complete their unplanned pregnancy.
Alice, thirty-four, became pregnant when she and Andy, twenty-seven, had been living
together only four months. She was determined to have a child, regardless of whether
Andy stayed in the picture. He did not feel ready to become a father, and though he dearly
loved Alice, he was struggling to come to terms with the pregnancy. It was the hardest
thing I ever had to deal with, he said. I had this idea that I wasnt even going to have to
think about being a father until I was over thirty, but here it was, and I had to decide now.
I was concerned about my soul. I didnt want, under any circumstances, to compromise
myself, but I knew it would be very hard on Alice if I took action that would result in her
being a single parent. It wouldve meant that Im the kind of person who turns his back on
someone I care about, and that would destroy me as well as her. And so he stayed.
24
The Planners and Acceptance of fate couples experienced minimal decline in marital
satisfaction, whereas the Ambivalent couples tended to have lower satisfaction to begin
with and to decline even further between pregnancy and two years later. The greatest risk
Ch-07.indd 266 7/8/2008 12:34:07 PM
Chapter 7 Parenthood 267
was for couples who had serious disagreementmore than ambivalenceabout having a
first baby. In these cases, one partner gave in to the others wishes in order to remain in
the relationship. The startling outcome provides a strong statement about the wisdom
of this strategy: all of the Yes-No couples like Alice and Andy were divorced by the time their
first child entered kindergarten, and the two Yes-No couples in which the wife was the reluc-
tant partner reported severe marital distress at every postpartum assessment. This finding
suggests that partners unresolved conflict in making the decision to have a child is mir-
rored by their inability to cope with conflict to both partners satisfaction once they become
parents. Couples styles of making this far-reaching decision seem to be a telling indicator
of whether their overall relationship is at risk for instability, a finding that contradicts the
folk wisdom that having a baby will mend serious marital rifts.
Additional Risk Factors for Couples
Not surprisingly, when couples reported high levels of outside-the-family life stress dur-
ing pregnancy, they are more likely to be unhappy in their marriages and stressed in their
parenting roles during the early years of parenthood. When there are serious problems in
the relationships between new parents and their own parents the couples are more likely
to experience more postpartum distress.
25
Belsky and colleagues showed that new parents
who recalled strained relationships with their own parents were more likely to experience
more marital distress in the first year of parenthood.
26
In our study, parents who reported
early childhoods clouded by their parents problem drinking had a more stressful time
on every indicator of adjustment in the first two years of parenthoodmore conflict, less
effective problem solving, less effective parenting styles, and greater parenting stress.
27

Although the transmission of maladaptive patterns across generations is not inevitable,
these data suggest that without intervention, troubled relationships in the family of origin
constitute a risk factor for relationships in the next generation.
Although it is never possible to make perfect predictions for purposes of creating
family policies to help reduce the risks associated with family formation, we have been
able to identify expectant parents at risk for later individual, marital, and parenting diffi-
culties based on information they provided during pregnancy. Recall that the participants
in the studies we are describing are the two-parent intact families portrayed as ideal in
the family decline debate. The problems they face have little to do with their family
values. The difficulties appear to stem from the fact that the visible fault lines in couple
relationships leave their marriages more vulnerable to the shake-up of the transition-to-
parenthood process.
Risks for Children
We are concerned about the impact of the transition to parenthood not only because it
increases the risk of distress in marriage but also because the parents early distress can
have far-reaching consequences for their children. Longitudinal studies make it clear
that parents early difficulties affect their childrens later intellectual and social adjust-
ment. For example, parents well-being or distress as individuals and as couples during
pregnancy predicts the quality of their relationships with their children in the preschool
Ch-07.indd 267 7/8/2008 12:34:07 PM
268 Part III Parents and Children
period.
28
In turn, the quality of both parent-child relationships in the preschool years is
related to the childs academic and social competence during the early elementary school
years.
29
Preschoolers whose mothers and fathers had more responsive, effective parent-
ing styles had higher scores on academic achievement and fewer acting out, aggressive,
or withdrawn behavior problems with peers in kindergarten and Grade 1.
30
When we
receive teachers reports, we see that overall, five-year-olds whose parents reported mak-
ing the most positive adaptations to parenthood were the ones with the most successful
adjustments to elementary school.
Alexander and Entwisle
31
suggested that in kindergarten and first grade, children
are launched into achievement trajectories that they follow the rest of their school years.
Longitudinal studies of childrens academic and social competence
32
support this hypoth-
esis about the importance of students early adaptation to school: children who are socially
rejected by peers in the early elementary grades are more likely to have academic problems
or drop out of school, to develop antisocial and delinquent behaviors, and to have difficulty
in intimate relationships with partners in late adolescence and early adulthood. Without
support or intervention early in a familys development, the children with early academic,
emotional, and social problems are at greater risk for later, even more serious problems.
POLICY IMPLICATIONS
What social scientists have learned about families during the transition to parent-
hood is relevant to policy discussions about how families with young children can be
strengthened.
We return briefly to the family values debate to examine the policy implications of
promoting traditional family arrangements, of altering workplace policies, and of provid-
ing preventive interventions to strengthen families during the early childrearing years.
The Potential Consequences of Promoting
Traditional Family Arrangements
What are the implications of the argument that families and children would benefit by
a return to traditional family arrangements? We are aware that existing data are not ad-
equate to provide a full test of the family values argument, but we believe that some
systematic information on this point is better than none. At first glance, it may seem as if
studies support the arguments of those proposing that the family is in decline. We have
documented the fact that a substantial number of new two-parent families are experienc-
ing problems of adjustmentparents depression, troubled marriages, intergenerational
strain, and stress in juggling the demands of work and family. Nevertheless, there is little
in the transition to parenthood research to support the idea that parents distress is at-
tributable to a decline in their family-oriented values. First, the populations studied here
are two-parent, married, nonteenage, lower-middle- to upper-middle-class families, who
do not represent the variants in family form that most writers associate with declining
quality of family life.
Ch-07.indd 268 7/8/2008 12:34:07 PM
Chapter 7 Parenthood 269
Second, threaded throughout the writings on family decline is the erroneous as-
sumption that because these changes in the family have been occurring at the same time
as increases in negative outcomes for children, the changes are the cause of the problems.
These claims are not buttressed by systematic data establishing the direction of causal
influence. For example, it is well accepted ( but still debated) that childrens adaptation is
poorer in the period after their parents divorce.
33
Nevertheless, some studies suggest that
it is the unresolved conflict between parents prior to and after the divorce, rather than the
divorce itself, that accounts for most of the debilitating effects on the children.
34
Third, we find the attack on family egalitarianism puzzling when the fact is that,
despite the increase in egalitarian ideology, modern couples move toward more traditional
family role arrangements as they become parentsdespite their intention to do other-
wise. Our key point here is that traditional family and work roles in families of the last
three decades tend to be associated with more individual and marital distress for parents.
Furthermore, we find that when fathers have little involvement in household and child
care tasks, both parents are less responsive and less able to provide the structure neces-
sary for their children to accomplish new and challenging tasks in our project playroom.
Finally, when we ask teachers how all of the children in their classrooms are faring at
school, it is the children of these parents who are less academically competent and more
socially isolated. There is, then, a body of evidence suggesting that a return to strictly
traditional family arrangements may not have the positive consequences that the propo-
nents of family values claim they will.
Family and Workplace Policy
Current discussions about policies for reducing the tensions experienced by parents of
young children tend to be polarized around two alternatives: (1) Encourage more moth-
ers to stay home and thereby reduce their stress in juggling family and work; (2) Make
the workplace more flexible and family friendly for both parents through parental
leave policies, flextime, and child care provided or subsidized by the workplace. There is
no body of systematic empirical research that supports the conclusion that when moth-
ers work outside the home, their children or husbands suffer negative consequences.
35

In fact, our own data and others suggest that (1) children, especially girls, benefit from
the model their working mothers provide as productive workers, and (2) mothers of
young children who return to work are less depressed than mothers who stay home full
time. Thus it is not at all clear that a policy designed to persuade contemporary mothers
of young children to stay at home would have the desired effects, particularly given the
potential for depression and the loss of one parents wages in single paycheck families. Un-
less governments are prepared, as they are in Sweden and Germany, for example, to hold
parents jobs and provide paid leave to replace lost wages, a stay-at-home policy seems too
costly for the family on both economic and psychological grounds.
We believe that the issue should not be framed in terms of policies to support
single-worker or dual-worker families, but rather in terms of support for the well-being
of all family members. This goal could entail financial support for families with very
young children so that parents could choose to do full-time or substantial part-time child
care themselves or to have support to return to work.
Ch-07.indd 269 7/8/2008 12:34:07 PM
270 Part III Parents and Children
What about the alternative of increasing workplace flexibility? Studies of families
making the transition to parenthood suggest that this alternative may be especially attrac-
tive and helpful when children are young, if it is accompanied by substantial increases in
the availability of high-quality child care to reduce the stress of locating adequate care or
making do with less than ideal caretakers. Adults and children tend to adapt well when
both parents work if both parents support that alternative. Therefore, policies that support
paid family leave along with flexible work arrangements could enable families to choose
arrangements that make most sense for their particular situation.
Preventive Services to Address Family Risk Points
According to our analysis of the risks associated with the formation of new families, many
two-parent families are having difficulty coping on their own with the normal challenges
of becoming a family. If a priority in our society is to strengthen new families, it seems
reasonable to consider offering preventive programs to reduce risks and distress and en-
hance the potential for healthy and satisfying family relationships, which we know lead to
more optimal levels of adjustment in children. What we are advocating is analogous to the
concept of Lamaze and other forms of childbirth preparation, which are now commonly
sought by many expectant parents. A logical context for these programs would be exist-
ing public and private health and mental health delivery systems in which services could
be provided for families who wish assistance or are already in difficulty. We recognize
that there is skepticism in a substantial segment of the population about psychological
services in general, and about services provided for families by government in particular.
Nonetheless, the fact is that many modern families are finding parenthood unexpectedly
stressful and they typically have no access to assistance. Evidence from intervention trials
suggests that when preventive programs help parents move their family relationships in
more positive directions, their children have fewer academic, behavioral, and emotional
problems in their first years of schooling.
36
Parent-Focused Interventions. Elsewhere, we reviewed the literature on interven-
tions designed to improve parenting skills and parent-child relationship quality in fami-
lies at different points on the spectrum from low-risk to high-distress.
37
For parents of
children already identified as having serious problems, home visiting programs and pre-
school and early school interventions, some of which include a broader family focus,
have demonstrated positive effects on parents behavior and self-esteem and on childrens
academic and social competence, particularly when the intervention staff are health or
mental health professionals. However, with the exception of occasional classes, books, or
tapes for parents, there are few resources for parents who need to learn more about how
to manage small problems before they spiral out of their control.
Couple-Focused Interventions. Our conceptual model of family transitions and re-
sults of studies of partners who become parents suggest that family-based interventions
might go beyond enhancing parent-child relationships to strengthen the relationship
between the parents. We have seen that the couple relationship is vulnerable in its own
right around the decision to have a baby and increasingly after the birth of a child. We
Ch-07.indd 270 7/8/2008 12:34:07 PM
Chapter 7 Parenthood 271
know of only one pilot program that provided couples an opportunity to explore mixed
feelings about the Baby-Maybe decision.
38
Surely, services designed to help couples
resolve their conflict about whether and when to become a familyespecially Yes-No
couplesmight reduce the risks of later marital and family distress, just as genetic coun-
seling helps couples make decisions when they are facing the risk of serious genetic
problems.
In our own work, we have been systematically evaluating two preventive interven-
tions for couples who have not been identified as being in a high-risk category. Both
projects involved work with small groups of couples who met weekly over many months,
in one case expectant couples, in the other, couples whose first child is about to make the
transition to elementary school.
39
In both studies, staff couples who are mental health
professionals worked with both parents in small groups of four or five couples. Ongoing
discussion over the months of regular meetings addressed participants individual, marital,
parenting, and three-generational dilemmas and problems. In both cases we found promis-
ing results when we compared adjustment in families with and without the intervention.
By two years after the Becoming a Family project intervention, new parents had
avoided the typical declines in role satisfaction and the increases in marital disenchant-
ment reported in almost every longitudinal study of new parents. There were no sepa-
rations or divorces in couples who participated in the intervention for the first three
years of parenthood, whereas 15 percent of comparable couples with no intervention had
already divorced. The positive impact of this intervention was still apparent five years
after it had ended.
In the Schoolchildren and Their Families project intervention, professional staff
engaged couples in group discussions of marital, parenting, and three-generational prob-
lems and dilemmas during their first childs transition to school. Two years after the
intervention ended, fathers and mothers showed fewer symptoms of depression and less
conflict in front of their child, and fathers were more effective in helping their children
with difficult tasks than comparable parents with no intervention. These positive effects
on the parents lives and relationships had benefits for the children as well: children of
parents who worked with the professionals in an ongoing couples group showed greater
academic improvement and fewer emotional and behavior problems in the first five years
of elementary school than children whose parents had no group intervention.
40
These results suggest that preventive interventions in which clinically trained staff
work with low-risk couples have the potential to buffer some of the parents strain, slow
down or stop the spillover of negative and unrewarding patterns from one relationship to
another, enhance fathers responsiveness to their children, and foster the childrens ability
both to concentrate on their school work and to develop more rewarding relationships
with their peers. The findings suggest that without intervention, there is increased risk
of spillover from parents distress to the quality of the parent-child relationships. This
means that preventive services to help parents cope more effectively with their problems
have the potential to enhance their responsiveness to their children and to their partners,
which, in turn, optimizes their childrens chances of making more successful adjustments
to school. Such programs have the potential to reduce the long-term negative conse-
quences of childrens early school difficulties by setting them on more positive develop-
mental trajectories as they face the challenges of middle childhood.
Ch-07.indd 271 7/8/2008 12:34:08 PM
272 Part III Parents and Children
CONCLUSION
The transition to parenthood has been made by men and women for centuries. In the
past three decades, the notion that this transition poses risks for the well-being of adults
and, thus, potentially for their childrens development, has been greeted by some with
surprise, disbelief, or skepticism. Our goal has been to bring recent social science findings
about the processes involved in becoming a family to the attention of social scientists,
family policymakers, and parents themselves. We have shown that this often-joyous time
is normally accompanied by changes and stressors that increase risks of relationship dif-
ficulty and compromise the ability of men and women to create the kinds of families they
dream of when they set out on their journey to parenthood. We conclude that there is
cause for concern about the health of the familyeven those considered advantaged
by virtue of their material and psychological resources.
Most chapters in this book focus on policies for families in more high-risk situ-
ations. We have argued that contemporary couples and their children in two-parent
lower- to upper-middle-class families deserve the attention of policymakers as well. We
view these couples as new pioneers, because, despite the fact that partners have been
having babies for millennia, contemporary parents are journeying into uncharted terrain,
which appears to hold unexpected risks to their own and their childrens development.
Like writers describing family decline, we are concerned about the strength and
hardiness of two-parent families. Unlike those who advocate that parents adopt more
traditional family values, we recommend that policies to address family health and well-
being allow for the creation of programs and services for families in diverse family ar-
rangements, with the goal of enhancing the development and well-being of all children.
We recognize that with economic resources already stretched very thin, this is not an aus-
picious time to recommend additional collective funding of family services. Yet research
suggests that without intervention, there is a risk that the vulnerabilities and problems of
the parents will spill over into the lives of their children, thus increasing the probability
of the transmission of the kinds of intergenerational problems that erode the quality of
family life and compromise childrens chances of optimal development. This will be very
costly in the long run.
We left Mark and Abby, and a number of other couples, in a state of animated
suspension. Many of them were feeling somewhat irritable and disappointed, though not
ready to give up on their dreams of creating nurturing families. These couples provide a
challengethat the information they have offered through their participation in scores
of systematic family studies in many locales will be taken seriously, and that their voices
will play a role in helping our society decide how to allocate limited economic and social
resources for the families that need them.
Notes
1. D. Blankenhorn, S. Bayme, and J. B. Elshtain (eds.), Rebuilding the Nest: A New Commitment to the
American Family ( Milwaukee, WI: Family Service America, 1990), 326; D. Popenoe, American
Family Decline, 1960 1990, Journal of Marriage and the Family 55:527541, 1993.
Ch-07.indd 272 7/8/2008 12:34:08 PM
Chapter 7 Parenthood 273
2. S. B. Crockenberg, Infant Irritability, Mother Responsiveness, and Social Support Influences on
Security of Infant-Mother Attachment, Child Development 52:857865, 1981; C. Cutrona, Non-
psychotic Postpartum Depression: A Review of Recent Research, Clinical Psychology Review 2:
487503, 1982.
3. A. Hochschild, The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home ( New York: Viking
Penguin, 1989); J. H. Pleck, Fathers and Infant Care Leave, in E. F. Zigler and M. Frank
(eds.), The Parental Leave Crisis: Toward a National Policy ( New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1988).
4. A. Skolnick, Embattled Paradise: The American Family in an Age of Uncertainty ( New York: Basic
Books, 1991).
5. D. Popenoe, Disturbing the Nest: Family Change and Decline in Modern Societies ( New York: Aldine
de Gruyter, 1988); Popenoe, American Family Decline.
6. Popenoe, American Family Decline. 41 42. Smaller two-parent families and larger one-parent
families are both attributed to the same mechanism: parental self-focus and selfishness.
7. D. Blankenhorn, American Family Dilemmas, in D. Blankenhorn, S. Bayme, and J. B. Elshtain
(eds.), Rebuilding the Nest. A New Commitment to the American Family (Milwaukee, WI: Family
Service America, 1990), 326.
8. Although the proportion of single-parent families is increasing, the concern about departure from
the two-parent form may be overstated. Approximately 70 percent of American babies born in the
1990s come home to two parents who are married. If we include couples with long-term commit-
ments who are not legally married, the proportion of modern families that begins with two parents
is even higher. The prevalence of two-parent families has declined since 1956, when 94 percent
of newborns had married parents, but, by far, the predominant family form in the nonteenage
population continues to be two parents and a baby.
9. J. Belsky, M. Lang, and M. Rovine, Stability and Change across the Transition to Parenthood:
A Second Study, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 50:517522, 1985; C. P. Cowan,
P. A. Cowan, G. Heming, E. Garrett, W. S. Coysh, H. Curtis-Boles, and A. J. Boles, Transi-
tions to Parenthood: His, Hers, and Theirs, Journal of Family Issues 6:451 481, 1985; M. J.
Cox, M. T. Owen, J. M. Lewis, and V. K. Henderson, Marriage, Adult Adjustment, and Early
Parenting, Child Development 60:10151024, 1989; F. Grossman, L. Eiehler, and S. Winickoff,
Pregnancy, Birth, and Parenthood (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1980); C. M. Heinicke, S. D. Dis-
kin, D. M. Ramsay-Klee, and D. S. Oates, Pre- and Postbirth Antecedents of 2-year-old Atten-
tion, Capacity for Relationships and Verbal Expressiveness, Developmental Psychology 22:777787,
1986; R. Levy-Shiff, Individual and Contextual Correlates of Marital Change Across the Transi-
tion to Parenthood, Developmental Psychology 30:591 601, 1994.
10. A. Engfer, The Interrelatedness of Marriage and the Mother-Child Relationship, in R. A. Hinde
and J. Stevenson-Hinde (eds.), Relationships within Families: Mutual Influences (Cambridge UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1988), 104 118; K. A. Schneewind, Konsequenzen der Ersteltern-
schaft [Consequences of the Transition to Parenthood: An Overview], Psychologie in Erziehung
and Unterricht 30:161172, 1983.
11. C. F. Clulow, To Have and to Hold: Marriage, the First Baby and Preparing Couples for Parenthood
(Aberdeen, Scotland: Aberdeen University Press, 1982).
12. C. P. Cowan and P. A. Cowan, Interventions to Ease the Transition to Parenthood: Why They
Are Needed and What They Can Do, Family Relations 44:412 423, 1995.
13. A. F. Shapiro, J. M. Gottman, and S. Carrere, The Baby and the Marriage. Identifying Factors
that Buffer against Decline in Marital Satisfaction after the First Baby Arrives. Journal of Family
Psychology, 14:5970, 2000.
14. E. E. LeMasters, Parenthood as Crisis, Marriage and Family Living 19:352365, 1957.
15. S. B. Campbell, J. F. Cohn, C. Flanagan, S. Popper, and T. Myers, Course and Correlates of
Postpartum Depression during the Transition to Parenthood, Development and Psychopathology
4:29 48, 1992.
16. T. Benedek, Parenthood during the Life Cycle, in E. J. Anthony and T. Benedek (eds.), Par-
enthood: Its Psychology and Psychopathology ( Boston: Little, Brown, 1970); J. D. Osofsky and H. J.
Osofsky, Psychological and Developmental Perspectives on Expectant and New Parenthood,
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274 Part III Parents and Children
in R. D. Parke (ed.), Review of Child Development Research 7: The Family (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1984), 372397.
17. A. Caspi and G. H. Elder, Jr. Emergent Family Patterns: The Intergenerational Construction of
Problem Behavior and Relationships, in R. A. Hinde and J. Stevenson-Hinde (eds.), Relationships
Within Families: Mutual Influences (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 218241; M. H. van Ijzen-
doorn, F. Juffer, M. G. Duyvesteyn, Breaking the Intergenerational Cycle of Insecure Attach-
ment: A Review of the Effects of Attachment-based Interventions on Maternal Sensitivity and
Infant Security, Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry & Allied Disciplines 36:225248, 1995.
18. D. A. Cohn, P. A. Cowan, C. P. Cowan, and J. Pearson, Mothers and Fathers Working Models
of Childhood Attachment Relationships, Parenting Styles, and Child Behavior, Development and
Psychopathology 4:417 431, 1992.
19. Crockenberg, Infant Irritability.
20. Hochsehild, The Second Shift.
21. C. P. Cowan and P. A. Cowan, When Partners Become Parents: The Big Life Change for Couples
(Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2000).
22. M. S. Schulz, Coping with Negative Emotional Arousal: The Daily Spillover of Work Stress
into Marital Interactions, Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of California, Berkeley,
1994; R. Repetti and J. Wood, Effects of Daily Stress at Work on Mothers Interactions with
Preschoolers, Journal of Family Psychology, 11:90 108, 1997.
23. J. Belsky and M. Rovine, Patterns of Marital Change across the Transition to Parenthood,
Journal of Marriage and the Family 52:109123, 1990.
24. We interviewed the couples in the mid-to-late stages of pregnancy. We were not, therefore, privy
to the early phases of decision making of these couples, whether wives became pregnant on pur-
pose, or whether husbands were coercive about the baby decision. What we saw in the Yes-No
couples, in contrast with the Ambivalent couples, was that the decision to go ahead with the
pregnancy, an accomplished fact, was still an unresolved emotional struggle.
25. M. Kline, P. A. Cowan, and C. P. Cowan, The Origins of Parenting Stress during the Transition
to Parenthood: A New Family Model, Early Education and Development 2:287305, 1991.
26. J. Belsky and R. A. Isabella, Marital and Parent-Child Relationships in Family of Origin and
Marital Change Following the Birth of a Baby: A Retrospective Analysis, Child Development
56:342349, 1985; C. P. Cowan, P. A. Cowan, and G. Heming, Adult Children of Alcoholics:
Adaptation during the Transition to Parenthood. Paper presented to the National Council on
Family Relations, 1988.
27. Cowan, Cowan, and Heming; Adult Children of Alcoholics.
28. Belsky, Lang, and Rovine, Stability and Change across the Transition to Parenthood; Cowan and
Cowan, When Partners Become Parents; Cox, Owen, Lewis, and Henderson, Marriage, Adult Ad-
justment, and Early Parenting; Heinicke, Diskin, Ramsay-Klee, and Oates, Pre- and Postbirth
Antecedents of 2-Year-Old Attention, Capacity for Relationships and Verbal Expressiveness.
29. D. Baumrind, The Development of Instrumental Competence through Socialization, in A. D.
Pick (ed.), Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology, vol. 7 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1979); J. H. Block and J. Block, The Role of Ego-Control and Ego-Resiliency in the
Organization of Behavior, in W. A. Collins (ed.), Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology, vol. 13
( Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1980).
30. P. A. Cowan, C. P. Cowan, M. Schulz, and G. Heming, Prebirth to Preschool Family Factors
Predicting Childrens Adaptation to Kindergarten, in R. Parke and S. Kellam (eds.), Exploring
Family Relationships with Other Social Contexts: Advances in Family Research, vol. 4 ( Hillsdale, NJ:
Erlbaum, 1994), 75114.
31. K. L. Alexander and D. Entwisle, Achievement in the First 2 Years of School: Patterns and Pro-
cesses, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 53:2, Serial No. 218, 1988.
32. S. Asher and J. D. Coie (eds.), Peer Rejection in Childhood (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1990); S. G. Kellam, M. B. Simon, and M. E. Ensminger, Antecedents in First Grade
of Teenage Drug Use and Psychological Well-Being: A Ten-Year Community-wide Prospective
Study, in D. Ricks and B. Dohrenwend (eds.), Origins of Psychopathology: Research and Public Policy
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( New York: Cambridge, 1982); N. Lambert, Adolescent Outcomes for Hyperactive Children:
Perspectives on General and Specific Patterns of Childhood Risk for Adolescent Educational,
Social, and Mental Health Problems, American Psychologist 43:786 799, 1988; E. A. Carlson,
L. A. Sroufe et al. Early Environment Support and Elementary School Adjustment as Predictors
of School Adjustment in Middle Adolescence, Journal of Adolescent Research 14:7294, 1999.
33. E. M. Hetherington and J. Kelly, For Better or for Worse: Divorce Reconsidered ( New York: W. W. Nor-
ton, 2002); J. Wallerstein and J. Kelly, Surviving the Breakup ( New York: Basic Books, 1980).
34. E. M. Cummings and P. T. Davies, Children and Marital Conflict: The Impact of Family Dispute and
Resolution ( New York: Guilford Press, 1994).
35. M. Moorehouse, Work and Family Dynamics, in P. A. Cowan, D. Field, D. A. Hansen, A. Skol-
nick, and G. E. Swanson (eds.), Family, Self, and Society: Toward a New Agenda for Family Research
( Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1993).
36. P. A. Cowan and C. P. Cowan, What an Intervention Design Reveals about How Parents Affect
Their Childrens Academic Achievement and Behavior Problems, in J. G. Borkowski, S. Ramey,
and M. Bristol-Power (eds.), Parenting and the Childs World: Influences on Intellectual, Academic, and
Social-Emotional Development (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002).
37. P. A. Cowan, D. Powell, and C. P. Cowan, Parenting Interventions: A Family Systems View of
Enhancing Childrens Development, in I. E. Sigel and K. A. Renninger (eds.), Handbook of Child
Psychology, 5th ed. vol. 4: Child Psychology in Practice ( New York: Wiley, 1997).
38. L. Potts, Considering Parenthood: Group Support for a Critical Life Decision, American Jour-
nal of Orthopsychiatry 50:629 638, 1980.
39. P. A. Cowan, C. P. Cowan, and T. Heming. Two Variations of a Preventive Intervention for
Couples: Effects on Parents and Children during the Transition to Elementary School, in P. A.
Cowan, C. P. Cowan, J. Ablow, V. K. Johnson, and J. Measelle (eds.), The Family Context of Par-
enting in Childrens Adaptation to Elementary School (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,
in press).
40. Ibid.
R E A DI NG 2 0
Caring for Our Young: Child Care
in Europe and the United States
Dan Clawson and Naomi Gerstel
When a delegation of American child care experts visited France, they were amazed by
the full-day, free coles maternelles that enroll almost 100 percent of French three-, four-
and five-year-olds:
Libraries better stocked than those in many U.S. elementary schools. Three-year-olds
serving one another radicchio salad, then using cloth napkins, knives, forks and real glasses
of milk to wash down their bread and chicken. Young children asked whether dragons exist
[as] a lesson in developing vocabulary and creative thinking.
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276 Part III Parents and Children
In the United States, by contrast, working parents struggle to arrange and pay for
private care. Publicly-funded child care programs are restricted to the poor. Although
most U.S. parents believe (or want to believe) that their children receive quality care, stan-
dardized ratings find most of the care mediocre and much of it seriously inadequate.
Looking at child care in comparative perspective offers us an opportunityalmost
requires usto think about our goals and hopes for children, parents, education and lev-
els of social inequality. Any child care program or funding system has social and political
assumptions with far-reaching consequences. National systems vary in their emphasis on
education; for three- to five-year-olds, some stress child care as preparation for school,
while others take a more playful view of childhood. Systems vary in the extent to which
they stress that childrens early development depends on interaction with peers or some
version of intensive mothering. They also vary in the extent to which they support policies
promoting center-based care as opposed to time for parents to stay at home with their
very young children. Each of these emphases entails different national assumptions, if only
implicit, about children and parents, education, teachers, peers and societies as a whole.
What do we want, why and what are the implications? Rethinking these questions
is timely because with changing welfare, employment, and family patterns, more U.S.
parents have come to believe they want and need a place for their children in child care
centers. Even parents who are not in the labor force want their children to spend time in
preschool. In the United States almost half of children less than one year old now spend
a good portion of their day in some form of non-parental care. Experts increasingly em-
phasize the potential benefits of child care. A recent National Academy of Sciences report
summarizes the views of experts: Higher quality care is associated with outcomes that
all parents want to see in their children. The word in Congress these days, especially
in discussions of welfare reform, is that child care is goodit saves money later on by
helping kids through school (which keeps them out of jail), and it helps keep mothers on
the job and families together. A generation ago, by contrast, Nixon vetoed a child care
bill as a radical piece of social legislation designed to deliver children to communal
approaches to child rearing over and against the family-centered approach. While to-
days vision is clearly different, most attempts to improve U.S. child care are incremental,
efforts to get a little more money here or there, with little consideration for what kind
of system is being created.
The U.S. and French systems offer sharp contrasts. Although many hold up the
French system as a model for children three or older, it is only one alternative. Other
European countries provide thought-provoking alternatives, but the U.S.-French con-
trast is a good place to begin.
FRANCE AND THE UNITED STATES:
PRIVATE VERSUS PUBLIC CARE
Until their children start school, most U.S. parents struggle to find child care, endure
long waiting lists, and frequently change locations. They must weave a complex, often
unreliable patchwork in which their children move among relatives, informal settings
Ch-07.indd 276 7/8/2008 12:34:08 PM
Chapter 7 Parenthood 277
and formal center care, sometimes all in one day. Among three- to four-year-old children
with employed mothers, more than one out of eight are in three or more child care ar-
rangements, and almost half are in two or more arrangements. A very small number of
the wealthy hire nannies, often immigrants; more parents place their youngest children
with relatives, especially grandmothers, or work alternate shifts so fathers can share child
care with mothers (these alternating shifters now include almost one-third of families with
infants and toddlers). Many pay kin to provide child caresometimes not because they
prefer it, but because they cannot afford other care, and it is a way to provide jobs and
income to struggling family members. For children three and older, however, the fastest-
growing setting in the United States is child care centersalmost half of three-year-olds
(46 percent) and almost two-thirds of four-year-olds (64 percent) now spend much of
their time there.
In France, participation in the cole maternelle system is voluntary, but a place is
guaranteed to every child three to six years old. Almost 100 percent of parents enroll their
three-year-olds. Even non-employed parents enroll their children, because they believe
it is best for the children. Schools are open from 8:30 A.M. to 4:30 P.M. with an extended
lunch break, but care is available at modest cost before and after school and during the
lunch break.
Integrated with the school system, French child care is intended primarily as early
education. All children, rich and poor, immigrant or not, are part of the same national
system, with the same curriculum, staffed by teachers paid good wages by the same na-
tional ministry. No major political party or group opposes the system.
When extra assistance is offered, rather than targeting poor children (or families),
additional resources are provided to geographic areas. Schools in some zones, mostly in
urban areas, receive extra funding to reduce class size, give teachers extra training and a
bonus, provide extra materials and employ special teachers. By targeting an entire area,
poor children are not singled out (as they are in U.S. free lunch programs).
Staff in the French coles maternelles have masters degrees and are paid teachers
wages; in 1998, U.S. preschool teachers earned an average of $8.32 an hour, and child
care workers earned $6.61, not only considerably less than (underpaid) teachers but also
less than parking lot attendants. As a consequence employee turnover averages 30 per-
cent a year, with predictably harmful effects on children.
What are the costs of these two very different systems? In almost every commu-
nity across the United States, a year of child care costs more than a year at a public
universityin some cases twice as much. Subsidy systems favor the poor, but subsidies
(unlike tax breaks) depend on the level of appropriations. Congress does not appropri-
ate enough money and, therefore, most of the children who qualify for subsidies do not
receive them. In 1999, under federal rules 15 million children were eligible to receive
benefits, but only 1.8 million actually received them. Middle- and working-class families
can receive neither kind of subsidy. An Urban Institute study suggests that some parents
place their children in care they consider unsatisfactory because other arrangements are
just too expensive. The quality of care thus differs drastically depending on the parents
income, geographic location, diligence in searching out alternatives and luck.
The French system is not cheap. According to French government figures, the cost
for a child in Paris was about $5,500 per year in 1999. That is only slightly more than the
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278 Part III Parents and Children
average U.S. parent paid for the care of a four-year-old in a center ($5,242 in 2000). But
in France child care is a social responsibility, and thus free to parents, while in the United
States parents pay the cost. Put another way, France spends about 1 percent of its Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) on government-funded early education and care programs.
If the United States devoted the same share of its GDP to preschools, the government
would spend about $100 billion a year. Current U.S. government spending is less than
$20 billion a year ($15 billion federal, $4 billion state).
OTHER EUROPEAN ALTERNATIVES
When the American child care community thinks about European models, the French
model is often what they have in mind. With its emphasis on education, the French sys-
tem has an obvious appeal to U.S. politicians, educators and child care advocates. Politi-
cians central concern in the United States appears to be raising childrens test scores;
in popular and academic literature, this standard is often cited as the major indicator of
program success. But such an educational model is by no means the only alternative.
Indeed, the U.S. focus on the French system may itself be a telling indicator of U.S. ex-
perts values as well as their assessments of political realities. Many advocates insist that
a substantial expansion of the U.S. system will be possible only if the system is presented
as improving childrens education. These advocates are no longer willing to use the term
child care, insisting on early education instead. The French model fits these priori-
ties: it begins quasi-school about three years earlier than in the United States. Although
the French obviously assist employed parents and childrens center activities are said to
be fun, the system is primarily touted and understood as educationalintended to treat
children as pupils, to prepare them to do better in school.
The 11 European nations included in a recent Organization for Economic Co-
operation and Development study (while quite different from one another) all have
significantly better child care and paid leave than the United States. Each also differs
significantly from France. Offering alternatives, these models challenge us to think even
more broadly about childhood, parenting and the kind of society we value.
NON-SCHOOL MODEL: DENMARK
From birth to age six most Danish children go to child care, but most find that care in
non-school settings. Overseen by the Ministry of Social Affairs (rather than the Ministry
of Education), the Danish system stresses relatively unstructured curricula that give
children time to hang out. Lead staff are pedagogues, not teachers. Although peda-
gogues have college degrees and are paid teachers wages, their role is equally important
but different from that of the school-based teacher. Listening to children is one of the
governments five principles, and centers emphasize looking at everything from the childs
perspective.
The Danish model differs from the French system in two additional ways that
clarify its non-school character. First, in the Danish system, pedagogues care for very
young children (from birth to age three as well as older children ages three to six). The
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Chapter 7 Parenthood 279
French preschool (cole maternelle) model applies only to children three and older. Before
that, children of working parents can attend crches. Crche staff, however, have only high
school educations and are paid substantially less than the (masters degree-trained) coles
maternelles teachers. Second, while the coles maternelles are available to all children, the
Danish system ( like the French crches) is only available to children with working parents
because it is intended to aid working parents, not to educate children.
The Danish system is decentralized, with each individual center required to have
a management board with a parent majority. But the system receives most of its money
from public funding, and parents contribute only about one-fifth of total costs.
Given its non-school emphasis, age integration, and the importance it assigns to local
autonomy, the Danish system might be appealing to U.S. parents, especially some people
of color. To be sure, many U.S. parentsacross race and classare ambivalent about child
care for their youngest children. Especially given the growing emphasis on testing, they
believe that preschool might give them an edge, but they also want their children to have
fun and playto have, in short, what most Americans still consider a childhood. Some
research suggests that Latina mothers are especially likely to feel that center-based care,
with its emphasis on academic learning, does not provide the warmth and moral guidance
they seek. They are, therefore, less likely to select center-based care than either white or
African-American parents, relying instead on kin or family child care providers whom
they know and trust. U.S. experts emphasis on the French model may speak not only to
political realities but also to the particular class and even more clearly race preferences
framing those realities.
MOTHERS OR PEERS
The United States, if only implicitly, operates on a mother-substitute model of child
care. Because of a widespread assumption in the United States that all women naturally
have maternal feelings and capacities, child care staff, who are almost all women (about
98 percent), are not required to have special training (and do not need to be well paid).
Even for regulated providers, 41 out of 50 states require no pre-service training beyond
orientation. Consequently, in the United States the child-staff ratio is one of the most
prominent measures used to assess quality and is central to most state licensing systems.
The assumption, based on the mother-substitute model, is that emotional support can
be given and learning can take place only with such low ratios.
Considering the high quality and ample funding of many European systems, it
comes as a surprise that most have much higher child-staff ratios than the United States.
In the French coles maternelles, for example, there is one teacher and one half-time aide
for every 25 children. In Italy, in a center with one adult for every eight children (ages one
to three years) the early childhood workers see no need for additional adults and think
the existing ratios are appropriate. Leading researchers Sheila Kamerman and Alfred
Kahn report that in Denmark, what is particularly impressive is that children are pretty
much on their own in playing with their peers. An adult is present all the time but does
not lead or play with the children. In a similar vein, a cross-national study of academic
literature found substantial focus on adult-child ratios in the United States, but very little
literature on the topic in German-, French- or Spanish-language publications. Why not?
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280 Part III Parents and Children
These systems have a different view of children and learning. Outside the United States
systems often center around the peer group. In Denmark the role of staff is to work
alongside children, rather than [to be] experts or leaders who teach children. Similarly,
the first director of the early childhood services in Reggio, Italy, argues that children
learn through conflict and that placing children in groups facilitates learning through
attractive, advantageous, and constructive conflict because among children there
are not strong relationships of authority and dependence. In a non-European example,
Joseph Tobin, David Wu, and Dana Davidson argue that in Japan the aim is ratios that
keep teachers from being too mother-like in their interactions with students . . . Large
class sizes and large ratios have become increasingly important strategies for promoting
the Japanese values of groupism and selflessness. Such practices contrast with the indi-
vidualistic focus in U.S. child care.
FAMILY LEAVES AND WORK TIME
When we ask how to care for children, especially those younger than three, one answer is
for parents to stay home. Policy that promotes such leaves is what one would expect from
a society such as the United States, which emphasizes a mothering model of child care.
It is, however, European countries that provide extensive paid family leave, usually uni-
versal, with not only job protection but also substantial income replacement. In Sweden,
for example, parents receive a full year and a half of paid parental leave (with 12 months
at 80 percent of prior earnings) for each child. Because so many parents (mostly mothers)
use family leave, fewer than 200 children under one year old in the entire country are in
public care. Generous programs are common throughout Europe (although the length,
flexibility and level of payment they provide vary).
The United States provides far less in the way of family leaves. Since its passage in
1993, the Family and Medical Leave Act ( FMLA) has guaranteed a 12-week job-protected
leave to workers of covered employers. Most employers (95 percent) and many workers
(45 percent), however, are not covered. And all federally mandated leaves are unpaid.
The unpaid leaves provided by the FMLA, like the private system of child care, ac-
centuate the inequality between those who can afford them and those who cant. Although
the FMLA was touted as a gender neutral piece of legislation, men (especially white
men) are unlikely to take leaves; it is overwhelmingly women (especially those who are
married) who take them. As a result, such women pay a wage penalty when they interrupt
their careers. To address such inequities, Sweden and Norway have introduced a use it
or lose it policy. For each child, parents may divide up to a year of paid leave (say nine
months for the mother, three for the father), except that the mother may not use more than
eleven months total. One month is reserved for the father; if he does not use the leave,
the family loses the month.
Finally, although not usually discussed as child care policy in the United States,
policy makers in many European countries now emphasize that the number of hours
parents work clearly shapes the ways young children are cared for and by whom. Workers
in the United States, on average, put in 300 hours more per year than workers in France
(and 400 more than those in Sweden).
Ch-07.indd 280 7/8/2008 12:34:09 PM
Chapter 7 Parenthood 281
CONCLUSION
The child care system in the United States is a fragmentary patchwork, both at the level
of the individual child and at the level of the overall system. Recent research suggests
that the quality of care for young children is poor or fair in well over half of child care
settings. This low quality of care, in concert with a model of intensive mothering, means
that many anxious mothers privately hunt for high-quality substitutes while trying to
20022003 Fee Schedule
(Prices effective until July 1, 2003)
Application Fee $50.00
(nonrefundable/annual fee)
Materials Fee $30.00 Full-time Enrollment
(nonrefundable) $20.00 Part-time Enrollment
Tuition Deposit* amount equal to one months tuition
(due in two installments)
a. Space Guarantee Fee** $150.00
(due upon acceptance to the school)
b. Balance due two months prior to starting date.
**See enrollment contract for refund conditions.
Full-time $859.00/month
Morning Preschool (9:00 a.m.1.00 p.m.)
three mornings $321.00/month
four mornings $397.00/month
five mornings $462.00/month
Afternoon Preschool (1:00 p.m.5.00 p.m.)
three afternoons $285.00/month
four afternoons $350.00/month
five afternoons $404.00/month
Kindergarten Program (11:25 a.m.5.00 p.m.)
three days $339.00/month
four days $416.00/month
five days $486.00/month
Extended Care ( hour before 9:00 a.m. and the hour after
5.00 p.m.) $5.25/hour
Unscheduled Drop-in $6.25/hour
Participating Parents ( P.P.) & Board Members receive tuition
credit. P.P. credit is $25.00 per day of participation. Board
credits vary with position.
Tuition and fees for the U.S. preschool illustrated here, a
non-profit, parent-run cooperative that costs almost $1,000 per
month.
Ch-07.indd 281 7/8/2008 12:34:09 PM
282 Part III Parents and Children
ensure they are not being really replaced. System administrators need to patch together a
variety of funding streams, each with its own regulations and paperwork. Because the cur-
rent system was fashioned primarily for the affluent at one end and those being pushed
off welfare at the other, it poorly serves most of the working class and much of the
middle class.
Most efforts at reform are equally piecemeal, seeking a little extra money here or
there in ways that reinforce the existing fragmentation. Although increasing numbers of
advocates are pushing for a better system of child care in the United States, they rarely
step back to think about the characteristics of the system as a whole. If they did, what
lessons could be learned from Europe?
The features that are common to our peer nations in Europe would presumably be
a part of a new U.S. system. The programs would be publicly funded and universal, avail-
able to all, either at no cost or at a modest cost with subsidies for low-income participants.
The staff would be paid about the same as public school teachers. The core programs
would cover at least as many hours as the school day, and wrap-around care would be
available before and after this time. Participation in the programs would be voluntary,
but the programs would be of such a high quality that a majority of children would
enroll. Because the quality of the programs would be high, parents would feel much
less ambivalence about their childrens participation, and the system would enjoy strong
public support. In addition to child care centers, parents would be universally offered a
significant period of paid parental leave. Of course, this system is expensive. But as the
National Academy of Science Report makes clear, not caring for our children is in the
long term, and probably even in the short term, even more expensive.
Centers in all nations emphasize education, peer group dynamics, and emotional
support to some extent. But the balance varies. The varieties of European experience pose
a set of issues to be considered if and when reform of the U.S. system is on the agenda:
To what degree should organized care approximate school and at what age, and to
what extent is the purpose of such systems primarily educational?
To what extent should we focus on adult-child interactions that sustain or substitute
for mother care as opposed to fostering child-child interactions and the develop-
ment of peer groups?
To what extent should policies promote parental time with children versus high-
quality organized care, and what are the implications for gender equity of either
choice?
These are fundamental questions because they address issues of social equality and
force us to rethink deep-seated images of children and parents.
Recommended Resources
Cooper, Candy J. Ready to Learn: The French System of Early Education and Care Offers Lessons for the United
States. New York: French American Foundation, 1999.
Gornick, Janet, and Marcia Meyers. Support for Working Families: What the United States Can Learn
from Europe. The American Prospect ( January 115, 2001): 37.
Ch-07.indd 282 7/8/2008 12:34:09 PM
Chapter 7 Parenthood 283
Helburn, Suzanne W., and Barbara R. Bergmann. Americas Childcare Problem: The Way Out. New York:
Palgrave/St. Martins, 2002.
Kamerman, Sheila B., and Alfred J. Kahn. Starting Right: How America Neglects Its Youngest Children and
What We Can Do About It. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Moss, Peter. Workforce Issues in Early Childhood Education and Care Staff. Paper prepared for con-
sultative meeting on International Developments in Early Childhood Education and Care, The
Institute for Child and Family Policy, Columbia University, May 1112, 2000.
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Starting StrongEarly Education and Care:
Report on an OECD Thematic Review. Online. www.oecd.org.
Shonkoff, Jack P., and Deborah Phillips, eds. From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood
Development. Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 2000.
R E A DI NG 2 1
The Four Facets of Fatherhood
Nicholas Townsend
Especially in this area, its a lifestyle not to have children. A lot of people dont. Theyll be
old and gray and Ill have my children around Christmas day. I dont determine success in
life as financial or monetary or anything like that. My success in life is when my kids leave
and go out and make their own lives; theyll come back and say, Dad, you did the best
job you could. Thanks. And theyll come back and see me. And to be a good husband to
my wife. I consider that a successful life.Howard
Fatherhood is one of the four elements that make up the package deal (father-
hood, marriage, employment, and home ownership). The elements are interconnected
and mutually dependent. As a complex whole, they can be viewed from a number of dif-
ferent perspectives. An analysis of mens lives from the perspective of employment, for
instance, would examine how fatherhood, marriage, and housing are affected by the
structure of work and the employment opportunities available to men. It would also
examine how mens employment prospects, experiences, and histories are affected by
being (or not being) fathers, husbands, and home owners. In this book, I examine the
elements of the package deal through the prism of fatherhood. My primary interest
in mens employment is in its impact on their fatherhood, and my primary interest in
their marriages is in the connections between marriage and fatherhood. This approach
illuminates the tensions and complications within the package deal that have implica-
tions for fatherhood.
The fathers I talked to recognized that fathering was a complex activity with no
guarantee of success. They were all concerned with ensuring their childrens current
well-being and future life chances. Life chances is used to describe the fact that the
ability to obtain goods, living conditions, and life experiences differs between people ac-
cording to their social position ( Weber 1978). The idea of life chances is at the forefront
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284 Part III Parents and Children
of my descriptions of men and their lives. For me it captures simultaneously (1) the real
possibilities and limits to what they can achieve, (2) their subjective perspective that life
unfolds by presenting opportunities, (3) the fact that life outcomes depend on both the
existence of opportunities and the availability of the resources to take advantage of them,
and (4) the notion that social position or class is about consumption or lifestyle as well
as production or income ( Bourdieu 1984).
Most fathers saw successful parenting as doing the right thing but avoiding extremes.
They wanted their children to be disciplined but still to have fun, to have opportunities
but not to be forced into particular directions, to respect their parents but not to be afraid
of them, and to make their own choices but not to make too many mistakes. Even though
they saw no unquestioned rules or role models to follow, they were sure that the kind of
relationship fathers have with their children was vitally important.
Knowing that the stakes were high but that there was no guarantee of success, the
fathers repeatedly returned to the question of why some people turned out well and oth-
ers did not, and of what fathers could do to make a difference in their childrens lives.
These discussions inevitably involved comparison with their peers who were also fathers
and with their own experience of being fathered. Men talked a great deal about their own
fathers and about the fathers of their friends.
Ralph drew on his memories of his friends childhoods to muse on the importance
of fathers, but also on the unpredictability of growing up. He was sure that social back-
ground made a difference, but not an automatic one. Surely a boys father could help him
to turn out to become a good man, he thought, but this was not guaranteed. Character
seemed to count also, but he wondered where it came from. Ralphs high school compan-
ions and their parents served as a reference group for him as he considered what good
fathering was, and what he should do as a father:
When I was a kid, I remember I was a real hard worker. Always had two paper routes
and always hustling to make a buck because I never had money. So I was determined to
have money when I got older. I envied a lot of my friends whose parents were well off.
They had motorcycles and they had the nicest bike. We had a ten-year reunion in high
school and when I went to it, I saw some of these guys that had all the breaks in the world.
They had everything given to them and now they had mediocre jobs and werent going
anywhere in life. It was just unbelievable. . . . But there was another friend of ours, Tom,
his dad was really a great dad. He had four kids and two of them turned out OK and one
didnt. I wonder about that often. With my kids, am I giving them too much? What can
you do to make them better?
Part of the reason Ralph paid particular attention to his friends fathers was that his own
childhood had not given him direct examples of effective parenting. His parents had
separated when he started high school and his father had moved out of state. Ralph did
not want to live with either his father, who had married a woman who was an alcoholic,
or with his mother, who drank too much, so he had lived with friends in an apartment
of their own for the last two years of high school. Years later, a high school counselor who
had helped him at the time told Ralph, I thought youd either be dead or doing time by
now. Remembering his own high school years, Ralph said,
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Chapter 7 Parenthood 285
That was tough, but it made me tougher down the road because I was having to worry
about bills and rent, everything. I was that much more prepared when I got into my early
twenties than other guys in their early twenties. . . .
Ralph was proud of himself for having worked hard and risen to a responsible position,
for being married to a popular girl from his high school, and for having two children for
whom he could provide a good life. Ralphs account was typical of those I heard from
other men in the way it paired hardships and benefits, transforming, in retrospect, ob-
stacles and disappointments into challenges and opportunities. The mens transformation
and reinterpretation of their own life-story complicated their task of deciding on what
was important for children. Since indulgence might make children lazy, and hardship
could build character, it was never clear that doing the right thing by children was not
simultaneously depriving them of important lessons.
Under these conditions, the men from Meadowview construct their accounts of their
own fatherhood within the context of culture expectations and in comparison with, imita-
tion of, or reaction against their own fathers. Judging their fathers and themselves by the
standards of their culture, they took one or more of three positions: He did well, and I do
as he did; He did not do well, so I do differently; He did badly, but I dont know how to
do differently. In every case there was a striving to meet a culturally approved and person-
ally acceptable level of parenting. In their accounts, men talked about fathering, about what
they did for their children, what they wanted to do for their children, what they wanted
their children to be, and what they feared for them, and thus illuminated what fatherhood
meant to them. As they talked about the similarities and differences between their own
and their childrens childhoods and about the things they did or wished to do differently or
the same as their own fathers, they drew a picture of fatherhood as multifaceted.
Fatherhood, as one element of the package deal, is itself composed of four facets:
emotional closeness, provision, protection, and endowment. Of these four, men said the
most important thing they did for their children was to provide for them. This identifi-
cation of fatherhood and providing is crucial, reflecting the central place of employment
in mens sense of self-worth and helping to explain many of the apparent anomalies in
mens accounts. But there are other things, not directly material, that fathers want: to be
emotionally close with their children; to protect their children from threats, fears, and
dangers; and to endow their children with opportunities and attributes that contribute to
their life chances. As I describe what I was told about each of these facets of fatherhood, it
will be clear that they merge and overlap, that no one of them can be achieved in isolation,
and that protection and endowment depend on being a good provider. It will also become
apparent that being close to ones children and being a good provider are in tension and
that fathers have to do cultural work to make the case that they are doing both.
EMOTIONAL CLOSENESS
. . . Emotional closenessintimacy or the lack of itwas the dominant emotional theme
in my conversations with fathers. That their concern is widespread is indicated by the
Ch-07.indd 285 7/8/2008 12:34:09 PM
286 Part III Parents and Children
amount of attention that advice books directed at fathers devote to connecting to their
children. In a typical example, James Levine and Todd Pittinsky appeal to mens memo-
ries of the absence of expressions of affection:
To understand how much a hug, and expressions of affection in general, can mean to your
kids, think back to how much it meant (or would have meant) to you when you were a
child. A study of 300 male executives and mid-level managers found that when managers
were asked what one thing they would like to change in their relationships with their own
fathers, the majority indicated they wished their fathers would have expressed emotions
and feelings. (1998: 173)
Some of the men from Meadowview spoke with deep feeling about the love they had
known from their own fathers; others talked about the distance they had felt from them.
Many of them spoke about their own difficulty expressing emotion and about the joyful
and transforming effect of children, who brought love into their lives and opened the
way to their expressions of affection. The men of Meadowview High were well aware of
the multiple positive contributions fatherhood made to their own well-being and sense
of themselves, as well as the contributions they could make to their childrens happiness
and success. Phil Marwick, who had married for the first time at thirty and had two young
sons, expressed the optimistic sense in which becoming a father allows a man to make
a fresh start emotionally, to overcome the experience of his own childhood, and to be a
warm and loving presence in his childrens lives:
Of all my friends growing up, I dont know anybody who really had a good friendship with
their father or mother. Im trying to think. I must have seen it because it appealed to me.
I do remember that kids that had a household thats open and a lot of communication really
appealed to me a lot. Love wasnt real big in my house, so I wanted to be around a lot of
love. And I had so much love to give because I never gave it growing up. And its funny, I had
such a hard time growing up telling anybody that I loved them, I just could never do that.
And even to this day, with my wife, its difficult for me to show feelings towards her. . . .
Phil clearly expressed the anguish of distance and the joy of closeness but his comments
were also significant for what he left unsaid. It is noteworthy that Phil attributed his
delayed marriage, and the issues in his relationship with his wife, to his own upbring-
ing. Explaining ones adult situation in terms of ones childhood experience is a common
practice in the contemporary United States, but there are other possible explanations
for Phils predicament. We might, for instance, consider male privilege that allows self-
absorption, the pressures on masculinity that militate against emotional expression, and
defects of characters such as selfishness or lack of empathy. . . .
Levine and Pittinsky stress the importance for fathers to reconnect with their chil-
dren when they return from work. Their advice assumes that the children are already at
home when fathers arrive. This assumption is explicit in their example of Michael John-
son, a man who has
an extremely clever way of cutting to the chase and connecting with his son. Before he
comes home, he calls to ask his wife what their five-year-old son, Will, is up to. When
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Chapter 7 Parenthood 287
Johnson comes home, hes able to be specific: Ill say, I hear you were running around
with an eye patch playing pirate today. It lets him know I have been thinking about him.
(1998: 175)
This example is paradigmatic of what I call womens mediating position between fathers
and children. . . .
The consistency with which men expressed their shared vision of what makes a
good fatherwarmth, involvement, doing things with his children, playing with them,
teaching them good values, taking pleasure in themwas accompanied by a very vari-
able sense of their own success at realizing that vision. Emotional closeness was a crucial
facet of their vision of good fathering, but it was not the only one. These fathers wanted
to experience emotional closeness to their children for its own sake, but they also saw
emotional closeness instrumentally, as something that would make it more possible for
them to protect their children from harm and to endow them with opportunities and
character.
PROTECTION
I dont like to think Im overprotective and I dont want to be. Theyve got to go out and
do their own thing. But I want to keep them out of harms way as much as possible. I dont
know. Its tough.Paul
. . . Most men I talked to expressed the fear about the dangers of the world. Most of them
also said it was important to live in a safe neighborhood and to protect their children,
distancing them from dangers and bad influences.
The men who had themselves been children in Meadowview remembered playing
in the fields and orchards that have since been paved and built over. The landscape of
their childhood was not only physically different, it was also a different social landscape.
They remembered playing, alone and with groups of their peers, far from home and
without adult supervision. They told me how they rode their bikes over the neighbor-
hood and the town and played baseball and other games in the public parks. None of
this was part of their childrens experience. In informal conversations many adults from
a range of backgrounds have said that their own childhoods were less supervised than
are their childrens. Bicycle helmets, car seats, playgrounds that charge by the hour,
careful checking of Halloween candy, suspicion of adults who interact with children, and
keeping children indoors or under the eye of adults are some of the many ways in which
childhood has become increasingly circumscribed. This change has made the work of
parenting more labor intensive at the same time that public provisioning for families and
children has been systematically dismantled. Public space for children has been replaced
by privatized extra-curricular activities; childrens sociability is organized by adults. It
is not only privileged children who are supervised and protected from what is seen as a
dangerous world. Parents living in inner-city neighborhoods also feel forced to restrict
their childrens freedom in order to protect them, though they find themselves without
the resources to provide the alternatives they would like. . . .
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288 Part III Parents and Children
Every father I spoke to was concerned about his childrens exposure to potentially
harmful outside influences. Losing interest in school, using drugs, being violent or the
victim of violence, and, for daughters, being the object of sexual attention (even in this
era of AIDS no man volunteered concerns about his own sons sexual activity) were seen
as influences from the larger society, from other people, and from the media.. . .
Protecting children, as a facet of fatherhood, was very closely linked to emotional
closeness. Protecting children meant, to the fathers I talked to, not only physical pro-
tection but also being able to talk to them about the dangers they faced and about the
consequences of their actions. In teaching values these men were filling their children
with good influences and inoculating them against bad. At this point the protective facet
of fatherhood merges into the facet that I call endowment. While protection is directed
against harm from the outside, endowment aims to give children encouragement and op-
portunities and the inner qualities of character necessary to take advantage of opportu-
nities. As they talked about the opportunities they could give their children, the fathers
I talked to again reflected on the shortcomings of their own fathers, and on the changed
circumstances their children faced.
ENDOWING CHILDREN WITH
OPPORTUNITIES AND CHARACTER
They never pushed me to do anything except leave. My mother pushed me to leave the
house. That was it. Dont cause any problems and be a good boy. And that was the extent
of it. Get good grades. But they never once sat down and helped me with my homework.
I dont say that out of exaggeration; they never once did. They were too busy doing what
they had to do. Maybe in the fifties thats the way things were. I dont know.Paul
In both protecting and encouraging their children, fathers need to strike a balance. On
the one hand they did not want anything bad to happen to their children, but on the other
they did not want to be overprotective and deprive their children of the opportunities to
learn from their mistakes. Several men claimed that they were better people for the hard-
ship or adversity of their childhoods. Indeed, it is hard to know how they could claim
otherwise, for the alternative seemed to be to admit that they were damaged, as very few
did. Similarly, they said they wanted to support their children in doing what they wanted
to do, but they did not want to force them in any particular direction.
Sometimes even the most self-assured men did not persuade me that they had
managed to maintain this balance. Mark Baxter, for instance, expressed the strain be-
tween competing values that makes child rearing a process of negotiation, alteration,
and concealment of contradiction. His explicit position was unambiguous: I dont want
to push them into anything. I feel theyll do whatever they want to do. I can guide them
in certain areas, but whatever they decide is fine with me. But Marks general attitude
that his children should make their own decisions, follow their own aptitudes and prefer-
ences, was in tension with his aspirations for his children. He was able to reconcile the
contradiction through this use of guidance.
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Chapter 7 Parenthood 289
Just how firm his guidance could be came out in our discussion of his sons academic
performance. Then in the eighth grade, his son was in a program for the gifted and tal-
ented. Mark said he had to keep him geared in to school, and that in Marks judgment,
if he got below a B grade he was not trying. Mark helped his son to achieve by reviewing
and correcting his homework, setting times for study, and setting high standards. The
strain that this put on his son became clear to me as Mark described what happened
when his son got a D on a math test and became so distraught that his teacher sent him
to the school counselor. There it came out that his son was terrified of Marks reaction:
My dads going to kill me. As it turned out, Marks son received a D because he had
inadvertently skipped one question, so each of his answers was recorded on the answer
sheet against the previous question. Mark denied that his sons distress was evidence that
he was pushing his son, but interpreted the entire incident as confirmation that the
parameters of the parent-child relationship were intact.
In all aspects of his parental relationship, Mark, like so many of the men I talked
to, said he was steering a course to avoid what he perceived as outmoded, rigid, and au-
thoritarian fathering, while not abdicating his parental responsibilities. The difficulties
of the distinction came out particularly when Mark was considering whether he wanted
his children to look up to him: Looking up to me is not important. If they respect me,
that is important.. . .
The difference between looking up to and respecting ones father is slight at
best, and not easily defined. Mark explained that he did not want fear or obedience just
because he was the father, and would always try to explain his actions to his children:
I want them to know I gave it some sort of logical thought before I yell. Mark, in fact,
wanted his children to obey and respect him because they recognized his greater expe-
rience and because they thought he was right, not simply because he was their father.
The distinction was blurred because it did not occur to Mark that his essential values
and orientation could be incorrect. Since he saw himself as both his childrens father
and as correct on the issues, the practical consequences of the distinction were minimal.
Whether they obeyed him because he was their father or because they recognized that
he was telling them the right thing to do, Mark expected his children to do what they
were told. . . .
Education was the one area in which there was a very clear and definite and univer-
sal change in both attitudes and practices between the men I talked to and their fathers.
The men from Meadowview High School all agreed that their childrens success and
happiness as adults depended on their education, and they were involved in making sure
that their children were successful in school and had opportunities for higher educa-
tion. Some of the mens parents had expected them to go on to college, but for many
finishing high school had been the summit of their aspirations. Their higher goals for
their own children reflected changes in the distribution of wages. Adjusted for inflation,
the average entry wage for college graduates was 2 percent lower in 1997 than it was in
1979. For high school graduates, the entry wage had dropped by 24 percent. A declining
real minimum wage, more workers earning the minimum wage or little more, declining
union membership, and the shift from manufacturing to service jobs have all contributed
to these changes. The growing differential between wages for college and high school
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290 Part III Parents and Children
graduates underlay the realization of the fathers I talked to that going to college was
more important for their childrens financial well-being than it had been for their own.
In 1979, about 18 percent of young people obtained four year degrees, by 1999 the figure
had grown to 27 percent ( Mishel, Bernstein, and Schmitt 2001).
The job market in 1972 had been such that many high school graduates had been
able to find jobs and earn promotions without any additional credentials. . . .
THE FACETS OF FATHERHOOD IN THE
CONTEXT OF THE PACKAGE DEAL
All the men I talked to denied that establishing ones virility or masculinity was any rea-
son for having childrenat least in their own cases. Frank made the typical exception of
himself from the general rule when he said, I think everybody has a big ego trip with
having children. I dont think that was really the case with me. These men did, however,
explicitly value having children as an affirmation of who they were, of their purpose in
life, and as representations of what they found truly important. Frank elaborated on his
personal sense of accomplishment on becoming a father:
I think the first time Carol got pregnant, with our first child, I felt a sense of accomplish-
ment. But as far as changing my manhood, I didnt really feel any change. I just felt that
positive feeling that we could have kids. Everybody has that question: Can I have kids?
Will I have kids? Just made me feel a lot better. Didnt feel like I had any more power or
anything, but I felt a lot better knowing that I did have children.
Becoming a father was a moral transformation in that it shifted mens priorities and sense
of responsibility. Within their script, marriage marked the end of a period of fun and
responsibility only for oneself, and having children marked the shift from couple time
to family time. The responsibility for children found its focus in working to provide for
them, but was also expressed through the other facets of fatherhood. . . .
In particular, the continuing cultural primacy of providing for children means that
mens time and energy are devoted to, and consumed by, their paid work. In important
ways employment and fatherhood are mutually reinforcing, for having children provides
a motivation for dedication to employment, and supporting a family is crucial to success-
ful fatherhood. But there is tension within the system. The tension between dedication
to employment and the desire for emotional closeness to children is addressed, if not re-
solved, by the cultural work men and women perform within the confines of the package
deal. . . . The men I talked to recognized that their employment took them away from
intimate relationship with their children, but they defined their work as an expression of
their paternal love. They also used their earnings, in conjunction with their marriages, to
ensure that their children had a mother who was at home, or was at least represented as
being at home. In many cases the trade-off was explicit: Men told me that they worked
longer hours so that their wives could be home with the children. These mens employ-
ment did nothing to contribute to their own, direct, emotional relationship with their
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Chapter 7 Parenthood 291
children, but it did make sure that the culturally appropriate person, their mother, was
there for them.
Figure 21.1 illustrates how each element of the package deal is linked to all oth-
ers. The elements are mutually reinforcing, but this is a not system that returns to a
stable equilibrium. Mens employment, for instance, enables them to achieve appropriate
housing, but also removes them physically from home and makes them more depen-
dent on their wives to mediate their relationships with their children. The dark arrows
emphasize that every other element motivates and reinforces the importance of em-
ployment, thus concentrating mens energies on the one element that does not contrib-
ute directly to emotional closeness to their children. Within the system, reducing the
commitment to work in favor of any other element increases the tensions. Changing
the experience of fatherhood involves transforming a cultural system, not just altering
emphasis within it.
Fatherhood
Home ownership
Employment Marriage
provides materially
and expresses love
motivates
maintains
pays for
motivates
provides physical
setting for joint
project
provides care
and example
justifies and
completes
protects and
symbolizes love
and intimacy
income maximizes
maternal presence
maternal presence
justifies work
commitment
requires a site
for family life
FIGURE 21.1 The Interconnections and Tensions among the Elements of the Package Deal
Ch-07.indd 291 7/8/2008 12:34:10 PM
292 Part III Parents and Children
References
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Levine, James A., and Todd L. Pittinsky. 1998. Working Fathers: New Strategies for Balancing Work and
Family. San Diego: Harcourt Brace.
Mishel, Lawrence, Jared Bernstein, and John Schmitt. 2001. The State of Working America 2000 2001.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
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293
8 Childhood and Youth
R E A DI NG 2 2
Beyond Sentimentality:
American Childhood as a
Social and Cultural Construct
Steven Mintz
Nowhere is it easier to romanticize childhood than in Mark Twains hometown of Han-
nibal, Missouri. In this small Mississippi riverfront town, where Mark Twain lived, off
and on, from the age of four until he was seventeen, many enduring American fantasies
about childhood come to life. There is a historical marker next to a fence like the one that
Toms friends paid him for the privilege of whitewashing. There is another marker point-
ing to the spot where Hucks cabin supposedly stood. There is also the window where
Huck hurled pebbles to wake the sleeping Tom. Gazing out across the raging waters of
the Mississippi, now unfortunately hidden behind a floodwall, one can easily imagine the
raft excursion that Huck and Jim took seeking freedom and adventure.
Hannibal occupies a special place in our collective imagination as the setting of two
of fictions most famous depictions of childhood. Our cherished myth about childhood
as a bucolic time of freedom, untainted innocence, and self-discovery comes to life in
this river town. But beyond the accounts of youthful wonder and small-town innocence,
Twains novels teem with grim and unsettling details about childhoods underside. Hucks
father Pap was an abusive drunkard who beat his son for learning how to read. When
we idealize Mark Twains Hannibal and its eternally youthful residents, we suppress his
novels more sinister aspects.
1
Twains real-life mid-nineteenth-century Hannibal was anything but a haven of sta-
bility and security. It was a place where a quarter of the children died before their first
birthday, half before they reached the age of twenty-one. Twain himself experienced the
death of two siblings. Although he was not physically abused like the fictional Huck, his fa-
ther was emotionally cold and aloof. There were few open displays of affection in his boy-
hood home. Only once did he remember seeing his father and mother kiss, and that was
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294 Part III Parents and Children
at the deathbed of his brother Ben. Nor was his home a haven of economic security. His
boyhood ended before his twelfth birthday when his fathers death forced him to take up
a series of odd jobs. Before he left home permanently at seventeen, he had already worked
as a printers apprentice; clerked in a grocery store, a bookshop, and a drug store; tried
his hand at blacksmithing; and delivered newspapers. Childhood ended early in Twains
hometown, though full adulthood came no more quickly than it does today.
2
A series of myths cloud public thinking about the history of American childhood.
One is the myth of a carefree childhood. We cling to a fantasy that once upon a time
childhood and youth were years of carefree adventure, despite the fact that for most
children in the past, growing up was anything but easy. Disease, family disruption, and
early entry into the world of work were integral parts of family life. The notion of a long
childhood devoted to education and free from adult-like responsibilities is a very recent
invention, a product of the past century and a half, and one that only became a reality
for a majority of children after World War II.
Another myth is that of the home as a haven and bastion of stability in an ever-
changing world. Throughout American history, family stability has been the exception,
not the norm. At the beginning of the twentieth century, fully a third of all American
children spent at least a portion of their childhood in a single-parent home, and as recently
as 1940, one child in ten did not live with either parentcompared to one in twenty-
five today.
3
A third myth is that childhood is the same for all children, a status transcending
class, ethnicity, and gender. In fact, every aspect of childhood is shaped by classas
well as by ethnicity, gender, geography, religion, and historical era. We may think of
childhood as a biological phenomenon, but it is better understood as a life stage whose
contours are shaped by a particular time and place. Childrearing practices, schooling,
and the age at which young people leave home are all the products of particular social
and cultural circumstances.
A fourth myth is that the United States is a peculiarly child-friendly society when,
in actuality, Americans are deeply ambivalent about children. Adults envy young people
their youth, vitality, and physical attractiveness, but they also resent childrens intrusions
on their time and resources and frequently fear their passions and drives. Many of the
reforms that nominally have been designed to protect and assist the young were also
instituted to insulate adults from children.
Lastly, the myth that is perhaps the most difficult to overcome is the myth of prog-
ress and its inverse, the myth of decline. There is a tendency to conceive of the history
of childhood as a story of steps forward over time: of parental engagement replacing
emotional distance, of kindness and leniency supplanting strict and stern punishment,
of scientific enlightenment superceding superstition and misguided moralism. This pro-
gressivism is sometimes seen in reverse, that is, that childhood is disappearing: chil-
dren are growing up too quickly and wildly and losing their innocence, playfulness, and
malleability.
Various myths and misconceptions have contributed to this undue pessimism about
the young. There has never been a golden age of childhood when the overwhelming ma-
jority of American children were well cared for and their experiences were idyllic. Nor
has childhood ever been an age of innocence, at least not for the overwhelming majority
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Chapter 8 Childhood and Youth 295
of children. Childhood has never been insulated from the pressures and demands of the
surrounding society and each generation of children has had to wrestle with the particu-
lar social, political, and economic constraints of its own historical period. In our own
time, the young have had to struggle with high rates of family instability, a deepening
disconnection from adults, and the expectation that all children should pursue the same
academic path at the same pace, even as the attainment of full adulthood recedes ever
further into the future.
THE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL
CONSTRUCTION OF CHILDHOOD
The history of children is often treated as a marginal subject, and there is no question
that the history of children is especially difficult to write. Children are rarely obvious
historical actors. Compared to adults, they leave fewer historical sources, and their pow-
erlessness makes them less visible than other social groups. Nevertheless, the history of
childhood is inextricably bound up with the broader political and social events in the life
of the nationincluding colonization, revolution, slavery, industrialization, urbaniza-
tion, immigration, and warand childrens experience embodies many of the key themes
in American history, such as the rise of modern bureaucratic institutions, the growth of
a consumer economy, and the elaboration of a welfare state. Equally important, child-
hoods history underscores certain long-term transformations in American life, such as
an intensifying consciousness about age, a clearer delineation of distinct life stages, and
the increasing tendency to organize institutions by age.
Childhood is not an unchanging, biological stage of life, and children are not just
growd, like Topsy in Harriet Beecher Stowes Uncle Toms Cabin. Rather, childhood is
a social and cultural construct. Every aspect of childhoodincluding childrens relation-
ships with their parents and peers, their proportion of the population, and their paths
through childhood to adulthoodhas changed dramatically over the past four centuries.
Methods of child rearing, the duration of schooling, the nature of childrens play, young
peoples participation in work, and the points of demarcation between childhood, adoles-
cence, and adulthood are products of culture, class, and historical era.
4
Childhood in the past was experienced and conceived of in quite a different way
than today. Just two centuries ago, there was far less age segregation than there is today
and less concern with organizing experience by chronological age. There was also far less
sentimentalization of children as special beings who were more innocent and vulnerable
than adults. This does not mean that adults failed to recognize childhood as a stage of
life, with its own special needs and characteristics, nor does it imply that parents were
un concerned about their children and failed to love them and mourn their deaths. Rather,
it means that the experience of young people was organized and valued very differently
than it is today.
Language itself illustrates shifts in the construction of childhood. Two hundred
years ago, the words used to describe childhood were far less precise than those we use
today. The word infancy referred not to the months after birth, but to the period in which
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296 Part III Parents and Children
children were under their mothers control, typically from birth to the age of 5 or 6. The
word childhood might refer to someone as young as the age of 5 or 6 or as old as the late
teens or early twenties. Instead of using our term adolescent or teenager, Americans two
centuries ago used a broader and more expansive term youth, which stretched from the
pre-teen years until the early or mid-20s. The vagueness of this term reflected the amor-
phousness of the life stages; chronological age was less important than physical strength,
size, and maturity. A young person did not achieve full adult status until marriage and
establishment of an independent farm or entrance into a full-time trade or profession.
Full adulthood might be attained as early as the mid- or late teens, but usually did not
occur until the late twenties or early thirties.
5
How, then, has childhood changed over the past two hundred years? The transfor-
mations that have taken place might be grouped into three broad categories. The first
involves shifts in the timing, sequence, and stages of growing up. Over the past two cen-
turies, the stages of childhood have grown much more precise, uniform, and prescriptive.
Before the Civil War, children and teens moved sporadically in and out of the parental
home, schools, and jobs, in an irregular, episodic pattern that the historian Joseph F. Kett
termed semi-dependence.. . .
Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, however, there were growing efforts to
regularize and systematize childhood experiences. Unable to transmit their status posi-
tion directly to their children, through bequests of family lands, transmission of craft
skills, or selection of a marriage partner, middle-class parents adopted new strategies to
assist their children, emphasizing birth control, maternal nurture, and prolonged school-
ing. Less formal methods of childrearing and education were replaced by intensive forms
of childrearing and prescribed curricula in schools. Unstructured contacts with adults
were supplanted by carefully age-graded institutions. Activities organized by young peo-
ple themselves were succeeded by adult sponsored, adult-organized organization. Lying
behind these developments was a belief that childhood should be devoted to education,
play, and character-building activities; that children needed time to mature inside a lov-
ing home and segregated from adult affairs; and that precocious behavior needed to be
suppressed.
6
Demography is a second force for change. A sharp reduction in the birth rate sub-
stantially reduced the proportion of children in the general population, from half the
population in the mid-nineteenth century to a third by 1900. A declining birth rate
divided families into more distinct generations and allowed parents to lavish more time,
attention, and resources on each child; it also made society less dependent on childrens
labor and allowed adult society to impose new institutional structures on young peoples
lives reflecting shifting notions about childrens proper chronological development.
The third category is attitudinal. Adult conceptions of childhood have shifted pro-
foundly over time, from the seventeenth-century Puritan image of the child as a depraved
being who needed to be restrained; to the Enlightened notion of children as blank slates
who could be shaped by environmental influences; to the Romantic conception of chil-
dren as creatures with innocent souls and redeemable, docile wills; to the Darwinian em-
phasis on highly differentiated stages of childrens cognitive, physiological, and emotional
development; to the Freudian conception of children as seething cauldrons of instinctual
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Chapter 8 Childhood and Youth 297
drives; and to the contemporary notions that emphasize childrens competence and ca-
pacity for early learning.
The history of childhood might be conceptualized in terms of three overlapping
phases. The first, pre-modern childhood, which roughly coincides with the colonial era,
was a period in which the young were viewed as adults in training. Religious and secular
authorities regarded childhood as a time of deficiency and incompleteness, and adults
rarely referred to their childhood with nostalgia or fondness. Infants were viewed as
un formed and even animalistic due to their inability to speak or stand upright. A par-
ents duty was to hurry a child toward adult status, especially through early engagement
in work responsibilities, both inside the parental home and outside it, as servants and
apprentices.
The middle of the eighteenth century saw the emergence of a new set of attitudes,
which came to define modern childhood. A growing number of parents began to regard
children as innocent, malleable, and fragile creatures who needed to be sheltered from
contamination. Childhood was increasingly viewed as a separate stage of life that required
special care and institutions to protect it. During the nineteenth century, the growing
acceptance of this new ideal among the middle class was evident in prolonged residence
of young people within the parental home; longer periods of formal schooling; and an
increasing consciousness about the stages of young peoples development, culminating
in the discovery (or, more accurately, the invention) of adolescence around the turn of
the twentieth century.
Universalizing the modern ideal of a sheltered childhood was a highly uneven
process and one that has never encompassed all American children. Indeed, it was not
until the 1950s that the norms of modern childhood defined the modal experience of
young people in the United States. But developments were already under way that would
bring modern childhood to an end and replace it with something quite different, a new
phase that might be called postmodern childhood. This term refers to the breakdown
of dominant norms about the family, gender roles, age, and even reproduction, as they
were subjected to radical change and revision. Age norms that many considered natural
were thrown into question. Even the bedrock biological process of sexual maturation ac-
celerated. Todays children are much more likely than the Baby Boomers to experience
their parents divorce; to have a working mother; to spend significant amounts of time
unsupervised by adults; to grow up without siblings; and to hold a job during high school.
Adolescent girls are much more likely to have sexual relations during their mid-teens.
7
Superficially, postmodern childhood resembles premodern childhood. As in the
seventeenth century, children are no longer regarded as the binary opposites of adults,
nor are they considered nave and innocent creatures. Today, adults quite rightly assume
that even preadolescents are knowledgeable about the realities of the adult world. But
unlike premodern children, postmodern children are independent consumers and par-
ticipants in a separate, semi-autonomous youth culture. We still assume that the young
are fundamentally different from adults; that they should spend their first eighteen years
in the parents home; and devote their time to education in age-graded schools. But it is
also clear that basic aspects of the ideal of a protected childhood, in which the young are
kept isolated from adult realities, have broken down.
8
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298 Part III Parents and Children
DIVERSITY
Diversity has always been the hallmark of American childhood. In seventeenth-century
America, demographic, economic, religious, and social factors made geographical sub-
cultures the most important markers of diversity in childrens experience. In the early pe-
riod of settlement, colonial childhood took profoundly different forms in New England,
the Middle Colonies, and the Chesapeake and southernmost colonies. In seventeenth
century New England, hierarchical, patriarchal Calvinist families shaped childrens ex-
periences. In the Chesapeake colonies of Maryland and Virginia, in contrast, families
were highly unstable and indentured servitude shaped childrens experience. Only in the
Middle Colonies, from New York to Delaware, did a childhood emphasizing maternal
nurture and an acceptance of early autonomy emerge, yet even here, large numbers of
children experienced various forms of dependence, as household and indentured servants,
apprentices, or slaves.
9
In the nineteenth century, a highly uneven process of capitalist expansion made
social class, gender, and race more saliant contributors to childhood diversity. The chil-
dren of the urban middle class, prosperous commercial farmers, and southern planters
enjoyed increasingly longer childhoods, free from major household or work responsibili-
ties until their late teens or twenties, whereas the offspring of urban workers, frontier
farmers, and blacks, both slave and free, had briefer childhoods and became involved in
work inside or outside the home before they reached their teens. Many urban working-
class children contributed to the family economy through scavenging in the streets,
vacant lots, or back alleys, collecting coal, wood, and other items that could be used at
home or sold. Others took part in the street trades, selling gum, peanuts, and crackers.
In industrial towns, young people under the age of 15 contributed on average about
20 percent of their familys income. In mining areas, boys as young as 10 or 12 worked as
breakers, separating coal from pieces of slate and wood, before becoming miners in their
mid- or late teens. On farms, children as young as 5 or 6 might pull weeds or chase birds
and cattle away from crops. By the time they reached the age of 8, many tended livestock,
and as they grew older they milked cows, churned butter, fed chickens, collected eggs,
hauled water, scrubbed laundry, and harvested crops. A blurring of gender roles among
children and youth was especially common on frontier farms. Schooling varied as widely
as did work routines. In the rural North, the Midwest, and the Far West, most mid- and
late-nineteenth-century students attended one-room schools for 3 to 6 months a year.
In contrast, city children attended age-graded classes taught by professional teachers
9 months a year. In both rural and urban areas, girls tended to receive more schooling
than boys.
10
Late in the nineteenth century, self-described child-savers launched a concerted
campaign to overcome diversity and universalize a middle-class childhood. This was
a slow and bitterly resisted process. Not until the 1930s was child labor finally outlawed
and not until the 1950s did high school attendance become a universal experience. Yet
for all the success in advancing this middle-class ideal, even today, social class remains
a primary determinant of childrens well-being.
11
In recent years, social conservatives have tended to fixate on family structure as
a source of diversity in childrens well-being, while political liberals have tended to focus
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Chapter 8 Childhood and Youth 299
on ethnicity, race, and gender. In fact, it is poverty that is the most powerful predictor
of childrens welfare. Economic stress contributes to family instability, inadequate health
care, high degrees of mobility, poor parenting, and elevated levels of stress and depres-
sion. As in the nineteenth century, social class significantly differentiates contemporary
American childhoods. There is a vast difference between the highly pressured, hyper-
organized, fast-track childhoods of affluent children and the highly stressed childhoods
of the one-third of children who live in poverty at some point before the age of eighteen.
In many affluent families, the boundaries between work and family life have diminished,
and parents manage by tightly organizing their childrens lives. Yet, contradictorily, most
affluent children have their own television and computer and therefore unmediated ac-
cess to information and are unsupervised by their parents for large portions of the day. In
many affluent families there are drastic swings between parental distance from children
and parental indulgence, when fathers and mothers try to compensate for parenting too
little. Yet at the same time, one-sixth of all children live in poverty at any one time, in-
cluding 36 percent of black children and 34 percent of Hispanic children. This generally
entails limited adult supervision, inferior schooling, and a lack of easy access to produc-
tive diversions and activities.
THE POLITICS OF CHILDHOOD
In recent years, two contrasting visions of childhood have collided. One is a vision of
a protected childhood, in which children are to be sheltered from adult realities, espe-
cially from sex, obscenity, and death. The opposing vision is of a prepared childhood,
of children who are exposed from a relatively early age to the realities of contemporary
society, such as sexuality and diverse family patterns. Proponents of a prepared childhood
argue that in a violent, highly commercialized, and hypersexualized society, a nave child
is a vulnerable child.
Clashes between conflicting conceptions of childhood are not new. For four hun-
dred years, childhood has been a highly contested category. The late twentieth-century
culture warpitting advocates of a protected childhood, who sought to shield children
from adult realities, against proponents of a prepared childhoodwas only the most
recent in a long series of conflicts over the definition of a proper childhood. In the seven-
teenth century, there were bitter struggles between Puritans who regarded even newborn
infants as sinful, humanistic educators who emphasized childrens malleability, and Angli-
can traditionalists who considered children as symbols of values (including the value of
deference and respect for social hierarchy) that were breaking down as England under-
went the wrenching economic transformations that accompanied the rise of modern
capitalist enterprise. In the late eighteenth century, battles raged over infant depravity
and patriarchal authority, conflicts that gave added resonance to the American revolu-
tionaries struggle against royal authority. At the turn of the twentieth century, conflict
erupted between the proponents of a useful childhood, which expected children to re-
ciprocate for their parents sacrifices, and advocates of a sheltered childhood, free from
labor and devoted to play and education.
12
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300 Part III Parents and Children
PARENTING
Anxiety is the hallmark of modern parenthood. Todays parents agonize incessantly about
their childrens physical health, personality development, psychological well-being, and
academic performance. From birth, parenthood is colored by apprehension. Contempo-
rary parents worry about sudden infant death syndrome, stranger abductions, and physi-
cal and sexual abuse, as well as more mundane problems, such as sleep disorders and
hyperactivity.
Parental anxiety about childrens well-being is not a new development, but parents
concerns have taken dramatically different forms over time. Until the mid-nineteenth
century, parents were primarily concerned about their childrens health, religious piety,
and moral development. In the late nineteenth century, parents became increasingly
attentive to their childrens emotional and psychological well-being, and during the
twentieth century, parental anxieties dwelt on childrens personality development, gen-
der identity, and their ability to interact with peers. Today, much more than in the past,
guilt-ridden, uncertain parents worry that their children not suffer from boredom, low
self-esteem, or excessive school pressures.
13
Today, we consider early childhood lifes formative stage and believe that childrens
experiences during the first two or three years of life mold their personality, lay the foun-
dation for future cognitive and psychological development, and leave a lasting imprint
on their emotional life. We also assume that childrens development proceeds through a
series of physiological, psychological, social, and cognitive stages; that even very young
children have a capacity to learn; that play serves valuable developmental functions; and
that growing up requires children to separate emotionally and psychologically from their
parents. These assumptions differ markedly from those held three centuries ago. Before
the mid-eighteenth century, most adults betrayed surprisingly little interest in the very
first years of life and autobiographies revealed little nostalgia for childhood. Also, adults
tended to dismiss childrens play as trivial and insignificant.
Parenting has evolved through a series of successive and overlapping phases, from
a seventeenth-century view of children as adults-in-training to the early nineteenth-
century emphasis on character formation; the late-nineteenth century notion of scientific
childrearing, stressing regularity and systematization; the mid-twentieth century emphasis
on fulfilling childrens emotional and psychological needs; and the late twentieth century
stress on maximizing childrens intellectual and social development. Seventeenth-century
colonists recognized that children differed from adults in their mental, moral, and phys-
ical capabilities and drew a distinction between childhood, an intermediate stage they
called youth, and adulthood. But they did not rigidly segregate children by age. Parents
wanted children to speak, read, reason, and contribute to their familys economic well-
being as soon as possible. Infancy was regarded as a state of deficiency. Unable to speak or
stand, infants lacked two essential attributes of full humanity. Parents discouraged infants
from crawling and placed them in walking stools, similar to todays walkers. To ensure
proper adult posture, young girls wore leather corsets and parents placed rods along the
spines of very young children of both sexes.
During the eighteenth century, a shift in parental attitudes took place. Fewer par-
ents expected children to bow or doff their hats in their presence or stand during meals.
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Chapter 8 Childhood and Youth 301
Instead of addressing parents as sir and madam, children called them papa and
mama. By the end of the eighteenth century, furniture specifically designed for chil-
dren, painted in pastel colors and decorated with pictures of animals or figures from nurs-
ery rhymes, began to be widely produced, reflecting the popular notion of childhood as a
time of innocence and playfulness. There was a growing stress on implanting virtue and
a capacity for self-government.
By the early nineteenth century, mothers in the rapidly expanding Northeastern
middle class increasingly embraced an amalgam of earlier childrearing ideas. From John
Locke, they absorbed the notion that children were highly malleable creatures and that
a republican form of government required parents to instill a capacity for self-government
in their children. From Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Romantic poets, middle-class par-
ents acquired the idea of childhood as a special stage of life, intimately connected with
nature and purer and morally superior to adulthood. From the evangelicals, the middle
class adopted the idea that the primary task of parenthood was to implant proper moral
character in children and to insulate children from the corruptions of the adult world.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, middle-class parents began to embrace
the idea that childrearing needed to become more scientific. The Child Study move-
ment, through which teachers and mothers under the direction of psychologists identi-
fied a series of stages of childhood development, culminating with the discovery of
adolescence as a psychologically turbulent period that followed puberty. The belief that
scientific principles had not been properly applied to childrearing produced new kinds
of childrearing manuals, of which the most influential was Dr. Luther Emmett Holts
The Care and Feeding of Children, first published in 1894. Holt emphasized rigid schedul-
ing of feeding, bathing, sleeping, and bowel movements and advised mothers to guard
vigilantly against germs and undue stimulation of infants. At a time when a well-adjusted
adult was viewed as a creature of habit and self-control, he stressed the importance of
imposing regular habits on infants. He discouraged mothers from kissing their babies
and told them to ignore their crying and to break such habits as thumb-sucking.
14
During the 1920s and 1930s, the field of child psychology exerted a growing in-
fluence on middle-class parenting. It provided a new language to describe childrens
emotional problems, such as sibling rivalry, phobias, maladjustment, and inferiority and
Oedipus complexes; it also offered new insights into forms of parenting ( based on such
variables as demandingness or permissiveness), the stages and milestones of childrens
development, and the characteristics of children at particular ages (such as the terrible
twos, which was identified by Arnold Gesell, Frances L. Ilg, and Louise Bates Ames).
The growing prosperity of the 1920s made the earlier emphasis on regularity and rigid
self-control seem outmoded. A well-adjusted adult was now regarded as a more easy-
going figure, capable of enjoying leisure. Rejecting the mechanistic and behaviorist no-
tion that childrens behavior could be molded by scientific control, popular dispensers of
advice favored a more relaxed approach to childrearing, emphasizing the importance of
meeting babies emotional needs. The title of a 1936 book by pediatrician C. Anderson
AldrichBabies Are Human Beingssummed up the new attitude.
15
The Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II greatly intensified parental
anxieties about childrearing. During the postwar era, there was an intense fear that faulty
mothering caused lasting psychological problems in children. Leading psychologists
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302 Part III Parents and Children
such as Theodore Lidz, Irving Bieber, and Erik Erikson linked schizophrenia, homo-
sexuality, and identity diffusion to mothers who displaced their frustrations and needs for
independence onto their children. A major concern was that many boys, raised almost
exclusively by women, failed to develop an appropriate sex role identity. In retrospect, it
seems clear that an underlying source of anxiety lay in the fact that mothers were raising
their children with an exclusivity and in an isolation unparalleled in American history.
16
Since the early 1970s, parental anxieties have greatly increased both in scope and
intensity. Many parents sought to protect children from every imaginable harm by baby-
proofing their homes, using car seats, and requiring bicycle helmets. Meanwhile, as more
mothers joined the labor force, parents arranged more structured, supervised activities
for their children. A variety of factors contributed to a surge in anxiety. As parents had
fewer children, they invested more emotion in each child. An increase in professional
expertise about children, coupled with a proliferation of research and advocacy organi-
zations, media outlets, and government agencies responsible for childrens health and
safety made parents increasingly aware of threats to childrens well-being and of ways to
maximize their childrens physical, social, and intellectual development. Unlike postwar
parents, who wanted to produce normal children who fit in, middle-class parents now
wanted to give their child a competitive edge. For many middle-class parents, fears of
downward mobility and anxiety that they would not be able to pass on their status and
class to their children, made them worry that their offspring would underperform aca-
demically, athletically, or socially. . . .
MORAL PANICS OVER
CHILDRENS WELL-BEING
Americans are great believers in progress in all areas but one. For more than three centu-
ries, Americans have feared that the younger generation is going to hell in a handbasket.
Today, many adults mistakenly believe that compared to their predecessors, kids today
are less respectful and knowledgeable, and more alienated, sexually promiscuous, and
violent. They fear that contemporary children are growing up too fast and losing their
sense of innocent wonder at too young an age. Prematurely exposed to the pressures,
stresses, and responsibilities of adult life, they fear that the young mimic adult sophistica-
tion, dress inappropriately, and experiment with alcohol, drugs, sex, and tobacco before
they are emotionally and psychologically ready.
A belief in the decline of the younger generation is one of this countrys oldest
convictions. In 1657, a Puritan minister, Ezekiel Rogers, admitted: I find the great-
est trouble and grief about the rising generation. . . . Much ado I have with my own
family . . . the young breed doth much afflict me. For more than three centuries,
American adults have worried that children are growing ever more disobedient and dis-
respectful. But wistfulness about a golden age of childhood is invariably misleading.
Nostalgia almost always represents a yearning not for the past as it really was but rather
for fantasies about the past. In 1820, children constituted about half of the workers in
early factories. As recently as the 1940s, one child in ten lived apart from both parents
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Chapter 8 Childhood and Youth 303
and fewer than half of all high school students graduated. We forget that over the past
century, the introduction of every new form of entertainment has generated intense
controversy over its impact on children, and that the anxiety over video games and the
Internet are only the latest in a long line of supposed threats to children that includes
movies, radio, and even comic books. The danger of nostalgia is that it creates unrealistic
expectations, guilt, and anger.
17
Ever since the Pilgrims departed for Plymouth in 1620, fearful that their posterity
would be in danger to degenerate and be corrupted in the Old World, Americans have
experienced repeated panics over the younger generation. Sometimes these panics were
indeed about children, such as the worries over polio in the early 1950s. More often,
however, children stand in for some other issue, and the panics are more metaphorical
than representational, such as the panic over teenage pregnancy, youth violence, and
declining academic achievement in the late 1970s and 1980s, which reflected pervasive
fears about family breakdown, crime, drugs, and Americas declining competitiveness in
the world.
18
ABUSE OF CHILDREN
Concern about the abuse of children has waxed and waned over the course of American
history. The seventeenth-century Puritans were the first people in the Western world to
make the physical abuse of a children a criminal offense, though their concern with family
privacy and patriarchal authority meant that these statutes were rarely enforced. During
the pre-Civil War decades, temperance reformers argued that curbs on alcohol would
reduce wife beating and child abuse. The first organizations to combat child abuse, which
appeared in the 1870s, were especially concerned about abuse in immigrant, destitute,
and foster families.
19
Over half a century ago, Alfred Kinseys studies found rates of sexual abuse similar
to those reported today. His interviews indicated that exhibitionists had exposed them-
selves in front of 12 percent of preadolescent girls and that 9 percent of the girls had had
their genitals fondled. But it was his findings about premarital and extramarital sex that
grabbed the publics attention, not the sexual abuse of its children. Not until the publica-
tion of an influential article on The Battered Child Syndrome in 1962 was child abuse
finally identified as a social problem demanding a significant governmental response.
Even in succeeding years, however, public consciousness about abuse has fluctuated
widely. In 1986, nearly a third of adults identified abuse as one of the most serious prob-
lems facing children and youth; in a survey a decade later abuse went unmentioned.
20
We quite rightly focus on the way that young people are physically at risk, whether
through physical or sexual abuse, neglect, or economic vulnerability. But across American
history, some of the gravest threats to the young have involved their psychological vul-
nerability. Even worse than the physical sufferings under slavery were the psychological
scars enslavement left. Worse than toiling in factories was the hidden curric ulum that
working class children were inferior to their supposed social betters, suited for little more
than routine, repetitious labor. As the historian Daniel Kline has persuasively argued,
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304 Part III Parents and Children
contemporary American society subjects the young to three forms of psychological vio-
lence that we tend to ignore. First, there is the violence of expectations in which children
are pushed beyond their social, physical, and academic capabilities, largely as an expres-
sion of their parents needs. Then there is the violence of labeling that diagnoses normal
childish behavior (for example, normal childhood exuberance or interest in sex) as patho-
logical. Further, there is the violence of representation, the exploitation of children and
adolescents by advertisers, marketers, purveyors of popular culture, and politicians, who
exploit parental anxieties as well as young peoples desire to be stylish, independent, and
defiant, and eroticize teenage and preadolescent girls.
There is a fourth form of psychological abuse that is perhaps the most unsettling
of all: the objectification of childhood. This involves viewing children as objects to be
shaped and molded for their own good. Compared to its predecessors, contemporary
American society is much more controlling in an institutional and ideological sense.
We expect children to conform to standards that few adults could meet. Meanwhile,
as the baby boom generation ages, we inhabit an increasingly adult-oriented society, a
society that has fewer free spaces for the young, a society that values youth primarily
as service workers and consumers and gawks at them as sex objects.
For more than three centuries, America has considered itself to be a particularly
child-centered society despite massive evidence to the contrary. Today, no other advanced
country allows as many young people to grow up in poverty or without health care, nor
does any other western society make so poor a provision for child care or for paid parental
leave. Still, Americans think of themselves as a child-centered nation. This paradox is
not new. Beginning in the early nineteenth century, the United States developed a host
of institutions for the young, ranging from the common school to the Sunday school,
the orphanage, the house of refuge, and the reformatory, and eventually expanding to
include the childrens hospital, the juvenile court, and a wide variety of youth organiza-
tions. It was assumed that these institutions served childrens interests, that they were car-
ing, developmental, and educational. In practice, however, these institutions frequently
proved to be primarily custodial and disciplinary. Indeed, many of the reforms that were
supposed to help children were adopted partly because they served the adults needs,
interests, and convenience. The abolition of child labor removed competition from an
overcrowded labor market. Age-grading not only made it much easier to control children
within schools, it also divided the young into convenient market segments. One of the
most serious challenges American society faces is to act on behalf of childrens welfare
rather than adults.
The most important lesson that grows out of an understanding of the history of
childhood is the simplest. While many fear that American society has changed too much,
the sad fact is that it has changed too little. Americans have failed to adapt social institu-
tions to the fact that the young mature more rapidly than they did in the past; that most
mothers of preschoolers now participate in the paid workforce; and that a near majority
of children will spend substantial parts of their childhood in a single-parent, cohabitating-
parent, or stepparent household. How can we provide better care for the young, especially
the one-sixth who are growing up in poverty? How can we better connect the worlds
of adults and the young? How can we give the young more ways to demonstrate their
growing competence and maturity? How can we tame a violence-laced, sex-saturated
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Chapter 8 Childhood and Youth 305
popular culture without undercutting a commitment to freedom and a respect for the
free-floating world of fantasy? These are the questions we must confront as we navigate
a new century of childhood.
Notes
1. Ron Powers, Dangerous Water: A Biography of the Boy Who Became Mark Twain ( New York: Da
Capo Press, 1999); Powers, Tom and Huck Dont Live Here Anymore: Childhood and Murder in the
Heart of America ( New York: St. Martins Press, 2001), 2, 3234, 40, 131; Shelley Fisher Fishkin,
Lighting Out for the Territories: Reflections on Mark Twain and American Culture ( New York: Oxford
University Press, 1997).
2. Powers, Dangerous Water, 26, 84, 167; Powers, Tom and Huck Dont Live Here Anymore, 78.
3. Richard Weissbourd, The Vulnerable Child: What Really Hurts Americas Children and What We Can
Do About It (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1996), 48.
4. Colin Heywood, A History of Childhood: Children and Childhood in the West from Medieval to Modern
Times (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2001); Joseph Illick, American Childhood (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 2002); James A. Schultz, The Knowledge of Childhood in the German Middle
Ages, 11001350 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 11.
5. Howard P. Chudacoff, How Old Are You? Age Consciousness in American Society (Princeton: Princ-
eton University Press, 1989); Joseph F. Kett, Rites of Passage: Adolescence in America ( New York:
Basic, 1977).
6. Kett, Rites of Passage, passim.
7. On changes in the onset of sexual maturation, see Marcia E. Herman-Giddens and others,
Secondary Sexual Characteristics and Menses in Young Girls Seen in Office Practice: A Study
from the Pediatric Research in Office Settings Network, Pediatrics, Vol. 99, No. 4 (April 1997),
505512. In 1890, the average age of menarche in the United States was estimated to be 14.8 years;
by the 1990s, the average age had fallen to 12.5 (12.1 for African American girls and 12.8 for girls
of northern European ancestry). According to the study, which tracked 17,000 girls to find out
when they hit different markers of puberty, 15 percent of white girls and 48 percent of African
American girls showed signs of breast development or pubic hair by age 8. For conflicting views
on whether the age of menarche has fallen, see Lisa Belkin, The Making of an 8-Year-Old
Woman, New York Times, December 24, 2000; Gina Kolata, Doubters Fault Theory Finding
Earlier Puberty, New York Times, February 20, 2001; and 2 Endocrinology Groups Raise Doubt
on Earlier Onset of Girls Puberty, New York Times, March 3, 2001.
8. Stephen Robertson, The Disappearance of Childhood, http://teaching.arts.usyd.edu.au/history/
2044/.
9. Gerald F. Moran, Colonial America, Adolescence in, Encyclopedia of Adolescence, edited by Richard
Lerner, Anne C. Petersen, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn ( New York: Garland Pub., 1991), I, 159167.
10. Priscilla Clement, Growing Pains: Children in the Industrial Age ( New York: Twayne, 1997); David
Nasaw, Children in the City: At Work and at Play (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday,
1985); Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 17891860 ( New York: Knopf,
1986).
11. David I. Macleod, The Age of the Child: Children in America, 18901912 ( New York: Twayne,
1998).
12. Viviana Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children (Princeton: Prince-
ton University Press).
13. Peter N. Stearns, Anxious Parents: A History of Modern Childrearing in America ( New York: New
York University Press, 2002).
14. Ann Hulbert, Raising America: Experts, Parents, and a Century of Advice about Children ( New York:
Knopf, 2003); Julia Grant, Raising Baby by the Book: The Education of American Mothers ( New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
Ch-08.indd 305 7/8/2008 12:34:27 PM
306 Part III Parents and Children
15. Kathleen W. Jones, Taming the Troublesome Child (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1999).
16. Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life
( New York: Free Press, 1988), 189.
17. Rogers quoted in James Axtell, School Upon a Hill: Education and Society in Colonial New England
( New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 28. Hard as it is to believe, in 1951 a leading television
critic decried the quality of childrens television. Jack Gould, radio and TV critic for The New
York Times from the late 1940s to 1972, complained that there was nothing on science, seldom
anything on the countrys cultural heritage, no introduction to fine books, scant emphasis on the
people of other lands, and little concern over hobbies and other things for children to do them-
selves besides watch television. Chicago Sun Times, Aug. 9, 1998, 35; Phil Scraton, ed., Childhood
in Crisis ( London; Bristol, Penn.: UCL Press, 1997), 161, 164.
18. William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, edited by Samuel Elliot Morrison ( New York: Modern
Library, 1952), 25; Moran, Colonial America, Adolescence in, 159.
19. Linda Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence ( New York:
Viking, 1988); Elizabeth Pleck, Domestic Tyranny: the Making of Social Policy against Family Violence
from Colonial Times to the Present ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).
20. William Feldman et al., Is Childhood Sexual Abuse Really Increasing in Prevalence? An Analysis
of the Evidence, Pediatrics, July 1991, Vol. 88, Issue 1, 2934; Males, Framing Youth, 257. In 1998,
government agencies substantiated over a million cases of child maltreatment, including approxi-
mately 101,000 cases of sexual abuse. About 51 percent of lifetime rapes occur prior to age 18
and 29 percent of lifetime rapes occur prior to age 12. Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice
and Delinquency Prevention, Combating Violence and Delinquency: The National Juvenile Justice
Action Plan: Report ( Washington DC: Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention, 1996), 75; National Criminal Justice Reference Service, www.ncjrs.org/html/ojjdp/
action_plan_2001_10/page1. html. The 1994 Sex in America study of the sex lives of 3,400 men
and women reported that 17 percent of the women and 12 percent of the men reported childhood
sexual abuse. See Males, Scapegoat Generation, 74.
R E A DI NG 2 3
Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race,
and Family Life
Annette Lareau
There are many studies that tell us of the detrimental effects of poverty on childrens
lives, but it is less clear what the mechanisms are for the transmission of class advantage
across generations.
I suggest that social class has an important impact on the cultural logic of childrear-
ing (see Lareau 2003 for details). Middle-class parents, both white and black, appear to
follow a cultural logic of childrearing that I call concerted cultivation. They enroll
their children in numerous age-specific organized activities that come to dominate fam-
ily life and create enormous labor, particularly for mothers. Parents see these activities
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Chapter 8 Childhood and Youth 307
as transmitting important life skills to children. Middle-class parents also stress language
use and the development of reasoning. Talking plays a crucial role in the disciplinary
strategies of middle-class parents. This cultivation approach results in a frenetic pace
for parents, creates a cult of individualism within the family, and emphasizes childrens
performance.
Among white and black working-class and poor families, childrearing strategies
emphasize the accomplishment of natural growth. These parents believe that as long
as they provide love, food, and safety, their children will grow and thrive. They do not
focus on developing the special talents of their individual children. Working-class and
poor children have more free time and deeper and richer ties within their extended
families than the middle-class children. Some participate in organized activities, but they
do so for different reasons than their middle-class counterparts. Working-class and poor
parents issue many more directives to their children and, in some households, place more
emphasis on physical discipline than do middle-class parents.
The pattern of concerted cultivation, with its stress on individual repertoires of
activities, reasoning, and questioning, encourages an emerging sense of entitlement in chil-
dren. Of course, not all parents and children are equally assertive, but the pattern of
questioning and intervening among the white and black middle-class parents in the study
contrasts sharply with the definitions of how to be helpful and effective observed among
the white and black working-class and poor families. The pattern of the accomplish-
ment of natural growth, with its emphasis on child-initiated play, autonomy from adults,
and directives, encourages an emerging sense of constraint [Table 23.1]. Members of these
families, adults as well as children, tend to be deferential and outwardly accepting (with
sporadic moments of resistance) in their interactions with professionals such as doctors
and educators. At the same time, however, compared to their middle-class counterparts,
the white and black working-class and poor families are more distrustful of professionals
in institutions. These are differences with long-term consequences. In a historical mo-
ment where the dominant society privileges active, informed, assertive clients of health
and educational services, the various strategies employed by children and parents are not
equally valuable. In sum, differences in family life lie not only in the advantages parents
are able to obtain for their children, but also in the skills being transmitted to children
for negotiating their own life paths.
METHODOLOGY
Study Participants
The study is based on interviews and observations of children eight to ten years of age
and their families. A team of graduate research assistants and I collected the data. The
first phase involved observations in third-grade public school classrooms, mainly in a
metropolitan area in the Northeast. The schools serve neighborhoods in a white sub-
urban area and two urban localesone a white working-class neighborhood and the
other a nearby poor black neighborhood. About one-half of the children are white and
about one-half are black. One child is interracial. The research assistants and I carried
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308 Part III Parents and Children
out individual interviews (averaging two hours each) with all of the mothers and most of
the fathers (or guardians) of 88 children, for a total of 137 interviews. We also observed
children as they took part in organized activities in the communities surrounding the
schools. The most intensive part of the research, however, involved home observations
of 12 children and their families. Nine of the 12 families came from the classrooms
I observed, but the boy and girl from the two black middle-class families and the boy
from the poor white family came from other sites. Most observations and interviews
took place between 1993 and 1995, but interviews were done as early as 1990 and as late
as 1997. This chapter focuses primarily on the findings from the observations of these
12 families since the key themes discussed here surfaced during this part of the field-
work. I do include some information from the larger study to provide a context for
understanding the family observations. All names are pseudonyms.
Intensive Family Observations
The research assistants and I took turns visiting the participating families daily, for a total
of about 20 visits in each home, often in the space of one month. The observations were
TABLE 23.1 Argument of Unequal Childhoods: Class Differences in Childrearing
Childrearing Approach
Concerted Cultivation
Accomplishment of
Natural Growth
Key Elements Parent actively fosters and
assesses childs talents,
opinions, and skills
Parent cares for child and
allows child to grow
Organization of
Daily Life
*multiple child leisure activities
orchestrated by adults
*child hangs out particularly
with kin
Language Use *reasoning/directives
*child contestation of adult
statements
*extended negotiations
between parents and child
*directives
*rare for child to question
or challenge adults
*general acceptance by child
of directives
Interventions in
Institutions
*criticisms and interventions
on behalf of child
*training of child to take
on this role
*dependence on institutions
*sense of powerlessness and
frustrations
*conflict between childrearing
practices at home and at
school
Consequences Emerging sense of entitlement
on the part of the child
Emerging sense of constraint
on the part of the child
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Chapter 8 Childhood and Youth 309
not limited to the home. Fieldworkers followed children and parents as they took part in
school activities, church services and events, organized play, kin visits, and medical ap-
pointments. Most field observations lasted about three hours; sometimes, depending on
the event (e.g., an out-of-town funeral, a special extended family event, or a long shop-
ping trip), they lasted much longer. In most cases, there was one overnight visit. We often
carried tape recorders with us and used the audiotapes for reference in writing up field
notes. Families were paid $350, usually at the end of the visits, for their participation.
A Note on Class
My purpose in undertaking the field observations was to develop an intensive, realistic
portrait of family life. Although I deliberately focused on only 12 families, I wanted to
compare children across gender and race lines. Adopting the fine-grained differentiation
of categories characteristic of current neo-Marxist and neo-Weberian empirical studies
was not tenable. My choice of class categories was further limited by the school popula-
tions at the sites I had selected. Very few of the students were children of employers or
of self-employed workers. I decided to concentrate exclusively on those whose parents
were employees. Various criteria have been proposed to differentiate within this hetero-
geneous group, but authority in the workplace and credential barriers are the two most
commonly used. I assigned the families in the study to a working-class or middle-class
category based on discussions with each of the employed adults. They provided extensive
information about the work they did, the nature of the organization that employed them,
and their educational credentials. I added a third category: families not involved in the
labor market (a population traditionally excluded from social class groupings) because
in the first school I studied, a substantial number of children were from households
supported by public assistance. To ignore them would have restricted the scope of the
study arbitrarily. The final sub-sample contained 4 middle-class, 4 working-class, and
4 poor families.
CHILDRENS TIME USE
In our interviews and observations of white and black middle-class children, it was strik-
ing how busy they were with organized activities. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of middle-
class childrens daily lives is a set of adult-run organized activities. Many children have
three and four activities per week. In some families, every few days activities conflict,
particularly when one season is ending and one is beginning. For example in the white
middle-class family of the Tallingers, Garrett is on multiple soccer teamsthe A trav-
eling team of the private Forest soccer club and the Intercounty soccer teamhe also has
swim lessons, saxophone lessons at school, private piano lessons at home, and baseball
and basketball. These organized activities provided a framework for childrens lives; other
activities were sandwiched between them.
These activities create labor for parents. Indeed, the impact of childrens activities
takes its toll on parents patience as well as their time. For example, on a June afternoon
at the beginning of summer vacation, in a white-middle-class family, Mr. Tallinger comes
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310 Part III Parents and Children
home from work to take Garrett to his soccer game. Garrett is not ready to go, and his
lackadaisical approach to getting ready irks his father:
Don says, Get your soccer stuffyoure going to a soccer game! Garrett comes into the
den with white short leggings on underneath a long green soccer shirt; hes number 16.
He sits on an armchair catty-corner from the television and languidly watches the World
Cup game. He slowly, abstractedly, pulls on shin guards, then long socks. His eyes are
riveted to the TV screen. Don comes in: Go get your other stuff. Garrett says he cant
find his shorts. Don: Did you look in your drawer? Garrett nods. . . . He gets up to look
for his shorts, comes back into the den a few minutes later. I ask, Any luck yet? Garrett
shakes his head. Don is rustling around elsewhere in the house. Don comes in, says to Gar-
rett, Well, Garrett, arent you wearing shoes? ( Don leaves and returns a short time later):
Garrett, we HAVE to go! Move! Were late! He says this shortly, abruptly. He comes
back in a minute and drops Garretts shiny green shorts on his lap without a word.
This pressured search for a pair of shiny green soccer shorts is a typical event in the
Tallinger household. Also typical is the solutiona parent ultimately finds the missing
object, while continuing to prod the child to hurry. The fact that todays frenzied sched-
ule will be matched or exceeded by the next days is also par:
Don: (describing their day on Saturday) Tomorrow is really nuts. We have a soccer game,
then a baseball game, then another soccer game.
This steady schedule of activitythat none of the middle-class parents reported hav-
ing when they were a similar agewas not universal. Indeed, while we searched for a
middle-class child who did not have a single organized activity we could not find one,
but in working-class and poor homes, organized activities were much less common and
there were many children who did not have any. Many children hung out. Television
and video games are a major source of entertainment but outdoor play can trump either
of these. No advanced planning, no telephone calls, no consultations between mothers,
no drop-offs or pickupsno particular effort at allis required to launch an activity.
For instance, one afternoon, in a black working-class family, Shannon (in 7th grade) and
Tyrec (in 4th grade) walk out their front door to the curb of the small, narrow street their
house faces. Shannon begins playing a game with a ball; she soon has company:
( Two boys from the neighborhood walk up.) Shannon is throwing the small ball against the
side of the row house. Tyrec joins in the game with her. As they throw the ball against the
wall, they say things they must do with the ball. It went something like this: Johnny Crow
wanted to know. . . . ( bounces ball against the wall), touch your knee ( bounce), touch your
toe ( bounce), touch the ground ( bounce), under the knee ( bounce), turn around ( bounce).
Shannon and Tyrec played about four rounds.
Unexpected events produce hilarity:
At one point Shannon accidentally threw the ball and it bounced off of Tyrecs head. All
the kids laughed; then Tyrec, who had the ball, went chasing after Shannon. It was a close,
fun momentlots of laughter, eye contact, giggling, chasing.
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Chapter 8 Childhood and Youth 311
Soon a different game evolves. Tyrec is on restriction. He is supposed to remain inside
the house all day. So, when he thinks he has taught a glimpse of his mom returning home
from work, he dashes inside. He reappears as soon as he realizes that it was a false alarm.
The neighborhood children begin an informal game of baiting him:
The kids keep teasing Tyrec that his moms comingwhich sends him scurrying just
inside the door, peering out of the screen door. This game is enacted about six times.
Tyrec also chases Shannon around the street, trying to get the ball from her. A few times
Shannon tells Tyrec that hed better get inside; he ignores her. Then, at 6:50 [P.M.] Ken
(a friend of Tyrecs) says, Theres your mom! Tyrec scoots inside, then, says, Oh, man.
You were serious this time.
Informal, impromptu outdoor play is common in Tyrecs neighborhood. A group of boys
approximately his age, regularly numbering four or five but sometimes reaching as many
as ten, play ball games together on the street, walk to the store to get treats, watch televi-
sion at each others homes, and generally hang out together.
LANGUAGE USE
In addition to differences by social class in time use, we also observed differences in
language use in the home. As others have noted ( Bernstein, 1971; Heath, 1983) middle-
class parents used more reasoning in their speech with children while working-class
and poor parents used more directives. For example, in observations of the African Amer-
ican home of Alex Williams, whose father was a trial lawyer and mother was a high level
corporate executive, we found that the Williamses and other middle-class parents use
language frequently, pleasurably, and instrumentally. Their children do likewise. For
example, one January evening, Alexander is stumped by a homework assignment to write
five riddles. He sits at the dinner table in the kitchen with his mother and a fieldworker.
Mr. Williams is at the sink, washing the dinner dishes. He has his back to the group at
the dinner table. Without turning around, he says to Alex, Why dont you go upstairs
to the third floor and get one those books and see if there is a riddle in there?
Alex [says] smiling, Yeah. Thats a good idea! Ill go upstairs and copy one from out of the
book. Terry turns around with a dish in hand, That was a jokenot a valid suggestion.
That is not an option. He smiled as he turned back around to the sink. Christina says,
looking at Alex: There is a word for that you know, plagiarism. Terry says (not turning
around), Someone can sue you for plagiarizing. Did you know that? Alex: Thats only
if it is copyrighted. They all begin talking at once.
Here we see Alex cheerfully (though gently) goading his father by pretending to
misunderstand the verbal instruction to consult a book for help. Mr. Williams dutifully
rises to the bait. Ms. Williams reshapes this movement of lightheartedness by introducing
a new word into Alexanders vocabulary. Mr. Williams goes one step further by connect-
ing the new word to a legal consequence. Alex upstages them both. He demonstrates
that he is already familiar with the general idea of plagiarism and that he understands the
concept of copyright, as well.
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312 Part III Parents and Children
In marked contrast to working-class and poor parents, however, even when the
Williamses issue directives, they often include explanations for their orders. Here,
Ms. Williams is reminding her son to pay attention to his teacher:
I want you to play close attention to Mrs. Scott when you are developing your film. Those
chemicals are very dangerous. Dont play around in the classroom. You could get that stuff
in someones eye. And if you swallow it, you could die.
Alex chooses to ignore the directive in favor of instructing his misinformed mother:
Alex corrects her, Mrs. Scott told us that we wouldnt die if we swallowed it. But we would
get very sick and would have to get our stomach pumped. Christina does not follow the
argument any further. She simply reiterates that he should be careful.
Possibly because the issue is safety, Ms. Williams does not encourage Alex to elaborate
here, as she would be likely to do if the topic were less charged. Instead, she restates her
directive and thus underscores her expectation that Alex will do as she asks.
Although Mr. and Ms. Williams disagreed on elements of how training in race rela-
tions should be implemented, they both recognized that their racial and ethnic identity
profoundly shaped their and their sons everyday experiences. They were well aware
of the potential for Alexander to be exposed to racial injustice, and they went to great
lengths to try to protect their son from racial insults and other forms of discrimination.
Nevertheless, race did not appear to shape the dominant cultural logic of childrearing
in Alexanders family or in other families in the study. All of the middle-class families
engaged in extensive reasoning with their children, asking questions, probing assertions,
and listening to answers. Similar patterns appeared in interviews and observations with
other African American middle-class families.
A different pattern appeared in working-class and poor homes where there was sim-
ply less verbal speech than we observed in middle-class homes. There was also less speech
between parents and children, a finding noted by other observational studies ( Hart and
Risley, 1995). Moreover, interspersed with intermittent talk are adult-issued directives.
Children are told to do certain things (e.g., shower, take out the garbage) and not to do
others (e.g., curse, talk back). In an African American home of a family living on public
assistance in public housing, Ms. McAllister uses one-word directives to coordinate the use
of the single bathroom. There are almost always at least four children in the apartment
and often seven, plus Ms. McAllister and other adults. Ms. McAllister sends the children to
wash up by pointing to a child, saying, Bathroom, and handing him or her a washcloth.
Wordlessly, the designated child gets up and goes to the bathroom to take a shower.
Children usually do what adults ask of them. We did not observe whining or pro-
tests, even when adults assign time-consuming tasks, such as the hour-long process of
hair-braiding Lori McAllister is told to do for the four-year-old daughter of Aunt Daras
friend Charmaine:
Someone tells Lori, Go do [Tyneshias] hair for camp. Without saying anything, Lori
gets up and goes inside and takes the little girl with her. They head for the couch near the
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Chapter 8 Childhood and Youth 313
television; Lori sits on the couch and the girl sits on the floor. [ Tyneshia] sits quietly for
about an hour, with her head tilted, while Lori carefully does a multitude of braids.
Loris silent obedience is typical. Generally, children perform requests without comment.
For example, at dinner one night, after Harold McAllister complains he doesnt like
spinach, his mother directs him to finish it anyway:
Mom yells ( loudly) at him to eat: EAT! FINISH THE SPINACH! ( No response. Har-
old is at the table, dawdling.) Guion and Runako and Alexis finish eating and leave. I finish
with Harold; he eats his spinach. He leaves all his yams.
The verbal world of Harold McAllister and other poor and working-class children
offers some important advantages as well as costs. Compared to middle-class children we
observed, Harold is more respectful towards adults in his family. In this setting, there are
clear boundaries between adults and children. Adults feel comfortable issuing directives
to children, which children comply with immediately. Some of the directives that adults
issue center on obligations of children to others in the family (dont beat on Guion
or go do [her] hair for camp). One consequence of this is that Harold, despite occa-
sional tiffs, is much nicer to his sister (and his cousins) than the siblings we observed in
middle-class homes. The use of directives and the pattern of silent compliance are not
universal in Harolds life. In his interactions with peers, for example on the basketball
court, Harolds verbal displays are distinctively different than inside the household,
with elaborated and embellished discourse. Nevertheless, there is a striking difference
in linguistic interaction between adults and children in poor and working-class families
when compared to that observed in the home of Alexander Williams. Ms. McAllister has
the benefit of being able to issue directives without having to justify their decisions at
every moment. This can make childrearing somewhat less tiring.
Another advantage is that Harold has more autonomy than middle-class children
in making important decisions in daily life. As a child, he controls his leisure schedule. His
basketball games are impromptu and allow him to develop important skills and talents.
He is resourceful. He appears less exhausted than ten-year-old Alexander. In addition,
he has important social competencies, including his deftness in negotiating the code of
the street.
1
His mother has stressed these skills in her upbringing, as she impresses upon
her children the importance of not paying no mind to others, including drunks and
drug dealers who hang out in the neighborhoods which Harold and Alexis negotiate.
Still, in the world of schools, health care facilities, and other institutional settings,
these valuable skills do not translate into the same advantages as the reasoning skills em-
phasized in the home of Alexander Williams and other middle-class children. Compared
to Alexander Williams, Harold does not gain the development of a large vocabulary, an
increase of his knowledge of science and politics, a set of tools to customize situations
outside the home to maximize his advantage, and instruction in how to defend his argu-
ment with evidence. His knowledge of words, which might appear, for example, on future
SAT tests, is not continually stressed at home.
In these areas, the lack of advantage is not connected to the intrinsic value of the
McAllister family life or the use of directives at home. Indeed, one can argue raising
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314 Part III Parents and Children
children who are polite and respectful children and do not whine, needle, or badger
their parents is a highly laudable childrearing goal. Deep and abiding ties with kinship
groups are also, one might further argue, important. Rather, it is the specific ways that
institutions function that ends up conveying advantages to middle-class children. In their
standards, these institutions also permit, and even demand, active parent involvement.
In this way as well, middle-class children often gain an advantage.
INTERVENTION IN INSTITUTIONS
Children do not live their lives inside of the home. Instead, they are legally required to
go to school, they go to the doctor, and many are involved in church and other adult-
organized activities. In childrens institutional lives, we found differences by social class
in how mothers monitored childrens institutional experiences. While in working-class
and poor families children are granted autonomy to make their own way in organiza-
tions, in the middle-class homes, most aspects of the childrens lives are subject to their
mothers ongoing scrutiny.
For example in an African American middle-class home, where both parents are
college graduates and Ms. Marshall is a computer worker and her husband a civil servant,
their two daughters have a hectic schedule of organized activities including gymnastics
for Stacey and basketball for Fern. When Ms. Marshall becomes aware of a problem, she
moves quickly, drawing on her work and professional skills and experiences. She displays
tremendous assertiveness, doggedness, and, in some cases, effectiveness in pressing in-
stitutions to recognize her daughters individualized needs. Staceys mothers proactive
stance reflects her belief that she has a duty to intervene in situations where she perceives
that her daughters needs are not being met. This perceived responsibility applies across
all areas of her childrens lives. She is no more (or less) diligent with regard to Stacey and
Ferns leisure activities than she is with regard to their experiences in school or church
or the doctors office. This is clear in the way she handles Staceys transition from her
township gymnastics classes to the private classes at an elite private gymnastic program
at Wrights.
Ms. Marshall describes Staceys first session at the club as rocky:
The girls were not warm. And these were little . . . eight and nine year old kids. You know,
they werent welcoming her the first night. It was kinda like eyeing each other, to see, you
know, Can you do this? Can you do that?
More importantly, Ms. Marshall reported that the instructor is brusque, critical
and not friendly toward Stacey. Ms. Marshall cannot hear what was being said, but she
could see the interactions through a window. A key problem is that because her previ-
ous instructor had not used the professional jargon for gymnastic moves, Stacey does
not know these terms. When the class ends and she walks out, she is visibly upset. Her
mothers reaction is a common one among middle-class parents: She does not remind
her daughter that in life one has to adjust, that she will need to work even harder, or that
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Chapter 8 Childhood and Youth 315
there is nothing to be done. Instead, Ms. Marshall focuses on Tina, the instructor, as the
source of the problem:
We sat in the car for a minute and I said, Look, Stac, I said. She said, I-I, and she
started crying. I said, You wait here. The instructor had come to the door, Tina. So I
went to her and I said, Look. I said, Is there a problem? She said, Aww . . . shell be
fine. She just needs to work on certain things. Blah-blah-blah. And I said, Shes really
upset. She said you-you-you [were] pretty much correcting just about everything. And
[ Tina] said, Well, shes gotshes gotta learn the terminology.
Ms. Marshall acknowledges that Stacey isnt familiar with specialized and technical gym-
nastics terms. Nonetheless, she continues to defend her daughter:
I do remember, I said to her, I said, Look, maybe its not all the student. You know, I just
left it like that. That, you know, sometimes teaching, learning and teaching, is a two-way
proposition as far as Im concerned. And sometimes teachers have to learn how to, you
know, meet the needs of the kid. Her style, her immediate style was not accommodating
toto Stacey.
Here Ms. Marshall is asserting the legitimacy of an individualized approach to instruc-
tion. She frames her opening remark as a question (Is there a problem?). Her purpose,
however, is to alert the instructor to the negative impact she has had on Stacey (Shes
really upset.). Although her criticism is indirect (Maybe its not all the student . . .),
Ms. Marshall makes it clear that she expects her daughter to be treated differently in the
future. In this case, Stacey does not hear what her mother says, but she knows that her
wishes and feelings are being transmitted to the instructor in a way that she could not
do herself.
Although parents were equally concerned about their childrens happiness, in
working-class and poor homes we observed different patterns of oversight for childrens
institutional activities. For example in the white working-class home of Wendy Driver.
Wendys mother does not nurture her daughters language development like Alexander
Williams mother does her sons. She does not attempt to draw Wendy out or follow up
on new information when Wendy introduces the term mortal sin while the family is sit-
ting around watching television. But, just like Ms. Williams, Ms. Driver cares very much
about her child and just like middle-class parents she wants to help her daughter suc-
ceed. Ms. Driver keeps a close and careful eye on her Wendys schooling. She knows that
Wendy is having problems in school. Ms. Driver immediately signs and returns each form
Wendy brings home from school and reminds her to turn the papers in to her teacher.
Wendy is being tested as part of an ongoing effort to determine why she has
difficulties with spelling, reading, and related language-based activities. Her mother wel-
comes these official efforts but she did not request them. Unlike the middle-class moth-
ers we observed, who asked teachers for detailed information about every aspect of their
childrens classroom performance and relentlessly pursued information and assessments
outside of school as well, Ms. Driver seems content with only a vague notion of her
daughters learning disabilities. This attitude contrasts starkly with that of Stacey Mar-
shalls mother, for example. In discussing Staceys classroom experiences with fieldworkers,
Ch-08.indd 315 7/8/2008 12:34:28 PM
316 Part III Parents and Children
Ms. Marshall routinely described her daughters academic strengths and weaknesses in
detail. Ms. Driver never mentions that Wendy is doing grade-level work in math but is
reading at a level a full three years below her grade. Her description is vague:
Shes having problems. . . . They had a special teacher come in and see if they could find
out what the problem is. She has a reading problem, but they havent put their finger on
it yet, so shes been through all kinds of special teachers and testing and everything. She
goes to Special Ed, I think its two classes a day . . . Im not one hundred percent surefor
her reading. Its very difficult for her to read whats on paper. But thenshe can remember
things. But not everything. Its like she has a puzzle up there. And weve tried, well, theyve
tried a lot of things. They just havent put their finger on it yet.
Wendys teachers uniformly praise her mother as supportive and describe her
as very loving, but they are disappointed in Ms. Drivers failure to take a more active,
interventionist role in Wendys education, especially given the formidable nature of her
daughters learning problems. From Ms. Drivers perspective, however, being actively
supportive means doing whatever the teachers tell her to do.
Whatever they would suggest, I would do. They suggested she go to the eye doctor, so
I did that. And they checked her and said there was nothing wrong there.
Similarly, she monitors Wendys homework and supports her efforts to read:
We listen to her read. We help her with her homework. So she has more attention here
in a smaller household than it was when I lived with my parents. So, were trying to help
her out more, which I think is helping. And with the two [special education] classes a day
at the school, instead of one like last year, shes learning a lot from that. So, were just
hoping it takes time and that shell just snap out of it.
But Ms. Driver clearly does not have an independent understanding of the nature
or degree of Wendys limitations, perhaps because she is unfamiliar with the kind of terms
the educators use to describe her daughters needs (e.g., a limited sight vocabulary,
underdeveloped language arts skills). Perhaps, too, her confidence in the school staff
makes it easier for her to leave the details to them: Ms. Morton, shes great. Shes
worked with us for different testing and stuff. Ms. Driver depends on the school staffs
expertise to assess the situation and then share the information with her:
I think they just want to keep it in the school till now. And when they get to a point where
they cant figure out what it is, and then I guess theyll send me somewhere else. . . .
Her mother is not alarmed, because the school has told her not to worry about
Wendys grades:
Her report cardas long as its not spelling and readingspelling and reading are like Fs.
And they keep telling me not to worry, because shes in the Special Ed class. But besides
that, she does good. I have no behavior problems with her at all.
Ch-08.indd 316 7/8/2008 12:34:29 PM
Chapter 8 Childhood and Youth 317
Ms. Driver wants the best possible outcome for her daughter and she does not
know how to achieve that goal without relying heavily on Wendys teachers:
I wouldnt even know where to start going. On the radio there was something for children
having problems reading and this and that, call. And I suggested it to a couple different
people, and they were like, wait a second, its only to get you there and youll end up pay-
ing an arm and a leg. So I said to my mom, No, Im going to wait until the first report
card and go up and talk to them up there.
Thus, in looking for the source of Ms. Drivers deference toward educators, the
answers dont seem to lie in her having either a shy personality or underdeveloped moth-
ering skills. To understand why Wendys mother is accepting where Stacey Marshalls
mother would be aggressive, it is more useful to focus on social class position, both in
terms of how class shapes worldviews and how class affects economic and educational
resources. Ms. Driver understands her role in her daughters education as involving a
different set of responsibilities from those perceived by middle-class mothers. She re-
sponds to contacts from the schoolsuch as invitations to the two annual parent-teacher
conferencesbut she does not initiate them. She views Wendys school life as a sepa-
rate realm, and one in which she, as a parent, is only an infrequent visitor. Ms. Driver
expects that the teachers will teach and her daughter will learn and that, under normal
circumstances, neither requires any additional help from her as a parent. If problems
arise, she presumes that Wendy will tell her; or, if the issue is serious, the school will
contact her. But what Ms. Driver fails to understand, is that the educators expect her to
take on a pattern of concerted cultivation where she actively monitors and intervenes
in her childs schooling. The teachers asked for a complicated mixture of deference and
engagement from parents; they were disappointed when they did not get it.
CONCLUSIONS
I have stressed how social class dynamics are woven into the texture and rhythm of chil-
dren and parents daily lives. Class position influences critical aspects of family life: time
use, language use, and kin ties. Working-class and middle-class mothers may express
beliefs that reflect a similar notion of intensive mothering, but their behavior is quite
different. For that reason, I have described sets of paired beliefs and actions as a cultural
logic of childrearing. When children and parents move outside the home into the world
of social institutions, they find that these cultural practices are not given equal value.
There are signs that middle-class children benefit, in ways that are invisible to them and
to their parents, from the degree of similarity between the cultural repertoires in the
home and those standards adopted by institutions.
Note
1. Elijah Anderson, Code of the Street, New York: W. W. Norton (1999).
Ch-08.indd 317 7/8/2008 12:34:29 PM
318 Part III Parents and Children
Bibliography
Anderson, Elijah. 1999. Code of the Street. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.
Bernstein, Basil. 1971. Class, Codes, and Control: Theoretical Studies Towards a Sociology of Language. New
York, NY: Schocken.
Hart, Betty and Todd R. Risley. 1995. Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experiences of Young American
Children. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Heath, Shirley Brice. 1983. Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work in Communities and Classrooms.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lareau, Annette. 2003. Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life. Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press.
R E A DI NG 2 4
How Families Still Matter:
A Longitudinal Study of Youth
in Two Generations
Vern L. Bengston, Timothy J. Biblarz,
and Robert E. L. Roberts
How Families Still Matter casts doubt on much conventional wisdom about family decline
during the last decades of the twentieth century. Generation X youth, who came of age in
the 1990s, have been described as a generation at risk because they are the first cohort
to have grown up in families with very high rates of divorce, fatherlessness, and working
mothers. There is concern that a decrease in family togetherness has spawned a gen-
eration of slackers, because their achievements have appeared, at least in some studies,
lower than that of previous generations. Authors Bengtson, Biblarz, and Roberts examine
this claim and the evidence for and against the general proposition often advanced by
politicians and pundits that the American family is at risk and declining in influence.
The authors draw from one of the longest-running longitudinal studies of families
in the worldthe Longitudinal Study of Generations, conducted at the University of
Southern Californiato discover whether parents are really less critical in shaping the
life orientations and achievements of youth than they were a generation ago. Using
survey data collected from as early as 1971, they compare the influence of parents (on
self-confidence, values, and levels of achievement) on the Baby Boomer generation with
that of Baby Boomer parents on their own Generation X children. The findings will be
surprising to many readers.
The authors find, first, that the Generation X youth display higher, not lower,
achievement orientations than did their Baby Boomer parents when they were young
Ch-08.indd 318 7/8/2008 12:34:29 PM
Chapter 8 Childhood and Youth 319
almost thirty years earlier. This is especially true for Generation X women, who have
far outpaced their mothers educational and occupational aspirations and are more am-
bitious than their male counterparts. Second, the strength of parents influence on life
choices and achievement is significantand at about the same levelas that of the
Baby Boomers parents. Third, the negative effect of parental divorce on Generation
X youths achievement orientations has been smallcertainly much lower than the di-
vorce is disaster literature would predict. Maternal employment has had no impact on
achievement orientations. Finally, while Generation X members education and career
aspirations and self-esteem are higher than that of their parents and youth, the data
show similar values about individualism and humanism across generations. These find-
ings indicate the resilience of family intergenerational bonds in the context of massive
social changes since the 1960s. They suggest that in the twenty-first century, families
and cross-generational connections will still be vitally important in influencing youths
values, choices, and their life course. The authors offer three new hypotheses about the
processes that may be underlying their findings: (1) extended kin relationsparticularly
the role of grandparentsare more important than ever; (2) todays two-parent families
may be more successful than ever before; and (3) through ups and downs, most mothers
and fathers seem to continue to find ways to take good care of their children.
First, childrens feelings of solidarity and closeness with their parentsparticularly
their motherswere high in both generations, even though Generation Xers in child-
hood experienced rates of family disruption and maternal employment that were never
experienced by their Baby Boomer parents. Solidarity with parents, in turn, was among
the strongest positive predictors of youths self-esteem and aspirations both today (Gen-
eration Xers) and in the previous generation ( Baby Boomers).
Second, the effects of parental divorce on younger generations were not as signifi-
cant as we had expected. Our evidence shows that three core dimensions of childrens
identityaspirations, self-esteem, and valuesare not strongly affected by the rise in di-
vorce rate over the past thirty years. Most important, the experience of parental divorce
did not erode the self-confidence of Generation X youth. Both Generation X youth who
experienced parental divorce and those from traditional families had high and roughly
equivalent levels of self-esteem. The late-adolescent Generation Xers who experienced
their parents divorce did have slightly lower aspirations than their Generation X coun-
terparts whose parents did not divorce. While Generation X youth who experienced
parental divorce were more materialistic than those who did not, they also held more
collectivistic and less individualistic value orientations.
Third, the impact of maternal employment on child well-being was also not as sig-
nificant as we had expected; in fact, it was negligible. One of our most important findings
is that across two generations and twenty-six years, mothers labor force participation
did not harm childrens status aspirations, self-esteem, or prosocial value orientations,
and in some cases maternal employment proved beneficial to children (e.g., in the case
of sons, maternal employment was associated with heightened self-esteem). Overall, it
made little difference whether mothers worked or stayed home.
Fourth, when we examined parental influences on youths aspirations, self-esteem,
and valuesthe measure of the familys success in the socialization of its childrenwe
found that parents ability to influence their children has not declined over recent generations.
Ch-08.indd 319 7/8/2008 12:34:29 PM
320 Part III Parents and Children
Contrary to the hypothesis of family decline, our data indicate that the importance of
parental influences for the self-esteem, aspirations, and values of their children has not
diminished across generations.
Fifth, we found that intergenerational transmission processes are still working effec-
tively to shape achievement orientations of youth. For one thing, these data indicate
that children learn from and model themselves after their parents in occupational and edu-
cational aspirations and values. Children hold for themselves the values they learned
from parents, such as high individualism or low materialism. For another, these data
indicate the crucial role of parental affirmation and intergenerational solidarity in the trans-
mission process. Children who are close to their parents have higher self-esteem and
educational and occupational aspirations than those who are not close. Finally, status
inheritance processes are important in achievement orientations. The social standing and
resources of families continue to be crucial predictors of what youth come to aspire for
themselves. Parental education and occupational status has a strong resemblance to the
aspirations of youth in both generationsthe Gen Xers as well as the Baby Boomers.
Moreover, parental status and resources had the same effect on children from divorced
families as they did in two-parent, long-married families.
In this study we compared the magnitude and direction of intergenerational influ-
ences on child outcomes, and the average child outcomes themselves, among families
who were raising children in very different social milieus (the 1950s and 1960s in the
case of our G2/G3 parent/child dyads, and the 1980s and 1990s in the case of our G3/
G4 dyads), and in very different kinds of family structures and family divisions of labor
over time. Our data indicate more continuity than contrast in the processes of intergen-
erational transmission and in the course of generational progress. With some exceptions,
our families seem to be able to do well by their children, even under a variety of more
or less taxing and challenging conditions. The contemporary families in our analysis,
changed in many ways from their predecessors by high divorce rates and the shifting mar-
ket and nonmarket responsibilities of parents, have been relatively successful in raising
a generation of youth that appears well equipped to face the challenges of adulthood.
To sum up, our results demonstrate the continuing influence and enduring impor-
tance of families across recent generations, despite the effects of divorce, alternative fam-
ily forms, and changing gender roles on family commitments and functions. The family
is still fulfilling its basic task, the socialization of children, but in a world very different
from that of the late 1950s. Its forms are more fluid, its relationship ties are both ascribed
and chosen. Traditional nuclear family forms are no longer the norm in American
society. Marriages, having evolved from institutional to companionate relationships
based largely on bonds of affection, are more fragile. But despite this, family influences
across generations are strong, and families still mattermuch more than advocates of
the family decline hypothesis would admit.
WHY FAMILIES STILL MATTER
These findings about how families are important raise the question of why. This is particu-
larly relevant in light of other research and family decline theory predicting that recent
social trends and changes in the family have significantly diminished intergenerational
Ch-08.indd 320 7/8/2008 12:34:29 PM
Chapter 8 Childhood and Youth 321
transmission processes and negatively affected child outcomes. Parental divorce, for
example, has been shown to create emotional distress, behavioral or school difficulties
and related problems for children in the short term ( Dawson 1991; Kline, Johnson, and
Tschann 1991) and over several decades (according to Wallerstein et al. 2000). The modal
pattern is that children suffer substantial economic loss following divorce (since children
most often reside with their mothers), and that childrens relationships with nonresiden-
tial fathers decline over time following divorce. The effects of maternal employment on
children should also be negative following the family decline hypothesis, because em-
ployment involves mothers reallocation of time away from childrearing, and mothers
time investments in children have been shown to be central for many aspects of childrens
development.
Below we offer three propositions about why families still matter, why Generation
X children have done well, and why divorce and maternal employment have not had (at
least in our sample) the severe detrimental effects on children predicted by some com-
mentators and researchers. We set forth these propositions as important issues to be
tested in future research.
Proposition 1: Families are adapting by expanding support across generations.
There is increasing interdependence and exchange across several generations of
family members; this expansion has protected and enhanced the well-being of new
generations of children.
Proposition 2: Nondivorced, two-parent families are more successful than their
counterparts a generation ago. Relational processes within two-parent families are
changing over time in ways that have enhanced the well-being of new generations
of children.
Proposition 3: Maternal investment in children has not declined over generations.
Despite growth in the rate of labor force participation among mothers, maternal
investment in children has remained high and constant over time, and this has as-
sured a generally positive level of well-being among new generations of children.
In a sense, these propositions summarize our major findings. But our data are lim-
ited and the story they tell is incomplete. We present the propositions as issues to be
tested in further research, using larger and nationally representative samples.
Proposition 1: Families Are Adapting by Expanding
Support across Generations
The apparent resiliency of Generation X children who have experienced recent changes
in family structure and roles may be accounted for by the adaptive and compensatory
processes that their families have drawn on, particularly in times of need. These pro-
cesses may often involve expanding the family to bring additional parent-like figures
and family members into the lives of children. African American families, for example,
have had a long history of adaptation to family disruption induced (in fact, often forced)
by slavery, segregation, employment discrimination, and other manifestations of racism.
Research like Hills (1999) The Strengths of African American Families (also Johnson 1999;
Ch-08.indd 321 7/8/2008 12:34:29 PM
322 Part III Parents and Children
Oates 1999) has emphasized the resilient capacities of African American families to care
and provide for children under difficult conditions (such as fatherlessness) by forming
extended and fictive kin relations. In father-absent African American families historically,
the fatherly role was often played by someone other than a biological father, and aunts,
uncles, and grandparents ( biologically or socially related) have been instrumental in the
rearing of children.
An important direction for further family research and theory involves the applica-
tion of this families adapt by extending kin concept to other kinds of families, particu-
larly those who have experienced disruptive events such as divorce. The relationships that
children and parents have with their grandparents following divorce, in particular, should
be carefully explored ( Bengtson 2001). Emotional closeness and support from grandpar-
ents have been shown to compensate for or mitigate divorce-related family processes and
custodial-parent role overload that can have a negative impact on the well-being of both
adult children and grandchildren ( Johnson and Barer 1987; Silverstein, Giarrusso, and
Bengtson 1998). For example, greater grandparental involvement with children could
compensate for the temporary declines in mothers attention and time with her children
immediately following divorce. In this situation, children would continue to receive the
adult-family-member time investment that is so essential to their development. This type
of compensation may ameliorate the risk of negative outcomes for todays children in
divorced families.
Grandparental involvement in postdivorce families is an especially important po-
tential source of social support ( Johnson 2000; Johnson and Barer 1987) becauseunlike
day-care centers, after-school programs, babysitters, or nanniesgrandparents typically
have a high level of concern for the interests of their children and grandchildren. Grand-
parents today bring other strengths to their family roles. Grandparents are considerably
more financially secure than they were just twenty-five years ago; they have a higher
standard of living ( Treas 1995). At the same time, grandparents today are healthier and
much more active, with many more years ahead of them after retirement. Grandparents
today, as they age, can expect fewer years with chronic illnesses and limiting disabilities
than previous generations ( Hayward and Heron 1999). These positive trends may make
grandparent /grandchildren relationships far more important and rewarding than ever
before.
In the context of the diversity of family conditions that exist today, there are pres-
sures and opportunities to shift more familial responsibility to members of the extended
family ( Bengtson 2001). Contemporary families may be moving beyond the confines of
the shrinking nuclear family to encompass the broader support and emotional resources
of multigenerational families, relationships that are both ascribed and created, where (as
Robert Frost noted), . . . when you have to go there . . . they have to take you in. And
increasingly they do. This can be seen in the growing incidence of grandparents raising
grandchildren, where the middle generations marriages dissolve, or where there are other
difficulties (such as drug addiction) that interfere with the younger adults ability to par-
ent. To the extent that traditional nuclear families weaken or transform themselves, the
strengths and resources of the multigenerational family may take on new importance.
At the same time that exchange, dependence, and support among multiple genera-
tions of family members are becoming increasingly important, so, too, are patterns of
Ch-08.indd 322 7/8/2008 12:34:29 PM
Chapter 8 Childhood and Youth 323
intergenerational exchange, dependence, and support over the life course. In the new
economic reality of postindustrialism, for example, many midlife parents still have their
young adult children at home or at school. Generation X young adults will be in college
far longer on average than their Baby Boomer parents were, extending the period of
economic dependence on the resources of their parents. This extended period of inter-
generational exchange and support tends to strengthen the bonds of solidarity between
parents and children as well ( Bengtson, Rosenthal, and Burton 1995; Elder 1994). In an
unexpected way, these examples of prolonged parenting by those now at midlife (that is,
Baby Boomers) may reflect, in practice, the shift that we found in this study toward more
collectivistic values. Especially in light of the ways in which families are diversifying, we
believe that multi- and intergenerational exchange and support among family members
over the life course of children must become an important object of study in examining
consequences for children of recent changes in the family.
Proposition 2: Todays Nondivorced, Two-Parent
Families Are More Successful Than Their
Counterparts a Generation Ago
A major finding in our study was the discovery of strengths in a family type that is typi-
cally used as a reference category but not as often explored in its own right: the two-
biological parent family of the 1990s and beyond. The aspirations, self-esteem, and values
of the Generation Xers from these families were significantly more positive than those
of comparable two-parent families in the previous generation ( Baby Boomer youth). In
several respects, todays two-parent families seem to be more effective in the socialization
of their children than yesterdays two-parent families.
It is likely these two-parent families are to some extent a select group, as less happily
married or dysfunctional parents of Generation Xers would have already divorced (unlike
similarly predisposed marital partners of earlier generations, who would have found divorce
much more difficult to accomplish). Nevertheless, uncovering how todays two- parent
families have been successful in navigating the postmodern social structurebalancing
work and home, negotiating divisions of labor, and finding individual self- fulfillment while
at the same time maintaining a high level of investment in childrenmay reveal family
processes of adaptation that can be of use to all kinds of families. Once uncovered and de-
scribed, these processes can also be comparedfor similarity and differencewith those
occurring in the new extended families that have accompanied family diversification.
There are several important questions that research on todays two-parent, long-
married families should pursue. For example, are these families characterized by fairly
traditional gender-based divisions of labor, or do these parents share a more equitable
division of housework, childcare, paid employment, and decision-making? The uniquely
high levels of humanistic and collectivistic values among Generation Xers from two-
parent families in our study may be related to a greater egalitarianism between still-
married mothers and fathers in the Baby Boom generation. Traditionally, women in the
United States have married men who were better educated than themselves. Improve-
ment in womens educational attainment over the past thirty years has, for the first time,
Ch-08.indd 323 7/8/2008 12:34:29 PM
324 Part III Parents and Children
reversed this trend. In fact, since 1980 marriages in which women were better educated
than their husbands have become more likely than marriages in which men were bet-
ter educated than their wives (Qian 1998). Womens greater education and economic
power within marriage may mean that they participate in household decision-making
about childrearing, consumption, and other life choices not only in their role as wives
and mothers but as educational equals and breadwinners. This change within marriages
may have served children well. We found, for example, that among two-biological-parent
families, mother/child bonds enhanced the values and self-esteem of Generation X youth
more than they did those of the previous generation.
The role of absentee fathers in a context of high divorce has been much inves-
tigated. We have found, consistent with other research (Amato 1994; Amato and Keith
1991), that divorced fathers have become increasingly disadvantaged in terms of their
emotional bonds with their young adult children when compared with mothers. Parental
divorce has reduced the ability of Baby Boomer fathers to influence their Generation
X childrens aspirations, self-esteem, and prosocial values, while mother/child affective
bonds and maternal influence have tended to remain high. Perhaps this is a reflection
of a broader cultural shift toward the feminization of kinship relations that has been
observed by other family researchers ( Fry 1995; Hagestad 1986; Rossi and Rossi 1990).
While evidence has accumulated showing decline in paternal investment in children
among divorced dads, some striking evidenceparticularly that assembled and analyzed
by Bianchi (2000)has also shown that todays married fathers are exhibiting an unprec-
edented, high level of involvement with their children. According to time diary studies
between 1965 and 1998, fathers time spent with children grew from about 25 percent
to fully two-thirds the amount of time that mothers spent with children. The greater
involvement of todays fathers within two-parent family contexts may be contributing
to the high levels of self-esteem and ambition that we observed in the aggregate among
Generation X youth. More generally, good parenting on the part of fatherscustodial
or noncustodialhas been shown to enhance many dimensions of childrens well-being
( Lamb 1997).
We have suggested that recent demographic trends (e.g., increased longevity and
active life expectancy) may have intersected with other demographic trends ( growth in
nonmarital fertility, divorce, remarriage, and the labor force participation of mothers) to
facilitate the growth of new kinds of extended families in the United States. The numbers
and kinds of multigenerational family members available to families and children have
certainly increased ( Bengtson 2001). The support functions served by multigenerational
family members may also have increased, accordingly. This kind of family expansion ap-
pears adaptive; that is, under diverse and potentially disruptive conditions, it may be a
way that families care for their children. It may also lie behind many of the findings of
this study: that families of all kinds still matter for children.
We have also proposed that, over time, processes within two-biological-parent
families have shifted in ways that benefit children. We believe that an intriguing and
important next step is to explore potential similarities and differences in processes that
occur in these new-form two-parent families, on the one hand, and these new-form ex-
tended families, on the other. For many families (probably an increasing number), close
multigenerational ties are adaptive and very much needed in a fast-changing world. The
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Chapter 8 Childhood and Youth 325
adaptive strengths evolving from these family arrangementsincluding, perhaps, shared
parenting, authoritative parenting practices (not just necessarily by parents, but also by
additional parent-like figures), egalitarian household arrangements, more collectivistic
and humanistic value orientationsmay parallel to some extent what is occurring in to-
days two-parent families, including the Baby Boom parents with Generation X children
in our study. It may be that through their intergenerational socialization processes and
practices, both two-parent families and extended multigenerational familiesthough
distinct in their relationship intensity or the immediacy of their responsibilities for
childrenengender similar patterns and strengths.
Proposition 3: Maternal Investment in Children
Has Not Declined Over Time
Social critics became alarmed at the huge growth in the labor force participation of
mothers over the past thirty years, for fear that the well-being of new generations of
children would be compromised by a lack of attention given to them by their mothers.
However, our study shows nonexistent, small, or ambiguous effects of mothers labor
force participation on children. This is similar to findings of other researchers ( Parcel
and Menaghan 1994).
The prognostications of negative consequences were not supported empirically, in
part because they rested on a shaky foundation: that the stay-at-home moms of yester-
year surely spent more time with their children than working moms do today. Bianchi
(2000) has questioned this assumption. She argues that the amount of nonmarket time
that mothers invested in children in the past has been overestimated. While employment
rates for mothers earlier in this century were much lower than today, mothers in the
past also faced more time-consuming family work and domestic chores, relied on older
children to spend time with the younger children, and had less education. Education is
positively correlated with the amount of direct time mothers spend caring for children.
Bianchi also suggests that the extent to which paid work takes mothers time away from
children today has been overestimated. The net result of these often offsetting trends,
according to many of the studies Bianchi draws from, is a relatively constant level of ma-
ternal investment in children over time, and a conclusion, consistent with the findings of
our study, that employment has generally not meant decline in mothers time with and
care for children.
This constancy in maternal investment may help explain why the consequences of
family change for Generation X youth were not more evident. In terms of their actual
time allocation to children, the mothers of our Baby Boomer and Generation X youth,
respectively, may not have been that different. Generation X children who experienced
divorce felt as close to their mothers as those who did not, suggesting again a kind of
safety net provided by a generally high and stable average level of maternal investment.
Other research has shown that in the context of divorce, mothers tend to sustain a high
level of emotional investment in children amidst spousal conflict and marital disruption,
whereas fathers relations with children diminish as their relationship with spouses di-
minish ( Belsky et al. 1991). This maternal investment (the parameters and variations of
which need to be carefully explored) may be linked to the patterns borne out by our data
Ch-08.indd 325 7/8/2008 12:34:30 PM
326 Part III Parents and Children
showing how familiesdivorced or not, dual-employed or notare bringing up children
with high self-esteem on average and aspirations that exceed those of each generation
before them.
High levels of paternal investment and involvement (among both residential and
nonresidential fathers) also positively affect many aspects of childrens lives, but evidence
shows that, on average, levels of paternal involvement are relatively low (Simons et al.
1996). However, if upward trends have been occurring in the proportion of highly in-
volved, good dads as described by Furstenberg (1988), this too may be linked to some
of the findings reported here.
THE PARADOX OF CONTINUITY AND
CHANGE ACROSS GENERATIONS
In concluding this examination of family functioning and change at the start of the twenty-
first century, we return to a question raised by philosophers and playwrights (and more
recently by social historians and social scientists) over six millennia of human experience:
How much is changing, and how much remains the same, across generations today?
Karl Mannheim (1952) called this the sociological problem of generations: the
ongoing tension between continuity and change, affirmation and innovation, as each new
generation comes into contact with the existing social order represented by their parents
generation, and how they attempt to adapt to or radically change this heritage.
Mannheim used this generational tension as a means to explain the development
of social and political movements in Europe throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, from cultural changes in style and art to political revolution and warfare. While
Mannheims sweeping sociopolitical theory has not been supported by subsequent analy-
ses, his central argument has become a central premise of life-course theory today.
The paradox of change and continuity is reflected in our data on family influences
on younger generations during the past three decades. We have approached this issue
from three analytic levels, each central to the life-course theoretical perspective in family
sociology and family psychology.
At the macrosocial level of analysis, it is important to recognize the changing con-
figurations of human demography reflected in the age structures of society, the social
metabolism of changes in birth and death rates, immigration and emigration, longevity
and morbidity. These trends are crucial for twenty-first-century societies, and particu-
larly for cross-generational relationships ( Bengtson and Putney 2000).
At the mesosocial level, the life-course perspective calls us to inquire about the in-
teractive effects of maturation, historical placement, and emerging sociohistorical events
on generational differences and continuities. And at the microsocial level, our focus is on
the processes by which generations within a family pass on the knowledge and values,
and the material and psychological resources that its members need to live successfully
in society.
It is within the familythe microsocial levelthat the paradox of continuity and
change, the problem of balancing individuality and allegiance, is most immediate. It is
Ch-08.indd 326 7/8/2008 12:34:30 PM
Chapter 8 Childhood and Youth 327
a fluid, unending process and at times contentious. At times we think that surely a break
from the past has occurred: Families arent what they used to be; families are in trou-
ble. Yet if we look closely, we can see threads of continuity and patterns of influence
across generations. These patterns within families across historical time have been the
focus of our study. How do they emerge? How are they sustained? What do they tell us
about the structure and function of families and intergenerational relations in our now
postindustrial world?
The family is the fulcrum balancing change and continuity over time in human
society. It has been so in the past; we believe it will be so in the twenty-first century. We
look to the family as the context for negotiating the problems of continuity and change,
of individuality and integration, between and within the generations in ways that allow
the continuous re-creation of society. Families still matter.
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and child outcome. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.
Treas, J. (1995). Older Americans in the 1990s and beyond. Population Bulletin, 50(2), 2 46.
Wallerstein, J. S., Lewis, J., and Blakeslee, S. (2000). The unexpected legacy of divorce: A 25-year landmark
study. New York: Hyperion Press.
R E A DI NG 2 5
A Longer Road to Adulthood
Jeffrey J. Arnett
In the past few decades a quiet revolution has taken place for young people in American
society, so quiet that it has been noticed only gradually and incompletely. As recently as
1970 the typical 21-year-old was married or about to be married, caring for a newborn
child or expecting one soon, done with education or about to be done, and settled into a
long-term job or the role of full-time mother. Young people of that time grew up quickly
and made serious enduring choices about their lives at a relatively early age. Today, the
life of a typical 21-year-old could hardly be more different. Marriage is at least five
years off, often more. Ditto parenthood. Education may last several more years, through
an extended undergraduate programthe four-year degree in five, six, or moreand
perhaps graduate or professional school. Job changes are frequent, as young people look
for work that will not only pay well but will also be personally fulfilling.
Ch-08.indd 328 7/8/2008 12:34:30 PM
Chapter 8 Childhood and Youth 329
For todays young people, the road to adulthood is a long one. They leave home
at age 18 or 19, but most do not marry, become parents, and find a long-term job until
at least their late twenties. From their late teens to their late twenties they explore the
possibilities available to them in love and work, and move gradually toward making en-
during choices. Such freedom to explore different options is exciting, and this period is a
time of high hopes and big dreams. However, it is also a time of anxiety and uncertainty,
because the lives of young people are so unsettled, and many of them have no idea where
their explorations will lead. They struggle with uncertainty even as they revel in being
freer than they ever were in childhood or ever will be once they take on the full weight
of adult responsibilities. To be a young American today is to experience both excitement
and uncertainty, wide-open possibility and confusion, new freedoms and new fears.
The rise in the ages of entering marriage and parenthood, the lengthening of higher
education, and prolonged job instability during the twenties reflect the development of a
new period of life for young people in the United States and other industrialized societies,
lasting from the late teens through the mid- to late twenties. This period is not simply an
extended adolescence, because it is much different from adolescence, much freer from
parental control, much more a period of independent exploration. Nor is it really young
adulthood, since this term implies that an early stage of adulthood has been reached,
whereas most young people in their twenties have not made the transitions historically asso-
ciated with adult statusespecially marriage and parenthoodand many of them feel they
have not yet reached adulthood. It is a new and historically unprecedented period of the life
course, so it requires a new term and a new way of thinking; I call it emerging adulthood.
Many Americans have noticed the change in how young people experience their
late teens and their twenties. In the 1990s Generation X became a widely used term
for people in this age period, inspired by Douglas Couplands 1991 novel of that title.
However, the characteristics of todays young people are not merely generational. The
changes that have created emerging adulthood are here to stayGenerations X, Y, Z,
and beyond will experience an extended period of exploration and instability in their late
teens and twenties. For this reason I believe emerging adulthood should be recognized
as a distinct new period of life that will be around for many generations to come.
In [the] book [this reading is from] I describe the characteristics of emerging adults,
based mainly on my research over the past decade, plus a synthesis of other research and
theories on the age period. In this [reading] I provide some historical background on the
rise of emerging adulthood and describe the periods distinctive features. I also explain
why the term emerging adulthood is preferable to other possible terms.
THE RISE OF EMERGING ADULTHOOD
Emerging adulthood has been created in part by the steep rise in the typical ages of
marriage and parenthood that has taken place in the past half century.
1
As you can see
in Figure 25.1, in 1950 the median age of marriage in the United States was just 20 for
women and 22 for men. Even as recently as 1970, these ages had risen only slightly, to
about 21 for women and 23 for men. However, since 1970 there has been a dramatic shift
Ch-08.indd 329 7/8/2008 12:34:30 PM
330 Part III Parents and Children
in the ages when Americans typically get married. By the year 2000 the typical age of
marriage was 25 for women and 27 for men, a four-year rise for both sexes in the space
of just three decades. Age at entering parenthood has followed a similar pattern. Then
as now, couples tend to have their first child about one year after marriage, on average.
2

So, from 1950 to 1970 most couples had their first child in their very early twenties,
whereas today most wait until at least their late twenties before becoming parents.
Why this dramatic rise in the typical ages of entering marriage and parenthood?
One reason is that the invention of the birth control pill, in combination with less strin-
gent standards of sexual morality after the sexual revolution of the 1960s and early 1970s,
meant that young people no longer had to enter marriage in order to have a regular
sexual relationship. Now most young people have a series of sexual relationships before
entering marriage,
3
and most Americans do not object to this, as long as sex does not
begin at an age that is too early (whatever that is) and as long as the number of partners
does not become too many (whatever that is). Although Americans may not be clear, in
their own minds, about what the precise rules ought to be for young peoples sexual re-
lationships, there is widespread tolerance now for sexual relations between young people
in their late teens and twenties in the context of a committed, loving relationship.
Another important reason for the rise in the typical ages of entering marriage
and parenthood is the increase in the years devoted to pursuing higher education. An
exceptionally high proportion of young people, about two thirds, now enter college after
graduating from high school.
4
This is a higher proportion than ever before in American
history. Among those who graduate from college, about one third go on to graduate
school the following year.
5
Most young people wait until they have finished school be-
fore they start thinking seriously about marriage and parenthood, and for many of them
this means postponing these commitments until at least their mid-twenties.
But it may be that the most important reason of all for the rise in the typical ages
of entering marriage and parenthood is less tangible than changes in sexual behavior
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
A
g
e
1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
Men
Women
Year
FIGURE 25.1 Median U.S. Marriage Age, 19502000
Ch-08.indd 330 7/8/2008 12:34:30 PM
Chapter 8 Childhood and Youth 331
or more years spent in college and graduate school. There has been a profound change
in how young people view the meaning and value of becoming an adult and entering
the adult roles of

spouse and parent. Young people of the 1950s were eager to enter
adulthood and settle down.
6
Perhaps because they grew up during the upheavals of
the Great Depression and World War II, achieving the stability of marriage, home,
and children seemed like a great accomplishment to them. Also, because many of them
planned to have three, four, or even five or more children, they had good reason to get
started early in order to have all the children they wanted and space them out at reason-
able intervals.
The young people of today, in contrast, see adulthood and its obligations in quite
a different light. In their late teens and early twenties, marriage, home, and children are
seen by most of them not as achievements to be pursued but as perils to be avoided. It
is not that they do not want marriage, a home, and (one or two) childreneventually.
Most of them do want to take on all of these adult obligations, and most of them will
have done so by the time they reach age 30. It is just that, in their late teens and early
twenties, they ponder these obligations and think, Yes, but not yet. Adulthood and its
obligations offer security and stability, but they also represent a closing of doorsthe end
of independence, the end of spontaneity, the end of a sense of wide-open possibilities.
Womens roles have also changed in ways that make an early entry into adult ob-
ligations less desirable for them now compared to 50 years ago. The young women of
1950 were under a great deal of social pressure to catch a man.
7
Being a single woman
was simply not a viable social status for a woman after her early twenties. Relatively few
women attended college, and those who did were often there for the purpose of obtain-
ing their m-r-s degree (in the joke of the day)that is, for the purpose of finding a
husband. The range of occupations open to young women was severely restricted, as it
had been traditionallysecretary, waitress, teacher, nurse, perhaps a few others. Even
these occupations were supposed to be temporary for young women. What they were
really supposed to be focusing on was finding a husband and having children. Having
no other real options, and facing social limbo if they remained unmarried for long, their
yearning for marriage and childrenthe sooner the betterwas sharpened.
For the young women of the 21st century, all this has changed. At every level of
education from grade school through graduate school girls now excel over boys.
8
Fifty-
six percent of the undergraduates in Americas colleges and universities are women, ac-
cording to the most recent figures.
9
Young womens occupational possibilities are now
virtually unlimited, and although men still dominate in engineering and some sciences,
women are equal to men in obtaining law and business degrees and nearly equal in ob-
taining medical degrees.
10
With so many options open to them, and with so little pressure
on them to marry by their early twenties, the lives of young American women today have
changed almost beyond recognition from what they were 50 years ago. And most of them
take on their new freedoms with alacrity, making the most of their emerging adult years
before they enter marriage and parenthood.
Although the rise of emerging adulthood is partly a consequence of the rising
ages of marriage and parenthood, marriage ages were also relatively high early in the
20th century and throughout the 19th century.
11
What is different now is that young
people are freer than they were in the past to use the intervening years, between the end
Ch-08.indd 331 7/8/2008 12:34:31 PM
332 Part III Parents and Children
of secondary school and entry into marriage and parenthood, to explore a wide range of
different possible future paths. Young people of the past were constricted in a variety of
ways, from gender roles to economics, which prevented them from using their late teens
and twenties for exploration. In contrast, todays emerging adults have unprecedented
freedom.
Not all of them have an equal portion of it, to be certain. Some live in conditions
of deprivation that make any chance of exploring life options severely limited, at best.
However, as a group, they have more freedom for exploration than young people in times
past. Their society grants them a long moratorium in their late teens and twenties with-
out expecting them to take on adult responsibilities as soon as they are able to do so. In-
stead, they are allowed to move into adult responsibilities gradually, at their own pace.
WHAT IS EMERGING ADULTHOOD?
What are the distinguishing features of emerging adulthood? What makes it distinct
from the adolescence that precedes it and the young adulthood that follows it? . . . [ I ]n
this [reading] I want to present an outline of what emerging adulthood is, in its essential
qualities. There are five main features:
12
1. It is the age of identity explorations, of trying out various possibilities, especially in
love and work.
2. It is the age of instability.
3. It is the most self-focused age of life.
4. It is the age of feeling in-between, in transition, neither adolescent nor adult.
5. It is the age of possibilities, when hopes flourish, when people have an unparalleled
opportunity to transform their lives.
Lets look at each of these features in turn.
The Age of Identity Explorations
Perhaps the most central feature of emerging adulthood is that it is the time when young
people explore possibilities for their lives in a variety of areas, especially love and work.
In the course of exploring possibilities in love and work, emerging adults clarify their
identities, that is, they learn more about who they are and what they want out of life.
Emerging adulthood offers the best opportunity for such self exploration. Emerging
adults have become more independent of their parents than they were as adolescents and
most of them have left home, but they have not yet entered the stable, enduring com-
mitments typical of adult life, such as a long-term job, marriage, and parenthood. During
this interval of years, when they are neither beholden to their parents nor committed to
a web of adult roles, they have an exceptional opportunity to try out different ways of
living and different options for love and work.
Of course, it is adolescence rather than emerging adulthood that has typically been
associated with identity formation. A half century ago Erik Erikson
13
designated identity
Ch-08.indd 332 7/8/2008 12:34:31 PM
Chapter 8 Childhood and Youth 333
versus role confusion as the central crisis of the adolescent stage of life, and in the decades
since he articulated this idea, the focus of research on identity has been on adolescence.
However, Erikson also commented on the prolonged adolescence typical of industrial-
ized societies and the psychosocial moratorium granted to young people in such societies,
during which the young adult through free role experimentation may find a niche in
some section of his society.
14
Decades later, this applies to many more young people
than when he wrote it.
15
If adolescence is the period from age 10 to 18 and emerging
adulthood is the period from (roughly) age 18 to the mid-twenties, most identity explo-
ration takes place in emerging adulthood rather than adolescence. Although research
on identity formation has focused mainly on adolescence, this research has shown that
identity achievement has rarely been reached by the end of high school and that identity
development continues through the late teens and the twenties.
16
In both love and work, the process of identity formation begins in adolescence but
intensifies in emerging adulthood. With regard to love, adolescent love tends to be ten-
tative and transient.
17
The implicit question is Who would I enjoy being with, here and
now? In contrast, explorations in love in emerging adulthood tend to involve a deeper
level of intimacy, and the implicit question is more identity-focused: What kind of
person am I, and what kind of person would suit me best as a partner through life? By
becoming involved with different people, emerging adults learn about the qualities that
are most important to them in another person, both the qualities that attract them and
the qualities they find distasteful and annoying. They also see how they are evaluated by
others who come to know them well. They learn what others find attractive in them
and perhaps what others find distasteful and annoying!
In work, too, there is a similar contrast between the transient and tentative explora-
tions of adolescence and the more serious and identity-focused explorations of emerging
adulthood. Most American adolescents have a part-time job at some point during high
school,
18
but most of their jobs last for only a few months at most. They tend to work in
service jobsrestaurants, retail stores, and so onunrelated to the work they expect to
be doing in adulthood, and they tend to view their jobs not as occupational preparation
but as a way to obtain the money that will support an active leisure lifeCDs, concert
tickets, restaurant meals, clothes, cars, travel, and so on.
19
In emerging adulthood, work experiences become more focused on laying the
groundwork for an adult occupation. In exploring various work possibilities and in ex-
ploring the educational possibilities that will prepare them for work, emerging adults
explore identity issues as well: What kind of work am I good at? What kind of work would
I find satisfying for the long term? What are my chances of getting a job in the field that
seems to suit me best? As they try out different jobs or college majors, emerging adults
learn more about themselves. They learn more about their abilities and interests. Just as
important, they learn what kinds of work they are not good at or do not want to do. In
work as in love, explorations in emerging adulthood commonly include the experience
of failure or disappointment. But as in love, the failures and disappointments in work can
be illuminating for self-understanding.
Although emerging adults become more focused and serious about their directions
in love and work than they were as adolescents, this change takes place gradually. Many
of the identity explorations of the emerging adult years are simply for fun, a kind of play,
Ch-08.indd 333 7/8/2008 12:34:31 PM
334 Part III Parents and Children
part of gaining a broad range of life experiences before settling down and taking on the
responsibilities of adult life. Emerging adults realize they are free in ways they will not
be during their thirties and beyond. For people who wish to have a variety of romantic
and sexual experiences, emerging adulthood is the time for it, when parental surveillance
has diminished and there is as yet little normative pressure to enter marriage. Similarly,
emerging adulthood is the time for trying out unusual educational and work possibili-
ties. Programs such as AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps find most of their volunteers
among emerging adults,
20
because emerging adults have both the freedom to pull up
stakes quickly in order to go somewhere new and the inclination to do something unusual.
Other emerging adults travel on their own to a different part of the country or the world
to work or study for a while. This, too, can be part of their identity explorations, part
of expanding the range of their personal experiences prior to making the more enduring
choices of adulthood. . . .
The Age of Instability
The explorations of emerging adults and their shifting choices in love and work make
emerging adulthood an exceptionally full and intense period of life but also an exception-
ally unstable one. Emerging adults know they are supposed to have a Plan with a capi-
tal P, that is, some kind of idea about the route they will be taking from adolescence to
adulthood,
21
and most of them come up with one. However, for almost all of them, their
Plan is subject to numerous revisions during the emerging adult years. These revisions
are a natural consequence of their explorations. They enter college and choose a major,
then discover the major is not as interesting as it seemedtime to revise the Plan. Or
they enter college and find themselves unable to focus on their studies, and their grades
sink accordinglytime to revise the Plan. Or they go to work after college but discover
after a year or two that they need more education if they ever expect to make decent
moneytime to revise the Plan. Or they move in with a boyfriend or girlfriend and start
to think of the Plan as founded on their future together, only to discover that they have
no future togethertime to revise the Plan.
With each revision in the Plan, they learn something about themselves and hope-
fully take a step toward clarifying the kind of future they want. But even if they succeed
in doing so, that does not mean the instability of emerging adulthood is easy. Sometimes
emerging adults look back wistfully on their high school years. Most of them remember
those years as filled with anguish in many ways, but in retrospect at least they knew what
they were going to be doing from one day, one week, one month to the next. In emerging
adulthood the anxieties of adolescence diminish, but instability replaces them as a new
source of disruption. . . .
The best illustration of the instability of emerging adulthood is in how often they
move from one residence to another. As Figure 25.2 indicates, rates of moving spike up-
ward beginning at age 18, reach their peak in the mid-twenties, then sharply decline.
22

This shows that emerging adults rarely know where they will be living from one year to
the next. It is easy to imagine the sources of their many moves. Their first move is to leave
home, often to go to college but sometimes just to be independent of their parents.
23

Other moves soon follow. If they drop out of college either temporarily or permanently,
Ch-08.indd 334 7/8/2008 12:34:31 PM
Chapter 8 Childhood and Youth 335
they may move again. They often live with roommates during emerging adulthood, some
of whom they get along with, some of whom they do notand when they do not, they
move again. They may move in with a boyfriend or girlfriend. Sometimes cohabitation
leads to marriage, sometimes it does notand when is does not, they move again. If they
graduate from college they move again, perhaps to start a new job to to enter graduate
school. For nearly half of emerging adults, at least one of their moves during the years
from age 18 to 25 will be back home to live with their parents.
24
. . .
All of this moving around makes emerging adulthood an unstable time, but it also
reflects the explorations that take place during the emerging adult years. Many of the
moves emerging adults make are for the purpose of some new period of exploration, in
love, work, or education. Exploration and instability go hand in hand.
The Self-Focused Age
There is no time of life that is more self-focused than emerging adulthood [ Figure 25.3].
Children and adolescents are self-focused in their own way, yes, but they always have
parents and teachers to answer to, and usually siblings as well. Nearly all of them live at
home with at least one parent. There are household rules and standards to follow, and if
they break them they risk the wrath of other family members. Parents keep track, at least
to some extent, of where they are and what they are doing. Although adolescents typically
grow more independent than they were as children, they remain part of a family system
that requires responses from them on a daily basis. In addition, nearly all of them attend
school, where teachers set the standards and monitor their behavior and performance.
By age 30, a new web of commitments and obligations is well established, for most
people. At that age, 75% of Americans have married and have had at least one child.
25

A new household, then, with new rules and standards. A spouse, instead of parents and
siblings, with whom they must coordinate activities and negotiate household duties and
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
P
e
r
c
e
n
t

W
h
o

M
o
v
e
d

i
n

P
a
s
t

Y
e
a
r
1519 1014 55+ 2024 2529 3034 3544 4554
Age
FIGURE 25.2 Rates of Moving, by Age
Ch-08.indd 335 7/8/2008 12:34:31 PM
336 Part III Parents and Children
requirements. A child, to be loved and provided for, who needs time and attention. An
employer, in a job and a field they are committed to and want to succeed in, who holds
them to standards of progress and achievement.
It is only in between, during emerging adulthood, that there are few ties that en-
tail daily obligations and commitments to others. Most young Americans leave home at
age 18 or 19, and moving out means that daily life is much more self-focused. What to
have for dinner? You decide. When to do the laundry? You decide. When (or whether)
to come home at night? You decide.
So many decisions! And those are the easy ones. They have to decide the hard
ones mostly on their own as well. Go to college? Work full time? Try to combine work
and college? Stay in college or drop out? Switch majors? Switch colleges? Switch jobs?
Switch apartments? Switch roommates? Break up with girlfriend /boyfriend? Move in
with girlfriend /boyfriend? Date someone new? Even for emerging adults who remain at
home, many of these decisions apply. Counsel may be offered or sought from parents and
friends, but many of these decisions mean clarifying in their own minds what they want,
and nobody can really tell them what they want but themselves.
To say that emerging adulthood is a self-focused time is not meant pejoratively.
There is nothing wrong about being self-focused during emerging adulthood; it is nor-
mal, healthy, and temporary. By focusing on them selves, emerging adults develop skills
for daily living, gain a better understanding of who they are and what they want from
life, and begin to build a foundation for their adult lives. The goal of their self-focusing
is self-sufficiency, learning to stand alone as a self-sufficient person, but they do not see
self-sufficiency as a permanent state. Rather, they view it as a necessary step before com-
mitting themselves to enduring relationships with others, in love and work.
The Age of Feeling In-Between
The exploration and instability of emerging adulthood give it the quality of an in-
between periodbetween adolescence, when most people live in their parents home
FIGURE 25.3 Most Emerging Adults Are Not Quite this Self-Focused!
Source: CATHY 1996 Cathy Guisewite. Reprinted with permission of Universal Press Syndicate.
All rights reserved.
Ch-08.indd 336 7/8/2008 12:34:31 PM
Chapter 8 Childhood and Youth 337
and are required to attend secondary school, and young adulthood, when most people
have entered marriage and parenthood and have settled into a stable occupational path.
In between the restrictions of adolescence and the responsibilities of adulthood lie the
explorations and instability of emerging adulthood.
It feels this way to emerging adults, toolike an age in-between, neither adolescent
nor adult, on the way to adulthood but not there yet. When asked whether they feel they
have reached adulthood, their responses are often ambiguous, with one foot in yes and the
other in no. For example, Lillian, 25, answered the question this way:
Sometimes I think Ive reached adulthood and then I sit down and eat ice cream directly
from the box, and I keep thinking, Ill know Im an adult when I dont eat ice cream
right out of the box any more! That seems like such a childish thing to do. But I guess
in some ways I feel like Im an adult. Im a pretty responsible person. I mean, if I say Im
going to do something, I do it. Im very responsible with my job. Financially, Im fairly
responsible with my money. But sometimes in social circumstances I feel uncomfortable
like I dont know what Im supposed to do, and I still feel like a little kid. So a lot of times
I dont really feel like an adult.
As Figure 25.4 demonstrates, about 60% of emerging adults aged 1825 report
this yes and no feeling in response to the question Do you feel that you have reached
adulthood?
26
Once they reach their late twenties and early thirties most Americans feel
they have definitely reached adulthood, but even then a substantial proportion, about
30%, still feels in-between. It is only in their later thirties, their forties, and their fifties
that this sense of ambiguity has faded for nearly everyone and the feeling of being adult
is well established.
The reason that so many emerging adults feel in-between is evident from the
criteria they consider to be most important for becoming an adult. The criteria most
1217 1825 2635
Age
3655
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
P
e
r
c
e
n
t
a
g
e
Yes
No
Yes and no
FIGURE 25.4 Do You Feel That You Have Reached Adulthood?
Ch-08.indd 337 7/8/2008 12:34:32 PM
338 Part III Parents and Children
important to them are gradual, so their feeling of becoming an adult is gradual, too. In
a variety of regions of the United States, in a variety of ethnic groups, in studies using
both questionnaires and interviews, people consistently state the following as the top
three criteria for adulthood:
27
1. Accept responsibility for yourself.
2. Make independent decisions.
3. Become financially independent.
All three criteria are gradual, incremental, rather than all at once. Consequently,
although emerging adults begin to feel adult by the time they reach age 18 or 19, they
do not feel completely adult until years later, some time in their mid- to late twenties.
By then they have become confident that they have reached a point where they accept
responsibility, make their own decisions, and are financially independent. While they are
in the process of developing those qualities, they feel in between adolescence and full
adulthood. . . .
The Age of Possibilities
Emerging adulthood is the age of possibilities, when many different futures remain open,
when little about a persons direction in life has been decided for certain. It tends to be
an age of high hopes and great expectations, in part because few of their dreams have
been tested in the fires of real life. Emerging adults look to the future and envision
a well-paying, satisfying job, a loving, lifelong marriage, and happy children who are
above average. In one national survey of 1824-year-olds, nearly all96%agreed with
the statement I am very sure that someday I will get to where I want to be in life.
28
The
dreary, dead-end jobs, the bitter divorces, the disappointing and disrespectful children
that some of them will find themselves experiencing in the years to comenone of them
imagine that this is what the future holds for them.
One feature of emerging adulthood that makes it the age of possibilities is that,
typically, emerging adults have left their family of origin but are not yet committed to
a new network of relationships and obligations. This is especially important for young
people who have grown up in difficult conditions. A chaotic or unhappy family is difficult
to rise above for children and adolescents, because they return to that family environment
every day and the familys problems are often reflected in problems of their own. If the
parents fight a lot, they have to listen to them. If the parents live in poverty, the children
live in poverty, too, most likely in dangerous neighborhoods with inferior schools. If
a parent is alcoholic, the disruptions from the parents problems rip through the rest of
the family as well. However, with emerging adulthood and departure from the family
home, an unparalleled opportunity begins for young people to transform their lives. For
those who have come from troubled families, this is their chance to try to straighten the
parts of themselves that have become twisted. . . .
Even for those who have come from families they regard as relatively happy and
healthy, emerging adulthood is an opportunity to transform themselves so that they are
not merely made in their parents images but have made independent decisions about
Ch-08.indd 338 7/8/2008 12:34:32 PM
Chapter 8 Childhood and Youth 339
what kind of person they wish to be and how they wish to live. During emerging adult-
hood they have an exceptionally wide scope for making their own decisions. Eventually,
virtually all emerging adults will enter new, long-term obligations in love and work, and
once they do their new obligations will set them on paths that resist change and that may
continue for the rest of their lives. But for now, while emerging adulthood lasts, they have
a chance to change their lives in profound ways.
29
Regardless of their family background, all emerging adults carry their family influ-
ences with them when they leave home, and the extent to which they can change what
they have become by the end of adolescence is not unlimited. Still, more than any other
period of life, emerging adulthood presents the possibility of change. For this limited
window of time7, perhaps 10, yearsthe fulfillment of all their hopes seems possible,
because for most people the range of their choices for how to live is greater than it has
ever been before and greater than it will ever be again.
Notes
1. Arnett (2000); Arnett & Taber (1994).
2. Arnett & Taber (1994). This applies to couples who marry. However, since the early 1970s, the
rate of single parenthood has grown dramatically, to a current rate of about 25% of all American
births. Consequently, the median age of entering parenthood used to be a year or so after mar-
riage, whereas today the median ages of marriage and parenthood are very similar. Nevertheless,
the point here remains valid, that the median ages of both marriage and parenthood have risen
steeply over the past half century.
3. Michael, Gagnon, Laumann, & Kolata (1995).
4. National Center for Education Statistics (2002).
5. Mogelonsky (1996). This is perhaps not as large a proportion as it sounds from this statistic.
Because only about one fourth of young Americans obtain a four-year degree (the rest drop out
or attend only two-year schools), one third of this one quarter is only about 8%. Nevertheless,
this percentage has risen steadily over recent decades. Also, there is an additional percentage who
attend graduate or professional school not immediately after graduating with a four-[ year] degree
but after spending some time out of higher education.
6. Modell (1989). There are no statistical data to confirm this, but this is the conclusion Modell
draws on the basis of his insightful historical analysis.
7. Modell (1989).
8. Sommers (2001). The rise in participation in higher education has been especially dramatic for
young women. Traditionally men were much more likely than women to obtain higher education
women were, in fact, barred from most colleges and universitiesbut young women surpassed
young men in the 1980s, and in the past decade the gender gap favoring women has been persis-
tent. See National Center for Education Statistics (2002), Table 20-2.
9. National Center for Education Statistics (2002).
10. Bianchi & Spain (1996); Dey & Hurtado (1999).
11. Arnett (1998); Arnett & Taber (1994).
12. Alan Reifman has developed a scale for assessing these five features, and initial results show em-
pirical support for them. See Reifman, Arnett, and Colwell (2003).
13. Erikson (1950).
14. Erikson (1968, p. 150).
15. As Gene Bockneck (1986) notes, numerous developmental theorists in the 20th century have
described something like what I am calling emerging adulthood. As far back as 1935, Charlotte
Buhler described a preparatory stage following adolescence that involved entry into self-chosen
and independent activity. More recently, Daniel Levinson and his colleagues (1978) delineated an
Ch-08.indd 339 7/8/2008 12:34:32 PM
340 Part III Parents and Children
early adult transition, lasting from age 17 to 22, which is characterized by separating physically
and psychologically from ones family, followed by a period of entering the adult world from
age 22 to 28, in which people explore possible roles and relationships and make tentative com-
mitments. But none of these theoretical ideas took root as a distinct area of scholarship on this
age period, perhaps because up until recently only a minority of young people (mainly men) were
able to use the late teens through the twenties for independent identity explorations.
16. Waterman (1999).
17. Feiring (1996); Furman, Brown, & Feiring (1999); Padgham & Blyth (1991).
18. Batting & Kelloway (1999); Csikszentmihalyi & Schneider (2000).
19. Bachman & Schulenberg (1993); Steinberg & Cauffman (1995).
20. See www.cns.gov/americorps and www.peacecorps.gov.
21. The idea about a Plan with a capital P is based on an essay by Elizabeth Greenspan (2000).
22. U.S. Bureau of the Census (2003).
23. Goldscheider & Goldscheider (1999).
24. Goldscheider & Goldscheider (1999).
25. Arnett (2000).
26. The graph is from Arnett (2000).
27. Arnett (1994, 1997, 1998, 2001, 2003); Nelson (2003).
28. Hornblower (1997).
29. A variety of scholars have commented on the increasing individualization of the self in posttra-
ditional societies, meaning that social timetables for the life course have become less standardized
and people now have a greater range of individual choice in when they make transitions such as
finishing education, marriage, and retirement (e.g., Heinz, 2002). I agree, but I would add that
the range of individual choice is greatest during emerging adulthood.
References
Arnett, J. J. (1994). Are college students adults? Their conceptions of the transition to adulthood. Jour-
nal of Adult Development, 1, 154168.
Arnett, J. J. (1997). Young peoples conceptions of the transition to adulthood. Youth & Society, 29,
123.
Arnett, J. J. (1998), Learning to stand alone: The contemporary American transition to adulthood in
cultural and historical context. Human Development, 41, 295315.
Arnett, J. J. (2000). Emerging adulthood: A theory of development from the late teens through the twen-
ties. American Psychologist, 55, 469480.
Arnett, J. J. (2001). Conceptions of the transition to adulthood: Perspectives from adolescence to midlife.
Journal of Adult Development, 8, 133143.
Arnett, J. J. (2003). Conceptions of the transition to adulthood among emerging adults in American
ethnic groups. New Directions in Child and Adolescent Development, 100, 6375.
Arnett, J., & Taber, S. (1994). Adolescence terminable and interminable: When does adolescence end?
Journal of Youth & Adolescence, 23, 517537.
Bachman, J. G., & Schulenberg, J. (1993). How part-time work intensity relates to drug use, problem
behavior, time use, and satisfaction among high school seniors: Are these consequences or just
correlates? Developmental Psychology, 29, 220235.
Barling, J., & Kelloway, E. K. (1999). Young workers: Varieties of experience. Washington, DC: American
Psychological Association.
Bianchi, S. M., & Spain, D. (1996). Women, work, and family in America. Population Bulletin, 51(3),
1 48.
Bockneck, G. (1986). The young adult: Development after adolescence. New York: Gardner.
Buhler, C. (1935). The curve of life as studied in biographies. Journal of Applied Psychology, 19, 405 409.
Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Schneider, B. (2000). Becoming adult: How teenagers prepare for the world of work.
New York: Basic.
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Dey, E. L., & Hurtado, S. (1999). Students, colleges, and society: Considering the interconnections. In
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first century: Social, political, and economic challenges (pp. 298322). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press.
Erikson, E. H. (1950). Childhood and society. New York: Norton.
Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity: Youth and crisis. New York: Norton.
Feiring, C. (1996). Concepts of romance in 15-year-olds. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 6, 181200.
Furman, W., Brown, B. B., & Feiring, C. (1999). The development of romantic relationships in adolescence.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Goldscheider, F., & Goldscheider, C. (1999). The changing transition to adulthood: Leaving and returning
home. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Greenspan, E. (2000, September 3). I had a plan: It just fell apart. Washington Post, p. B4.
Heinz, W. R. (2002). Self-socialization and post-traditional society. Advances in Life Course Research, 7,
4164.
Hornblower, M. (1997, June 9). Great Xpectations. Time, pp. 5868.
Levinson, D., Darrow, C., Klein, E., Levinson, M., & McKee, B. (1978). The seasons of a mans life. New
York: Knopf.
Michael, R. T., Gagnon, J. H., Laumann, E. O., & Kolata, G. (1995). Sex in America: A definitive survey.
New York: Warner.
Modell, J. (1989). Into ones own: From youth to adulthood in the United States, 19201975. Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press.
Mogelonsky, M. (1996, May). The rocky road to adulthood. American Demographics, 2636, 56.
National Center for Education Statistics. (2002). The condition of education, 2002. Washington, DC: U.S.
Department of Education. Available: www.nces.gov.
Nelson, L. J. (2003). Rites of passage in emerging adulthood: Perspectives of young Mormons. New
Directions in Child and Adolescent Development, 100, 3349.
Padgham, J. J., & Blyth, D. A. (1991). Dating during adolescence. In R. M. Lerner, A. C. Petersen, &
J. Brooks-Gunn ( Eds.), Encyclopedia of adolescence (pp. 196 198). New York: Garland.
Reifman, A., Arnett, J. J., & Colwell, M. J. (2003, August). The IDEA: Inventory of the Dimensions of
Emerging Adulthood. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological As-
sociation, Toronto, Canada.
Sommers, C. H. (2001). The war against boys: How misguided feminism is harming our young men. New
York: Touchstone.
Steinberg, L., & Cauffman, E. (1995). The impact of employment on adolescent development. In
R. Vasta ( Ed.), Annals of child development ( Vol. 11). London: Kingsley.
U.S. Bureau of the Census (2003). Geographic mobility: March 1997 to March 1998. Current Population
Reports (Series P-20, No. 520). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
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343
I V Families in Society
Almost a decade into the twenty-first century, Americans still tend to judge families by
the standards of sixty years ago. During the 1950s and 1960s, family scholars and the mass
media presented an image of the typical, normal, or model U.S. family. It included a father,
a mother, and two or three children living a middle-class existence in a single-family home
in an area neither rural nor urban. Father was the breadwinner, and mother was a full-time
homemaker. Both were white, as were virtually all families portrayed in the mass media.
No one denied that many families and individuals fell outside the standard nuclear
model. Single persons, one-parent families, two-parent families in which both parents
worked, three-generation families, and childless couples abounded. Three- or four- parent
families were not uncommon, as one or both divorced spouses often remarried. Many
families, moreover, neither white nor well-off, also varied from the dominant image. The
image scarcely reflected the increasing ratio of older people in the empty nest and retire-
ment stages of the life cycle. But like poverty before its discovery in the mid-1960s,
family complexity and variety existed on some dim fringe of semi-awareness.
When they were discussed, individuals or families who departed from the standard
model were analyzed in a context of pathology. Studies of one-parent families or work-
ing mothers, for example, focused on the harmful effects to children of such deviant
situations. Couples who were childless by choice were assumed to possess some basic
personality inadequacies. Single persons were similarly interpreted, or else thought to be
homosexual. Homosexuals symbolized evil, depravity, degradation, and mental illness.
Curiously, although social scientists have always emphasized the pluralism of U.S.
society in terms of ethnic groups, religion, and geographic region, the concept of plural-
ism had rarely been applied to the family. In the wake of the social upheavals of the 1960s
and 1970s, middle-class mainstream attitudes toward womens roles, sexuality, and the
family were transformed. Despite the backlash that peaked in the 1980s, the traditional
family did not return. U.S. families became increasingly diverse, and Americans were
increasingly willing to extend the notion of pluralism to family life.
The selections in this part of the book discuss not only diversity in families, but
also the reality that families are both embedded in and sensitive to changes in the social
structure and economics of U.S. life. The economic pressures on families since the mid-
1970s have done as much as feminism to draw women into the paid workforce. The two-
parent family in which both parents work is the form that now comes closest to being
the typical American family. In the 1950s, the working mother was considered deviant,
even though many women were employed in the labor force. It was taken for granted that
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344 Part IV Families in Society
maternal employment must be harmful to children; much current research on working
mothers still takes this social problem approach to the subject.
What really does happen in the family as women share the role of the family bread-
winner with their husbands? Arlie Hochschild and Anne Machung take a close look at the
emotional dynamics inside the family when both parents work full time and the second
shiftthe work of caring for children and maintaining the homeis not shared equita-
bly. The selection from their book portrays a painful dilemma common to many couples
in their study: The men saw themselves as having equal marriages; they were doing more
work around the house than their fathers had done and more than they thought other
men did. The women, whose lives were different from their own mothers, saw their
husbands contributions as falling far short of true equality. They resented having to carry
more than their share of the second shift, yet they stifled their angry feelings in order
to preserve their marriages. Still, this strategy took its toll on love and intimacy.
In their article, Kathleen Gerson and Jerry A. Jacobs challenge widespread notions
about families and work: first, the notion that the average person is putting in more time
at work than earlier generations did, and second, that there has been a cultural shift in
which people have come to prefer the workplace to the home. Gerson and Jacobs have
found that average working time has not changed all that much, but that this average is
misleading. Rather, the workforce has come to be divided; one group of workers is put-
ting in very long work weeks, while another group is unable to find enough work to meet
their needs. In fact, given a choice, both men and women, especially those with young
children, would prefer more time at home and greater flexibility at work.
This lack of flexibility in the workplace is one source of what has been called the the
opt out revolutionprofessional women supposedly leaving the workplace in droves to
become full-time mothers. Pamela Stones research was aimed at understanding the real-
ity behind the rhetoric. Were professional women really choosing to opt-out? Were
they really trying to return to the feminine mystique model of the family? Stone found
a more complicated reality. Rather than choosing to become full-time homemakers,
she discovered that these women actually faced a choice gap: the kind of work-and-
family balance they really wanted was simply not available to them. Instead, they were
caught between the demands of intensive motheringthe new higher standards of
middle class childrearingand the demands of todays high-pressure workplaces. Stone
concludes that the opting-out notion is a myth that harms not just women, but society.
Employers need the skills of high-achieving women, but they have created toxic work
environments that are incompatible with family life.
Of course its not only professionals facing the pressures of the new economy. Lil-
lian B. Rubin finds that words such as downsizing, restructuring, and reengineering have
become all too familiar and even terrifying to todays blue-collar workers and their fami-
lies. Rubin carried out a similar study of working-class families in the 1970s. She found
then that while these families were never entirely secure, they felt they had a grasp of
the American dream. Most owned their own homes, and expected that their children
would do even better. In the more recent study, the people Rubin interviewed perceived
a discontinuity between past and presenta sense that something had gone very wrong
in the country.
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Part IV Families in Society 345
Thirty-five percent of the men in the study were either unemployed at the time
or had experienced bouts of unemployment. Parents and children had given up hope of
upward mobility, or even the hope that the children could own homes comparable to
the ones they had grown up in. The families, particularly the men, were angry, yet per-
plexed about who or what to blamethe government, high taxes, immigrants, minorities,
womenfor displacing them from the jobs they once had.
About two out of five working Americans40 percent of our labor forceface ad-
ditional pressures from their nonstandard work schedules. As Harriet Presser explains,
todays nonstop 24/7 economy makes it necessary for millions of mostly lower income
people to work through the night, on weekends, or on shifts 12 or more hours long. This
work pattern has some advantages for families, but it also puts a heavy burden on them.
Nonstandard schedules are particularly hard on single mothers and married couples with
children.
Not even the solid middle class is immune from the stresses of the current econ-
omy. Millions of employed, educated, and homeowning Americans are in financial trou-
ble, having mortgages foreclosed and filing for bankruptcy. In 2004, more families filed
for bankruptcy than for divorce. In their article, Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren
Tyagi debunk what they call the over-consumption myththe idea that Americans
are spending themselves into financial ruin for luxuries they dont really need. Instead,
the rising costs of housing, decent elementary schools, and college tuition have placed
middle-class parents at greater risk than in earlier generations.
The next group of articles addresses family diversity along several dimensions
economic status, race, ethnicity, age, and sexual orientation. In recent years, family re-
searchers have recognized that diversity is more complicated than previously thought.
Its too simple to sort people into distinct categoriesAfrican Americans, Latinos, Asian
Americans, European Americans, or gays. These aspects of diversity cross-cut one an-
other, along with many other aspects of difference, such as social class, religion, region,
family structure (e.g., stepfamilies), and many more.
There is also great diversity within groups. In his article, Ronald L. Taylor explores
diversity among African American families. He recalls being troubled that the stereo-
types of African Americans that appeared in the media as well as in social science did not
reflect the families he knew growing up in a small southern city. The dominant image
of African American families remains the low-income, single-parent family living in a
crime-ridden inner-city neighborhood. Yet only a quarter of African American families
fit that description. All African Americans share a common history of slavery and segre-
gation, and they still face discrimination in housing and employment. Taylor discusses
the impact of these past and present features on African American family life.
Latino families are now emerging as Americas largest minority. They are more
diverse than other groups, as Maxine Baca Zinn and Barbara Wells show in their article.
Mexican Americans are the largest group among Latinos and have been the most stud-
ied, but Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Central and South Americans differ from those of
Mexican background and among themselves. These differences are not only cultural, but
also reflect the immigrants social and economic statuses in their home countries as well
as the reasons for and the timing of their departures for the United States. The new wave
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346 Part IV Families in Society
of immigration from Latin America as well as Asia and other non-European regions has
contributed to what demographers have called the browning of America.
The nation is also graying as the aging population continues to grow. By 2030,
people over 65 are expected to grow to 20 percent of the American population. As
Rona J. Karasik and Raeann R. Hamon point out in their article, it is also becoming
an increasingly diverse population. Thus far there has been relatively little research
focusing on the intersection of race, ethnicity, and culture in aging families. Karasik and
Hamon review what is known about diversity in late-life families. They examine cultural
differences in marriage, sibling relationships, and grandparenthood. They conclude by
suggesting that researchers and professionals dealing with the aging populations adopt
an attitude of cultural humility.
Diversity in American family life is not new, but gay and lesbian families are a new
addition to the mix. For some people, especially religious conservatives, homosexuality is
immoral and unnatural. As Judith Stacey makes clear in her article, families with same-sex
parents are here to stay. Stacey traces the emergence of these families in the wake of the
gay liberation movements of the 1970s, the growing willingness of courts and legislatures
to grant legal recognition to gay families, and the fierce backlash against such efforts.
Stacey argues that children in both gay and heterosexual families would benefit if both
law and society would be more accepting of diversity in American family life.
In the final chapter, we look at three kinds of family trouble. First, we consider an
issue that is rarely thought of as a family problem: the huge spike in the prison population
in recent decades due to the war on drugs and other get-tough-on-crime policies. The
United States now locks up a higher proportion of its citizens than any other country in
the world. People who commit violent crimes should go to prison, both as punishment
and to protect the community, but about half those now in prison for long sentences are
not there for violent acts. As Jeremy Travis points out, prison places a huge burden on the
families of prisoners, especially on their relationships with partners and children. He also
spells out the ripple effects that high rates of imprisonment have on poor and minority
communitiesfor example, creating a shortage of marriageable men.
Travis partially answers the questions that Katherine Edin and Maria Kefalas ad-
dress in their article on poor unmarried young mothers. Why do they have babies when
they know they will have to struggle to support them? Have they given up the marriage
norm? The Bush administration is currently promoting marriage as a poverty policy, on
the theory that if low-income people marry they will no longer be poor. In contrast, Edin
and Kefalas find that this kind of thinking is backwardtheir research shows that these
women revere marriage, and about 70 percent will eventually marry. But in Americas
poor neighborhoods, plagued by joblessness, drug and alcohol abuse, as well as high rates
of crime and imprisonment, a good man is hard to find. Edin and Kefalas conclude that
the real cure for poverty and too-early motherhood is access to good jobs for both
men and women.
The most dramatic and disturbing form of family trouble is violence between fam-
ily members. The media regularly report on shocking cases of child abuse or marital
violence. In his article, Michael P. Johnson offers a new answer to an ongoing debate
among family violence researchers: Are women as violent as men in intimate relation-
ships? Is there a battered husband syndrome that matches the widely recognized
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Part IV Families in Society 347
battered wife syndrome? Or does domestic violence always involve an aggressive male
and a female victim? There are reputable social scientists on each side of the argument, as
well as empirical data supporting each side. Johnson argues that the issue can be resolved
if we recognize that there are different types of family violence, and that researchers on
each side are looking at different data. The kind of violence that sends its victims to hos-
pital emergency rooms and shelters is almost always carried out by men against women.
Johnson calls this type intimate terrorism, and describes it as part of the general at-
tempt to take control of the partners life. Situational couple violence is something both
men and women admit to on surveys, but does not involve attempts to terrorize the other
person. A third type of violence is womens resistance to intimate terrorism.
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349
Work and Family Life
R E A DI NG 2 6
The Second Shift: Working Parents
and the Revolution at Home
Arlie Hochschild, with Anne Machung
Between 8:05 A.M. and 6:05 P.M., both Nancy and Evan are away from home, working
a first shift at full-time jobs. The rest of the time they deal with the varied tasks of
the second shift: shopping, cooking, paying bills; taking care of the car, the garden, and
yard; keeping harmony with Evans mother who drops over quite a bit, concerned
about Joey, with neighbors, their voluble babysitter, and each other. And Nancys talk
reflects a series of second-shift thoughts: Were out of barbecue sauce. . . . Joey needs
a Halloween costume. . . . The car needs a wash. . . . and so on. She reflects a certain
second-shift sensibility, a continual attunement to the task of striking and restriking the
right emotional balance between child, spouse, home, and outside job.
When I first met the Holts, Nancy was absorbing far more of the second shift
than Evan. She said she was doing 80 percent of the housework and 90 percent of the
childcare. Evan said she did 60 percent of the housework, 70 percent of the childcare.
Joey said, I vacuum the rug, and fold the dinner napkins, finally concluding, Mom
and I do it all. A neighbor agreed with Joey. Clearly, between Nancy and Evan, there
was a leisure gap: Evan had more than Nancy. I asked both of them, in separate in-
terviews, to explain to me how they had dealt with housework and childcare since their
marriage began.
One evening in the fifth year of their marriage, Nancy told me, when Joey was two
months old and almost four years before I met the Holts, she first seriously raised the
issue with Evan. I told him: Look, Evan, its not working. I do the housework, I take the
major care of Joey, and I work a full-time job. I get pissed. This is your house too. Joey
is your child too. Its not all my job to care for them. When I cooled down I put to him,
Look, how about this: Ill cook Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. You cook Tuesdays,
Thursdays, and, Saturdays. And well share or go out Sundays.
9
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350 Part IV Families in Society
According to Nancy, Evan said he didnt like rigid schedules. He said he didnt
necessarily agree with her standards of housekeeping, and didnt like that standard im-
posed on him, especially if she was sluffing off tasks on him which from time to time
he felt she was. But he went along with the idea in principle. Nancy said the first week
of the new plan went as follows: On Monday, she cooked. For Tuesday, Evan planned
a meal that required shopping for a few ingredients, but on his way home he forgot to
shop for them. He came home, saw nothing he could use in the refrigerator or in the
cupboard and suggested to Nancy that they go out for Chinese food. On Wednesday,
Nancy cooked. On Thursday morning, Nancy reminded Evan, Tonight its your turn.
That night Evan fixed hamburgers and french fries and Nancy was quick to praise him.
On Friday, Nancy cooked. On Saturday, Evan forgot again.
As this pattern continued, Nancys reminders became sharper. The sharper they
became, the more actively Evan forgotperhaps anticipating even sharper reprimands
if he resisted more directly. This cycle of passive refusal followed by disappointment and
anger gradually tightened, and before long the struggle had spread to the task of doing
the laundry. Nancy said it was only fair that Evan share the laundry. He agreed in prin-
ciple, but anxious that Evan would not share, Nancy wanted a clear, explicit agreement.
You ought to wash and fold every other load, she had told him. Evan experienced this
plan as a yoke around his neck. On many weekdays, at this point, a huge pile of laundry
sat like a disheveled guest on the living-room couch.
In her frustration, Nancy began to make subtle emotional jabs at Evan. I dont
know whats for dinner, she would say with a sigh. Or I cant cook now, Ive got to deal
with this pile of laundry. She tensed at the slightest criticism about household disorder;
if Evan wouldnt do the housework, he had absolutely no right to criticize how she did
it. She would burst out angrily at Evan. She recalled telling him: After work my feet are
just as tired as your feet. Im just as wound up as you are. I come home. I cook dinner.
I wash and I clean. Here we are, planning a second child, and I cant cope with the one
we have.
About two years after I first began visiting the Holts, I began to see the problem in
a certain light: as a conflict between their two gender ideologies. Nancy wanted to be the
sort of woman who was needed and appreciated both at home and at worklike Lacey,
she told me, on the television show Cagney and Lacey. She wanted Evan to appreciate
her for being a caring social worker, a committed wife, and a wonderful mother. But she
cared just as much that she be able to appreciate Evan for what he contributed at home,
not just for how he supported the family. She would feel proud to explain to women
friends that she was married to one of these rare new men.
A gender ideology is often rooted in early experience, and fueled by motives formed
early on and such motives can often be traced to some cautionary tale in early life. So it
was for Nancy. Nancy described her mother:
My mom was wonderful, a real aristocrat, but she was also terribly depressed being a house-
wife. My dad treated her like a doormat. She didnt have any self-confidence. And growing
up, I can remember her being really depressed. I grew up bound and determined not to be
like her and not to marry a man like my father. As long as Evan doesnt do the housework,
I feel it means hes going to be like my fathercoming home, putting his feet up, and hol-
lering at my mom to serve him. Thats my biggest fear. Ive had bad dreams about that.
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Chapter 9 Work and Family Life 351
Nancy thought that women friends her age, also in traditional marriages, had
come to similarly bad ends. She described a high school friend: Martha barely made
it through City College. She had no interest in learning anything. She spent nine years
trailing around behind her husband [a salesman]. Its a miserable marriage. She hand
washes all his shirts. The high point of her life was when she was eighteen and the two
of us were running around Miami Beach in a Mustang convertible. Shes gained seventy
pounds and she hates her life. To Nancy, Martha was a younger version of her mother,
depressed, lacking in self-esteem, a cautionary tale whose moral was if you want to be
happy, develop a career and get your husband to share at home. Asking Evan to help
again and again felt like hard work but it was essential to establishing her role as a
career woman.
For his own reasons, Evan imagined things very differently. He loved Nancy and
if Nancy loved being a social worker, he was happy and proud to support her in it. He
knew that because she took her caseload so seriously, it was draining work. But at the
same time, he did not see why, just because she chose this demanding career, he had to
change his own life. Why should her personal decision to work outside the home require
him to do more inside it? Nancy earned about two-thirds as much as Evan, and her salary
was a big help, but as Nancy confided, If push came to shove, we could do without it.
Nancy was a social worker because she loved it. Doing daily chores at home was thankless
work, certainly not something Evan needed her to appreciate about him. Equality in the
second shift meant a loss in his standard of living, and despite all the high-flown talk, he
felt he hadnt really bargained for it. He was happy to help Nancy at home if she needed
help; that was fine. That was only decent. But it was too risky a matter committing
himself to sharing.
Two other beliefs probably fueled his resistance as well. The first was his suspicion
that if he shared the second shift with Nancy, she would dominate him. Nancy would
ask him to do this, ask him to do that. It felt to Evan as if Nancy had won so many small
victories that he had to draw the line somewhere. Nancy had a declarative personality;
and as Nancy said, Evans mother sat me down and told me once that I was too forceful,
that Evan needed to take more authority. Both Nancy and Evan agreed that Evans sense
of career and self was in fact shakier than Nancys. He had been unemployed. She never
had. He had had some bouts of drinking in the past. Drinking was foreign to her. Evan
thought that sharing housework would upset a certain balance of power that felt cultur-
ally right. He held the purse strings and made the major decisions about large purchases
(like their house) because he knew more about finances and because hed chipped in
more inheritance than she when they married. His job difficulties had lowered his self-
respect, and now as a couple they had achieved some ineffable balancetilted in his
favor, she thoughtwhich, if corrected to equalize the burden of chores, would result in
his giving in too much. A certain driving anxiety behind Nancys strategy of actively
renegotiating roles had made Evan see agreement as giving in. When he wasnt feeling
good about work, he dreaded the idea of being under his wifes thumb at home.
Underneath these feelings; Evan perhaps also feared that Nancy was avoiding tak-
ing care of him. His own mother, a mild-mannered alcoholic, had by imperceptible steps
phased herself out of a mothers role, leaving him very much on his own. Perhaps a
personal motive to prevent that happening in his marriagea guess on my part, and
Ch-09.indd 351 7/8/2008 12:34:46 PM
352 Part IV Families in Society
unarticulated on hisunderlay his strategies of passive resistance. And he wasnt alto-
gether wrong to fear this. Meanwhile, he felt he was offering Nancy the chance to stay
home, or cut back her hours, and that she was refusing his gift; while Nancy felt that,
given her feelings about work, this offer was hardly a gift.
In the sixth year of her marriage, when Nancy again intensified her pressure on
Evan to commit himself to equal sharing, Evan recalled saying, Nancy, why dont you
cut back to half time, that way you can fit everything in. At first Nancy was baffled:
Weve been married all this time, and you still dont get it. Work is important to me.
I worked hard to get my MSW. Why should I give it up? Nancy also explained to Evan
and later to me, I think my degree and my job has been my way of reassuring myself
that I wont end up like my mother. Yet shed received little emotional support in getting
her degree from either her parents or in-laws. (Her mother had avoided asking about
her thesis, and her in-laws, though invited, did not attend her graduation, later claiming
theyd never been invited.)
In addition, Nancy was more excited about seeing her elderly clients in tenderloin
hotels than Evan was about selling couches to furniture salesmen with greased-back hair.
Why shouldnt Evan make as many compromises with his career ambitions and his leisure
as shed made with hers? She couldnt see it Evans way, and Evan couldnt see it hers.
In years of alternating struggle and compromise, Nancy had seen only fleeting
mirages of cooperation, visions that appeared when she got sick or withdrew and dis-
appeared when she got better or came forward.
After seven years of loving marriage, Nancy and Evan had finally come to a terrible
impasse. Their emotional standard of living had drastically declined, they began to snap
at each other, to criticize, to carp. Each felt taken advantage of. Evan, because his offering
of a good arrangement was deemed unacceptable, and Nancy, because Evan wouldnt do
what she deeply felt was fair.
This struggle made its way into their sexual lifefirst through Nancy directly, and
then through Joey. Nancy had always disdained any form of feminine wiliness or manipu-
lation. Her family saw her as a flaming feminist and that was how she saw herself. As
such, she felt above the underhanded ways traditional women used to get around men.
She mused, When I was a teenager, I vowed I would never use sex to get my way with
a man. It is not self-respecting; its demeaning. But when Evan refused to carry his load
at home, I did, I used sex, I said, Look, Evan, I would not be this exhausted and asexual
every night if I didnt have so much to face every morning. She felt reduced to an old
strategy, and her modern ideas made her ashamed of it. At the same time, shed run
out of other, modern ways.
The idea of a separation arose, and they became frightened. Nancy looked at the
deteriorating marriages and fresh divorces of couples with young children around them.
One unhappy husband they knew had become so uninvolved in family life (they didnt
know whether his unhappiness made him uninvolved, or whether his lack of involvement
had caused his wife to be unhappy) that his wife left him. In another case, Nancy felt the
wife had nagged her husband so much that he abandoned her for another woman. In
both cases, the couple was less happy after the divorce than before, and both wives took
the children and struggled desperately to survive financially. Nancy took stock. She asked
herself, Why wreck a marriage over a dirty frying pan? Is it really worth it?
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Chapter 9 Work and Family Life 353
UPSTAIRS-DOWNSTAIRS: A FAMILY
MYTH AS SOLUTION
Not long after this crisis in the Holts marriage, there was a dramatic lessening of tension
over the issue of the second shift. It was as if the issue was closed. Evan had won. Nancy
would do the second shift. Evan expressed vague guilt but beyond that he had nothing to
say. Nancy had wearied of continually raising the topic, wearied of the lack of resolution.
Now in the exhaustion of defeat, she wanted the struggle to be over too. Evan was so
good in other ways, why debilitate their marriage by continual quarreling. Besides, she
told me, Women always adjust more, dont they?
One day, when I asked Nancy to tell me who did which tasks from a long list
household chores, she interrupted me with a broad wave of her hand and said, I do the
upstairs, Evan does the downstairs. What does that mean? I asked. Matter-of-factly,
she explained that the upstairs included the living room, the dining room, the kitchen,
two bedrooms, and two baths. The downstairs meant the garage, a place for storage
and hobbiesEvans hobbies. She explained this was a sharing arrangement, without
humor or ironyjust as Evan did later. Both said they had agreed it was the best solution
to their dispute. Evan would take care of the car, the garage, and Max, the family dog.
As Nancy explained, the dog is all Evans problem. I dont have to deal with the dog.
Nancy took care of the rest.
For purposes of accommodating the second shift, then, the Holts garage was ele-
vated to the full moral and practical equivalent of the rest of the home. For Nancy and
Evan, upstairs and downstairs, inside and outside, were vaguely described like half
and half, a fair division of labor based on a natural division of their house.
The Holts presented their upstairs-downstairs agreement as a perfectly equitable
solution to a problem they once had. This belief is what we might call family myth,
even a modest delusional system. Why did they believe it? I think they believed it be-
cause they needed to believe it, because it solved a terrible problem. It allowed Nancy
to continue thinking of herself as the sort of woman whose husband didnt abuse hera
self-conception that mattered a great deal to her. And it avoided the hard truth that, in
his stolid, passive way, Evan had refused to share. It avoided the truth, too, that in their
showdown, Nancy was more afraid of divorce than Evan was. This outer cover to their
family life, this family myth was jointly devised. It was an attempt to agree that there
was no conflict over the second shift, no tension between their versions of manhood and
womanhood, that the powerful crisis that had arisen was temporary and minor.
The wish to avoid such a conflict is natural enough. But their avoidance tacitly
supported by the surrounding culture, especially the image of the woman with the flying
hair. After all, this admirable woman also proudly does the upstairs each day without a
husbands help and without conflict.
After Nancy and Evan reached their upstairs-downstairs agreement, the confronta-
tions ended. They were nearly forgotten. Yet, as she described daily life months after the
agreement, Nancys resentment still seemed alive and well. For example, she said:
Evan and I eventually divided the labor so that I do the upstairs and Evan does the down-
stairs and the dog. So the dog is my husbands problem. But when I was getting the dog
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354 Part IV Families in Society
outside and getting Joey ready for childcare, and cleaning up the mess, feeding the cat,
and getting the lunches together, and having my son wipe his nose on my outfit so I would
have to changethen I was pissed! I felt that I was doing everything. All Evan was doing
was getting up, having coffee, reading the paper, saying, Well, I have to go now, and
often forgetting the lunch Id bothered to make.
She also mentioned that she had fallen into the habit of putting Joey to bed in a
certain way: he asked to be swung around by the arms, dropped on the bed and nuzzled
and hugged, whispered to in his ear. Joey waited for her attention. He didnt go to sleep
without it. But, increasingly, when Nancy tried it at eight and nine, the ritual didnt put
Joey to sleep. On the contrary, it woke him up. It was then that Joey began to say he could
only go to sleep in his parents bed, that he began to sleep in their bed and to encroach
on their sexual life.
Near the end of my visits, it struck me that Nancy was putting Joey to bed in an ex-
citing way, later and later at night, in order to tell Evan something important: You win,
Ill go on doing all the work at home, but Im angry about it and Ill make you pay. Evan
had won the battle but lost the war. According to the family myth, all was well: the struggle
had been resolved by the upstairs-downstairs agreement. But suppressed in one area of
their marriage, this struggle lived on in anotheras Joeys Problem, and as theirs.
NANCYS PROGRAM TO SUSTAIN THE MYTH
There was a moment, I believe, when Nancy seemed to decide to give up on this one.
She decided to try not to resent Evan. Whether or not other women face a moment just
like this, at the very least they face the need to deal with all the feelings that naturally
arise from a clash between a treasured ideal and an incompatible reality. In the age of a
stalled revolution, it is a problem a great many women face.
Emotionally, Nancys compromise from time to time slipped; she would forget and
grow resentful again. Her new resolve needed maintenance. Only half aware that she was
doing so, Nancy went to extraordinary lengths to maintain it. She could tell me now,
a year or so after her decision, in a matter-of-fact and noncritical way: Evan likes to
come home to a hot meal. He doesnt like to clear the table. He doesnt like to do the
dishes. He likes to go watch TV. He likes to play with his son when he feels like it and
not feel like he should be with him more. She seemed resigned.
Everything was fine. But it had taken an extraordinary amount of complex emo-
tion workthe work of trying to feel the right feeling, the feeling she wanted to
feelto make and keep everything fine. Across the nation at this particular time in
history, this emotion work is often all that stands between the stalled revolution on the
one hand, and broken marriages on the other.
HOW MANY HOLTS?
In one key way the Holts were typical of the vast majority of two-job couples: their fam-
ily life had become the shock absorber for a stalled revolution whose origin lay far outside
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Chapter 9 Work and Family Life 355
itin economic and cultural trends that bear very differently on men and women. Nancy
was reading books, newspaper articles, and watching TV programs on the changing role of
women. Evan wasnt. Nancy felt benefited by these changes; Evan didnt. In her ideals and
in reality, Nancy was more different from her mother than Evan was from his father, for the
culture and economy were in general pressing change faster upon women like her than upon
men like Evan. Nancy had gone to college; her mother hadnt. Nancy had a professional
job; her mother never had. Nancy had the idea that she should be equal with her husband;
her mother hadnt been much exposed to that idea in her day. Nancy felt she should share
the job of earning money, and that Evan should share the work at home; her mother hadnt
imagined that was possible. Evan went to college, his father (and the other boys in his fam-
ily, though not the girls) had gone too. Work was important to Evans identity as a man as it
had been for his father before him. Indeed, Evan felt the same way about family roles as
his father had felt in his day. The new job opportunities and the feminist movement of the
1960s and 70s had transformed Nancy but left Evan pretty much the same. And the friction
created by this difference between them moved to the issue of second shift as metal to a
magnet. By the end, Evan did less housework and childcare than most men married to work-
ing womenbut not much less. Evan and Nancy were also typical of nearly 40 percent of
the marriages studied in their clash of gender ideologies and their corresponding difference
is a notion about what constituted a sacrifice and what did not. By far the most common
form of mismatch was like that between Nancy, an egalitarian, and Evan, a transitional.
But for most couples, the tensions between strategies did not move so quickly and
powerfully to issues of housework and childcare. Nancy pushed harder than most women
to get her husband to share the work at home, and she also lost more overwhelmingly
than the few other women who fought that hard. Evan pursued his strategy of passive
resistance with more quiet tenacity then most men, and he allowed himself to become far
more marginal to his sons life than most other fathers. The myth of the Holts equal
arrangement seems slightly more odd than other family myths that encapsulated equally
powerful conflicts.
Beyond their upstairs-downstairs myth, the Holts tell us a great deal about the sub-
tle ways a couple can encapsulate the tension caused by a struggle over the second shift
without resolving the problem or divorcing. Like Nancy Holt, many women struggle to
avoid, suppress, obscure, or mystify a frightening conflict over the second shift. They do
not struggle like this because they start off wanting to, or because such struggle is inevi-
table or because women inevitably lose, but because they are forced to choose between
equality and marriage. And they choose marriage. When asked about ideal relations
between men and women in general, about what they want for their daughters or about
what ideally theyd like in their own marriage, most working mothers wished their
men would share the work at home.
But many wish it instead of want it. Other goalslike keeping peace at
homecome first. Nancy Holt did some extraordinary behind-the-scenes emotion
work to prevent her ideals from clashing with her marriage. In the end she had con-
fined and miniaturized her ideas of equality successfully enough to do two things she
badly wanted to do: feel like a feminist, and live at peace with a man who was not. Her
program had worked. Evan won on the reality of the situation, because Nancy did the
second shift. Nancy won on the cover story, they would talk about it as if they shared.
Ch-09.indd 355 7/8/2008 12:34:47 PM
356 Part IV Families in Society
Nancy wore the upstairs-downstairs myth as an ideological cloak to protect her
from the contradictions in her marriage and from the cultural and economic forces that
press upon it. Nancy and Evan Holt were caught on opposite sides of the gender revolu-
tion occurring all around them. Through the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s masses of women
entered the public world of workbut went only so far up the occupational ladder. They
tried for equal marriages, but got only so far in achieving it. They married men who
liked them to work at the office and who wouldnt share the extra month a year at home.
When confusion about the identity of the working woman created a cultural vacuum in
the 1970s and 1980s, the image of the supermom quietly glided in. She made the stall
seem normal and happy. But beneath the happy image of the woman with the flying hair
are modern marriages like the Holts, reflecting intricate webs of tension, and the huge,
hidden emotional cost to women, men, and children of having to manage inequality.
Yet on the surface, all we might see would be Nancy Holt bounding confidently out
the door at 8:30 A.M. briefcase in one hand, Joey in the other. All we might hear would
be Nancys and Evans talk about their marriage as happy, normal, even equalbecause
equality was so important to Nancy.
R E A DI NG 2 7
The Work-Home Crunch
Kathleen Gerson and Jerry A. Jacobs
More than a decade has passed since the release of The Overworked American, a prominent
1991 book about the decline in Americans leisure time, and the work pace in the United
States only seems to have increased. From sleep-deprived parents to professionals who be-
lieve they must put in long hours to succeed at the office, the demands of work are colliding
with family responsibilities and placing a tremendous time squeeze on many Americans.
Yet beyond the apparent growth in the time that many Americans spend on the job
lies a more complex story. While many Americans are working more than ever, many
others are working less. What is more, finding a balance between work and other obli-
gations seems increasingly elusive to many workerswhether or not they are actually
putting in more time at work than workers in earlier generations. The increase in harried
workers and hurried families is a problem that demands solutions. But before we can
resolve this increasingly difficult time squeeze we must first understand its root causes.
AVERAGE WORKING TIME AND BEYOND
There arent enough hours in the day is an increasingly resonant refrain. To most ob-
servers, including many experts, the main culprit appears to be overworkour jobs just
take up too much of our time. Yet it is not clear that the average American is spending
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Chapter 9 Work and Family Life 357
more time on the job. Although it may come as a surprise to those who feel overstressed,
the average work weekthat is, hours spent working for pay by the average employee
has hardly changed over the past 30 years. Census Bureau interviews show, for example,
that the average male worked 43.5 hours a week in 1970 and 43.1 hours a week in 2000,
while the average female worked 37.1 hours in 1970 and 37.0 hours in 2000.
Why, then, do more and more Americans feel so pressed for time? The answer is
that averages can be misleading. Looking only at the average experience of American
workers misses key parts of the story. From the perspective of individual workers, it turns
out some Americans are working more than ever, while others are finding it harder to
get as much work as they need or would like. To complicate matters further, American
families are now more diverse than they were in the middle of the 20th century, when
male-breadwinner households predominated. Many more Americans now live in dual-
earner or single-parent families where all the adults work.
These two trendsthe growing split of the labor force and the transformation of
family lifelie at the heart of the new time dilemmas facing an increasing number of
Americans. But they have not affected all workers and all families in the same way. In-
stead, these changes have divided Americans into those who feel squeezed between their
work and the rest of their life, and those who have more time away from work than they
need or would like. No one trend fits both groups.
So, who are the time-squeezed, and how do they differ from those with fewer time
pressures but who may also have less work than they may want or need? To distinguish
and describe the two sets of Americans, we need to look at the experiences of both indi-
vidual workers and whole families. A focus on workers shows that they are increasingly
divided between those who put in very long work weeks and who are concentrated in
the better-paying jobs, and those who put in comparatively short work weeks, who are
more likely to have fewer educational credentials and are more likely to be concentrated
in the lower-paying jobs.
But the experiences of individuals does not tell the whole story. When we shift our
focus to the family, it becomes clear that time squeezes are linked to the total working
hours of family members in households. For this reason, two-job families and single par-
ents face heightened challenges. Moreover, women continue to assume the lions share of
home and child care responsibilities and are thus especially likely to be squeezed for time.
Changes in jobs and changes in families are putting overworked Americans and under-
employed Americans on distinct paths, are separating the two-earner and single-parent
households from the more traditional households, and are creating different futures for
parents (especially mothers) than for workers without children at home. (On the issue
of which specific schedules people work and the consequences of nonstandard shifts, see
The Economy that Never Sleeps, Contexts, Spring 2004.)
A GROWING DIVIDE IN INDIVIDUAL
WORKING TIME
In 1970, almost half of all employed men and women reported working 40 hours a week.
By 2000, just 2 in 5 worked these average hours. Instead, workers are now far more
likely to put in either very long or fairly short work weeks. The share of working men
Ch-09.indd 357 7/8/2008 12:34:47 PM
358 Part IV Families in Society
putting in 50 hours or more rose from 21 percent in 1970 to almost 27 percent in 2000,
while the share of working women putting in these long work weeks rose from 5 to
11 percent.
At the other end of the spectrum, more workers are also putting in shorter weeks.
In 1970, for example, 5 percent of men were employed for 30 or fewer hours a week,
while 9 percent worked these shortened weeks in 2000. The share of employed women
spending 30 or fewer hours on the job also climbed from 16 percent to 20 percent (see
Figure 27.1). In total, 13 million Americans in 2000 worked either shorter or longer work
weeks than they would have if the 1970s pattern had continued.
These changes in working time are not evenly distributed across occupations. In-
stead, they are strongly related to the kinds of jobs people hold. Managers and profes-
sionals, as one might expect, tend to put in the longest work weeks. More than 1 in 3 men
in this category now work 50 hours or more per week, compared to only 1 in 5 for men in
other occupations. For women, 1 in 6 professionals and managers work these long weeks,
compared to fewer than 1 in 14 for women in all other occupations. And because jobs are
closely linked to education, the gap in working time between the college educated and
those with fewer educational credentials has also grown since 1970.
Thus, time at work is growing most among those Americans who are most likely
to read articles and buy books about overwork in America. They may not be typical, but
they are indeed working more than their peers in earlier generations. If leisure time once
signaled an elite lifestyle, that no longer appears to be the case. Working relatively few
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
30 hours 30 hours 30 hours 30 hours
1970 2000
P
e
r
c
e
n
t
a
g
e

o
f

A
l
l

W
o
r
k
e
r
s
5%
21%
16%
20%
5%
11%
27%
9%
Women Men
FIGURE 27.1 The Percentage of Men and Women Who Put in 30 or Fewer Hours
and Who Put in 50 or More Hours a Week in 1970 and 2000
Source: Match Current Population Surveys; nonfarm wage and salary workers.
Ch-09.indd 358 7/8/2008 12:34:47 PM
Chapter 9 Work and Family Life 359
hours is now more likely to be concentrated among those with less education and less
elite jobs.
Workers do not necessarily prefer these new schedules. On the contrary, when
workers are asked about their ideal amount of time at work, a very different picture
emerges. For example, in a 1997 survey of workers conducted by the Families and Work
Institute, 60 percent of both men and women responded that they would like to work
less while 19 percent of men and women said that they would like to work more. Most
workersboth women and menaspire to work between 30 and 40 hours per week.
Men generally express a desire to work about 38 hours a week while women would like to
work about 32 hours. The small difference in the ideal working time of men and women
is less significant than the shared preferences among them. However, whether their jobs
require very long or comparatively short work weeks, this shared ideal does stand in
sharp contrast to their job realities. As some workers are pressured to put in more time
at work and others less, finding the right balance between work and the rest of life has
become increasingly elusive.
OVERWORKED INDIVIDUALS
OR OVERWORKED FAMILIES?
Fundamental shifts in family life exacerbate this growing division between the over- and
under-worked. While most analyses of working time focus on individual workers, time
squeezes are typically experienced by families, not isolated individuals. A 60-hour work
week for a father means something different depending on whether the mother stays at
home or also works a 60-hour week. Even a 40-hour work week can seem too long if
both members of a married couple are juggling job demands with family responsibilities.
And when a family depends on a single parent, the conflicts between home and work can
be even greater. Even if the length of the work week had not changed at all, the rise of
families that depend on either two incomes or one parent would suffice to explain why
Americans feel so pressed for time.
To understand how families experience time squeezes, we need to look at the com-
bined working time of all family members. For example, how do married couples with
two earners compare with those anchored by a sole, typically male, breadwinner? For all
married couples, the work week has indeed increased from an average of about 53 hours
in 1970 to 63 hours in 2000. Given that the average work week for individuals did not
change, it may seem strange that the couples family total grew so markedly. The ex-
planation for this apparent paradox is both straightforward and crucial: married women
are now far more likely to work. In 1970, half of all married-couple families had only
male breadwinners. By 2000, this group had shrunk to one quarter (see Figure 27.2). In
1970, one-third of all married-couple families had two wage-earners, but three-fifths did
in 2000. In fact, two-earner families are more common today than male-breadwinner
families were 30 years ago.
Each type of family is also working a little more each week, but this change is
relatively modest and certainly not large enough to account for the larger shift in total
household working time. Two-earner families put in close to 82 working hours in 2000
Ch-09.indd 359 7/8/2008 12:34:47 PM
360 Part IV Families in Society
compared with 78 hours in 1970. Male-breadwinner couples worked 44 hours on aver-
age in 1970 and 45 hours in 2000. The vast majority of the change in working time
over the past 30 years can thus be traced to changes in the kinds of families we live in
rather than to changes in how much we work. Two-earner couples work about as much
today as they did 30 years ago, but there are many more of them because more wives
are working.
Single parents, who are overwhelmingly mothers, are another group who are truly
caught in a time squeeze. They need to work as much as possible to support their family,
and they are less likely to be able to count on a partners help in meeting their childrens
daily needs. Although these households are not displayed in Figure 27.2, Census Bureau
data show that women headed one-fifth of all families in 2000, twice the share of female-
headed households in 1970. Even though their average work week remained unchanged
at 39 hours, the lack of childcare and other support services leaves them facing time
squeezes at least as sharp. Single fathers remain a much smaller group, but their ranks
have also grown rapidly. Single dads work almost as much as single moms37 hours
per week in 2000. Even though this represents a drop of two hours since 1970, single
fathers face time dilemmas as great as those facing single mothers. Being a single parent
has always posed daunting challenges, and now there are more mothers and fathers than
ever in this situation.
0
20
40
60
80
100
P
e
r
c
e
n
t
a
g
e

o
f

A
l
l

M
a
r
r
i
e
d

C
o
u
p
l
e
s
Both worked
Husband only
Wife only
Neither worked
5%
51%
36%
8%
7%
26%
60%
7%
1970 2000
worked
36 hours
worked
78 hours
worked
44 hours
worked
37 hours
worked
45 hours
worked
82 hours
FIGURE 27.2 Total Hours of Work per Week for Married Couples, 1970 and 2000
Source: March Current Population Surveys; nonfarm married couples aged 18 64.
Ch-09.indd 360 7/8/2008 12:34:47 PM
Chapter 9 Work and Family Life 361
At the heart of these shifts is American families growing reliance on a womans
earningswhether or not they depend on a mans earnings as well. Womens strength-
ened commitment to paid employment has provided more economic resources to fami-
lies and given couples more options for sharing the tasks of breadwinning and caretaking.
Yet this revolution in womens work has not been complemented by an equal growth
in the amount of time men spend away from the job or in the availability of organized
childcare. This limited change at the workplace and in mens lives has intensified the time
pressures facing women.
DUAL-EARNER PARENTS
AND WORKING TIME
The expansion of working time is especially important for families with children, where
work and family demands are most likely to conflict. Indeed, there is a persisting concern
that in their desire for paid work, families with two earners are shortchanging their children
in time and attention. A closer looks reveals that even though parents face increased time
pressure, they cope with these dilemmas by cutting back on their combined joint working
time when they have children at home. For example, U.S. Census data show that parents
in two-income families worked 3.3 fewer hours per week than spouses in two-income
families without children, a slightly wider difference than the 2.6 hours separating them
in 1970. Working hours also decline as the number of children increase. Couples with one
child under 18 jointly averaged 81 hours per week in 2000, while couples with three or
more children averaged 78 hours. Rather than forsaking their children, employed parents
are taking steps to adjust their work schedules to make more time for the rest of life.
However, it is mothers, not fathers, who are cutting back. Fathers actually work
more hours when they have children at home, and their working hours increase with the
number of children. Thus, the drop in joint working time among couples with children
reflects less working time among mothers. Figure 27.3 shows that in 2000, mothers
worked almost 4 fewer hours per week than married women without children. This gap
is not substantially different than in 1970.
This pattern of mothers reducing their hours while fathers increase them creates
a larger gender gap in work participation among couples with children compared to the
gender gap for childless couples. However, these differences are much smaller than the
once predominant pattern in which many women stopped working for pay altogether
when they bore children. While the transition to raising children continues to have dif-
ferent consequences for women and men, the size of this difference is diminishing.
It is also important to remember that the rise in working time among couples is not
concentrated among those with children at home. Though Americans continue to worry
about the consequences for children when both parents go to work, the move toward
more work involvement does not reflect neglect on the part of either mothers or fathers.
On the contrary, employed mothers continue to spend less time at the workplace than
their childless peers, while employed fathers today do not spend substantially more time
at work than men who are not fathers.
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362 Part IV Families in Society
SOLVING THE TIME PRESSURE PUZZLE
Even though changes in the average working time of American workers are modest,
many American families have good reason to feel overworked and time-deprived. The
last several decades have witnessed the emergence of a group of workers who face very
long work weeks and live in families that depend on either two incomes or one parent.
And while parents are putting in less time at work than their peers without children at
home, they shoulder domestic responsibilities that leave them facing clashes between
work demands and family needs.
The future of family well-being and gender equality will depend on developing
policies to help workers resolve the time pressures created by the widespread and deeply
rooted social changes discussed above. The first step toward developing effective policy
responses requires accepting the social transformations that sent women into the work-
place and left Americans wishing for a balance between work and family that is difficult
to achieve. Unfortunately, these changes in the lives of women and men continue to
evoke ambivalence.
For example, mothers continue to face strong pressures to devote intensive time and
attention to child rearing. Indeed, generally they want to, despite the rising economic and
social pressure to hold a paid job as well. Even though most contemporary mothers are
counted on to help support their families financially, the United States has yet to develop
the child care services and flexible jobs that can help workers meet their families needs.
Whether or not mothers work outside the home, they face conflicting expectations that
0
20
40
60
80
100
1970 2000 1970
Parents Non Parents
2000
Wives Husbands
T
o
t
a
l

H
o
u
r
s

W
o
r
k
e
d

i
n

a

W
e
e
k
b
y

M
a
r
r
i
e
d

C
o
u
p
l
e
s
32
45
35
45
36
43
39
45
FIGURE 27.3 Average Hours of Work per Week of Couples ( Parents and Non-Parents)
Source: March Current Population Surveys; nonfarm married couples aged 18 64.
Ch-09.indd 362 7/8/2008 12:34:48 PM
Chapter 9 Work and Family Life 363
are difficult to meet. These social contradictions can be seen in the political push to re-
quire poor, single mothers to work at a paid job while middle-class mothers continue to
be chastised for spending too much time on their jobs and away from home.
To a lesser but still important extent, fathers also face intensifying and competing
pressures. Despite American families increasing reliance on womens earnings, men face
significant barriers to family involvement. Resistance from employers and co-workers
continues to greet individual fathers who would like to spend less time at work to care
for their children. For all the concern and attention focused on employed mothers, social
policies that would help bring men more fully into the work of parenting get limited
notice or support. New time squeezes can thus be better understood by comparing the
large changes in womens lives with the relative lack of changes in the situation for men.
The family time bind is an unbalanced one.
Even as family time has become squeezed, workers are also contending with changes
in the options and expectations they face at work, Competitive workplaces appear to be
creating rising pressures for some workers, especially professionals and managers, to de-
vote an excessive amount of time to their jobs, while not offering enough work to others.
In contrast to these bifurcating options, American workers increasingly express a desire
to balance the important work of earning a living and caring for a new generation.
Finding solutions to these new time dilemmas will depend on developing large
scale policies that recognize and address the new needs of 21st century workers and their
families. As we suggest in our book, The Time Divide, these policies need to address the
basic organization of American work and community institutions. This includes revising
regulations on hours of work and providing benefit protections to more workers, moving
toward the norm of a shorter work week, creating more family-supportive workplaces
that offer both job flexibility and protections for employed parents, and developing a
wider array of high quality, affordable child care options.
Extending protections, such as proportional benefits and overtime pay, to workers
in a wider range of jobs and occupations would reduce the built-in incentives employers
have to extract as much work as possible from professionals and managers while offer-
ing less work to other employees. If professionals and managers were given overtime
pay for overtime work, which wage workers are now guaranteed under the Fair Labor
Standards Act, the pressures on these employees to put in endless workdays might lessen.
Yet, the Bush administration recently revised these rules to move more employees into
the category of those ineligible for overtime pay. Similarly, if part-time workers were of-
fered fringe benefits proportional to the hours they work (such as partial pensions), there
would be fewer reasons for employers to create jobs with work weeks so short that they
do not provide the economic security all families need.
Reducing the average work week to 35 hours would also reduce the pressures on
workers and help them find a better work-family balance. While this goal may seem
utopian, it is important to remember that the 40-hour standard also seemed unimagin-
ably idealistic before it was adopted in the early 20th century. Other countries, most
notably France, have adopted this standard without sacrificing economic well-being.
A shorter work week still would allow for variation in work styles and commitments,
but it would also create a new cultural standard that better reflects the needs and aspira-
tions of most contemporary workers. It would also help single parents meet their dual
Ch-09.indd 363 7/8/2008 12:34:48 PM
364 Part IV Families in Society
obligations and allow couples to fashion greater equality in their work and caretaking
responsibilities.
Time at work is clearly important, but it is not the whole story. The organization
of the workplace and the structure of jobs also matters, especially for those whose jobs
and occupations require intensive time at work. Among those putting in very long work
weeks, we find that having job flexibility and autonomy help ease the perceived strains
and conflicts. The work environment, especially in the form of support from supervisors
and co-workers, also makes a difference. In addition, we find that workers with access to
such family-friendly options as flexible work schedules are likely to use them, while work-
ers without such benefits would like to have them.
Flexibility and autonomy are only useful if workers feel able to use them. Women
and men both express concern that making use of family-friendly policies, such as ex-
tended parental leaves or nonstandard working hours, may endanger their future work
prospects. Social policies need to protect the rights of workers to be involved parents
without incurring excessive penalties at the workplace. Most Americans spend a portion
of their work lives simultaneously immersed in work for pay and in parenting. Providing
greater flexibility at the workplace will help workers develop both short- and longer-
term strategies for integrating work and family life. However, even basic changes in the
organization of work will not suffice to meet the needs of 21st century families. We also
need to join the ranks of virtually all other industrialized nations by creating widely
available, high quality and affordable child care. In a world where mothers and fathers
are at the workplace to stay, we need an expanded network of support to care for the
next generation of workers.
These changes will not be easy to achieve. But in one form or another, they have
been effectively adopted in other societies throughout the modern world. While no one
policy is a cure-all, taken together they offer a comprehensive approach for creating
genuine resolution to the time pressures that confront growing numbers of American
workers and their families. Ultimately, these new time dilemmas cannot be resolved by
chastising workers (and, most often, mothers) for working too much. Rather, the time
has come to create more flexible, family-supportive, and gender-equal workplaces and
communities that complement the 21st century forms of work and family life.
Recommended Resources
Bond, James T. Highlights of the National Study of the Changing Workforce. New York: Families and Work
Institute, 2003. Bond reports findings from a major national survey of contemporary American
workers, workplace conditions and work-family conflict.
Gornick, Janet, and Marcia Meyers. Families that Work: Policies for Reconciling Parenthood and Employment.
New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2003. This important study compares family-supportive
policies in Europe and the United States.
Hays, Sharon. The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997.
Hays examines how American mothers continue to face pressure to practice intensive parenting
even as they increase their commitment to paid work.
Heymann, Jody. The Widening Gap: Why Americas Working Families Are in Jeopardy And What Can Be
Done About It. New York: Basic Books, 2000. Drawing from a wide range of data, this study makes
a compelling case for more flexible work structures.
Ch-09.indd 364 7/8/2008 12:34:48 PM
Chapter 9 Work and Family Life 365
Hochschild, Arlie. The Time Bind: When Home Becomes Work and Work Becomes Home. New York: Metro-
politan Books, 1997. This is a rich study of how employees in one company try to reconcile the
tensions between spending time at work and caring for their families.
Jacobs, Jerry A., and Kathleen Gerson. The Time Divide: Work, Family and Gender Inequality. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. An overview of trends in working time, our book shows why
and how time pressures have emerged in America over the past three decades, how they are linked
to gender inequality and family change and what we can do to alleviate them.
Robinson, John P., and Geoffrey Godbey. Time For Life. The Surprising Ways Americans Use Their Time.
University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999. Drawing on time diaries, Robin-
son and Godbey conclude that Americans leisure time has increased.
Schor, Juliet. The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure. New York: Basic Books,
1991. This early and original analysis of how Americans are overworked sparked a national discus-
sion on and concern for the problem.
R E A DI NG 2 8
The Rhetoric and Reality
of Opting Out
Pamela Stone
As a senior publicist at a well-known media conglomerate, Regina Donofrio had one of
the most coveted, glamorous jobs in New York. A typical workday might include riding
around Manhattan in limousines with movie stars. She loved her job, had worked a
long time, and felt comfortable in it. So when the time came to return to work after
the birth of her first child, Regina did not hesitate. I decided I would go back to work,
because the job was great, basically, she told me. Before long, Regina found herself
crying on the train, torn between wanting to be at home with her baby and wanting
to keep up her successful, exciting career. She started feeling she was never in the right
place at the right time. When I was at work, I should have been at home. When I was at
home, I felt guilty because I had left work a little early to see the baby, and I had maybe
left some things undone. Ever resourceful, she devised a detailed job-share plan with
a colleague who was also a first-time mother. But their proposal was denied. Instead,
Reginas employer offered her more money to stay and work full time, and Regina left
in a huff, incensed that her employer, with whom she had a great track record, would
block her from doing what she wanted to docontinue with her career and combine
it with family.
Despite mainstream media portrayals to the contrary, Reginas reasons for quitting
are all too typical of what I found in my study of high-achieving, former professionals
who are now at-home moms. While Regina did, in fact, feel a strong urge to care for
her baby, she decided to quit because of an inflexible workplace, not because of her at-
traction to home and hearth. She gave up her high-powered career as a last resort, after
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366 Part IV Families in Society
agonized soul-searching and exhausting her options. Her story differs from the popular
depiction of similar, high-achieving, professional women who have headed home. Media
stories typically frame these womens decisions as choices about family and see them as
symptomatic of a kind of sea-change among the daughters of the feminist revolution, a
return to traditionalism and the resurgence of a new feminine mystique. The quintessen-
tial article in this prevailing story line (and the one that gave the phenomenon its name)
was published in 2003 by the New York Timess work-life columnist, Lisa Belkin, titled
The Opt-Out Revolution. Opting out is redolent with overtones of lifestyle prefer-
ence and discretion, but Reginas experience counters this characterization; her decision
to quit was not a lifestyle preference, nor a change in aspirations, nor a desire to return
to the 1950s family. Regina did not opt out of the workplace because she chose to, but
for precisely the opposite reason: because she had no real options and no choice.
High-achieving womens reasons for heading home are multilayered and complex,
and generally counter the common view that they quit because of babies and family. This
is what I found when I spoke to scores of women like Regina: highly educated, affluent,
mostly white, married women with children who had previously worked as professionals
or managers and whose husbands could support their being at home. Although many
of these women speak the language of choice and privilege, their stories reveal a choice
gapthe disjuncture between the rhetoric of choice and the reality of constraints like
those Regina encountered. The choice gap reflects the extent to which high achieving
women like Regina are caught in a double bind: spiraling parenting (read mothering)
demands on the home front collide with the increasing pace of work in the gilded cages
of elite professions.
SOME SKEPTICISM
I approached these interviews with skepticism tempered by a recognition that there
might be some truth to the popular image of the new traditionalist. But to get beyond
the predictable family explanation and the media drumbeat of choice, I thought it was
important to interview women in some depth and to study women who, at least theoreti-
cally, could exercise choice. I also gave women full anonymity, creating fictitious names
for them so they would speak to me as candidly as possible. The women I interviewed
had outstanding educational credentials; more than half had graduate degrees in busi-
ness, law, medicine, and other professions, and had once had thriving careers in which
they had worked about a decade. By any measure, these were work-committed women,
with strong reasons to continue with the careers in which they had invested so much.
Moreover, they were in high-status fields where they had more control over their jobs
and enjoyed (at least relative to workers in other fields) more family-friendly benefits.
While these women had compelling reasons to stay on the job, they also had the op-
tion not to, by virtue of their own past earnings and because their husbands were also high
earners. To counter the potential criticism that they were quitting or being let go because
they were not competent or up to the job, I expressly chose to study women with impecca-
ble educational credentials, women who had navigated elite environments with competitive
entry requirements. To ensure a diversity of perspectives, I conducted extensive, in-depth
Ch-09.indd 366 7/8/2008 12:34:48 PM
Chapter 9 Work and Family Life 367
interviews with 54 women in a variety of professionslaw, medicine, business, publishing,
management consulting, nonprofit administration, and the likeliving in major metro-
politan areas across the country, roughly half of them in their 30s, half in their 40s.
To be sure, at-home moms are a distinct minority. Despite the many articles pro-
claiming a trend of women going home, among the demographic of media scrutinywhite,
college-educated women, 3054 years oldfully 84 percent are now in the workforce,
up from 82 percent 20 years ago. And the much-discussed dip in the labor-force partici-
pation of mothers of young children, while real, appears to be largely a function of an
economic downturn, which depresses employment for all workers.
Nevertheless, these women are important to study. Elite, educated, high-achieving
women have historically been cultural arbiters, defining what is acceptable for all women
in their work and family roles. This groups entrance into high-status, formerly male pro-
fessions has been crucial to advancing gender parity and narrowing the wage gap, which
stubbornly persists to this day. At home, moreover, they are rendered silent and invisible,
so that it is easy to project and speculate about them. We can see in them whatever we
want to, and perhaps that is why they have been the subject of endless speculationabout
mommy wars, a return to traditionalism, and the like. While they do not represent all
women, elite womens experiences provide a glimpse into the work-family negotiations
that all women face. And their stories lead us to ask, If the most privileged women of
society cannot successfully combine work and family, who can?
MOTHERHOOD PULLS
When Regina initially went back to work, she had no clue that she would feel so torn.
She advises women not to set too much in stone, because you just dont know, when a
human being comes out of your body, how youre going to feel. For some women, the
pull of children was immediate and strong. Lauren Quattrone, a lawyer, found herself
absolutely besotted with this baby. . . . I realized that I just couldnt bear to leave him.
Women such as Lauren tended to quit fairly soon after their first child was born. For
others, like Diane Childs, formerly a nonprofit executive, the desire to be home with the
kids came later. I felt that it was easy to leave a baby for twelve hours a day. That I could
do. But to leave a six-year-old, I just thought, was a whole different thing.
But none of these women made their decisions to quit in a vacuum. In fact, they did
so during a cultural moment when norms and practices for parentsmothersare very
demanding. These women realized they would rear children very differently from the
way their own mothers raised them, feeling an external, almost competitive pressure to
do so. Middle- and upper-middle-class women tend to be particularly mindful of expert
advice, and these women were acutely aware of a well-documented intensification in
raising children, which sociologist Sharon Hays calls an ideology of intensive mother-
ing. This cultural imperative, felt by women of all kinds, advises mothers to expend a
tremendous amount of time, energy and money in raising their children.
A corollary is what Annette Lareau terms concerted cultivation, a nonstop pace
of organized activities scheduled by parents for school-age children. Among the women
I spoke to, some, like Diane, felt the urgency of concerted cultivation and reevaluated
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368 Part IV Families in Society
their childcare as the more sophisticated needs of their older children superseded the
simpler, more straightforward babysitting and physical care required for younger chil-
dren. Marina Isherwood, a former executive in the health care industry, with children in
the second and fourth grades, became convinced that caregivers could not replace her
own parental influence:
There isnt a substitute, no matter how good the childcare. When theyre little, the fact
that someone else is doing the stuff with them is fine. It wasnt the part that I loved anyway.
But when they start asking you questions about values, you dont want your babysitter
telling them. . . . Our children come home, and they have all this homework to do, and
piano lessons and this and this, and its all a complicated schedule. And, yes, you could get
an au pair to do that, to balance it all, but theyre not going to necessarily teach you how
to think about math. Or help you come up with mnemonic devices to memorize all of the
countries in Spain or whatever.
Because academic credentials were so important to these womens (and their husbands)
career opportunities, formal schooling was a critical factor in their decisions to quit.
For some, the premium they placed on education and values widened the gap between
themselves and their less educated caregivers.
Depending on the woman, motherhood played a larger or smaller role in her deci-
sion whether and when to quit. Children were the main focus of womens caregiving,
but other family members needed care as well, for which women felt responsible. About
10 percent of the women spoke of significant elder-care responsibilities, the need for
which was especially unpredictable. This type of caregiving and mothering made up
half of the family/career double bind. More important, though, motherhood influenced
womens decision to quit as they came to see the rhythms and values of the workplace as
antagonistic to family life.
WORKPLACE PUSHES
On top of their demanding mothering regime, these women received mixed messages from
both their husbands and their employers. Husbands offered emotional support to wives
who were juggling career and family. Emily Mitchell, an accountant, described her mar-
riage to a CPA as a pretty equal relationship, but when his career became more demand-
ing, requiring long hours and Saturdays at work, he saw the downside of egalitarianism:
I think he never minded taking my daughter to the sitter, that was never an issue, and
when he would come home, we have a pretty equal relationship on that stuff. But getting
her up, getting her ready, getting himself ready to go into work, me coming home, getting
her, getting her to bed, getting unwound from work, and then he would come home, wed
try to do something for dinner, and then there was always something else to dolaundry,
cleaning, whateverI think he was feeling too much on a treadmill.
But husbands did little to share family responsibilities, instead maintaining their own
demanding careers full-speed ahead.
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Chapter 9 Work and Family Life 369
Similarly, many workplaces claimed to be family friendly and offered a variety
of supports. But for women who could take advantage of them, flexible work sched-
ules (which usually meant working part-time) carried significant penalties. Women who
shifted to part-time work typically saw their jobs gutted of significant responsibilities
and the once-flourishing careers derailed. Worse, part-time hours often crept up to the
equivalent of full time. When Diane Childs had children, she scaled back to part time
and began to feel the pointlessness of continuing:
And Im never going to get anywhereyou have the feeling that you just plateaued profes-
sionally because you cant take on the extra projects; you cant travel at a moments notice;
you cant stay late; youre not flexible on the Friday thing because that could mean finding
someone to take your kids. You really plateau for a much longer period of time than you
ever realize when you first have a baby. Its like youre going to be plateaued for thirteen
to fifteen years.
Lynn Hamilton, an M.D., met her husband at Princeton, where they were both
undergraduates. Her story illustrates how family pulls and workplace pushes (from both
her career and her husbands) interacted in a marriage that was founded on professional
equality but then devolved to the detriment of her career:
We met when we were 19 years old, and so, there I was, so naive, I thought, well, here
we are, we have virtually identical credentials and comparable income earnings. Thats
an opportunity. And, in fact, I think our incomes were identical at the time I quit. To the
extent to which we have articulated it, it was always understood, well, with both of us
working, neither of us would have to be working these killer jobs. So, what was happen-
ing was, instead, we were both working these killer jobs. And I kept saying, We need to
reconfigure this. And what I realized was, he wasnt going to.
Meanwhile, her young daughter was having behavioral problems at school, and her job
as a medical director for a biomedical start-up company had the fax machine going, the
three phone lines upstairs, they were going. Lynn slowly realized that the only recon-
figuration possible, in the face of her husbands absence, was for her to quit.
Over half (60 percent) of the women I spoke to mentioned their husbands as one of
the key reasons why they quit. That not all women talked about their husbands involve-
ment, or lack thereof, reveals the degree to which they perceived the work-family balanc-
ing act to be their responsibility alone. But women seldom mentioned their husbands for
another reason: they were, quite literally, absent.
Helena Norton, an educational administrator who characterized her husband as a
workaholic, poignantly described a scenario that many others took for granted and which
illustrates a pattern typical of many of these womens lives: He was leaving early mornings;
6:00 or 6:30 before anyone was up, and then he was coming home late at night. So I felt this
real emptiness, getting up in the morning to, not necessarily an empty house, because my
children were there, but I did, I felt empty, and then going to bed, and he wasnt there.
In not being there to pick up the slack, many husbands had an important indi-
rect impact on their wives decisions to quit. Deferring to their husbands careers and
exempting them from household chores, these women tended to accept this situation.
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370 Part IV Families in Society
Indeed, privileging their husbands careers was a pervasive, almost tacit undercurrent of
their stories.
When talking about their husbands, women said the same things: variations on
hes supportive, and that he gave them a choice. But this hands-off approach revealed
husbands to be bystanders, not participants, in the work family bind. Its your choice
was code for its your problem. And husbands absences, a direct result of their own
high-powered careers, put a great deal of pressure on women to do it all, thus undermin-
ing the faade of egalitarianism.
Family pullsfrom children and, as a result of their own long work hours, their
husbandsexacerbated workplace pushes; and all but seven women cited features of their
jobsthe long hours, the travelas another major motivation in quitting. Marketing
executive Nathalie Everett spoke for many women when she remarked that her full-time
workweek was really 60 hours, not 40. Nobody works nine-to-five anymore.
Surprisingly, the women I interviewed, like Nathalie, neither questioned nor showed
much resentment toward the features of their jobs that kept them from fully integrating
work and family. They routinely described their jobs as all or nothing and appeared to
internalize what sociologists call the ideal worker model of a (typically male) worker
unencumbered by family demands. This model was so influential that those working
part time or in other flexible arrangements often felt stigmatized. Christine Thomas,
a marketing executive and job-sharer, used imagery reminiscent of The Scarlet Letter to
describe her experience: When you job share, you have MOMMY stamped in huge
letters on your forehead.
While some womens decisions could be attributed to their unquestioning accep-
tance of the status quo or a lack of imagination, the unsuccessful attempts of others
who tried to make it work by pursuing alternatives to full-time, like Diane, serve as
cautionary tales. Women who made arrangements with bosses felt like they were being
given special favors. Their part-time schedules were privately negotiated, hence fragile
and unstable, and were especially vulnerable in the context of any kind of organizational
restructuring such as mergers.
THE CHOICE GAP
Given the incongruity of these womens experiencesthey felt supported by supportive
yet passive husbands and pushed out by workplaces that once prized their expertisehow
did these women understand their situation? How did they make sense of professions
that, on the one hand, gave them considerable status and rewards, and, on the other hand,
seemed to marginalize them and force them to compromise their identity as mothers?
The overwhelming majority felt the same way as Melissa Wyatt, the 34-year-old
who gave up a job as a fund-raiser: I think today its all about choices, and the choices we
want to make. And I think thats great. I think it just depends where you want to spend
your time. But a few shared the outlook of Olivia Pastore, a 42-year-old ex-lawyer:
Ive had a lot of women say to me, Boy, if I had the choice of, if I could balance, if I could
work part-time, if I could keep doing it. And there are some women who are going to stay
home full-time no matter what and thats fine. But there are a number of women, I think,
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Chapter 9 Work and Family Life 371
who are home because theyre caught between a rock and a hard place. . . . Theres a lot
of talk about the individual decisions of individual women. Is it good? Is it bad? She gave
it up. She couldnt hack it. . . . And theres not enough blame, if you will, being laid at
the feet of the culture, the jobs, society.
My findings show that Olivias commentsabout the disjuncture between the rhet-
oric of choice and the reality of constraint that shapes womens decisions to go home
are closer to the mark. Between trying to be the ideal mother (in an era of intensive
mothering) and the ideal worker (a model based on a man with a stay-at-home wife),
these high-flying women faced a double bind. Indeed, their options were much more lim-
ited than they seemed. Fundamentally, they faced a choice gap: the difference between
the decisions women could have made about their careers if they were not mothers or
caregivers and the decisions they had to make in their circumstances as mothers married
to high-octane husbands in ultimately unyielding professions. This choice gap obscures
individual preferences, and thus reveals the things Olivia railed againstculture, jobs,
societythe kinds of things sociologists call structure.
Overall, women based their decisions on mutually reinforcing and interlocking
factors. They confronted, for instance, two sets of trade-offs: kids versus careers, and
their own careers versus those of their husbands. For many, circumstances beyond their
control strongly influenced their decision to quit. On the family side of the equation,
for example, women had to deal with caregiving for sick children and elderly parents,
childrens developmental problems, and special care needs. Such reasons figured in one-
third of the sample. On the work side, women were denied part-time arrangements, a
couple were laid off, and some had to relocate for their own careers or their husbands.
A total of 30 women, a little more than half the sample, mentioned at least one forced-
choice consideration.
But even before women had children, the prospect of pregnancy loomed in the
background, making women feel that they were perceived as flight risks. In her first
day on the job as a marketing executive, for example, Patricia Lamberts boss asked her:
So, are you going to have kids? And once women did get pregnant, they reported that
they were often the first in their office, which made them feel more like outsiders. Some
remarked that a dearth of role models created an atmosphere unsympathetic to work-
family needs. And as these women navigated pregnancy and their lives beyond, their
stories revealed a latent bias against mothers in their workplaces. What some women
took from this was that pregnancy was a dirty little secret not to be openly discussed.
The private nature of pregnancy thus complicated womens decisions regarding their
careers once they became mothers, which is why they often waited until the last minute
to figure out their next steps. Their experiences contrasted with the formal policies of
their workplaces, which touted themselves as family friendly.
THE RHETORIC OF CHOICE
Given the indisputable obstacleshostile workplaces and absentee husbandsthat sty-
mied a full integration of work and family, it was ironic that most of the women invoked
choice when relating the events surrounding their decision to exit their careers. Why
Ch-09.indd 371 7/8/2008 12:34:49 PM
372 Part IV Families in Society
were there not more women like Olivia, railing against the tyranny of an outmoded
workplace that favored a 1950s-era employee or bemoaning their husbands drive for
achievement at the expense of their own?
I found that these women tended to use the rhetoric of choice in the service of their
exceptionality. Women associated choice with privilege, feminism, and personal agency,
and internalized it as a reflection of their own perfectionism. This was an attractive com-
bination that played to their drive for achievement and also served to compensate for their
loss of the careers they loved and the professional identities they valued. Some of these
women bought into the media message that being an at-home mom was a status symbol,
promoted by such cultural arbiters as New York Magazine and the Wall Street Journal.
Their ability to go home reflected their husbands career success, in which they and their
children basked. Living out the traditional lifestyle, male breadwinner and stay-at-home-
mom, which they were fortunate to be able to choose, they saw themselves as realizing the
dreams of third-wave feminism. The goals of earlier, second-wave feminism, economic
independence and gender equality, took a back seat, at least temporarily.
CHALLENGING THE MYTH
These strategies and rhetoric, and the apparent invisibility of the choice gap, reveal
how fully these high-achieving women internalized the double bind and the intensive
mothering and ideal-worker models on which it rests. The downside, of course, is that
they blamed themselves for failing to have it all rather than any actual structural con-
straints. That work and family were incompatible was the overwhelming message they
took from their experiences. And when they quit, not wanting to burn bridges, they cited
family obligations as the reason, not their dissatisfaction with work, in accordance with
social expectations. By adopting the socially desirable and gender-consistent explanation
of family, women often contributed to the larger misunderstanding surrounding their
decision. Their own explanations endorsed the prevalent idea that quitting to go home
is a choice. Employers rarely challenged womens explanations. Nor did they try to con-
vince them to stay, thus reinforcing womens perception that their decision was the right
thing to do as mothers, and perpetuating the reigning media image of these women as
the new traditionalists.
Taken at face value, these women do seem to be traditional. But by rejecting an
intransigent workplace, their quitting signifies a kind of silent strike. They were not
acquiescing to traditional gender roles by quitting, but voting with their feet against an
outdated model of work. When women are not posing for the camera or worried about
offending former employers (from whom they may need future references), they are able
to share their stories candidly. From what I found, the truth is far different and certainly
more nuanced than the media depiction.
The vast majority of the type of women I studied do not want to choose between
career and family. The demanding nature of todays parenting puts added pressure on
women. Women do indeed need to learn to be good enough mothers, and their hus-
bands need to engage more equally in parenting. But on the basis of what they told me,
women today choose to be home full-time not as much because of parenting overload
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Chapter 9 Work and Family Life 373
as because of work overload, specifically long hours and the lack of flexible options in
their high-status jobs. The popular media depiction of a return to traditionalism is wrong
and misleading. Women are trying to achieve the feminist vision of a fully integrated life
combining family and work. That so many attempt to remain in their careers when they
do not have to work testifies strongly to their commitment to their careers, as does the
difficulty they experience over their subsequent loss of identity. Their attempts at jug-
gling and their plans to return to work in the future also indicate that their careers were
not meant to be ephemeral and should not be treated as such. Rather, we should regard
their exits as the miners canarya frontline indication that something is seriously amiss
in many workplaces. Signs of toxic work environments and white-collar sweatshops are
ubiquitous. We can glean from these womens experiences the true cost of these work
conditions, which are personal and professional, and, ultimately, societal and economic.
Our current understanding of why high-achieving women quitbased as it is on
choice and separate spheresseriously undermines the will to change the contemporary
workplace. The myth of opting out returns us to the days when educated women were
barred from entering elite professions because theyll only leave anyway. To the extent
that elite women are arbiters of shifting gender norms, the opting out myth also has the
potential to curtail womens aspirations and stigmatize those who challenge the separate-
spheres ideology on which it is based. Current demographics make it clear that employers
can hardly afford to lose the talents of high-achieving women. They can take a cue from
at-home moms like the ones I studied: Forget opting out; the key to keeping professional
women on the job is to create better, more flexible ways to work.
Recommended Resources
Mary Blair-Loy. Competing Devotions: Career and Family among Women Executives (Harvard University
Press, 2003). Argues for a cultural, less materialist, understanding of contemporary work-family
conflict among high-achieving working women.
Sharon Hays. The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood (Yale University Press, 1995). Describes the his-
torical emergence and contemporary internalization of motherhood norms that are at odds with
the realities of womens changing lives, with powerful theorizing as to why.
Arlie Hochschild. The Second Shift (Viking, 1989). Still the defining classic of the work-family field,
identifying in womens work at home another problem that had no name.
Jerry A. Jacobs and Kathleen Gerson. The Time Divide: Work, Family and Gender Inequality (Harvard
University Press, 2004). Makes the case for time as the newly emerging basis of gender and class
inequality, with lots of hard-to-find facts and good policy prescriptions.
Phyllis Moen and Patricia Roehling. The Career Mystique: Cracks in the American Dream (Rowman and
Littlefield, 2005). A masterful exploration of the creation, maintenance, and consequences of the
high-demand, all-consuming workplace, whose title consciously echoes Friedans The Feminine
Mystique.
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375
10 Family and the Economy
R E A DI NG 2 9
Families on the Fault Line
Lillian B. Rubin
THE BARDOLINOS
It has been more than three years since I first met the Bardolino family, three years in
which to grow accustomed to words like downsizing, restructuring, or the most recent
one, reengineering; three years in which to learn to integrate them into the language so
that they now fall easily from our lips. But these are no ordinary words, at least not for
Marianne and Tony Bardolino.
The last time we talked, Tony had been unemployed for about three months and
Marianne was working nights at the telephone company and dreaming about the day
they could afford a new kitchen. They seemed like a stable couple thena house, two
children doing well in school, Marianne working without complaint, Tony taking on a
reasonable share of the family work. Tony, who had been laid off from the chemical plant
where he had worked for ten years, was still hoping hed be called back and trying to
convince himself their lives were on a short hold, not on a catastrophic downhill slide.
But instead of calling workers back, the company kept cutting its work force. Shortly
after our first meeting, it became clear: There would be no recall. Now, as I sit in the
little cottage Marianne shares with her seventeen-year-old daughter, she tells the story
of these last three years.
When we got the word that they wouldnt be calling Tony back, thats when we re-
ally panicked; I mean really panicked. We didnt know what to do. Where was Tony going
to find another job, with the recession and all that? It was like the bottom really dropped
out. Before that, we really hoped hed be called back any day. It wasnt just crazy; they told
the guys when they laid them off, you know, that it would be three, four months at most.
So we hoped. I mean, sure we worried; in these times, youd be crazy not to worry. But
hed been laid off for a couple of months before and called back, so we thought maybe
its the same thing. Besides, Tonys boss was so sure the guys would be coming back in a
couple of months; so you tried to believe it was true.
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376 Part IV Families in Society
She stops speaking, takes a few sips of coffee from the mug she holds in her hand,
then says with a sigh, I dont really know where to start. So much happened, and some-
times you cant even keep track. Mostly what I remember is how scared we were. Tony
started to look for a job, but there was nowhere to look. The union couldnt help; there
were no jobs in the industry. So he looked in the papers, and he made the rounds of all
the places around here. He even went all the way to San Francisco and some of the places
down near the airport there. But there was nothing.
At first, I kept thinking, Dont panic; hell find something. But after his unemployment
ran out, we couldnt pay the bills, so then you cant help getting panicked, can you?
She stops again, this time staring directly at me, as if wanting something. But Im
not sure what, so I sit quietly and wait for her to continue. Finally, she demands, Well,
can you?
I understand now; she wants reassurance that her anxiety wasnt out of line, that its
not she whos responsible for the rupture in the family. So I say, It sounds as if you feel
guilty because you were anxious about how the family would manage.
Yeah, thats right, she replies as she fights her tears. I keep thinking maybe if I
hadnt been so awful, I wouldnt have driven Tony away. But as soon as the words are
spoken, she wants to take them back. I mean, I dont know, maybe I wasnt that bad. We
were both so depressed and scared, maybe theres nothing I could have done. But I think
about it a lot, and I didnt have to blame him so much and keep nagging at him about
how worried I was. It wasnt his fault; he was trying.
It was just that we looked at it so different. I kept thinking he should take anything,
but he only wanted a job like the one he had. We fought about that a lot. I mean, what
difference does it make what kind of job it is? No, I dont mean that; I know it makes a
difference. But when you have to support a family, that should come first, shouldnt it?
As I listen, I recall my meeting with Tony a few days earlier and how guiltily he, too,
spoke about his behavior during that time. I wasnt thinking about her at all, he explained.
I was just so mad about what happened; it was like the world came crashing down on me.
I did a little too much drinking, and then Id just crawl into a hole, wouldnt even know
whether Marianne or the kids were there or not. She kept saying it was like I wasnt there.
I guess she was right, because I sure didnt want to be there, not if I couldnt support them.
Is that the only thing you were good for in the family? I asked him.
Good point, he replied laughing. Maybe not, but its hard to know what else
youre good for when you cant do that.
I push these thoughts aside and turn my attention back to Marianne. Tony told
me that he did get a job after about a year, I remark.
Yeah, did he tell you what kind of job it was?
Not exactly, only that it didnt work out.
Sure, he didnt tell you because hes still so ashamed about it. He was out of work
so long that even he finally got it that he didnt have a choice. So he took this job as a
dishwasher in this restaurant. Its one of those new kind of places with an open kitchen,
so there he was, standing there washing dishes in front of everybody. I mean, we used to
go there to eat sometimes, and now hes washing the dishes and the whole town sees him
doing it. He felt so ashamed, like it was such a comedown, that hed come home even
worse than when he wasnt working.
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Chapter 10 Family and the Economy 377
Thats when the drinking really started heavy. Before that hed drink, but it wasnt
so bad. After he went to work there, hed come home and drink himself into a coma. I was
working days by then, and Id try to wait up until he came home. But it didnt matter; all
he wanted to do was go for that bottle. He drank a lot during the day, too, so sometimes
Id come home and find him passed out on the couch and he never got to work that day.
Thats when I was maddest of all. I mean, I felt sorry for him having to do that work. But
I was afraid hed get fired.
Did he?
No, he quit after a couple of months. He heard there was a chemical plant down
near L.A. where he might get a job. So he left. I mean, we didnt exactly separate, but we
didnt exactly not. He didnt ask me and the kids to go with him; he just went. It didnt
make any difference. I didnt trust him by then, so why would I leave my job and pick up
the kids and move when we didnt even know if hed find work down there?
I think he went because he had to get away. Anyway, he never found any decent
work there either. I know he had some jobs, but I never knew exactly what he was doing.
Hed call once in awhile, but we didnt have much to say to each other then. I always
figured he wasnt making out so well because he didnt send much money the whole time
he was gone.
As Tony tells it, he was in Los Angeles for nearly a year, every day an agony of
guilt and shame. I lived like a bum when I was down there. I had a room in a place that
wasnt much better than a flop house, but it was like I couldnt get it together to go find
something else. I wasnt making much money, but I had enough to live decent. I felt like
what difference did it make how I lived?
He sighsa deep, sad soundthen continues, I couldnt believe what I did, I
mean that I really walked out on my family. My folks were mad as hell at me. When
I told them what I was going to do, my father went nuts, said I shouldnt come back to
his house until I got some sense again. But I couldnt stay around with Marianne blaming
me all the time.
He stops abruptly, withdraws to someplace inside himself for a few moments, then
turns back to me. Thats not fair. She wasnt the only one doing the blaming. I kept
beating myself up, too, you know, blaming myself, like I did something wrong.
Anyhow, I hated to see what it was doing to the kids; they were like caught in the
middle with us fighting and hollering, or else I was passed out drunk. I didnt want them
to have to see me like that, and I couldnt help it. So I got out.
For Marianne, Tonys departure was both a relief and a source of anguish. At first
I was glad he left; at least there was some peace in the house. But then I got so scared;
I didnt know if I could make it alone with the kids. Thats when I sold the house. We
were behind in our payments, and I knew wed never catch up. The bank was okay; they
said theyd give us a little more time. But there was no point.
That was really hard. It was our home; we worked so hard to get it. God, I hated
to give it up. We were lucky, though. We found this place here. Its near where we used to
live, so the kids didnt have to change schools, or anything like that. Its small, but at least
its a separate little house, not one of those grungy apartments. She interrupts herself
with a laugh, Well, house makes it sound a lot more than it is, doesnt it?
How did your children manage all this?
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378 Part IV Families in Society
It was real hard on them. My son had just turned thirteen when it all happened,
and he was really attached to his father. He couldnt understand why Tony left us, and
he was real angry for a long time. At first, I thought hed be okay, you know, that hed
get over it. But then he got into some bad company. I think he was doing some drugs,
although he still wont admit that. Anyway, one night he and some of his friends stole a
car. I think they just wanted to go for a joyride; they didnt mean to really steal it forever.
But they got caught, and he got sent to juvenile hall.
I called Tony down in L.A. and told him what happened. It really shocked him;
he started to cry on the phone. I never saw him cry before, not with all our trouble. But
he just cried and cried. When he got off the phone, he took the first plane he could get,
and hes been back up here ever since.
Jimmys trouble really changed everything around. When Tony came back, he
didnt want to do anything to get Jimmy out of juvy right away. He thought he ought
to stay there for a while; you know, like to teach him a lesson. I was mad at first because
Jimmy wanted to come home so bad; he was so scared. But now I see Tony was right.
Anyhow, we let Jimmy stay there for five whole days, then Tonys parents lent us
the money to bail him out and get him a lawyer. He made a deal so that if Jimmy pleaded
guilty, hed get a suspended sentence. And thats what happened. But the judge laid down
the law, told him if he got in one little bit of trouble again, hed go to jail. It put the fear
of God into the boy.
For Tony, his sons brush with the law was like a shot in the arm. It was like I had
something really important to do, to get that kid back on track. We talked it over and
Marianne agreed it would be better if Jimmy came to live with me. Shes too soft with
the kids; Ive got better control. And I wanted to make it up to him, too, to show him
he could count on me again. I figured the whole trouble came because I left them, and
I wanted to set it right.
So when he got out of juvy, he went with me to my folks house where I was stay-
ing. We lived there for awhile until I got this job. Its no great shakes, a kind of general
handyman. But its a job, and right from the start I made enough so we could move into
this here apartment. So things are going pretty good right now.
Pretty good means that Jimmy, now sixteen, has settled down and is doing well
enough in school to talk about going to college. For Tony, too, things have turned around.
He set up his own business as an independent handyman several months ago and, al-
though the work isnt yet regular enough to allow him to quit his job, his reputation as a
man who can fix just about anything is growing. Last month the business actually made
enough money to pay his bills. Ill hang onto the job for a while, even if the business gets
going real good, because weve got a lot of catching up to do. I dont mind working hard;
I like it. And being my own boss, boy, thats really great, he concludes exultantly.
Do you think you and Marianne will get together again?
I sure hope so; its what Im working for right now. She says shes not sure, but
shes never made a move to get a divorce. Thats a good sign, isnt it?
When I ask Marianne the same question, she says, Tony wants to, but I still feel
a little scared. You know, I never thought I could manage without him, but then when
I was forced to, I did. Now, I dont know what would happen if we got together again.
It wouldnt be like it was before. I just got promoted to supervisor, so I have a lot of
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Chapter 10 Family and the Economy 379
responsibility on my job. Im a different person, and I dont know how Tony would like
that. He says he likes it fine, but I figure we should wait a while and see what happens. I
mean, what if things get tough again for him? I dont ever want to live through anything
like these last few years.
Yet youve never considered divorce.
She laughs, You sound like Tony. Then more seriously, I dont want a divorce if
I can help it. Right now, I figure if we got through these last few years and still kind of
like each other, maybe weve got a chance.
* * *
When the economy falters, families tremble. The Bardolinos not only trembled, they
cracked. Whether they can patch up the cracks and put the family back together again
remains an open question. But the experience of families like those on the pages of this
book provides undeniable evidence of the fundamental link between the public and pri-
vate arenas of modern life.
No one has to tell the Bardolinos or their children about the many ways the struc-
tural changes in the economy affect family life. In the past, a worker like Tony Bardolino
didnt need a high level of skill or literacy to hold down a well-paying semiskilled job in
a steel mill or an automobile plant. A high school education, often even less, was enough.
But an economy that relies most heavily on its service sector needs highly skilled and
educated workers to fill its better-paying jobs, leaving people like Tony scrambling for
jobs at the bottom of the economic order.
The shift from the manufacturing to the service sector, the restructuring of the
corporate world, the competition from low-wage workers in underdeveloped countries
that entices American corporations to produce their goods abroad, all have been going
on for decades; all are expected to accelerate through the 1990s. The manufacturing
sector, which employed just over 26 percent of American workers in 1970, already had
fallen to nearly 18 percent by 1991. And experts predict a further drop to 12.5 percent
by the year 2000. This is the end of the post-World War boom era. We are never going
back to what we knew, says employment analyst Dan Lacey, publisher of the newsletter
Workplace Trends.
Yet the federal government has not only failed to offer the help working-class fami-
lies need, but as a sponsor of a program to nurture capitalism elsewhere in the world it
has become party to the exodus of American factories to foreign lands. Under the aus-
pices of the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID), for example, Decaturville
Sportswear, a company that used to be based in Tennessee, has moved to El Salvador.
AID not only gave grants to trade organizations in El Salvador to recruit Decaturville but
also subsidized the move by picking up the $5 million tab for the construction of a new
plant, footing the bill for over $1 million worth of insurance, and providing low-interest
loans for other expenses involved in the move.
Its a sweetheart deal for Decaturville Sportswear and the other companies that have
been lured to move south of the border under this program. They build new factories
at minimal cost to themselves, while their operating expenses drop dramatically. In El
Salvador, Decaturville is exempted from corporate taxes and shipping duties. And best of
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380 Part IV Families in Society
all, the hourly wage for factory workers there is forty-five cents an hour; in the United
States the minimum starting wage for workers doing the same job is $4.25.
True, like Tony Bardolino, many of the workers displaced by downsizing, restruc-
turing, and corporate moves like these will eventually find other work. But like him also,
theyll probably have to give up what little security they knew in the past. For the forty-
hour-a-week steady job that pays a decent wage and provides good benefits is quickly
becoming a thing of the past. Instead, as part of the new lean, clean, mean look of corpo-
rate America, we now have what the federal government and employment agencies call
contingent workersa more benign name for what some labor economists refer to as
disposable or throwaway workers.
Its a labor strategy that comes in several forms. Generally, disposable workers are
hired in part-time or temporary jobs to fill an organizational need and are released as
soon as the work load lightens. But when union contracts call for employees to join the
union after thirty days on the job, some unscrupulous employers fire contingent workers
on the twenty-ninth day and bring in a new crew. However its done, disposable workers
earn less than those on the regular payroll and their jobs rarely come with benefits of any
kind. Worse yet, they set off to work each morning fearful and uncertain, not knowing
how the day will end, worrying that by nightfall theyll be out of a job.
The governments statistics on these workers are sketchy, but Labor Secretary
Robert Reich estimates that they now make up nearly one-third of the existing work
force. This means that about thirty-four million men and women, most of whom want
steady, full-time work, start each day as contingent and/or part-time workers. Indeed, so
widespread is this practice now that in some places temporary employment agencies are
displacing the old ones that sought permanent placements for their clients.
Here again, class makes a difference. For while its true that managers and pro-
fessionals now also are finding themselves disposable, most of the workers who have
become so easily expendable are in the lower reaches of the work order. And its they
who are likely to have the fewest options. These are the workers, the unskilled and the
semiskilledthe welders, the forklift operators, the assemblers, the clerical workers, and
the likewho are most likely to seem to management to be interchangeable. Their skills
are limited; their job tasks are relatively simple and require little training. Therefore,
theyre able to move in and perform with reasonable efficiency soon after they come on
the job. Whatever lost time or productivity a company may suffer by not having a steady
crew of workers is compensated by the savings in wages and benefits the employment of
throwaway workers permits. A resolution that brings short-term gains for the company
at the long-term expense of both the workers and the nation. For when a person cant
count on a permanent job, a critical element binding him or her to society is lost.
THE TOMALSONS
When I last met the Tomalsons, Gwen was working as a clerk in the office of a large
Manhattan company and was also a student at a local college where she was studying
nursing. George Tomalson, who had worked for three years in a furniture factory, where
he laminated plastic to wooden frames, had been thrown out of a job when the company
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Chapter 10 Family and the Economy 381
went bankrupt. He seemed a gentle man then, unhappy over the turn his life had taken
but still wanting to believe that it would come out all right.
Now, as he sits before me in the still nearly bare apartment, George is angry. If
youre a black man in this country, you dont have a chance, thats all, not a chance. Its
like no matter how hard you try, youre nothing but trash. Ive been looking for work for
over two years now, and theres nothing. White people are complaining all the time that
black folks are getting a break. Yeah, well, I dont know who those people are, because
its not me or anybody else I know. People see a black man coming, they run the other
way, thats what I know.
You havent found any work at all for two years? I ask.
Some temporary jobs, a few weeks sometimes, a couple of months once, mostly
doing shit work for peanuts. Nothing I could count on.
If you could do any kind of work you want, what would you do?
He smiles, Thats easy; Id be a carpenter. Im good with my hands, and I know a
lot about it, he says, holding his hands out, palms up, and looking at them proudly. But
his mood shifts quickly; the smile disappears; his voice turns harsh. But thats not going to
happen. I tried to get into the union, but theres no room there for a black guy. And in this
city, without being in the union, you dont have a chance at a construction job. Theyve
got it all locked up, and theyre making sure they keep it for themselves.
When I talk with Gwen later, she worries about the intensity of her husbands
resentment. Its not like George; hes always been a real even guy. But hes moody now,
and hes so angry, I sometimes wonder what he might do. This place is a hell hole, she
says, referring to the housing project they live in. Its getting worse all the time; kids
with guns, all the drugs, grown men out of work all around. Ill bet theres hardly a man
in this whole place whos got a job, leave alone a good one.
Just what is it you worry about?
She hesitates, clearly wondering whether to speak, how much to tell me about her
fears, then says with a shrug, I dont know, everything, I guess. Theres so much crime
and drugs and stuff out there. You cant help wondering whether hell get tempted. She
stops herself, looks at me intently, and says, Look, dont get me wrong; I know its crazy
to think like that. Hes not that kind of person. But when you live in times like these, you
cant help worrying about everything.
We both worry a lot about the kids at school. Every time I hear about another kid
shot while theyre at school, I get like a raving lunatic. Whats going on in this world that
kids are killing kids? Doesnt anybody care that so many black kids are dying like that? Its
like a black childs life doesnt count for anything. How do they expect our kids to grow
up to be good citizens when nobody cares about them?
Its one of the things that drives George crazy, worrying about the kids. Theres
no way you can keep them safe around here. Sometimes I wonder why we send them to
school. Theyre not getting much of an education there. Michelle just started, but Julias
in the fifth grade, and believe me shes not learning much.
We sit over her every night to make sure she does her homework and gets it right.
But what good is it if the people at school arent doing their job. Most of the teachers
there dont give a damn. They just want the paycheck and the hell with the kids. Every-
body knows its not like that in the white schools; white people wouldnt stand for it.
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382 Part IV Families in Society
I keep thinking weve got to get out of here for the sake of the kids. Id love to
move someplace, anyplace out of the city where the schools arent such a cesspool. But,
she says dejectedly, well never get out if George cant find a decent job. Im just begin-
ning my nursing career, and I know Ive got a future now. But still, no matter what I do
or how long I work at it, I cant make enough for that by myself.
George, too, has dreams of moving away, somewhere far from the city streets, away
from the grime and the crime. Look at this place, he says, his sweeping gesture taking
in the whole landscape. Is this any place to raise kids? Do you know what my little girls
see every day they walk out the door? Filth, drugs, guys hanging on the corner waiting
for trouble.
If I could get any kind of a decent job, anything, wed be out of here, far away,
someplace outside the city where the kids could breathe clean and see a different life. Its
so bad here, I take them over to my mothers a lot after school; its a better neighborhood.
Then we stay over there and eat sometimes. Mom likes it; shes lonely, and it helps us out.
Not that shes got that much, but theres a little pension my father left.
What about Gwens family? Do they help out, too?
Her mother doesnt have anything to help with since her father died. Hes long
gone; he was killed by the cops when Gwen was a teenager, he says as calmly as if re-
porting the time of day.
Killed by the cops. The words leap out at me and jangle my brain. But why do they
startle me so? Surely with all the discussion of police violence in the black community in
recent years, I cant be surprised to hear that a black man was killed by the cops.
Its the calmness with which the news is relayed that gets to me. And its the realiza-
tion once again of the distance between the lives and experiences of blacks and others,
even poor others. Not one white person in this study reported a violent death in the
family. Nor did any of the Latino and Asian families, although the Latinos spoke of a
difficult and often antagonistic relationship with Anglo authorities, especially the police.
But four black families (13 percent) told of relatives who had been murdered, one of the
families with two victimsa teenage son and a twenty-two-year-old daughter, both killed
in violent street crimes.
But Im also struck by the fact that Gwen never told me how her father died. True,
I didnt ask. But I wonder now why she didnt offer the information. Gwen didnt tell
me, I say, as if trying to explain my surprise.
She doesnt like to talk about it. Would you? he replies somewhat curtly.
Its a moment or two before I can collect myself to speak again. Then I comment,
You talk about all this so calmly.
He leans forward, looks directly at me, and shakes his head. When he finally speaks,
his voice is tight with the effort to control his rage. What do you want? Should I rant and
rave? You want me to say I want to go out and kill those mothers? Well, yeah, I do. They
killed a good man just because he was black. He wasnt a criminal; he was a hard-working
guy who just happened to be in the wrong place when the cops were looking for someone
to shoot, he says, then sits back and stares stonily at the wall in front of him.
We both sit locked in silence until finally I break it. How did it happen?
He rouses himself at the sound of my voice. They were after some dude who
robbed a liquor store, and when they saw Gwens dad, they didnt ask questions; they shot.
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Chapter 10 Family and the Economy 383
The bastards. Then they said it was self-defense, that they saw a gun in his hand. That
man never held a gun in his life, and nobody ever found one either. But nothing happens
to them; its no big deal, just another dead nigger, he concludes, his eyes blazing.
Its quiet again for a few moments, then, with a sardonic half smile, he says, What
would a nice, white middle-class lady like you know about any of that? You got all those
degrees, writing books and all that. How are you going to write about people like us?
I was poor like you once, very poor, I say somewhat defensively.
He looks surprised, then retorts, Poor and white; its a big difference.
* * *
Thirty years before the beginning of the Civil War, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote: If ever
America undergoes great revolutions, they will be brought about by the presence of the
black race on the soil of the United States; that is to say they will owe their origin, not to
the equality, but to the inequality of condition. One hundred and sixty years later, rela-
tions between blacks and whites remain one of the great unresolved issues in American
life, and the inequality of condition that de Tocqueville observed is still a primary part
of the experience of black Americans.
I thought about de Tocquevilles words as I listened to George Tomalson and about
how the years of unemployment had changed him from, as Gwen said, a real even guy
to an angry and embittered one. And I was reminded, too, of de Tocquevilles observa-
tion that the danger of conflict between the white and black inhabitants perpetually
haunts the imagination of the [white] Americans, like a painful dream. Fifteen genera-
tions later were still paying the cost of those years when Americans held slaveswhites
still living in fear, blacks in rage. People see a black man coming, they run the other
way, says George Tomalson.
Yet however deep the cancer our racial history has left on the body of the nation,
most Americans, including many blacks, believe that things are better today than they
were a few decades agoa belief thats both true and not true. Theres no doubt that in
ending the legal basis for discrimination and segregation, the nation took an important
step toward fulfilling the promise of equality for all Americans. As more people meet as
equals in the workplace, stereotypes begin to fall away and caricatures are transformed
into real people. But its also true that the economic problems of recent decades have
raised the level of anxiety in American life to a new high. So although virtually all whites
today give verbal assent to the need for racial justice and equality, they also find ways
to resist the implementation of the belief when it seems to threaten their own status or
economic well-being.
Our schizophrenia about race, our capacity to believe one thing and do another, is
not new. Indeed, it is perhaps epitomized by Thomas Jefferson, the great liberator. For
surely, as Gordon Wood writes in an essay in the New York Review of Books, there is no
greater irony in American history than the fact that Americas supreme spokesman for
liberty and equality was a lifelong aristocratic owner of slaves.
Jefferson spoke compellingly about the evils of slavery, but he bought, sold, bred,
and flogged slaves. He wrote eloquently about equality but he was convinced that
blacks were an inferior race and endorsed the racial stereotypes that have characterized
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384 Part IV Families in Society
African-Americans since their earliest days on this continent. He believed passionately
in individual liberty, but he couldnt imagine free blacks living in America, maintaining
instead that if the nation considered emancipating the slaves, it must also prepare for
their expulsion.
No one talks seriously about expulsion anymore. Nor do many use the kind of
language to describe African-Americans that was so common in Jeffersons day. But the
duality he embodiedhis belief in justice, liberty, and equality alongside his conviction
of black inferioritystill lives.
THE RIVERAS
Once again Ana Rivera and I sit at the table in her bright and cheerful kitchen. Shes
sipping coffee; Im drinking some bubbly water while we make small talk and get reac-
quainted. After a while, we begin to talk about the years since we last met. Im a grand-
mother now, she says, her face wreathed in a smile. My daughter Karen got married
and had a baby, and hes the sweetest little boy, smart, too. Hes only two and a half, but
you should hear him. He sounds like five.
When I talked to her the last time I was here, Karen was planning to go to college.
What happened? I ask.
She flushes uncomfortably. She got pregnant, so she had to get married. I was
heartbroken at first. She was only nineteen, and I wanted her to get an education so bad.
It was awful; she had been working for a whole year to save money for college, then she
got pregnant and couldnt go.
You say she had to get married. Did she ever consider an abortion?
I dont know; we never talked about it. Were Catholic, she says by way of ex-
planation. I mean, I dont believe in abortion. She hesitates, seeming uncertain about
what more she wants to say, then adds, I have to admit, at a time like that, you have to
ask yourself what you really believe. I dont think anybodys got the right to take a childs
life. But when I thought about what having that baby would do to Karens life, I couldnt
help thinking, What if . . . ? She stops, unable to bring herself to finish the sentence.
Did you ever say that to Karen?
No, I would never do that. I didnt even tell my husband I thought such things.
But, you know, she adds, her voice dropping to nearly a whisper, if she had done it,
I dont think I would have said a word.
What about the rest of the kids?
Pauls going to be nineteen soon; hes a problem, she sighs. I mean, hes got a
good head, but he wont use it. I dont know whats the matter with kids these days; its
like they want everything but theyre not willing to work for anything. He hardly finished
high school, so you cant talk to him about going to college. But whats he going to do?
These days if you dont have a good education, you dont have a chance. No matter what
we say, he doesnt listen, just goes on his smart-alecky way, hanging around the neighbor-
hood with a bunch of no-good kids looking for trouble.
Ricks so mad, he wants to throw him out of the house. But I say no, we cant do
that because then whatll become of him? So we fight about that a lot, and I dont know
whats going to happen.
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Chapter 10 Family and the Economy 385
Does Paul work at all?
Sometimes, but mostly not. Im afraid to think about where he gets money from.
His father wont give him a dime. He borrows from me sometimes, but I dont have much
to give him. And anyway, Rick would kill me if he knew.
I remember Paul as a gangly, shy sixteen-year-old, no macho posturing, none of
the rage that shook his older brother, not a boy I would have thought would be heading
for trouble. But then, Karen, too, had seemed so determined to grasp at a life that was
different from the one her parents were living. What happens to these kids?
When I talk with Rick about these years, he, too, asks in bewilderment: What hap-
pened? I dont know; we tried so hard to give the kids everything they needed. I mean,
sure, were not rich, and theres a lot of things we couldnt give them. But we were always
here for them; we listened; we talked. What happened? First my daughter gets pregnant
and has to get married; now my son is becoming a bum.
Robertothats what we have to call him now, explains Rick, he says its what
happens when people dont feel theyve got respect. He says well keep losing our kids
until they really believe they really have an equal chance. I dont know; I knew I had to
make the Anglos respect me, and I had to make my chance. Why dont my kids see it like
that? he asks wearily, his shoulders seeming to sag lower with each sentence he speaks.
I guess its really different today, isnt it? he sighs. When I was coming up, you
could still make your chance. I mean, I only went to high school, but I got a job and
worked myself up. You cant do that anymore. Now you need to have some kind of special
skills just to get a job that pays more than the minimum wage.
And the schools, they dont teach kids anything anymore. I went to the same public
schools my kids went to, but what a difference. Its like nobody cares anymore.
How is Roberto doing? I ask, remembering the hostile eighteen-year-old I inter-
viewed several years earlier.
Hes still mad; hes always talking about injustice and things like that. But hes
different than Paul. Roberto always had some goals. I used to worry about him because
hes so angry all the time. But I see now that his anger helps him. He wants to fight for
his people, to make things better for everybody. Paul, hes like the wind; nothing matters
to him.
Right now, Roberto has a job as an electricians helper, learning the trade. Hes
been working there for a couple of years; hes pretty good at it. But I thinkI hopehes
going to go to college. He heard that theyre trying to get Chicano students to go to the
university, so he applied. If he gets some aid, I think hell go, Rick says, his face radiant
at the thought that at least one of his children will fulfill his dream. Ana and me, we tell
him even if he doesnt get aid, he should go. We cant do a lot because we have to help
Anas parents and that takes a big hunk every month. But well help him, and he could
work to make up the rest. I know its hard to work and go to school, but people do it all
the time, and hes smart; he could do it.
His gaze turns inward; then, as if talking to himself, he says, I never thought Id
say this but I think Robertos right. Weve got something to learn from some of these
kids. I told that to Roberto just the other day. He says Ana and me have been trying to
pretend were one of them all of our lives. I told him, I think youre right. I kept think-
ing if I did everything right, I wouldnt be a greaser. But after all these years, Im still
a greaser in their eyes. It took my son to make me see it. Now I know. If I werent Id
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386 Part IV Families in Society
be head of the shipping department by now, not just one of the supervisors, and maybe
Paul wouldnt be wasting his life on the corner.
* * *
We keep saying that family matters, that with a stable family and two caring parents
children will grow to a satisfactory adulthood. But Ive rarely met a family thats more
constant or more concerned than the Riveras. Or one where both parents are so in-
volved with their children. Ana was a full-time homemaker until Paul, their youngest, was
twelve. Rick has been with the same company for more than twenty-five years, having
worked his way up from clerk to shift supervisor in its shipping department. Whatever
the conflicts in their marriage, theirs is clearly a warm, respectful, and caring relationship.
Yet their daughter got pregnant and gave up her plans for college, and a son is idling his
youth away on a street corner.
Obviously, then, something more than family matters. Growing up in a world
where opportunities are available makes a difference. As does being able to afford to
take advantage of an opportunity when it comes by. Getting an education that broadens
horizons and prepares a child for a productive adulthood makes a difference. As does
being able to find work that nourishes self-respect and pays a living wage. Living in a
world that doesnt judge you by the color of your skin makes a difference. As does feeling
the respect of the people around you.
This is not to suggest that there arent also real problems inside American families
that deserve our serious and sustained attention. But the constant focus on the failure of
family life as the locus of both our personal and social difficulties has become a mindless
litany, a dangerous diversion from the economic and social realities that make family life
so difficult today and that so often destroy it.
THE KWANS
Its a rare sunny day in Seattle, so Andy Kwan and I are in his backyard, a lovely showcase
for his talents as a landscape gardener. Although it has been only a few years since we first
met, most of the people to whom Ive returned in this round of interviews seem older,
grayer, more careworn. Andy Kwan is no exception. The brilliant afternoon sunshine is
cruel as it searches out every line of worry and age in his angular face. Since I interviewed
his wife the day before, I already know that the recession has hurt his business. So I begin
by saying, Carol says that your business has been slow for the last couple of years.
Yes, he sighs. At first when the recession came, it didnt hurt me. I think Seattle
didnt really get hit at the beginning. But the summer of 1991, thats when I began to feel
it. Its as if everybody zipped up their wallets when it came to landscaping.
A lot of my business has always been when people buy a new house. You know,
they want to fix up the outside just like they like it. But nobodys been buying houses
lately, and even if they do, theyre not putting any money into landscaping. So its been
tight, real tight.
How have you managed financially?
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Chapter 10 Family and the Economy 387
We get by, but its hard. We have to cut back on a lot of stuff we used to take for
granted, like going out to eat once in a while, or going to the movies, things like that.
Clothes, nobody gets any new clothes anymore.
I do a lot of regular gardening nowyou know, the maintenance stuff. It helps;
it takes up some of the slack, but its not enough because it doesnt pay much. And the
competitions pretty stiff, so youve got to keep your prices down. I mean, everybody
knows that its one of the things people can cut out when things get tough, so the
gardeners around here try to hold on by cutting their prices. It gets pretty hairy, real
cutthroat.
He gets up, walks over to a flower bed, and stands looking at it. Then, after a few
quiet moments, he turns back to me and says, Its a damned shame. I built my business
like you build a house, brick by brick, and it was going real good. I finally got to the point
where I wasnt doing much regular gardening anymore. I could concentrate on landscap-
ing, and I was making a pretty good living. With Carol working, too, we were doing all
right. I even hired two people and was keeping them busy most of the time. Then all of
a sudden, it all came tumbling down.
I felt real bad when I had to lay off my workers. They have families to feed, too.
But what could I do? Now its like Im back where I started, an ordinary gardener again
and even worrying about how long thatll last, he says disconsolately.
He walks back to his seat, sits down, and continues somewhat more philosophi-
cally, Carol says I shouldnt complain because, with all the problems, were lucky. She
still has her job, and Im making out. I mean, its not great, but it could be a lot worse.
He pauses, looks around blankly for a moment, sighs, and says, I guess shes right. Her
sister worked at Boeing for seven years and she got laid off a couple of months ago. No
notice, nothing; just the pink slip. I mean, everybody knew thered be layoffs there, but
you know how it is. You dont think its really going to happen to you.
I try not to let it get me down. But its hard to be thankful for not having bigger
trouble than youve already got, he says ruefully. Then, a smile brightening his face
for the first time, he adds, But theres one thing I can be thankful for, and thats the kids;
theyre doing fine. I worry a little bit about whats going to happen, though. I guess you
cant help it if youre a parent. Erics the oldest; hes fifteen now, and you never know. Kids
get into all kinds of trouble these days. But so far, hes okay. The girls, theyre good kids.
Carol worries about whatll happen when they get to those teenage years. But I think
theyll be okay. We teach them decent values; they go to church every week. I have to
believe that makes a difference.
You say that you worry about Eric but that the girls will be fine because of the
values of your family. Hasnt he been taught the same values?
He thinks a moment, then says, Did I say that? Yeah, I guess I did. I think maybe
theres more ways for a boy to get in trouble than a girl. He laughs and says again, Did
I say that? Then, more thoughtfully, I dont know. I guess I worry about them all, but
if you dont tell yourself that thingsll work out okay, you go nuts. I mean, so much can
go wrong with kids today.
It used to be the Chinese family could really control the kids. When I was a kid,
the family was law. My father was Chinese-born; he came here as a kid. My mother was
born right here in this city. But the grandparents were all immigrants; everybody spoke
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388 Part IV Families in Society
Chinese at home; and we never lived more than a couple of blocks from both sides of the
family. My parents were pretty Americanized everywhere but at home, at least while their
parents were alive. My mother would go clean her mothers house for her because thats
what a Chinese daughter did.
Was that because your grandmother was old or sick?
No, he replies, shaking his head at the memory. Its because thats what her
mother expected her to do; thats the way Chinese families were then. We talk about that,
Carol and me, and how things have changed. Its hard to imagine it, but thats the kind
of control families had then.
Its all changed now. Not that Id want it that way. I want my kids to know respect
for the family, but they shouldnt be servants. Thats what my mother was, a servant for
her mother.
By the time my generation came along, things were already different. I couldnt
wait to get away from all that family stuff. I mean, it was nice in some ways; there was
always this big, noisy bunch of people around, and you knew you were part of some-
thing. That felt good. But Chinese families, boy, they dont let go. You felt like they were
choking you.
Now its really different; its like the kids arent hardly Chinese any more. I mean,
my kids are just like any other American kids. They never lived in a Chinese neighbor-
hood like the one I grew up in, you know, the kind where the only Americans you see are
the people who come to buy Chinese food or eat at the restaurants.
You say theyre ordinary American kids. What about the Chinese side? What kind
of connection do they have to that?
Its funny, he muses. We sent them to Chinese school because we wanted them
to know about their history, and we thought they should know the language, at least a
little bit. But they werent really interested; they wanted to be like everybody else and
eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Lately its a little different, but thats because
they feel like theyre picked on because theyre Chinese. I mean, everybodys worrying
about the Chinese kids being so smart and winning all the prizes at school, and the kids
are angry about that, especially Eric. He says theres a lot of bad feelings about Chinese
kids at school and that everybodys picking on themthe white kids and the black kids,
all of them.
So all of a sudden, hes becoming Chinese. Its like theyre making him think about
it because theres all this resentment about Asian kids all around. Until a couple of years
ago, he had lots of white friends. Now he hangs out mostly with other Asian kids. I guess
thats because they feel safer when theyre together.
How do you feel about this?
The color rises in his face; his voice takes on an edge of agitation. Its too bad. Its
not the way I wanted it to be. I wanted my kids to know theyre Chinese and be proud
of it, but thats not whats going on now. Its more like . . . , he stops, trying to find the
words, then starts again. Its like they have to defend themselves because theyre Chi-
nese. Know what I mean? he asks. Then without waiting for an answer, he explains,
Theres all this prejudice now, so then you cant forget youre Chinese.
It makes me damn mad. You grow up here and they tell you everybodys equal and
that any boy can grow up to be president. Not that I ever thought a Chinese kid could
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Chapter 10 Family and the Economy 389
ever be president; any Chinese kid knows thats fairy tale. But I did believe the rest of it,
you know, that if youre smart and work hard and do well, people will respect you and
youll be successful. Now, it looks like the smarter Chinese kids are, the more trouble
they get.
Do you think that prejudice against Chinese is different now than when you were
growing up?
Yeah, I do. When I was a kid like Eric, nobody paid much attention to the Chinese.
They left us alone, and we left them alone. But now all these Chinese kids are getting
in the way of the white kids because theres so many of them, and theyre getting better
grades, and things like that. So then everybody gets mad because they think our kids are
taking something from them.
He stops, weighs his last words, then says, I guess theyre right, too. When I was
growing up, Chinese kids were lucky to graduate from high school, and we didnt get in
anybodys way. Now so many Chinese kids are going to college that theyre taking over
places white kids used to have. I can understand that they dont like that. But thats not
our problem; its theirs. Why dont they work hard like Chinese kids do?
Its not fair that theyve got quotas for Asian kids because the people who run the
colleges decided theres too many of them and not enough room for white kids. Nobody
ever worried that there were too many white kids, did they?
* * *
Its not faira cry from the heart, one I heard from nearly everyone in this study. For
indeed, life has not been fair to the working-class people of America, no matter what
their color or ethnic background. And its precisely this sense that its not fair, that there
isnt enough to go around, that has stirred the racial and ethnic tensions that are so
prevalent today.
In the face of such clear class disparities, how is it that our national discourse con-
tinues to focus on the middle class, denying the existence of a working class and rendering
them invisible?
Whether a family or a nation, we all have myths that play tag with realitymyths
that frame our thoughts, structure our beliefs, and organize our systems of denial. A myth
encircles reality, encapsulates it, controls it. It allows us to know some things and to avoid
knowing others, even when somewhere deep inside we really know what we dont want to
know. Every parent has experienced this clash between myth and reality. We see signals
that tell us a child is lying and explain them away. It isnt that we cant know; its that we
wont, that knowing is too difficult or painful, too discordant with the myth that defines
the relationship, the one that says: My child wouldnt lie to me.
The same is true about a nation and its citizens. Myths are part of our national
heritage, giving definition to the national character, offering guidance for both public and
private behavior, comforting us in our moments of doubt. Not infrequently our myths
trip over each other, providing a window into our often contradictory and ambivalently
held beliefs. The myth that we are a nation of equals lives side-by-side in these United
States with the belief in white supremacy. And, unlikely as it seems, its quite possible to
believe both at the same time. Sometimes we manage the conflict by shifting from one
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390 Part IV Families in Society
side to the other. More often, we simply redefine reality. The inequality of condition
between whites and blacks isnt born in prejudice and discrimination, we insist; its black
inferiority thats the problem. Class distinctions have nothing to do with privilege, we
say; its merit that makes the difference.
Its not the outcome that counts, we maintain; its the rules of the game. And since
the rules say that everyone comes to the starting line equal, the different results are
merely products of individual will and wit. The fact that working-class children usu-
ally grow up to be working-class parents doesnt make a dent in the belief system, nor
does it lead to questions about why the written rule and the lived reality are at odds.
Instead, with perfect circularity, the outcome reinforces the reasoning that says theyre
deficient, leaving those so labeled doubly woundedfirst by the real problems in living
they face, second by internalizing the blame for their estate.
Two decades ago, when I began the research for Worlds of Pain, we were living
in the immediate aftermath of the civil rights revolution that had convulsed the na-
tion since the mid-1950s. Significant gains had been won. And despite the tenacity with
which this headway had been resisted by some, most white Americans were feeling good
about themselves. No one expected the nations racial problems and conflicts to dissolve
easily or quickly. But there was also a sense that we were moving in the right direction,
that there was a national commitment to redressing at least some of the worst aspects of
black-white inequality.
In the intervening years, however, the national economy buckled under the weight
of three recessions, while the nations industrial base was undergoing a massive restruc-
turing. At the same time, government policies requiring preferential treatment were
enabling African-Americans and other minorities to make small but visible inroads into
what had been, until then, largely white terrain. The sense of scarcity, always a part of
American life but intensified sharply by the history of these economic upheavals, made
minority gains seem particularly threatening to white working-class families.
It isnt, of course, just working-class whites who feel threatened by minority prog-
ress. Wherever racial minorities make inroads into formerly all-white territory, ten-
sions increase. But its working-class families who feel the fluctuations in the economy
most quickly and most keenly. For them, these last decades have been like a bumpy roller
coaster ride. Every time we think we might be able to get ahead, it seems like we get
knocked down again, declares Tom Ahmundsen, a forty-two-year-old white construc-
tion worker. Things look a little better; theres a little more work; then all of a sudden,
boom, the economy falls apart and its gone. You cant count on anything; it really gets
you down.
This is the story I heard repeatedly: Each small climb was followed by a fall, each
glimmer of hope replaced by despair. As the economic vise tightened, despair turned to
anger. But partly because we have so little concept of class resentment and conflict in
America, this anger isnt directed so much at those above as at those below. And when
whites at or near the bottom of the ladder look down in this nation, they generally see
blacks and other minorities.
True, during all of the 1980s and into the 1990s, white ire was fostered by national
administrations that fanned racial discord as a way of fending off white discontentof
diverting anger about the state of the economy and the declining quality of urban life to
the foreigners and racial others in our midst. But our history of racial animosity coupled
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Chapter 10 Family and the Economy 391
with our lack of class consciousness made this easier to accomplish than it might other-
wise have been.
The difficult realities of white working-class life not withstanding, however,
their whiteness has accorded them significant advantagesboth materially and
psycho logicallyover people of color. Racial discrimination and segregation in the
workplace have kept competition for the best jobs at a minimum. They do, obviously,
have to compete with each other for the resources available. But thats different. Its a
competition among equals; theyre all white. They dont think such things consciously,
of course; they dont have to. Its understood, rooted in the culture and supported by
the social contract that says they are the superior ones, the worthy ones. Indeed, this is
precisely why, when the courts or the legislatures act in ways that seem to contravene
that belief, whites experience themselves as victims.
From the earliest days of the republic, whiteness has been the ideal, and freedom
and independence have been linked to being white. Republicanism, writes labor his-
torian David Roediger, had long emphasized that the strength, virtue and resolve of a
people guarded them from enslavement. And it was whites who had these qualities in
abundance, as was evident, in the peculiarly circuitous reasoning of the time, in the fact
that they were not slaves.
By this logic, the enslavement of blacks could be seen as stemming from their
slavishness rather than from the institution of slavery. Slavery is gone now, but the
reasoning lingers on in white America, which still insists that the lowly estate of people
of color is due to their deficits, whether personal or cultural, rather than to the prejudice,
discrimination, and institutionalized racism that has barred them from full participation
in the society.
This is not to say that culture is irrelevant, whether among black Americans or any
other group in our society. The lifeways of a people develop out of their experiences
out of the daily events, large and small, that define their lives; out of the resources that
are available to them to meet both individual and group needs; out of the place in the
social, cultural, and political systems within which group life is embedded. In the case
of a significant proportion of blacks in Americas inner cities, centuries of racism and
economic discrimination have produced a subculture that is both personally and socially
destructive. But to fault culture or the failure of individual responsibility without under-
standing the larger context within which such behaviors occur is to miss a vital piece of the
picture. Nor does acknowledging the existence of certain destructive subcultural forms
among some African-Americans disavow or diminish the causal connections between the
structural inequalities at the social, political, and economic levels and the serious social
problems at the community level.
In his study of working-class lads in Birmingham, England, for example, Paul
Willis observes that their very acts of resistance to middle-class normsthe defiance with
which these young men express their anger at class inequalitieshelp to reinforce the
class structure by further entrenching them in their working-class status. The same can
be said for some of the young men in the African-American community, whose active
rejection of white norms and in your face behavior consigns them to the bottom of the
American economic order.
To understand this doesnt make such behavior, whether in England or the United
States, any more palatable. But it helps to explain the structural sources of cultural forms
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392 Part IV Families in Society
and to apprehend the social processes that undergird them. Like Williss white working-
class lads, the hip-hoppers and rappers in the black community who are so determinedly
not white are not just making a statement about black culture. Theyre also expressing
their rage at white society for offering a promise of equality, then refusing to fulfill it. In
the process, theyre finding their own way to some accommodation and to a place in the
world they can call their own, albeit one that ultimately reinforces their outsider status.
But, some might argue, white immigrants also suffered prejudice and discrimina-
tion in the years after they first arrived, but they found more socially acceptable ways
to accommodate. Its trueand so do most of todays people of color, both immigrant
and native born. Nevertheless, theres another truth as well. For wrenching as their early
experiences were for white ethnics, they had an out. Writing about the Irish, for example,
Roediger shows how they were able to insist upon their whiteness and to prove it by
adopting the racist attitudes and behaviors of other whites, in the process often becoming
leaders in the assault against blacks. With time and their growing political power, they
won the prize they soughtrecognition as whites. The imperative to define themselves
as white, writes Roediger, came from the particular public and psychological wages
whiteness offered to a desperate rural and often preindustrial Irish population coming to
labor in industrializing American cities.
Thus does whiteness bestow its psychological as well as material blessings on even
the most demeaned. For no matter how far down the socioeconomic ladder whites may
fall, the one thing they cant lose is their whiteness. No small matter because, as W. E. B.
DuBois observed decades ago, the compensation of white workers includes a psycho-
logical wage, a bonus that enables them to believe in their inherent superiority over
nonwhites.
Its also true, however, that this same psychological bonus that white workers prize
so highly has cost them dearly. For along with the importation of an immigrant popula-
tion, the separation of black and white workers has given American capital a reserve labor
force to call upon whenever white workers seemed to them to get too uppity. Thus,
while racist ideology enables white workers to maintain the belief in their superiority,
they have paid for that conviction by becoming far more vulnerable in the struggle for
decent wages and working conditions than they might otherwise have been. . . .
R E A DI NG 3 0
The Economy That Never Sleeps
Harriet B. Presser
Forty percent of the American labor force works mostly during nonstandard timesin
the evenings, overnight, on rotating or variable shifts, or on weekends. These sched-
ules challenge American families, particularly those with children. Research suggests
Ch-10.indd 392 7/8/2008 12:35:07 PM
Chapter 10 Family and the Economy 393
that such schedules undermine the stability of marriages, increase the amount of
housework to be done, reduce family cohesiveness, and require elaborate child-care
arrangements.
Nonstandard work schedules also have some benefits. Most notably, when fathers
and mothers work different shifts, fathers and children typically spend more time to-
gether and child care costs less. Parents of school-aged children who work late shifts
can see their children off to school and welcome them home. However, the advantages
and disadvantages of nonstandard work hours are not evenly distributed. Some kinds of
families and workers feel the downside more than others. And all off-hour workers and
families need more attention than they are now getting.
Late and rotating work shifts are certainly not new. Some people have always worked
at all hours of the day and night. While official data on which hours people work have only
recently become available, in recent decades the number of people working nonstandard
schedules seems to have increased. A central factor is the remarkable growth of the service
economyparticularly in the food, recreation, travel and medical care industriesall of
which require more round-the-clock employees than does manufacturing. Consumers are
clamoring for continuously available services as well. We see these trends in the newly
common phrase 24/7 and in the extension of store hours. Indeed, the 7-Eleven conve-
nience stores, once considered unusual for opening at 7 A.M. and closing at 11 P.M., are
anachronistically named: almost all of them are now open around the clock.
At the same time, families themselves are changing. With the growth of female
employment, spouses increasingly both work. Also, increasingly many employed mothers
are single parents. The Ozzie and Harriet familyin which the father works outside
the home full time and the mother is a full-time homemakerhas become more and
more of an exception. Although we have belatedly come to acknowledge this change, we
still tend to think of employed parents as working in the daytime and home with their
children in the evening and at night. This remains the case for most parents, but not for
a substantial minority.
With more employed mothersmarried or singleand more diverse work sched-
ules, the rhythm of family life is changing for millions of Americans. We need to dis-
cuss whether employers and government can and should do more to ease the social and
physical stresses that many families experience. Moreover, employees need to be aware
of the risks of working late and rotating hours so that they can make more informed
decisions before accepting such a jobassuming, of course, they have a genuine choice
in the matter.
WHO WORKS NONSTANDARD SCHEDULES?
Nonstandard work schedules are surprisingly common. One out of five employed Ameri-
cans work most of their hours outside the range of 8 A.M. to 4 P.M., or have a regularly
rotating schedule. Many more work at least some of their hours in the evenings or at
night. About one-third of employed Americans work Saturday, Sunday or both. Men are
somewhat more likely than women to work nonstandard schedules, and minorities
particularly blacksare more likely to do so than non-Hispanic whites. ( These estimates
Ch-10.indd 393 7/8/2008 12:35:07 PM
394 Part IV Families in Society
are based on a large, representative national sample in 1997. More recent numbers, not
yet fully analyzed, suggest little change since then.)
Dual-earner married couples are especially likely to have at least one spouse work-
ing late or rotating shifts. In 1997, this was so for 28 percent of all such couples, but even
more so for those with children: 35 percent of dual-earner couples with a child under 5
had a parent with such a schedule. (Rarely did both spouses work such schedules.) These
percentages are yet higher among low-income couples, the families most likely to be
under financial stress while juggling a difficult work schedule.
Weekend work among dual-earner couples is also very common. In more than
two-fifths of all dual-earner couples, at least one spouse worked on Saturday or Sunday.
The ratio was closer to one-half of all dual-earner couples with children under five. And
again, low-income couples had especially high rates of weekend work.
Single mothers are more likely than married mothers to work at nonstandard times
and to work long hours. About one-fourth of single mothers with children worked late
or rotating shifts and more than one-third worked weekends. For single mothers with
children under age five, these ratios were one-fourth and two-fifths, respectivelyand
still higher for those with low incomes.
STRESS ON MARRIAGES
Late and rotating work schedules seem particularly damaging to marriages when the
couples have children at home. The competing demands of children and spouses come
through in intensive interviews with such couples. In Families on the Fault Line, Lillian
Rubin writes about one couple working split shifts: If the arriving spouse gets home
early enough, there may be an hour when both are there together. But with the pressures
of the workday fresh for one and awaiting for the other, and with children clamoring
for parental attention, there isnt a promising moment for serious conversation (p. 95).
From similar interviews in Halving It All, Francine Deutsch reports that, although this
arrangement allowed both spouses to care for their children themselves and contribute
to family income, the loss of time together was a bitter pill to swallow. The physical
separation symbolized a spiritual separation as well (p. 177).
Large survey studies confirm that dual-earner couples with children have a less sat-
isfactory married life when one spouse works at nonstandard times. I found, in a sample
of about 3,500 married couples, that those in which one spouse works a late shift report
having substantially less quality time together and more marital unhappiness. Couples
with children are also more likely to separate or divorce. Neither working the evening
shift nor weekends seemed to endanger the marriages; only night work did. One might
think that spouses who choose to work night shifts do so because their marriages have
soured, but data suggest the opposite: the schedule is the cause and marital strain is the
effect. Spouses who moved into night work after the first interviews were not any less
happy with their marriages during those pre-change interviews than were other em-
ployed spouses.
Ch-10.indd 394 7/8/2008 12:35:07 PM
Chapter 10 Family and the Economy 395
FAMILY REACTIONS
When spouses work different shifts, housework expands. Spouses tend to fend for them-
selves more, adding to the total family work load. Each one may make dinner for him- or
herself rather than one cooking for two (as well as for the children). The husbands also
do more traditionally female tasks, such as cleaning house, washing, ironing and cook-
ing. These changes emerge for couples both with and without children. Although wives
typically still spend considerably more time than husbands doing housework, husbands
shoulder a larger share when their wives are not available. Working late shifts may not be
the ideal way of achieving gender equality in housework, but it may be considered a good
change by many wives in this situation. However, men who have traditional expectations
may see it differently, making housework a potential source of friction.
The family dinner is typically the only daily event that allows for meaningful family
time. The dinnertime absence of parents who work evening shifts is clearly a cost. ( Night
shifts and weekend employment do not generally undercut the family dinner, although
schedules that rotate around the clock can.) As [Figure 30.1] shows, among dual-earner
couples with children ages 5 to 13, about 45 percent of the mothers and 59 percent of
the fathers who worked evenings had dinner with their children fewer than five days a
week. Many of their children at least had one parent available at dinnertimebut not
children of single mothers. When single moms worked evenings, fewer than 40 percent
ate with their children at least five days a week. Their children may have been eating
with other adults, with siblings, or alonewe do not know. (Parents who miss dinner
80
0
16%
45%
7%
30%
Mothers in Two-Earner
Couples
20%
59%
24%
28%
Fathers in Two-Earner
Couples
23%
64%
Single, Working
Mothers
42%
39%
Evening
Night
Rotating
Day
60
40
20
P
e
r
c
e
n
t
a
g
e

o
f

P
a
r
e
n
t
s
FIGURE 30.1 Missing Dinner: Percentage of Parents Who Ate Dinner with Their
Children Fewer than 5 Times in the Last Week, According to the Work Shift
Source: 198788 National Survey of Families and Households.
Ch-10.indd 395 7/8/2008 12:35:07 PM
396 Part IV Families in Society
with their children because they work the evening shift do not compensate by having
breakfast with them more often.)
Child care also must be negotiated differently. If mothers who work evenings or
nights are married, their husbands who work during the day typically assume responsibil-
ity for child care during those hours. More than four-fifths of fathers with children under
age 5 did so. Child care is also shared when the work schedules of spouses are reversed
and the husband works nonstandard hours.
This tag-team arrangement increases father-child interaction. It also reduces the
cost of child care. Holding down expenses is especially a concern when married mothers
have low-paying jobs. But most married mothers who work evenings, nights or rotating
shifts do not say they do it for this reason. Many say it is because the job demands it.
Similarly, very few fathers of young children report that they work non-standard sched-
ules for child care reasons, even though they are often caregivers. Many parents simply
do not have a choice in their work schedules.
Child care studies show that off-hours workers also rely heavily on relatives, par-
ticularly grandparents. Single mothers are especially likely to rely on grandparents,
particularly grandmothers, who often work jobs with hours different from their daugh-
ters, allowing them to care for their grandchildren in their off time.
Both single and married mothers have to rely on relatives (as well as neighbors
and other informal caregivers) because only a few child care centers are open evenings
or nights and not many are open on weekends. Because relatives and neighbors may not
be available or willing to babysit during all the mothers work hours, mothers are often
forced to rely on multiple child care providers. More than half of all American mothers
with children under age five who work late or rotating schedules or weekends rely on two
or more caregivers. Multiple child care arrangements can create multiple breakdowns.
Single mothers are especially vulnerable to such problems, since given their usually low
earnings, they have fewer child care options. A recent tragedy reported in the New York
Times (October 19, 2003) illuminates the frustration many single mothers on the night
shift must face, as well as the potential for calamity:
[A]s her night shift neared, Kim Brathwaite faced a hard choice. Her baby sitter had not
shown up, and to miss work might end her position as assistant manager at a McDonalds
in downtown Brooklyn. So she left her two children, 9 and 1, alone, trying to stay in touch
by phone. It turned out to be a disastrous decision. Someone, it seems, deliberately set
fire to the apartment. Her children died. And within hours, Ms. Brathwaite was under
arrest, charged with recklessly endangering her children . . . and now faces up to 16 years
in prison. . . .
HEALTH
Several intensive studies suggest that sleep deprivation is a chronic problem for people
who work late at night or rotate their hours around the clock on a regular basis. Par-
ents who forego sleep in order to be available for their children when they are home
from school aggravate the toll on their personal health. People with such schedules run
Ch-10.indd 396 7/8/2008 12:35:08 PM
Chapter 10 Family and the Economy 397
higher risks of gastrointestinal disorders, cardiovascular disease and breast cancer. Late
and changing work schedules affect our sleep cycles, which in turn are linked to such bio-
logical functions as body temperature and hormone levels. Also, being out of sync with
the daily rhythms of other family members raises stress and further affects physiological
and psychological health.
A PUBLIC DISCUSSION
Clearly, employment in a 24/7 economy challenges American families. Given what we
already knowand there is more to learnwe need more public discussion on the role of
employers and government. How can we help American workers and families who are
feeling the pinch of nonstandard work shifts either to change to day schedules or cope with
the odd hours? Low-income parents merit special attention, because they have the fewest
work options and suffer the worst financial and emotional stress.
There are several policy options. For instance, we could require higher wages for late
shifts to compensate workers for the social and health costs of their schedules, or reduce
work hours on late shifts (without a reduction in pay) to minimize the stress on individu-
als and families. Such reforms could make a major difference for 24/7 workers. Although
employment at nonstandard times is pervasive from the worst to the best jobs, one-third of
the nonstandard jobs are concentrated in just 10 service-sector occupations, most of which
are low paying: cashiers; truck drivers; sales people; waiters and waitresses; cooks; janitors
and cleaners; sales supervisors and proprietors; registered nurses; food service and lodging
managers; and nursing aides, orderlies, and attendants. Except for registered nurses, the
median hourly pay for those in the same occupations who work at nonstandard times is
about the same as or less than the pay for people who work daytimes and weekdays only.
On the other hand, a financial premium for taking late shifts might tempt more nonpar-
ents to compete for those jobs or more low-income parents to take them.
Efforts to enact workshift reforms are constrained by a lack of legal guidelines
for adult workers. The Fair Labor Standards Act deals with overtime compensation for
working more than 40 hours a week, but does not deal explicitly with work shifts. Pay
premiums for shift work are generally negotiated by unions, but only a small minority of
American workers are union members. Some unions have negotiated reduced hours at
full-time pay for people working late shifts, but this is rare and the pay premiums gener-
ally are not large.
Policy could also address the particular difficulties of nonstandard shifts for par-
ents with children by expanding the availability, flexibility and affordability of child care.
Little child care is available in the evening and overnight. ( Ironically, the people who
would provide the care would themselves become part of the problem.) Extra compen-
sation from public sources to providers may be needed. On-site care by employers, as
some hospitals provide, and near-site care, as some airports provide, may also help. But
many neighborhoods resist the late-night traffic of parents dropping off and picking up
their children.
Alternatively, child care subsidies would give more low-income mothers the option
of working standard hours while using day care for their young children. As noted earlier,
Ch-10.indd 397 7/8/2008 12:35:08 PM
398 Part IV Families in Society
parents who work late shifts rely heavily on multiple child-care arrangements with spouses,
relatives and others. Such arrangements for late-hour home care may be financially cheaper
than center care, but they may be more costly socially for everyone involved.
Finally, a policy option is to regulate night work, as many other highly industrialized
countries do. For example, Belgium has highly restrictive legislation, which generally pro-
hibits work between 8 P.M. and 6 A.M. (exceptions allow for emergency services) and all night
workers are entitled by law to substantial pay premiums. However, while European unions
fought for such legislation, the restriction of late work shifts does not seem to be high on
the agenda of American organized labor. Some voices call for reducing the work week from
40 to 35 hours without reducing pay, but these suggestions treat all hours alike.
If new regulations are pursued, they must avoid discouraging employers from hiring
parents of young children. Janet Gornick and Marcia Meyers have proposed the adoption
of gender-egalitarian protections that would prevent employers from forcing parents into
nonstandard shifts. These protections would expand child care as well, so that parents
could switch out of those shifts if they so desire (and presumably not lose their jobs). This
is clearly a complex social issue, especially in light of the increasing wariness of protective
legislation amid concerns about who is protected by it. In 1990, the International Labor
Organization decided to drop its recommended restrictions on women working at night
after realizing that the rule had a discriminatory effect: to save those jobs for men. Simi-
larly, in the United States, legislation protective of women was declared by the courts to
be invalid under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which outlawed sex discrimination.
Americans may not be debating these matters because, as consumers, we like stores
to be open around the clock, medical services to be available continuously, and people to
answer the phone when we make travel reservations late at night. Also, as employees, we
may benefit from the expansion of job opportunities in a 24/7 economy. But, again, the
economy that never sleeps poses risks to the workers who staff it, and to their families.
Given that difficult work schedules are currently a fact of life in our economy, it is obvi-
ous that we need to think about how to mitigate their harm. Some employers have tried
out shift rotation systems that minimize employee fatigue; others have investigated the
use of light to control or change the circadian rhythms of people working late hours.
There is also talk about medications that could reset the bodys clock. We must consider
as well the ethical issues that underlie these manipulations, insofar as they put workers
out of sync with family and friends.
When 2 of every 5 working Americans are on nonstandard shifts, employment in
a 24/7 economy and its effects on them and their families clearly need to be put higher
on the public agenda. The underlying trends that have brought about the great diversity
in work schedules among Americans will surely continue, and we need to confront the
challenges they pose for American families.
Recommended Resources
Casper, Lynne M. My Daddy Takes Care of Me!: Fathers as Care Providers. Current Population Reports.
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office for the U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1997.
Casper describes in detail the extent to which American fathers provide child care when mothers
are employed.
Ch-10.indd 398 7/8/2008 12:35:08 PM
Chapter 10 Family and the Economy 399
Deutsch, Francine. Halving It All: How Equally Shared Parenting Works. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1999. This interview-based study includes a chapter on how some dual-earner cou-
ples work different shifts to manage child care.
Presser, Harriet B. Working in a 24/7 Economy: Challenges for American Families. New York: Russell Sage
Foundation, 2003. This book describes what we know about work shifts in the United States and
their consequences for American families.
Presser, Harriet B. Race-Ethnic and Gender Differences in Nonstandard Work Shifts. Work and Oc-
cupations 30 (2003): 412 439. I examine how work shifts differ by race, ethnicity and gender.
Wedderburn, Alexander, ed. Shiftwork and Health. Special issue of Bulletin of Studies on Time, Vol. 1.
Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2001. Online.
http://www.eurofound.ie. This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the relationship be-
tween shift work and health.
R E A DI NG 3 1
Why Middle-Class Mothers
and Fathers Are Going Broke
Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi
During the past generation, a great myth has swept through America. Like all good
myths, the Over-Consumption Myth tells a tale to explain a confusing world. Why are
so many Americans in financial trouble? Why are credit card debts up and savings down?
Why are millions of mothers heading into the labor force and working overtime? The
myth is so deeply embedded in our collective understanding that it resists even elemen-
tary questioning: Families have spent too much money buying things they dont need.
Americans have a new character flawthe urge to splurge
1
and it is driving them to
spend, spend, spend like never before.
The drive for all that spending is almost mystical in origin. John de Graaf and his
coauthors explain in Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic, Its as if we Americans, de-
spite our intentions, suffer from some kind of Willpower Deficiency Syndrome, a break-
down in affluenza immunity.
2
Economist Juliet Schor blames the never consumerism,
but the results are the same. She points to mass overspending within the middle class
[in which] large numbers of Americans spend more than they say they would like to, and
more than they have. That they spend more than they realize they are spending, and
more than is fiscally prudent.
3
Many maladies are explained away by the Over-Consumptive Myth. Why are
Americans in debt? Sociologist Robert Frank claims that Americas newfound Luxury
Fever forces middle-class families to finance their consumption increases largely by
reduced savings and increased debt.
4
Why are schools failing and streets unsafe? Juliet
Schor cites competitive spending as a major contributor to the deterioration of public
goods such as education, social services, public safety, recreation, and culture.
5
Why
Ch-10.indd 399 7/8/2008 12:35:09 PM
400 Part IV Families in Society
are Americans unhappy? Affluenza sums it up: The dogged pursuit for more accounts
for Americans overload, debt, anxiety, and waste.
6
Everywhere we turn, it seems that
over-consumption is tearing at the very fabric of society.
The Over-Consumption Myth rests on the premise that families spend their money
on things they dont really need. Over-consumption is not about medical care or basic
housing; it is, in the words of Juliet Schor, about designer clothes, a microwave, res-
taurant meals, home and automobile air conditioning, and, of course, Michael Jordans
ubiquitous athletic shoes, about which children and adults both display near-obsession.
7

And it isnt about buying a few goodies with extra income; it is about going deep into debt
to finance consumer purchases that sensible people could do without.
The beauty of the Over-Consumption Myth is that it squares neatly with our own
intuitions. We see the malls packed with shoppers. We receive catalogs filled with out-
rageously expensive gadgets. We think of that overpriced summer dress that hangs in
the back of the closet or those power tools gathering dust in the garage. The conclusion
seems indisputable: The urge to splurge is driving folks into economic ruin.
But is it true? Intuitions and anecdotes are no substitute for hard data, so we
searched deep in the recesses of federal archives, where we found detailed information
on Americans spending patterns since the early 1970s, carefully sorted by spending cat-
egories and family size.
8
If families really are blowing their paychecks on designer clothes
and restaurant meals, then the expenditure data should show that todays families are
spending more on these frivolous items than ever before. ( Throughout our discussion,
in this [reading] . . . all figures will be adjusted for the effects of inflation.
9
) But we found
that the numbers pointed in a very different direction, demonstrating that the over-
consumption explanation is just a myth.
Consider clothing. Newsweek recently ran a multipage cover story about Ameri-
cans drowning in debt. The reason for widespread financial distress and high bank-
ruptcy rates? Frivolous shopping is part of the problem: many debtors blame their woes
squarely on Tommy, Ralph, Gucci, and Prada.
10
That certainly sounds reasonable.
After all, Banana Republic is so crowded with shoppers we can barely find an empty
fitting room, Adidas and Nike clad the feet of every teenager we meet, and designer
shops rake in profits selling nothing but underwear or sunglasses. Even little childrens
clothes now carry hip brand names, and babies sport GAP or YSL on their T-shirts
and sleepers.
And yet, when it is all added up, including the Tommy sweatshirts and Ray-Ban
sunglasses, the average family of four today spends 21 percent less (inflation adjusted)
on clothing than a similar family did in the early 1970s. How can this be? What the
finger-waggers have forgotten are the things families dont spend money on anymore.
I (Elizabeth) recall the days of rushing off to Stride Rite to buy two new pairs of sensible
leather shoes for each of my children every three months (one for church and one for
everyday) plus a pair of sneakers for play. Today, Amelias toddler owns nothing but a pair
of $5 sandals from Wal-Mart. Suits, ties, and pantyhose have been replaced by cotton
trousers and knit tops, as business casual has swept the nation. New fabrics, new tech-
nology, and cheap labor have lowered prices. And discounters like Target and Marshalls
have popped up across the country, providing reasonable, low-cost clothes for todays
families. The differences add up. In 1973, Sunday dresses, wool jackets, and the other
Ch-10.indd 400 7/8/2008 12:35:09 PM
Chapter 10 Family and the Economy 401
clothes for a family of four claimed nearly $750 more a year from the family budget than
all the name-brand sneakers and hip T-shirts todays families are buying.
11
OK, so if Americans arent blowing their paychecks on clothes, then they must
be overspending on food. Designer brands have hit the grocery shelves as well, with far
more prepared foods, high-end ice creams, and exotic juices. Families even buy bottles
of water, a purchase that would have shocked their grandparents. Besides, who cooks at
home anymore? With Mom and Dad both tied up at work, Americans are eating out (or
ordering in) more than ever before. The authors of Affluenza grumble, City streets and
even suburban malls sport a United Nations of restaurants. . . . Eating out used to be a
special occasion. Now we spend more money on restaurant food than on the food we
cook ourselves.
12
They are right, but only to a point. The average family of four spends more at
restaurants than it used to, but it spends less at the grocery storea lot less. Families are
saving big bucks by skipping the T-bone steaks, buying their cereal in bulk at Costco,
and opting for generic paper towels and canned vegetables. Those savings more than
compensate for all that restaurant eatingso much so that todays family of four is actu-
ally spending 22 percent less on food (at-home and restaurant eating combined) than its
counterpart of a generation ago.
13
Outfitting the home? Affluenza rails against appliances that were deemed luxuries
as recently as 1970, but are now found in well over half of U.S. homes, and thought of
by a majority of Americans as necessities: dishwashers, clothes dryers, central heating
and air conditioning, color and cable TV.
14
These handy gadgets may have captured
a new place in Americans hearts, but they arent taking up much space in our wallets.
Manufacturing costs are down, and durability is up. When the microwave oven, dish-
washer, and clothes dryer are combined with the refrigerator, washing machine, and
stove, families are actually spending 44 percent less on major appliances today than they
were a generation ago.
15
Vacation homes are another big target. A financial columnist for Money maga-
zine explains how life has changed. A generation ago, the dream vacation was a modest
affair: Come summer, the family piled into its Ford country wagon (with imitation
wood-panel doors) and tooled off to Lake Watchamasakee for a couple of weeks. Now,
laments the columnist, things have changed. The rented cabin on the lake gave way
to a second home high on an ocean dune.
16
But the world he describes does not exist,
at least not for the middle-class family. Despite the rhetoric, summer homes remain
the fairly exclusive privilege of the well-to-do. In 1973, 32 percent of families reported
expenses associated with owning a vacation home; by 2000, the proportion had inched
up to 4 percent.
17
That is not to say that middle-class families never fritter away any money. A gen-
eration ago no one had cable, big-screen televisions were a novelty reserved for the
very rich, and DVD and TiVo were meaningless strings of letters. So how much more
do families spend on home entertainment, premium channels included? They spend
23 percent morea whopping extra $170 annually. Computers add another $300 to the
annual family budget.
18
But even that increase looks a little different in the context of
other spending. The extra money spent on cable, electronics, and computers is more than
offset by families savings on major appliances and household furnishings.
Ch-10.indd 401 7/8/2008 12:35:09 PM
402 Part IV Families in Society
The same balancing act holds true in other areas. The average family spends more
on airline travel than it did a generation ago, but it spends less on dry cleaning. More on
telephone services, but less on tobacco. More on pets, but less on carpets.
19
And, when
we add it all up, increases in one category are offset by decreases in another. In other
words, there seems to be about as much frivolous spending today as there was a genera-
tion ago.
Yet the myth remains rock solid: Middle-class families are rushing headlong into
financial ruin because they are squandering too much money on Red Lobster, Gucci, and
trips to the Bahamas. Americans cling so tightly to the myth not because it is supported
by hard evidence, but because it is a comforting way to explain away some very bad news.
If families are in trouble because they squander their money, then those of us who shop
at Costco and cook our own pasta have nothing to worry about. Moreover, if families
are to blame for their own failures, then the rest of us bear no responsibility for helping
those who are in trouble. Their fault, their problem. We can join the chorus of experts
advising the financial failures to simplifystay away from Perrier and Rolex. Follow
this sensible advice, and credit card balances will vanish, bankruptcy filings will disappear,
and mortgage foreclosures will cease to plague America.
Reality is not nearly so neat. Sure, there are some families who buy too much
stuff, but there is no evidence of any epidemic in overspendingcertainly nothing that
could explain a 255 percent increase in the foreclosure rate, a 430 percent increase in the
bankruptcy rolls, and a 570 percent increase in credit card debt.
20
A growing number of
families are in terrible financial trouble, but no matter how many times the accusation is
hurled, Prada and HBO are not the reason.
WHERE DID THE MONEY GO?
If they arent spending themselves into oblivion on designer water and DVDs, how did
middle-class families get into so much financial trouble? The answer starts, quite liter-
ally, at home.
We could pile clich on clich about the home, but we will settle for this observa-
tion: The home is the most important purchase for the average middle-class family. To
the overwhelming majority of Americans, home ownership stands out as the single most
important component of the good life.
21
Homes mark the lives of their children, set-
ting out the parameters of their universe. The luck of location will determine whether
there are computers in their classrooms, whether there are sidewalks for them to ride
bikes on, and whether the front yard is a safe place to play. And a home will consume
more of the familys income than any other purchasemore than food, more than cars,
more than health insurance, more than child care.
As anyone who has read the newspapers or purchased a home knows, it costs a
lot more to buy a house than it used to.
22
(Since the overwhelming majority of middle-
class parents are homeowners, we focus this discussion on the costs of owning, rather
than renting.
23
) What most of us have forgotten, however, is that todays home prices
are not the product of some inevitable demographic force that has simply rolled its way
across America. Quite the opposite. In the late 1980s, several commentators predicted
Ch-10.indd 402 7/8/2008 12:35:09 PM
Chapter 10 Family and the Economy 403
a spectacular collapse in the housing market. Economists reasoned that the baby boom-
ers were about to become empty nesters, so pressure on the housing market would un-
dergo a sharp reversal. According to these experts, housing prices would reverse their
forty-year upward trend and drop during the 1990s and 2000sanywhere from 10 to
47 percent.
24
Of course, the over-consumption critics have a ready explanation for why hous-
ing prices shot up despite expert predictions: Americans are bankrupting themselves to
buy over-gadgeted, oversized McMansions. Money magazine captures this view: A
generation or so ago . . . a basic, 800-square-foot, $8,000 Levittown box with a carport
was heaven. . . . By the 1980s, the dream had gone yupscale. Home had become a 6,000-
square-foot contemporary on three acres or a gutted and rehabbed townhouse in a gen-
trified ghetto.
25
Where did so many people get this impression? Perhaps from the much ballyhooed
fact that the average size of a new home has increased by nearly 40 percent over the
past generation (though it is still less than 2,200 square feet).
26
But before the over-
consumption camp declares victory, there are a few more details to consider. The over-
whelming majority of middle-income families dont live in one of those spacious new
homes. Indeed, the proportion of families living in older homes has increased by nearly
50 percent over the past generation, leaving a growing number of homeowners grap-
pling with deteriorating roofs, peeling paint, and old wiring. Today, nearly six out of ten
families own a home that is more than twenty-five years old, and nearly a quarter own a
house that is more than fifty years old.
27
Despite all the hoopla over the highly visible status symbols of the well-to-do, the
size and amenities of the average middle-class family home have increased only modestly.
The median owner-occupied home grew from 5.7 rooms in 1975 to 6.1 rooms in the late
1990san increase of less than half of a room in more than two decades.
28
What was this
half a room used for? Was it an exercise room, a media room, or any of the other
exotic uses of space that critics have so widely mocked? No. The data show that most
often that extra room was a second bathroom or a third bedroom.
29
These are meaning-
ful improvements, to be sure, but the average middle-class family in a six-room house
has hardly rocketed to McMansion status.
FOR THE CHILDREN
The finger-waggers missed another vital fact: The rise in housing costs has become a fam-
ily problem. Home prices have grown across the board, but the brunt of the price increases
has fallen on families with children. Data from the Federal Reserve show that the median
home value for the average childless individual increased by 23 percent between 1983
and 1998an impressive rise in just fifteen years.
30
(Again, these and all other figures
are adjusted for inflation.) For married couples with children, however, housing prices
shot up 79 percentmore than three times faster.
31
To put this in dollar terms, compare
the single person without children to a married couple with children. In 1983 the aver-
age childless individual bought a $73,000 house, compared with a $90,000 house today
(adjusted for inflation). In 1983 the average married couple with children owned a house
Ch-10.indd 403 7/8/2008 12:35:09 PM
404 Part IV Families in Society
worth $98,000. Just fifteen years later, a similar family with children bought a house worth
$175,000. The growing costs made a big dent in the family budget, as monthly mortgage
costs made a similar jump, despite falling interest rates.
32
No matter how the data are cut,
couples with children are spending more than ever on housing.
Why would the average parent spend so much money on a home? The over-
consumption theory doesnt offer many insights. We doubt very much that families with
children have a particular love affair with bathroom spas and professional kitchens
while the swinging singles are perfectly content to live in Spartan apartments with out-
dated kitchens and closet sized bathrooms.
No, the real reason lies elsewhere. For many parents, the answer came down to two
words so powerful that families would pursue them to the brink of bankruptcy: safety and
education. Families put Mom to work, used up the familys economic reserves, and took
on crushing debt loads in sacrifice to these twin gods, all in the hope of offering their
children the best possible start in life.
The best possible start begins with good schools, but parents are scrambling to find
those schools. Even politicians who cant agree on much of anything agree that there is a
major problem in Americas public schools. In the 2000 election campaign, for example,
presidential candidates from both political parties were tripping over each other to pro-
mote their policies for new educational programs. And they had good reason. Accord-
ing to a recent poll, education now ranks as voters single highest priority for increased
federal spendinghigher than health care, research on AIDS, environmental protection,
and fighting crime.
33
Everyone has heard the all-too-familiar news stories about kids who cant read,
gang violence in the schools, classrooms without textbooks, and drug dealers at the school
doors. For the most part, the problems arent just about flawed educational policies; they
are also depicted as the evils associated with poverty.
34
Even President Bush (who didnt
exactly run on a Help-the-Poor platform) focused on helping failing schools, which, by
and large, translates into help for schools in the poorest neighborhoods.
So what does all this have to do with educating middle-class children, most of whom
have been lucky enough to avoid the worst failings of the public school system? The an-
swer is simplemoney. Failing schools impose an enormous cost on those children who
are forced to attend them, but they also inflict an enormous cost on those who dont.
Talk with an average middle-class parent in any major metropolitan area, and shell
describe the time, money, and effort she devoted to finding a slot for her offspring in
a decent school. In some cases, the story will be about mastering the system: we put
Joshua on the wait-list for the Science Magnet School the day he was born. In other
cases, it will be one of leaving the public school system altogether, as middle-class parents
increasingly opt for private, parochial, or home schooling. My husband and I both went
to public schools, but we just couldnt see sending Erin to the [local] junior high. But
private schools and strategic maneuvering go only so far. For most middle-class parents,
ensuring that their children get a decent education translates into one thing: snatching up
a home in the small subset of school districts that have managed to hold on to a reputa-
tion of high quality and parent confidence.
Homes can command a premium for all sorts of amenities, such as a two-car ga-
rage, proximity to work or shopping, or a low crime rate. A study conducted in Fresno
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Chapter 10 Family and the Economy 405
(a midsized California metropolis with 400,000 residents) found that, for similar homes,
school quality was the single most important determinant of neighborhood pricesmore im-
portant than racial composition of the neighborhood, commute distance, crime rate, or
proximity to a hazardous waste site.
35
A study in suburban Boston showed the impact
of school boundary lines. Two homes located less than half a mile apart and similar in
nearly every aspect, will command significantly different prices if they are in different
elementary school zones.
36
Schools that scored just 5 percent higher on fourth-grade
math and reading tests added a premium of nearly $4,000 to nearby homes, even though
these homes were virtually the same in terms of neighborhood character, school spend-
ing, racial composition, tax burden, and crime rate.
By way of example, consider University City, the West Philadelphia neighbor-
hood surrounding the University of Pennsylvania. In an effort to improve the area, the
university committed funds for a new elementary school. The results? At the time of
the announcement, the median home value in the area was less than $60,000. Five years
later, homes within the boundaries go for about $200,000, even if they need to be totally
renovated.
37
The neighborhood is otherwise pretty much the same: the same commute
to work, the same distance from the freeways, the same old houses. And yet, in five years
families are willing to pay more than triple the price for a home, just so they can send
their kids to a better public elementary school. Real estate agents have long joked that
the three things that matter in determining the price of a house are location, location,
location. Today, that mantra could be updated to schools, schools, schools.
This phenomenon isnt new, but the pressure has intensified considerably. In the
early 1970s, not only did most Americans believe that the public schools were function-
ing reasonably well, a sizable majority of adults thought that public education had actu-
ally improved since they were kids. Today, only a small minority of Americans share this
optimistic view. Instead, the majority now believes that schools have gotten significantly
worse.
38
Fully half of all Americans are dissatisfied with Americas public education sys-
tem, a deep concern shared by black and white parents alike.
39
Even Juliet Schor, a leading critic of over-consumption, acknowledges the growing
pressure on parents. For all that she criticizes Americas love affair with granite counter-
tops and microwave ovens, she recognizes that parents can find themselves trapped by
the needs of their children:
Within the middle class, and even the upper middle class, many families experience an
almost threatening pressure to keep up, both for themselves and their children. They
are deeply concerned about the rigors of the global economy, and the need to have their
children attend good schools. This means living in a community with relatively high
housing costs.
40
In other words, the only way to ensure that a beloved youngster gets a solid education is
to spring for a three-bedroom Colonial with an hour-long commute to a job in the city.
Todays parents must also confront another frightening prospect as they consider
where their children will attend school: the threat of school violence. The widely publi-
cized rise in shootings, gangs, and dangerous drugs at public schools sent many parents
in search of a safe haven for their sons and daughters: Violent incidents can happen
Ch-10.indd 405 7/8/2008 12:35:09 PM
406 Part IV Families in Society
anywhere, as the shootings at lovely suburban Columbine High School in Colorado re-
vealed to a horrified nation. But the statistics show that school violence is not as random
as it might seem. According to one study, the incidence of serious violent crimesuch
as robbery, rape, or attack with a weaponis more than three times higher in schools
characterized by high poverty levels than those with predominantly middle- and upper-
income children.
41
Similarly, urban children are more than twice as likely as suburban
children to fear being attacked on the way to or from school.
42
The data expose a harsh
reality: Parents who can get their kids into a more economically segregated neighbor-
hood really improve the odds that their sons and daughters will make it through school
safely.
Newer, more isolated suburbs with restrictive zoning also promise a refuge from
the random crimes that tarnish urban living.
43
It may seem odd that families would de-
vote so much attention to personal safetyor the lack thereofwhen the crime rate in
the United States has fallen sharply over the past decade.
44
But national statistics mask
differences among communities, and disparities have grown over time. In many cities,
the urban centers have grown more dangerous while outlying areas have gotten safer
further intensifying the pressure parents feel to squeeze into a suburban refuge.
45
In
Baltimore and Philadelphia, for example, the crime rate fell in the surrounding suburbs
just as it increased in the center city. The disparities are greatest for the most frighten-
ing violent crimes. Today a person is ten times more likely to be murdered in center city
Philadelphia than in its surrounding suburbs, and twelve times more likely to be killed
in central Baltimore.
46
Dyed-in-the-wool urbanites would be quick to remind us that although the crime
rate may have climbed in many urban areas, the average family faces only minuscule odds
of being killed in a random act of violence in downtown Baltimore or any other city.
That may be true, but it is beside the point, because it ignores a basic fact of parental
psychologyworry. Parents are constantly mindful of the vulnerability of their children,
and no amount of statistical reasoning can persuade them to stop worrying.
Emily Cheung tells a story that resonates with millions of parents. A psychothera-
pist and longtime city dweller, Emily had rented an apartment in a working-class neigh-
borhood. For years, she sang the praises of city living. But as her boys got older, her views
began to change. We were close to The Corner and I was scared for [my sons]. I didnt
want them to grow up there. After a series of break-ins on her block, Emily started look-
ing for a new place for her family to live. I wasnt looking to buy a house, but I wanted
to rent something away from [this neighborhood] to get my boys out to better schools
and a safer place. It wasnt as easy as she had hoped. Emily couldnt find any apartments
in the neighborhood she wanted to live in. When her real estate agent convinced her that
she could qualify for a mortgage, she jumped at the chance to move to the suburbs.
The first night in the house, I just walked around in the dark and was so grateful. . . . At
this house, it was so nice and quiet. [My sons] could go outdoors and they didnt need to
be afraid. [She starts crying.] I thought that if I could do this for them, get them to a better
place, what a wonderful gift to give my boys. I mean, this place was three thousand times
better. It is safe with a huge front yard and a back yard and a driveway. It is wonderful.
I had wanted this my whole life.
Ch-10.indd 406 7/8/2008 12:35:10 PM
Chapter 10 Family and the Economy 407
Emily took a huge financial gamble buying a house that claimed nearly half of her monthly
income, but she had made up her mind to do whatever she could to keep her boys safe.
Families like Emilys have long acknowledged crime as an unfortunate fact of life,
but the effect on parents has changed. A generation ago, there just wasnt much that av-
erage parents could do to escape these hazards. A family could buy a guard dog or leave
the lights on, but if the suburbs were about as troubled as the citiesor if crime wasnt
framed as a city problemthen the impetus to move wasnt very compelling. Today,
however, cities and suburbs seem to present two very distinct alternatives. When the car
is stolen or the news features a frightening murder on a nearby street, families are more
inclined to believe that the suburbs will offer them a safer alternative. According to one
study, more than one-third of families who had left central Baltimore and over half of
families who had considered leaving were moved to do so by their fear of crime.
47
Ultimately, however, it did not matter whether there was a meaningful gap between
the schools in the center cities and those in the surrounding suburbs, or whether the
streets really were safer far away from the big city. It didnt even matter whether there
really was a crisis in public education, as the politicians and the local news might insist.
What mattered was that parents believed that there was an important differenceand that
the difference was growing.
48
The only answer for millions of loving parents was to buy
their way into a decent school district in a safe neighborhoodwhatever the cost.
BIDDING WAR IN THE SUBURBS
And so it was that middle-class families across America have been quietly drawn into an
all-out war. Not the war on drugs, the war about creationism, or the war over sex educa-
tion. Their war has received little coverage in the press and no attention from politicians,
but it has profoundly altered the lives of parents everywhere, shaping every economic
decision they make. Their war is a bidding war. The opening shots in this war were fired
in the most ordinary circumstances. Individual parents sought out homes they thought
were good places to bring up kids, just as their parents had done before them. But as
families saw urban centers as increasingly unattractive places to live, the range of desir-
able housing options began to shrink and parents desire to escape from failing schools
began to take on new urgency. Millions of parents joined in the search for a house on a
safe street with a good school nearby. Over time, demand heated up for an increasingly
narrow slice of the housing stock.
This in itself would have been enough to trigger a bidding war for suburban homes
in good school districts. But a growing number of families brought new artillery to the
war: a second income. In an era when the overwhelming majority of mothers are bring-
ing home a paycheck and covering a big part of the familys bills, it is easy to forget that
just one generation ago most middle-class mothersincluding those in the workforce
made only modest contributions to the familys regular expenses. A generation ago, the
average working wife contributed just one-quarter of the familys total income.
49
In many
families, Moms earnings were treated as pin money to cover treats and extras, not
mortgages and car payments. Unenlightened husbands werent the only ones to foster
Ch-10.indd 407 7/8/2008 12:35:10 PM
408 Part IV Families in Society
this attitude. Banks and loan companies routinely ignored womens earnings in calculat-
ing whether to approve a mortgage, on the theory that a wife might leave the workforce
at any moment to pursue full-time homemaking.
50
In 1975 Congress passed an important law with far-reaching consequences for fam-
ilies housing choices. The Equal Craft Opportunity Act stipulated, among other things,
that lenders could no longer ignore a wifes income when judging whether a family
earned enough to qualify for a mortgage.
51
By the early 1980s, womens participation in
the labor force had become a significant factor in whether a married couple could buy a
home.
52
Both families and banks had started down the path of counting Moms income
as an essential part of the monthly budget.
This change may not sound revolutionary today, but it represents a seismic shift
in family economics. No longer were families constrained by Dads earning capacity.
When Mom wanted a bigger yard or Dad wanted a better school for the kids, families
had a new answer: Send Mom to work and use her paycheck to buy that nice house in
the suburbs.
The womens movement contributed to this trend, opening up new employment
possibilities and calling on mothers to reconsider their lifetime goals. For some women,
the decision to head into the workplace meant personal fulfillment and expanded op-
portunities to engage in interesting, challenging occupations. For many more, the sense
of independence that accompanied a job and a paycheck provided a powerful incentive.
But for most middle-class women, the decision to get up early, drop the children off at
day care, and head to the office or factory was driven, at least in part, by more prosaic
reasons. Millions of women went to work in a calculated attempt to give their families
an economic edge.
53
The transformation happened gradually, as hundreds of thousands of mothers
marched into the workforce year after year. But over the course of a few decades, the
change has been nothing short of revolutionary. As recently as 1976 a married mother
was more than twice as likely to stay home with her children as to work full-time. By
2000, those figures had almost reversed: The modern married mother is now nearly twice
as likely to have a full-time job as to stay home.
54
The transformation can be felt in other
ways. In 1965 only 21 percent of working women were back at their jobs within 6 months
of giving birth to their first child. Today, that figure is higher than 70 percent. Similarly,
a modern mother with a three-month-old infant is more likely to be working outside the
home than was a 1960s woman with a five-year-old child.
55
As a claims adjuster with two
children told us, It never even occurred to me not to work, even after Zachary was born.
All the women I know have a job.
Even these statistics understate the magnitude of change among middle-class
mothers. Before the 1970s, large numbers of older women, lower-income women, and
childless women were in the workforce.
56
But middle-class mothers were far more
likely to stay behind, holding on to the more traditional role of full-time homemaker
long after many of their sisters had given it up. Over the past generation, middle-class
mothers flooded into offices, shops, and factories, undergoing a greater increase in
workforce participation than either their poor or their well-to-do sisters.
57
Attitudes
changed as well. In 1970, when the womens revolution was well under way, 78 percent
of younger married women thought that it was better for wives to be homemakers
Ch-10.indd 408 7/8/2008 12:35:10 PM
Chapter 10 Family and the Economy 409
and husbands to do the breadwinning.
58
Today, only 38 percent of women believe that
it is ideal for one parent to be home full-time, and nearly 70 percent of Americans
believe it doesnt matter whether it is the husband or the wife who stays home with the
children.
59
It is also the middle-class family whose finances have been most profoundly af-
fected by womens entry into the workforce. Poorer, less educated women have seen small
gains in real wages over the past generation. Wealthy women have enjoyed considerable
increases, but those gains were complemented by similar increases in their husbands
rapidly rising incomes.
60
For the middle class, however, womens growing paychecks have
made all the difference, compensating for the painful fact that their husbands earnings
have stagnated over the past generation.
61
For millions of middle-class families hoping to hold on to a more traditional
mother-at-home lifestyle, the bidding wars crushed those dreams. A group of solidly
middle-class Americansour nations police officersillustrate the point. A recent study
showed that the average police officer could not afford a median priced home in two-
thirds of the nations metropolitan areas on the officers income alone.
62
The same is true
for elementary school teachers. Nor is this phenomenon limited to high-cost cities such
as New York and San Francisco. Without a working spouse, the family of a police officer
or teacher is forced to rent an apartment or buy in a marginal neighborhood even in more
modestly priced cities such as Nashville, Kansas City, and Charlotte. These families have
found that in order to hold on to all the benefits of a stay-at-home mom . . . , they will
be shoved to the bottom rungs of the middle class.
What about those families with middle-class aspirations who earned a little less
than average or those who lived in a particularly expensive city? Even with both parents
in the workforce, they have fallen behind. Rather than drop out of the bidding war and
resign themselves to sending their kids to weaker schools, many middle-class couples
have seized on another way to fund their dream home: take on a bigger mortgage. In
1980, the mortgage lending industry was effectively deregulated. . . . As a result, average
families could find plenty of banks willing to issue them larger mortgages relative to their
incomes. As the bidding war heated up, families took on larger and larger mortgages just
to keep up, committing themselves to debt loads that were unimaginable just a genera-
tion earlier.
With extra income from Moms paycheck and extra mortgage money from the
bank, the usual supply and demand in the market for homes in desirable areas exploded
into an all-out bidding war. As millions of families sent a second earner into the work-
force, one might expect that they would spend less on housing as a proportion of total
income. Instead, just the opposite occurred. A growing number of middle-class families
now spend more on housing relative to family income.
63
As demand for the limited stock
of desirable family housing continued to grow, prices did not reach the natural limit that
would have been imposed by the purchasing power of the single-income family confined
to a conventional 80 percent mortgage. Instead, monthly mortgage expenses took a leap
of 69 percent at a time that other family expendituresfood, clothing, home furnishings,
and the likeremained steady or fell.
64
Parents were caught. It may have been their collective demand for housing in
family neighborhoods that drove prices up, but each individual family that wanted one
Ch-10.indd 409 7/8/2008 12:35:10 PM
410 Part IV Families in Society
of those houses had no choice but to join in the bidding war. If one family refused to
pay, some other family would snatch up the property. No single family could overcome
the effects of millions of other families wanting what it wanted.
Each year, a growing number of stay-at-home mothers made the move into the
workforce, hoping to put their families into solidly middle-class neighborhoods. But the
rules quietly changed. Todays mothers are no longer working to get ahead; now they
must work just to keep up. Somewhere along the way, they fell into a terrible trap.
. . . Short of buying a new home, parents currently have only one way to escape a
failing public school: Send the kids to private school. But there is another alternative,
one that would keep much-needed tax dollars inside the public school system while still
reaping the advantages offered by a voucher program. Local governments could enact
meaningful reform by enabling parents to choose from among all the public schools in a
locale, with no presumptive assignment based on neighborhood. Under a public school
voucher program, parents, not bureaucrats, would have the power to pick schools for
their childrenand to choose which schools would get their childrens vouchers. Stu-
dents would be admitted to a particular public school on the basis of their talents, their
interests, or even their lottery numbers; their zip codes would be irrelevant. Tax dollars
would follow the children, not the parents home addresses, and children who live in
a $50,000 house would have the same educational opportunities as those who live in a
$250,000 house.
Children who required extra resources, such as those with physical or learning dis-
abilities, could be assigned proportionately larger vouchers, which would make it more
attractive for schools to take on the more challenging (and expensive) task of educating
these children. It might tales some re-jiggering to settle on the right amount for a public
school voucher, but eventually every child would have a valuable funding ticket to be used
in any school in the area. To collect those tickets, schools would have to provide the
education parents want. And parents would have a meaningful set of choices, without the
need to buy a new home or pay private school tuition. Ultimately, an all-voucher system
would diminish the distinction between public and private schools, as parents were able
to exert more direct control over their childrens schools.
65
Of course, public school vouchers would not entirely eliminate the pressure par-
ents feel to move into better family neighborhoods. Some areas would continue to have
higher crime rates or better parks, and many parents might still prefer to live close to
their childrens schools. But a fundamental revision of school assignment policies would
broaden the range of housing choices families would consider. Instead of limiting them-
selves to homes within one or two miles of a school, parents could choose a home five
or even ten miles awayenough distance to give them several neighborhoods to choose
from, with a broad range of price alternatives.
School change, like any other change, would entail some costs. More children
might need to take a bus to school, pushing up school transportation expenses. On the
other hand many parents might actually shorten their own commutes, since they would
no longer be forced to live in far-flung suburbs for the sake of their children. The net
costs could be positive or negative.
An all-voucher system would be a shock to the educational system, but the shakeout
might be just what the system needs. In the short run, a large number of parents would
Ch-10.indd 410 7/8/2008 12:35:10 PM
Chapter 10 Family and the Economy 411
likely chase a limited number of spots in a few excellent schools. But over time, the whole
concept of the Beverly Hills schools or Newton schools would die out, replaced
in the hierarchy by schools that offer a variety of programs that parents want for their
children, regardless of the geographic boundaries. By selecting where to send their chil-
dren (and where to spend their vouchers), parents would take control over schools tax
dollars, making them the de facto owners of those schools. Parents, not administrators,
would decide on programs, student-teacher ratios, and whether to spend money on art
or sports. Parents competitive energies could be channeled toward signing up early or
improving their childrens qualifications for a certain school, not bankrupting themselves
to buy homes they cannot afford.
If a meaningful public school voucher system were instituted, the U.S. housing
market would change forever. These changes might dampen, and perhaps even depress,
housing prices in some of todays most competitive neighborhoods. But these losses
would be offset by other gains. Owners of older homes in urban centers might find more
willing buyers, and the urge to flee the cities might abate. Urban sprawl might slow down
as families recalculate the costs of living so far from work. At any rate, the change would
cause a one-time readjustment. The housing market would normalize, with supply and
demand more balanced and families freed from ruinous mortgages.
THE PRICE OF EDUCATION
Even with that perfect house in a swanky school district parents still are not covered
when it comes to educating their kidsnot by a long shot. The notion that taxpayers
foot the bill for educating middle-class children has become a myth in yet another way.
The two ends of the spectrumeverything that happens before a child shows up for his
first day of kindergarten and after he is handed his high-school diplomafall directly
on the parents. Preschool and college, which now account for one-third (or more) of
the years a typical middle-class kid spends in school, are paid for almost exclusively by
the childs family.
Preschool has always been a privately funded affair, at least for most middle-class
families. What has changed is its role for middle-class children. Over the past genera-
tion, the image of preschool has transformed from an optional stopover for little kids to
a prerequisite for elementary school. Parents have been barraged with articles telling
them that early education is important for everything from pre-reading skills to social
development. As one expert in early childhood education observes, In many communi-
ties around the country, kindergarten is no longer aimed at the entry level. And the only
way Mom and Dad feel they can get their child prepared is through a pre-kindergarten
program.
66
Middle-class parents have stepped into line with the experts recommendations.
Today, nearly two-thirds of Americas three- and four-year-olds attend preschool, com-
pared with just 4 percent in the mid-1960s.
67
This isnt just the by-product of more
mothers entering the workforce; nearly half of all stay-at-home moms now send their
kids to a prekindergarten program.
68
As Newsweek put it, The science says it all: pre-
school programs are neither a luxury nor a fad, but a real necessity.
69
Ch-10.indd 411 7/8/2008 12:35:10 PM
412 Part IV Families in Society
As demand has heated up, many families have found it increasingly difficult to find
a prekindergarten program with an empty slot. Author Vicki Iovine describes the struggle
she experienced trying to get her children into preschool in southern California:
Just trying to get an application to any old preschool can be met with more attitude than
the maitre d at Le Cirque. If you should be nave enough to ask if there will be open-
ings in the next session, you may be reminded that there are always more applicants than
openings, or the person might just laugh at you and hang up.
70
Ms. Iovines remarks are tongue-in-cheek, and pundits love to mock the parent
who subscribes to the theory that if little Susie doesnt get into the right preschool shell
never make it into the right medical school. But the shortage of quality preschool pro-
grams is very real. Child development experts have rated day-care centers, and the news is
not good. The majority are lumped in the poor to mediocre range.
71
Not surprisingly,
preschools with strong reputations often have long waiting lists.
72
Once again, todays parents find themselves caught in a trap. A generation ago,
when nursery school was regarded as little more than a chance for Mom to take a break,
parents could consider the economics in a fairly detached way, committing to pay no
more than what they could afford. And when only a modest number of parents were
shopping for those preschool slots, the prices had to remain low to attract a full class.
Today, when scores of experts routinely proclaim that preschool is decisive in a childs
development, but a slot in a preschoolany preschoolcan be hard to come by, parents
are in a poor position to shop around for lower prices.
The laws of supply and demand take hold in the opposite direction, eliminating
the pressure for preschool programs to keep prices low as they discover that they can in-
crease fees without losing pupils. A full-day program in a prekindergarten offered by the
Chicago public school district costs $6,500 a yearmore than the cost of a years tuition
at the University of Illinois.
73
High? Yes, but that hasnt deterred parents: At just one
Chicago public school, there are ninety-five kids on a waiting list for twenty slots. That
situation is fairly typical. According to one study, the annual cost for a four-year-old to
attend a child care center in an urban area is more than double the price of college tuition
in fifteen states.
74
And so todays middle-class families simply spend and spend, stretching
their budgets to give their child the fundamentals of a modern education.
Notes
1. John de Graaf, David Waan, and Thomas H. Naylor, Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic (San
Francisco: Barrett-Koehler, 2001), p. 13.
2. Graaf, Waan, and Naylor, Affluenza, p. 13.
3. Juliet B. Sehor, The Overspent American: Upscaling, Downshifting, and the New Consumer ( New York:
Basic Books, 1998), p. 20.
4. Robert H. Frank, Luxury Fever: Why Money Fails to Satisfy in an Era of Excess ( New York: Free
Press, 1999), p. 45.
5. Sehor, The Overspent American, p. 21.
6. Graaf, Waan, and Naylor, Affluenza, back cover.
7. Sehor, The Overspent American, p. 11.
Ch-10.indd 412 7/8/2008 12:35:10 PM
Chapter 10 Family and the Economy 413
8. The Bureau of Labor Statistics maintains the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES), a periodic set
of interviews and diary entries that analyze the spending behavior of over 20,000 consumer units.
For much of our analysis we compare the results of the 19721973 CES with those of the 2000
CES. In some instances, we use prepublished tables from the 1980 or the 2000 survey in order to
use the most comparable data available. We gratefully acknowledge the valuable assistance of Eric
Keil, an economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in locating and interpreting these data.
9. All comparisons of expenditures and income are adjusted for inflation using the Inflation Calcula-
tor, U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. Available at www.bls.gov/cpi/home.
htm [1/22/2003].
10. Daniel McGinn, Maxed Out, Newsweek, August 27, 2001, p. 37.
11. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Consumer Expenditure Survey: Inter-
view Survey, 19721973 (1997), Table 5, Selected Family Characteristics, Annual Expenditures,
and Sources of Income Classified by Family Income Before Taxes for Four Person Families;
Consumer Expenditures in 2000, BLS Report 958 (April 2002), Table 4, Size of Consumer Unit:
Average Annual Expenditures and Characteristics, Consumer Expenditure Survey 2000 (data are
for four-person families). See also Mark Lino, USDAs Expenditures on Children by Families
Project. Uses and Changes Over Time, Family Economics and Nutrition Review 13, no. 1 (2001):
8186. According to USDA estimates, the total amount of money an average family will spend on
clothing for a child between birth and age eighteen decreased 38 percent between 1960 and 2000
(Lino, p. 84).
12. Graaf, Waan, and Naylor, Affluenza, p. 28.
13. BLS, Consumer Expenditure Survey: Interview Survey, 19721973, Table 5; Consumer Expenditures in
2000, Table 4. See also Eva Jacobs and Stephanie Shipps, How Family Spending Has Changed
in the U.S., Monthly Labor Review 113 (March 1990): 2027.
14. Graaf, Waan, and Naylor, Affluenza, p. 28.
15. BLS, Consumer Expenditure Survey: Interview Survey, 19721973, Table 5; Consumer Expenditure
Survey, 2000 (prepublished data), Table 1400, Size of Consumer Unit: Average Annual Expendi-
tures and Characteristics (data are for four-person families).
16. Walter L. Updegrave, How Are We Doing? So Far, So Good. But Prosperity in the 90s Means
Meeting Seven Basic Goals, Money, Fall 1990, p. 20.
17. BLS, Consumer Expenditure Survey: Interview Survey, 19721973, Table 5; Consumer Expenditure
Survey, 2000, Table 1400.
18. BLS, Consumer Expenditure Survey: Interview Survey, 19721973, Table 5; Consumer Expenditure
Survey, 2000, Table 1400. Electronics comparison includes expenditures on televisions, radios,
musical instruments, and sound equipment. Computer calculation includes computer hardware
and software.
19. For example, in 2000 the average family of four spent an extra $290 on telephone services. On
the other hand, the average family spent nearly $200 less on floor coverings, $210 less on dry
cleaning and laundry supplies, and $240 less on tobacco products and smoking supplies. BLS,
Consumer Expenditure Survey: Interview Survey, 19721973, Table 5; Consumer Expenditure Survey,
2000, Table 1400.
20. Total revolving debt (which is predominantly credit card debt) increased from $64,500,000 in
1981 to $692,800,000 in 2000. SMR Research Corporation, The New Bankruptcy Epidemic: Fore-
casts, Causes, and Risk Control (Hackettstown, NJ, 2001), p. 14. Bankruptcy data calculated from
data reported by Administrative Office of the United States Courts, Table F2 (total nonbusiness
filings), 19802002.
21. Carolyn Setlow, Home: The New Destination, Point of Purchase, July 1, 2002.
22. Today the median sale price for an existing home is more than $150,000up 32 percent in
inflation-adjusted dollars from 1975. Joint Center for Housing Studies, Harvard University,
The State of the Nations Housing, 2002 (Cambridge, MA, 2002), Table A-1, Housing Market
Indicators, 19752001.
23. In 2001, 78.8 percent of married couples with children were homeowners. U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research. U.S. Housing
Market Conditions (Fourth Quarter, 2002), Table 30, Homeownership Rates by Household Type,
Ch-10.indd 413 7/8/2008 12:35:10 PM
414 Part IV Families in Society
1983Present. Although the data are not reported for subgroups, presumably this rate was lower
for low-income families, and even higher for middle- and upper-income families. In the general
population, middle-income households are 34 percent more likely than low-income households
to own a home. Calculated from Joint Center for Housing Studies, State of the Nations Housing,
Table A-9.
24. Patric H. Hendershott, Are Real House Prices Likely to Decline by 47 Percent? Regional Science
and Urban Economics 21, no. 4 (1991): 553563. See also N. Gregory Mankiw and David N. Weil,
The Baby Boom, the Baby Bust, and the Housing Market, Regional Science and Urban Economics
19, no. 2 (1989): 235258. Jonathan R. Laing, Crumbling Castles: The Recession in Real Estate
Has Ominous Implications, Barrons, December 18, 1989.
25. Updegrave, How Are We Doing? p. 20.
26. Joint Center for Housing Studies, State of the Nations Housing, Table A-1.
27. The proportion of owner-occupied houses twenty-five years or older grew from 40 percent in
1975 to 59 percent in 1999. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, American
Housing Survey, 1999, Current Housing Reports, H150/99 (October 2000), Table 3-1, Introduc-
tory CharacteristicsOwner Occupied Units; American Housing Survey: 1975, General Housing
Characteristics, Current Housing Reports, H-150-75A (April 1977), Table A1, Characteristics of
the Housing Inventory, 1975 and 1970.
28. Bureau of the Census, American Housing Survey: 1975, General Housing Characteristics, Current
Housing Reports, H-150-75A, Table A1; American Housing Survey, 1997, Current Housing Re-
ports, H150/97 (October 2000), Table 3-3, Size of Unit and LotOwner Occupied Units.
29. Bureau of the Census, American Housing Survey: 1975, General Housing Characteristics, Current
Housing Reports, H-150-75A, Table A1; American Housing Survey, 1999, Current Housing Re-
ports, H150/99, Table 3-3.
30. Federal Reserve Board, Survey of Consumer Finances, 1998 Full Public Dataset, available at http://
www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/oss/oss2/98/scf98home.html [1/5/2003]; Arthur Kennickell and
Janice Shack-Marquez, Changes in Family Finances from 1983 to 1989: Evidence from the Sur-
vey of Consumer Finances, Federal Reserve Bulletin 78 ( January 1992), Table 7, Median Amount
of Non-Financial Assets of Families Holding Such Assets, by Selected Characteristics of Families,
1983 and 1989 (data are for home-owning individuals under age fifty-five). We note that the
American Housing Survey does not report a substantial difference in the increase in housing
prices between families with and without children. Those data are likely skewed by the fact that a
growing number of families with children are headed by single mothers, who live in much smaller
and less expensive homes than their married counterparts, thus reducing the average amount spent
by households with children. When we focus on married couples with children, a demographic
group reported on by the Federal Reserve and the Consumer Expenditure Survey, the picture
facing two-parent families comes into sharp focus.
31. Federal Reserve Board, Survey of Consumer Finances, 1998 Full Public Dataset, Kennickell and
Shack-Marquez. Data are for home-owning households in which the head of household is under
age fifty-five. Married couples under fifty-five with no minor children also saw an increase in home
values, of 84 percent. This statistic is somewhat misleading, however, because it mixes together
couples who never planned to have children, couples who bought homes in anticipation of having
children, and couples whose children are now eighteen or older. Nearly nine out of ten married
women will have children at some point in their lives, so we believe it is reasonable to assume that
a large proportion of this group made their housing choices with their children in mind. Bureau
of the Census, Current Population Survey ( June 2000), Table H2, Distribution of Women 40 to
44 Years Old by Number of Children Ever Born and Marital Status: June 1970 to June 2000.
The data also reflect a growing number of couples decisions to commit both spouses incomes to
purchase housing, even among those who never have children.
32. BLS, Consumer Expenditure Survey, 1980, prepublished Table 5, Selected Characteristics and An-
nual Expenditures of All Consumer Units Classified by Composition of Consumer Unit, Interview
Survey, 1980; Consumer Expenditure Survey, 1999 (prepublished data), Table 1500, Composition of
Consumer Unit: Average Annual Expenditures and Characteristics (data are for husband and wife
with children).
Ch-10.indd 414 7/8/2008 12:35:10 PM
Chapter 10 Family and the Economy 415
33. Americans Put Education at Top of Federal Spending Priorities, Public Agenda Online, April 2001.
Available at http://www.publicagenda.org/issues/majprop.cfm?issue_type=education [1/20/2003].
34. See, for example, Arthur Levine, American Education: Still Separate, Still Unequal, Los Angeles
Times, February 2, 2003, p. M1.
35. David E. Clark and William E. Herrin, The Impact of Public School Attributes on Home Sale
Prices in California, Growth and Change 31 (Summer 2000): 385 407. The elasticity of teacher-
student ratio is nearly 8 times that of murder rate and just over 10 times that of the largest envi-
ronmental quality measure [proximity to interstate].
36. Sandra E. Black, Do Better Schools Matter? Parental Valuation of Elementary Education, Quar-
terly Journal of Economics 114 (May 1999): 577599.
37. The University of Pennsylvania made other modest investments in the neighborhood, including
hiring trash collectors to remove litter from the streets and employing neighborhood safety am-
bassadors. Those initiatives, however, did not represent major changes, since the university had
already been policing the area for several years; many locals agree that the new elementary school
was by far the most important change. Caitlin Francke, Penn Area Revival Lures Many, Pushes
Others Out, Philadelphia Inquirer, February 24, 2003.
38. George H. Gallup, The Eleventh Annual Gallup Poll of the Publics Attitudes Toward the Public
Schools, Phi Delta Kappan (September 1979), p. 37. More Than Half of Americans Say Public Edu-
cation Is Worse Today Than When They Were Students, Public Agenda Online (April 2000), available
at http://www.publicagenda.org/issues/pcc_detail.cfm?issue_type=education&list=16 [1/20/2003].
39. Black parents are almost three times more likely than other parents to report that they are com-
pletely dissatisfied with the quality of their childrens schools. Lydia Saad, Grade School Re-
ceives Best Parent Ratings, Education Nationally Gets Modest Ratings, Gallup Poll Analyses,
September 4, 2002.
40. Juliet Schor, Do Americans Shop Too Much? (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000), p. 11.
41. Thomas D. Snyder and Charlene M. Hoffman, Digest of Education Statistics, 2001, NCES
2001-130 (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, February
2002), Table 150, Percent of Public Schools Reporting Crime Incidents and the Seriousness of
Crime Incidents Reported, by School Characteristics, 1996 1997.
42. U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Sourcebook of Criminal Justice, 2000, NCJ
190251 (December 2001), Table 2.0001, Students Age 12 to 18 Reporting Fear of School-Related
Victimization.
43. For a discussion of the financial effects of restrictive zoning, see Michael Schill, Regulatory Bar-
riers to Housing Development in the United States, in Land Law in Comparative Perspective,
edited by Maria Elena Sanchez Jordan and Antonio Gambara ( The Hague: Kluwer Law Interna-
tional, 2002), pp. 101120.
44. Violent Crime Fell 9% in 01, Victim Survey Shows, New York Times, September 9, 2002; the
article cites a 50 percent decline in violent crime since 1993.
45. U.S. Department of Justice, 1995 Uniform Crime Reports (1996), cited in Setha M. Low, The
Edge and the Center: Gated Communities and the Discourse of Urban Fear, American Anthro-
pologist 103 (March 2001): 4558. In a 1975 survey of homeowners, the U.S. Census Bureau found
that people living in city centers were 38 percent more likely to complain of crime in their neigh-
borhoods than their suburban counterparts. Today urban dwellers are 125 percent more likely
than suburbanites to cite crime in their neighborhoods. Bureau of the Census, American Housing
Survey: 1975, Indicators of Housing and Neighborhood Quality, Current Housing Reports, H-150-
75B (February 1977), Table A-4, Selected Neighborhood Characteristics, 1975; American Housing
Survey, 1999, Current Housing Reports, H150/99 (October 2000), Table 3-8, Neighborhood
Owner Occupied Units.
46. Dando Yanich, Location, Location, Location: Urban and Suburban Crime on Local TV News,
Journal of Urban Affairs 23, no. 3 4 (2001): 221241, Table 2, Rates of Selected Crimes in Balti-
more and Philadelphia, 1977 and 1996.
47. Yanich, Location, Location, Location, p. 222.
48. While this is not exclusively an urban-suburban dichotomy, urban dwellers are more than twice
as likely as suburbanites to say that the public elementary schools are so bad that they would like
Ch-10.indd 415 7/8/2008 12:35:11 PM
416 Part IV Families in Society
to move. Similarly, parents who have young children and own homes in urban areas are almost
70 percent more likely to be unsatisfied with the public elementary schools in their neighborhoods
than those living in the suburbs. Bureau of the Census, American Housing Survey, 1999, Current
Housing Reports, H150/99, Table 3-8.
49. Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein, and Heather Boushey, The State of Working America, 200203
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003) p. 103.
50. See, for example, Congressional Research Service, Women and Credit: Synopsis of Prospective Find-
ings of Study on Available Legal Remedies Against Sex Discrimination in the Granting of Credit and
Possible State Statutory Origins of Unequal Treatment Based Primarily on the Credit Applicants Sex or
Marital Status. Prepared for the Subcommittee on Consumer Affairs, House Committee on Bank-
ing and Currency; Hearings on Credit Discrimination, by Sylvia L. Beckey, U.S. House of Repre-
sentatives, 93rd Congress, 2nd sess., May 2, 1974; and Margaret J. Gates, Credit Discrimination
Against Women: Causes and Solutions, Vanderbilt Law Review 27 (1974): 409 441.
51. Federal Trade Commission, Equal Credit Opportunity. Information sheet for consumers, available
at http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/credit /ecoa.htm [1/20/03].
52. Mark Evan Edwards, Home Ownership, Affordability, and Mothers Changing Work and Family
Roles, Social Science Quarterly 82 ( June 2001): 369383; Sharon Danes and Mary Winter, The
Impact of the Employment of the Wife on the Achievement of Home Ownership, Journal of
Consumer Affairs 24, no. 1 (1990): 148169.
53. In a survey of 1,000 working mothers, 80 percent reported that their main reason for working was
to support their families. Carin Rubenstein, The Confident Generation: Working Moms Have
a Brand New Attitude, Working Mother, May 1994, p. 42.
54. Calculated from Bureau of the Census, Historical Income TablesFamilies, Current Population
Survey, various Annual Demographic Supplements, Table F-14, Work Experience of Husband
and WifeAll Married-Couple Families, by Presence of Children Under 18 Years Old and Me-
dian and Mean Income: 1976 to 2000.
55. Kristin Smith, Barbara Downs, and Martin OConnell, Maternity Leave and Patterns: 19611995,
Household Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau, November 2001, Table 1, Women Working at a
job, by Monthly Interval After First Birth, 1961 65 to 199194.
56. Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap ( New York:
Basic Books, 1992), p. 162.
57. Between 1979 and 2000, married mothers at all income levels increased their hours in the work-
force. However, women whose husbands were in the bottom quintile added 334 hours per year,
and those in the top quintile added just 315 hours per year, compared with an average increase of
428 hours per year for women in the middle three quintiles. Calculated from The State of Working
America 20022003, Table 1.32, Annual Hours, Wives in Prime-Age, Married-Couple Families
with Children, and Contributions to Change, 19792000, Sorted by Husbands Income.
58. Coontz, The Way We Never Were, p. 168.
59. Chris McComb, Few Say Its Ideal for Both Parents to Work Full Time Outside of Home,
Gallup News Service, April 2022, 2001.
60. Both women and men who did not finish high school saw declines in real wages over the past
twenty years. By contrast, among college graduates, womens earnings have increased 30 percent
since 1979, while mens earnings have increased by 17 percent. U.S. Department of Labor, High-
lights of Womens Earnings in 2000, Report 952, August 2001, Table 15, Median Usual Weekly
Earnings of Full-Time Wage and Salary Workers 25 and Over in Constant (2000) Dollars, by Sex
and Educational Attainment, 19792000 Annual Averages.
61. Median earnings, which are the best measure of middle-class wages, have risen less than 1 percent
for men since the early 1970s, while womens earnings have increased by more than one-third.
Bureau of the Census, Historical Income TablesPeople, Current Population Survey, various Annual
Demographic Supplements. Available at http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/incperdet.
html [1/5/2003], Table P-36, Full-Time, Year-Round Workers (All Races) by Median Income and
Sex, 1955 to 2000.
62. Barbara J. Lipman, Center for Housing Policy, Paycheck to Paycheck: Working Families and the
Cost of Housing in America, New Century Housing 2 ( June 2001): 24 26.
Ch-10.indd 416 7/8/2008 12:35:11 PM
Chapter 10 Family and the Economy 417
63. [T]he proportion of middle-income families who would be considered house poor has doubled
since 1975. Bureau of the Census, Annual Housing Survey for the United States and Regions, 1975,
Part C, Financial Characteristics of the Housing Inventory, Annual Survey (1977), Table A-1, Income
of Families and Primary Individuals in Owner and Renter Occupied Housing Units, 1975. Avail-
able at http://www.census.gov/prod/www/abs/h150.html [3/10/2003]; American Housing Survey
for the United States: 2001, Annual Survey (2001), Table 220, Income of Families and Primary In-
dividuals by Selected CharacteristicsOccupied Units. Available at http://www.census.gov/hhes/
www/housing/abs/ahs01/tab313.html [3/4/2003]. In addition, the Consumer Expenditure Survey
indicates that mortgage payments as a proportion of income has increased considerably since the
early 1970s. Many indexes that measure housing affordability have shown no clear trend. These
indices, however, typically calculate a theoretical housing cost, based on such factors as current
mortgage rates and an imputed down payment amount. As a result, the indices are extremely sensi-
tive to fluctuations in interest rates, ignoring the fact that many families have fixed-rate mortgages
and do not refinance during periods of high interest. Similarly, these indexes typically assume
that all buyers get a conventional mortgage, which ignores the extraordinary rise in high-cost
subprime mortgages in recent years. Furthermore, they assume that the typical down payment
has held constant over the past generation, when in fact first-time home buyers are putting down
far smaller down payments today than twenty years ago. See, for example, Bureau of the Census,
Who Could Afford to Buy a House in 1995? Table 4-2, Affordability Status of Families and
Unrelated Individuals for a Modestly Priced Home, by Current Tenure and Type of Financing,
United States, 1984, 1988, 1991, 1993, and 1995. See also Joint Center for Housing Studies, State
of the Nations Housing, Table A-3. We continue to believe that the best evidence of real housing
costs is the direct data on what families report they are actually paying.
64. BLS, Consumer Expenditure Survey: Interview Survey, 19721973, Table 5; Consumer Expenditure
Survey, 2000, Table 1400. Note that in 2000, 74 percent of married couples with children owned
their own homes; in 1972/73 this figure was 71 percent. In order to isolate the effects of chang-
ing supply and demand for owner-occupied housing, this calculation only accounts for changes in
mortgage expenditures (including both interest and principal) by families who owned their own
homes. Federal Reserve data produce similar results (see above).
65. Martha Minow argues that daring changes are needed to increase parental involvement and pro-
mote accountability in the schools. Partners, Not Rivals: Privatization and the Public Good (Boston:
Beacon Press, 2003).
66. Laurent Belsie, Preschools Are Popping at the Seams, Christian Science Monitor, July 9, 2002,
p. 13.
67. Belsie, Preschools Are Popping at the Seams, p. 13.
68. Childrens Defense Fund, Key Facts: Essential Information About Child Care, Early Education, and
School-Age Care (Washington, DC: CDF, 2000).
69. Anna Quindlen, Building Blocks for Every Kid, Newsweek, February 12, 2001.
70. Vicki Iovine, The Girlfriends Guide to Toddlers: A Survival Manual to the Terrible Twos (and Ones
and Threes) from the First Step, the First Potty, and the First Word (No) to the Last Blankie ( New
York: Berkley Publishing Group, 1999): 240.
71. Suzanne Helburn et al., Cost, Quality, and Child Care Outcomes in Child Care Centers (Denver:
Center for Research in Economic and Social Policy, University of Colorado at Denver, 1995).
72. National Council of Jewish Women, Opening a New Window on Child Care: A Report on the Status
of Child Care in the Nation Today ( New York: NCJW, 1999), p. 6.
73. Kate N. Grossman, Pre-kindergarten Lures Middle Class to Public School, Chicago Sun-Times,
June 10, 2002; in-state tuition and fees at the University of Illinois are $5,748. University of
Illinois Web site, at http://www.oar.uiuc.edu/current/tuit.html [12/19/2002].
74. Karen Schulman, The High Cost of Child Care Puts Quality Care Out of Reach for Many Families
(Washington, DC: Childrens Defense Fund, 2000), Table A-1, Comparison of Average Annual
Child Care Costs in Urban Area Centers to Average Annual Public College Tuition Costs.
Ch-10.indd 417 7/8/2008 12:35:11 PM
Ch-10.indd 418 7/8/2008 12:35:11 PM
419
Dimensions of Diversity
R E A DI NG 3 2
Diversity within African
American Families
Ronald L. Taylor
PERSONAL REFLECTIONS
My interest in African American families as a topic of research was inspired more than
two decades ago by my observation and growing dismay over the stereotypical portrayal
of these families presented by the media and in much of the social science literature. Most
of the African American families I knew in the large southern city in which I grew up
were barely represented in the various authoritative accounts I read and other scholars
frequently referred to in their characterizations and analyses of such families. Few such
accounts have acknowledged the regional, ethnic, class, and behavioral diversity within the
African American community and among families. As a result, a highly fragmented and dis-
torted public image of African American family life has been perpetuated that encourages
perceptions of African American families as a monolith. The 1986 television documentary
A CBS Report: The Vanishing Family: Crisis in Black America, hosted by Bill Moyers, was
fairly typical of this emphasis. It focused almost exclusively on low-income, single-parent
households in inner cities, characterized them as vanishing non-families, and implied
that such families represented the majority of African American families in urban America.
It mattered little that poor, single-parent households in the inner cities made up less than
a quarter of all African American families at the time the documentary was aired.
As an African American reared in the segregated South, I was keenly aware of the
tremendous variety of African American families in composition, lifestyle, and socio-
economic status. Racial segregation ensured that African American families, regardless
of means or circumstances, were constrained to live and work in close proximity to one
another. Travel outside the South made me aware of important regional differences
among African American families as well. For example, African American families in
11
Ch-11.indd 419 7/8/2008 12:35:28 PM
420 Part IV Families in Society
the Northeast appeared far more segregated by socioeconomic status than did families
in many parts of the South with which I was familiar. As a graduate student at Boston
University during the late 1960s, I recall the shock I experienced upon seeing the level
of concentrated poverty among African American families in Roxbury, Massachusetts,
an experience duplicated in travels to New York, Philadelphia, and Newark. To be sure,
poverty of a similar magnitude was prevalent throughout the South, but was far less
concentrated and, from my perception, far less pernicious.
As I became more familiar with the growing body of research on African American
families, it became increasingly clear to me that the source of a major distortion in the
portrayal of African American families in the social science literature and the media was
the overwhelming concentration on impoverished inner-city communities of the North-
east and Midwest to the near exclusion of the South, where more than half the African
American families are found and differences among them in family patterns, lifestyles,
and socioeconomic characteristics are more apparent.
In approaching the study of African American families in my work, I have adopted a
holistic perspective. This perspective, outlined first by DuBois (1898) and more recently by
Billingsley (1992) and Hill (1993), emphasizes the influence of historical, cultural, social,
economic, and political forces in shaping contemporary patterns of family life among Af-
rican Americans of all socioeconomic backgrounds. Although the impact of these external
forces is routinely taken into account in assessing stability and change among white fami-
lies, their effects on the structure and functioning of African American families are often
minimized. In short, a holistic approach undertakes to study African American families
in context. My definition of the family, akin to the definition offered by Billingsley (1992),
views it as an intimate association of two or more persons related to each other by blood,
marriage, formal or informal adoption, or appropriation. The latter term refers to the
incorporation of persons in the family who are unrelated by blood or marital ties but are
treated as though they are family. This definition is broader than other dominant defini-
tions of families that emphasize biological or marital ties as defining characteristics.
This [reading] is divided into three parts. The first part reviews the treatment of
African American families in the historical and social sciences literatures. It provides a
historical overview of African American families, informed by recent historical scholar-
ship, that corrects many of the misconceptions about the nature and quality of family life
during and following the experience of slavery. The second part examines contemporary
patterns of marriage, family, and household composition among African Americans in
response to recent social, economic, and political developments in the larger society.
The third part explores some of the long-term implications of current trends in marriage
and family behavior for community functioning and individual well-being, together with
implications for social policy.
THE TREATMENT OF AFRICAN AMERICAN
FAMILIES IN AMERICAN SCHOLARSHIP
As an area of scientific investigation, the study of African American family life is of recent
vintage. As recently as 1968, Billingsley, in his classic work Black Families in White America,
observed that African American family life had been virtually ignored in family studies and
Ch-11.indd 420 7/8/2008 12:35:28 PM
Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 421
studies of race and ethnic relations. He attributed the general lack of interest among white
social scientists, in part, to their ethnocentrism and intellectual commitment to peoples
and values transplanted from Europe (p. 214). Content analyses of key journals in soci-
ology, social work, and family studies during the period supported Billingsleys conten-
tion. For example, a content analysis of 10 leading journals in sociology and social work
by Johnson (1981) disclosed that articles on African American families constituted only
3% of 3,547 empirical studies of American families published between 1965 and 1975.
Moreover, in the two major journals in social work, only one article on African American
families was published from 1965 to 1978. In fact, a 1978 special issue of the Journal of
Marriage and the Family devoted to African American families accounted for 40% of all
articles on these families published in the 10 major journals between 1965 and 1978.
Although the past two decades have seen a significant increase in the quantity and
quality of research on the family lives of African Americans, certain features and limi-
tations associated with earlier studies in this area persist (Taylor, Chatters, Tucker, &
Lewis, 1990). In a review of recent research on African American families, Hill (1993)
concluded that many studies continue to treat such families in superficial terms; that is,
African American families are not considered to be an important unit of focus and, con-
sequently, are treated peripherally or omitted altogether. The assumption is that African
American families are automatically treated in all analyses that focus on African Ameri-
cans as individuals; thus, they are not treated in their own right. Hill noted that a major
impediment to understanding the functioning of African American families has been the
failure of most analysts to use a theoretical or conceptual framework that took account
of the totality of African American family life. Overall, he found that the preponderance
of recent studies of African American families are
(a) fragmented, in that they exclude the bulk of Black families by focusing on only a
subgroup; (b) ad hoc, in that they apply arbitrary explanations that are not derived from
systematic theoretical formulations that have been empirically substantiated; (c) negative,
in that they focus exclusively on the perceived weaknesses of Black families; and (d) inter-
nally oriented, in that they exclude any systematic consideration of the role of forces in
the wider society on Black family life. (p. 5)
THEORETICAL APPROACHES
The study of African American families, like the study of American families in general,
has evolved through successive theoretical formulations. Using white family structure as
the norm, the earliest studies characterized African American families as impoverished
versions of white families in which the experiences of slavery, economic deprivation,
and racial discrimination had induced pathogenic and dysfunctional features (Billingsley,
1968). The classic statement of this perspective was presented by Frazier, whose study,
The Negro Family in the United States (1939), was the first comprehensive analysis of
African American family life and its transformation under various historical conditions
slavery, emancipation, and urbanization (Edwards, 1968).
It was Fraziers contention that slavery destroyed African familial structures and cul-
tures and gave rise to a host of dysfunctional family features that continued to undermine
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422 Part IV Families in Society
the stability and well-being of African American families well into the 20th century.
Foremost among these features was the supposed emergence of the African American
matriarchal or maternal family system, which weakened the economic position of Afri-
can American men and their authority in the family. In his view, this family form was in-
herently unstable and produced pathological outcomes in the family unit, including high
rates of poverty, illegitimacy, crime, delinquency, and other problems associated with the
socialization of children. Frazier concluded that the female-headed family had become
a common tradition among large segments of lower-class African American migrants to
the North during the early 20th century. The two-parent male-headed household repre-
sented a second tradition among a minority of African Americans who enjoyed some of
the freedoms during slavery, had independent artisan skills, and owned property.
Frazier saw an inextricable connection between economic resources and African
American family structure and concluded that as the economic position of African Ameri-
cans improved, their conformity to normative family patterns would increase. How-
ever, his important insight regarding the link between family structure and economic
resources was obscured by the inordinate emphasis he placed on the instability and self-
perpetuating pathologies of lower-class African American families, an emphasis that
powerfully contributed to the pejorative tradition of scholarship that emerged in this
area. Nonetheless, Frazier recognized the diversity of African American families and in
his analyses, consistently attributed the primary sources of family instability to external
forces (such as racism, urbanization, technological changes and recession) and not to
internal characteristics of Black families ( Hill, 1993, pp. 78).
During the 1960s, Fraziers characterization of African American families gained
wider currency with the publication of Moynihans The Negro Family: The Case for National
Action (1965), in which weaknesses in family structure were identified as a major source
of social problems in African American communities. Moynihan attributed high rates
of welfare dependence, out-of-wedlock births, educational failure, and other problems
to the unnatural dominance of women in African American families. Relying largely
on the work of Frazier as a source of reference, Moynihan traced the alleged tangle
of pathology that characterized urban African American families to the experience of
slavery and 300 years of racial oppression, which, he concluded, had caused deep-seated
structural distortions in the family and community life of African Americans.
Although much of the Moynihan report, as the book was called, largely restated
what had become conventional academic wisdom on African American families during
the 1960s, its generalized indictment of all African American families ignited a firestorm
of criticism and debate and inspired a wealth of new research and writings on the nature
and quality of African American family life in the United States (Staples & Mirande,
1980). In fact, the 1970s saw the beginning of the most prolific period of research on
African American families, with more than 50 books and 500 articles published during
that decade alone, representing a fivefold increase over the literature produced in all
the years since the publication of DuBoiss (1909) pioneering study of African American
family life (Staples & Mirande, 1980). To be sure, some of this work was polemical and
defensively apologetic, but much of it sought to replace ideology with research and to
provide alternative perspectives for interpreting observed differences in the characteris-
tics of African American and white families (Allen, 1978).
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Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 423
Critics of the deficit or pathology approach to African American family life (Scan-
zoni, 1977; Staples, 1971) called attention to the tendency in the literature to ignore
family patterns among the majority of African Americans and to overemphasize findings
derived from studies of low-income and typically problem-ridden families. Such find-
ings were often generalized and accepted as descriptive of the family life of all African
American families, with the result that popular but erroneous images of African American
family life were perpetuated. Scrutinizing the research literature of the 1960s, Billingsley
(1968) concluded that when the majority of African American families was considered,
evidence refuted the characterization of African American family life as unstable, depen-
dent on welfare, and matriarchal. In his view, and in the view of a growing number of
scholars in the late 1960s and early 1970s, observed differences between white and Af-
rican American families were largely the result of differences in socioeconomic position
and of differential access to economic resources (Allen, 1978; Scanzoni, 1977).
Thus, the 1970s witnessed not only a significant increase in the diversity, breadth,
and quantity of research on African American families, but a shift away from a social
pathology perspective to one emphasizing the resilience and adaptiveness of African
American families under a variety of social and economic conditions. The new emphasis
reflected what Allen (1978) referred to as the cultural variant perspective, which treats
African American families as different but legitimate functional forms. From this per-
spective, Black and White family differences [are] taken as given, without the presump-
tion of one family form as normative and the other as deviant (Farley & Allen, 1987,
p. 162). In accounting for observed racial differences in family patterns, some researchers
have taken a structural perspective, emphasizing poverty and other socioeconomic fac-
tors as key processes (Billingsley, 1968). Other scholars have taken a cultural approach,
stressing elements of the West African cultural heritage, together with distinctive expe-
riences, values, and behavioral modes of adaptation developed in this country, as major
determinants ( Nobles, 1978; Young, 1970). Still others (Collins, 1990; Sudarkasa, 1988)
have pointed to evidence supporting both interpretations and have argued for a more
comprehensive approach.
Efforts to demythologize negative images of African American families have con-
tinued during the past two decades, marked by the development of the first national
sample of adult African Americans, drawn to reflect their distribution throughout the
United States ( Jackson, 1991), and by the use of a variety of conceptualizations, ap-
proaches, and methodologies in the study of African American family life (Collins, 1990;
McAdoo, 1997). Moreover, the emphasis in much of the recent work
has not been the defense of African American family forms, but rather the identification of
forces that have altered long-standing traditions. The ideological paradigms identified by
Allen (1978) to describe the earlier thrust of Black family researchcultural equivalence,
cultural deviance, and cultural variationdo not fully capture the foci of this new genre
of work as a whole. (Tucker & Mitchell-Kernan, 1995, p. 17)
Researchers have sought to stress balance in their analyses, that is, to assess the strengths
and weaknesses of African American family organizations at various socioeconomic lev-
els, and the need for solution-oriented studies ( Hill, 1993). At the same time, recent
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424 Part IV Families in Society
historical scholarship has shed new light on the relationship of changing historical cir-
cumstances to characteristics of African American family organization and has under-
scored the relevance of historical experiences to contemporary patterns of family life.
AFRICAN AMERICAN FAMILIES
IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Until the 1970s, it was conventional academic wisdom that the experience of slavery
decimated African American culture and created the foundation for unstable female-
dominated households and other familial aberrations that continued into the 20th century.
This thesis, advanced by Frazier (1939) and restated by Moynihan (1965), was seriously
challenged by the pioneering historical research of Blassingame (1972), Furstenberg,
Hershberg, and Modell (1975), and Gutman (1976), among others. These works provide
compelling documentation of the centrality of family and kinship among African Ameri-
cans during the long years of bondage and how African Americans created and sustained
a rich cultural and family life despite the brutal reality of slavery.
In his examination of more than two centuries of slave letters, autobiographies,
plantation records, and other materials, Blassingame (1972) meticulously documented
the nature of community, family organization, and culture among American slaves. He
concluded that slavery was not an all-powerful, monolithic institution which strip[ped]
the slave of any meaningful and distinctive culture, family life, religion or manhood
(p. vii). To the contrary, the relative freedom from white control that slaves enjoyed
in their quarters enabled them to create and sustain a complex social organization that
incorporated norms of conduct, defined roles and behavioral patterns and provided
for the traditional functions of group solidarity, defense, mutual assistance, and family
organization. Although the family had no legal standing in slavery and was frequently
disrupted, Blassingame noted its major role as a source of survival for slaves and as a
mechanism of social control for slaveholders, many of whom encouraged monogamous
mating arrangements as insurance against runaways and rebellion. In fashioning famil-
ial and community organization, slaves drew upon the many remnants of their African
heritage (e.g., courtship rituals, kinship networks, and religious beliefs), merging those
elements with American forms to create a distinctive culture, features of which persist in
the contemporary social organization of African American family life and community.
Genoveses (1974) analysis of plantation records and slave testimony led him to
similar conclusions regarding the nature of family life and community among African
Americans under slavery. Genovese noted that, although chattel bondage played havoc
with the domestic lives of slaves and imposed severe constraints on their ability to enact
and sustain normative family roles and functions, the slaves created impressive norms
of family, including as much of a nuclear family norm as conditions permitted and . . .
entered the postwar social system with a remarkably stable base (p. 452). He attributed
this stability to the extraordinary resourcefulness and commitment of slaves to marital
relations and to what he called a paternalistic compromise, or bargain between masters
and slaves that recognized certain reciprocal obligations and rights, including recogni-
tion of slaves marital and family ties. Although slavery undermined the role of African
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Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 425
American men as husbands and fathers, their function as role models for their children
and as providers for their families was considerably greater than has generally been sup-
posed. Nonetheless, the tenuous position of male slaves as husbands and fathers and the
more visible and nontraditional roles assumed by female slaves gave rise to legends of
matriarchy and emasculated men. However, Genovese contended that the relationship
between slave men and women came closer to approximating gender equality than was
possible for white families.
Perhaps the most significant historical work that forced revisions in scholarship on
African American family life and culture during slavery was Gutmans (1976) landmark
study, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom. Inspired by the controversy surrounding
the Moynihan report and its thesis that African American family disorganization was a
legacy of slavery, Gutman made ingenious use of quantifiable data derived from planta-
tion birth registers and marriage applications to re-create family and kinship structures
among African Americans during slavery and after emancipation. Moreover, he mar-
shaled compelling evidence to explain how African Americans developed an autonomous
and complex culture that enabled them to cope with the harshness of enslavement, the
massive relocation from relatively small economic units in the upper South to vast planta-
tions in the lower South between 1790 and 1860, the experience of legal freedom in the
rural and urban South, and the transition to northern urban communities before 1930.
Gutman reasoned that, if family disorganization (fatherless, matrifocal families)
among African Americans was a legacy of slavery, then such a condition should have
been more common among urban African Americans closer in time to slaveryin 1850
and 1860than in 1950 and 1960. Through careful examination of census data, mar-
riage licenses, and personal documents for the period after 1860, he found that stable,
two-parent households predominated during slavery and after emancipation and that
families headed by African American women at the turn of the century were hardly
more prevalent than among comparable white families. Thus [a]t all moments in time
between 1860 and 1925 . . . the typical Afro-American family was lower class in status and
headed by two parents. That was so in the urban and rural South in 1880 and 1900 and
in New York City in 1905 and 1925 (p. 456). Gutman found that the two-parent family
was just as common among the poor as among the more advantaged, and as common
among southerners as those in the Northeast. For Gutman, the key to understanding the
durability of African American families during and after slavery lay in the distinctive Af-
rican American culture that evolved from the cumulative slave experiences that provided
a defense against some of the more destructive and dehumanizing aspects of that system.
Among the more enduring and important aspects of that culture are the enlarged kinship
network and certain domestic arrangements (e.g., the sharing of family households with
nonrelatives and the informal adoption of children) that, during slavery, formed the core
of evolving African American communities and the collective sense of interdependence.
Additional support for the conclusion that the two-parent household was the norm
among slaves and their descendants was provided by Furstenberg et al. (1975) from their
study of the family composition of African Americans, native-born whites, and immi-
grants to Philadelphia from 1850 to 1880. From their analysis of census data, Fursten-
berg et al. found that most African American families, like those of other ethnic groups,
were headed by two parents (75% for African Americans versus 73% for native whites).
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426 Part IV Families in Society
Similar results are reported by Pleck (1973) from her study of African American family
structure in late 19th-century Boston. As these and other studies ( Jones, 1985; White,
1985) have shown, although female-headed households were common among African
Americans during and following slavery, such households were by no means typical. In
fact, as late as the 1960s, three fourths of African American households were headed by
married couples ( Jaynes & Williams, 1989; Moynihan, 1965).
However, more recent historical research would appear to modify, if not challenge,
several of the contentions of the revisionist scholars of slavery. Manfra and Dykstra (1985)
and Stevenson (1995), among others, found evidence of considerably greater variability
in slave family structure and in household composition than was reported in previous
works. In her study of Virginia slave families from 1830 to 1860, Stevenson (1995) dis-
covered evidence of widespread matrifocality, as well as other marital and household
arrangements, among antebellum slaves. Her analysis of the family histories of slaves in
colonial and antebellum Virginia revealed that many slaves did not have a nuclear core
in their families. Rather, the most discernible ideal for their principal kinship organiza-
tion was a malleable extended family that provided its members with nurture, education,
socialization, material support, and recreation in the face of the potential social chaos the
slavemasters power imposed (1995, p. 36).
A variety of conditions affected the family configurations of slaves, including cul-
tural differences among the slaves themselves, the state or territory in which they lived,
and the size of the plantation on which they resided. Thus, Stevenson concluded that
the slave family was not a static, imitative institution that necessarily favored one form of
family organization over another. Rather, it was a diverse phenomenon, sometimes assum-
ing several forms even among the slaves of one community. . . . Far from having a negative
impact, the diversity of slave marriage and family norms, as a measure of the slave familys
enormous adaptive potential, allowed the slave and the slave family to survive. (p. 29)
Hence, postrevisionist historiography emphasizes the great diversity of familial
arrangements among African Americans during slavery. Although nuclear, matrifocal,
and extended families were prevalent, none dominated slave family forms. These post-
revisionist amendments notwithstanding, there is compelling historical evidence that
African American nuclear families and kin-related households remained relatively intact
and survived the experiences of slavery, Reconstruction, the Great Depression, and the
transition to northern urban communities. Such evidence underscores the importance
of considering recent developments and conditions in accounting for changes in family
patterns among African Americans in the contemporary period.
CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN
AMERICAN FAMILY PATTERNS
Substantial changes have occurred in patterns of marriage, family, and household com-
position in the United States during the past three decades, accompanied by significant
alterations in the family lives of men, women, and children. During this period, divorce
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Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 427
rates have more than doubled, marriage rates have declined, fertility rates have fallen
to record levels, the proportion of traditional families ( nuclear families in which chil-
dren live with both biological parents) as a percentage of all family groups has declined,
and the proportion of children reared in single-parent households has risen dramatically
(Taylor, 1997).
Some of the changes in family patterns have been more rapid and dramatic among
African Americans than among the population as a whole. For example, while declin-
ing rates of marriage and remarriage, high levels of separation and divorce, and higher
proportions of children living in single-parent households are trends that have charac-
terized the U.S. population as a whole during the past 30 years, these trends have been
more pronounced among African Americans and, in some respects, represent marked
departures from earlier African American family patterns. A growing body of research
has implicated demographic and economic factors as causes of the divergent marital and
family experiences of African Americans and other populations.
In the following section, I examine diverse patterns and evolving trends in family
structure and household composition among African Americans, together with those
demographic, economic, and social factors that have been identified as sources of change
in patterns of family formation.
Diversity of Family Structure
Since 1960, the number of African American households has increased at more than twice
the rate of white households. By 1995, African American households numbered 11.6 mil-
lion, compared with 83.7 million white households. Of these households, 58.4 million
white and 8.0 million African American ones were classified as family households by the
U.S. Bureau of the Census (1996), which defines a household as the person or persons oc-
cupying a housing unit and a family as consisting of two or more persons who live in the
same household and are related by birth, marriage, or adoption. Thus, family households
are households maintained by individuals who share their residence with one or more
relatives, whereas nonfamily households are maintained by individuals with no relatives
in the housing unit. In 1995, 70% of the 11.6 million African American households were
family households, the same proportion as among white households ( U.S. Bureau of the
Census, 1996). However, nonfamily households have been increasing at a faster rate than
family households among African Americans because of delayed marriages among young
adults, higher rates of family disruption (divorce and separation), and sharp increases in
the number of unmarried cohabiting couples (Cherlin, 1995; Glick, 1997).
Family households vary by type and composition. Although the U.S. Bureau of
the Census recognizes the wide diversity of families in this country, it differentiates be-
tween three broad and basic types of family households: married-couple or husband-wife
families, families with female householders ( no husband present), and families with male
householders ( no wife present). Family composition refers to whether the household is
nuclear, that is, contains parents and children only, or extended, that is, nuclear plus other
relatives.
To take account of the diversity in types and composition of African American fami-
lies, Billingsley (1968; 1992) added to these conventional categories augmented families
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428 Part IV Families in Society
( nuclear plus nonrelated persons), and modified the definition of nuclear family to in-
clude incipient (a married couple without children), simple (a couple with children), and
attenuated (a single parent with children) families. He also added three combinations of
augmented families: incipient extended augmented (a couple with relatives and nonrela-
tives), nuclear extended augmented (a couple with children, relatives, and nonrelatives), and
attenuated extended augmented (a single parent with children, relatives, and nonrelatives).
With these modifications, Billingsley identified 32 different kinds of nuclear, extended,
and augmented family households among African Americans. His typology has been
widely used and modified by other scholars (see, for example, Shimkin, Shimkin, &
Frate, 1978; Stack, 1974). For example, on the basis of Billingsleys typology, Dressler,
Haworth-Hoeppner, and Pitts (1985) developed a four-way typology with 12 subtypes
for their study of household structures in a southern African American community and
found a variety of types of female-headed households, less than a fourth of them consist-
ing of a mother and her children or grandchildren.
However, as Staples (1971) pointed out, Billingsleys typology emphasized the
household and ignored an important characteristic of such familiestheir extended-
ness. African Americans are significantly more likely than whites to live in extended
families that transcend and link several different households, each containing a sepa-
rate . . . family (Farley & Allen, 1987, p. 168). In 1992, approximately 1 in 5 African
American families was extended, compared to 1 in 10 white families (Glick, 1997). The
greater proportion of extended households among African Americans has been linked to
the extended family tradition of West African cultures ( Nobles, 1978; Sudarkasa, 1988)
and to the economic marginality of many African American families, which has encour-
aged the sharing and exchange of resources, services, and emotional support among fam-
ily units spread across a number of households (Stack, 1974).
In comparative research on West African, Caribbean, and African American family
patterns some anthropologists ( Herskovits, 1958; Sudarkasa, 1997) found evidence of
cultural continuities in the significance attached to coresidence, formal kinship relations,
and nuclear families among black populations in these areas. Summarizing this work, Hill
(1993, pp. 104 105) observed that, with respect to
co-residence, the African concept of family is not restricted to persons living in the same
household, but includes key persons living in separate households. . . . As for defining kin
relationships, the African concept of family is not confined to relations between formal
kin, but includes networks of unrelated [i.e., fictive kin] as well as related persons living
in separate households. . . . [According to] Herskovits (1941), the African nuclear family
unit is not as central to its family organization as is the case for European nuclear families:
The African immediate family, consisting of a father, his wives, and their children, is but
a part of a larger unit. This immediate family is generally recognized by Africanists as
belonging to a local relationship group termed the extended family.
Similarly, Sudarkasa (1988) found that unlike the European extended family, in which
primacy is given to the conjugal unit (husband, wife, and children) as the basic build-
ing block, the African extended family is organized around blood ties (consanguineous
relations).
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Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 429
In their analysis of data from the National Survey of Black Americans ( NSBA) on
household composition and family structure, Hatchett, Cochran, and Jackson (1991)
noted that the extended family perspective, especially kin networks, was valuable in de-
scribing the nature and functioning of African American families. They suggested that
the extended family can be viewed both as a family network in the physical-spatial sense
and in terms of family relations or contact and exchanges. In this view of extendedness,
family structure and function are interdependent concepts (p. 49). Their examination
of the composition of the 2,107 households in the NSBA resulted in the identification of
12 categories, 8 of which roughly captured the dimensions of household family structure
identified in Billingsleys typology of Black families (1968)the incipient nuclear fam-
ily, the incipient nuclear extended and/or augmented nuclear family, the simple nuclear
family, the simple extended and/or augmented nuclear family, the attenuated nuclear
family, and the attenuated extended and/or augmented family, respectively (p. 51).
These households were examined with respect to their actual kin networks, defined as
subjective feelings of emotional closeness to family members, frequency of contact, and
patterns of mutual assistance, and their potential kin networks, defined as the availability
or proximity of immediate family members and the density or concentration of family
members within a given range.
Hatchett et al. (1991) found that approximately 1 in 5 African American house-
holds in the NSBA was an extended household (included other relativesparents and
siblings of the household head, grandchildren, grandparents, and nieces and nephews).
Nearly 20% of the extended households with children contained minors who were not
the heads; most of these children were grandchildren, nieces, and nephews of the head.
The authors suggested that [t]hese are instances of informal fostering or adoption
absorption of minor children by the kin network (p. 58).
In this sample, female-headed households were as likely to be extended as male-
headed households. Hatchett et al. (1991) found little support for the possibility that eco-
nomic hardship may account for the propensity among African Americans to incorporate
other relatives in their households. That is, the inclusion of other relatives in the house-
holds did not substantially improve the overall economic situation of the households
because the majority of other relatives were minor children, primarily grandchildren of
heads who coresided with the household heads own minor and adult children. Moreover,
they stated, household extendedness at both the household and extra-household levels
appears to be a characteristic of black families, regardless of socioeconomic level (p. 81),
and regardless of region of the country or rural or urban residence.
The households in the NSBA were also compared in terms of their potential and
actual kin networks. The availability of potential kin networks varied by the age of the
respondent, by the region and degree of urban development of the respondents place
of residence, and by the type of household in which the respondent resided ( Hatchett
et al., 1991). For example, households with older heads and spouses were more isolated
from kin than were younger households headed by single mothers, and female-headed
households tended to have greater potential kin networks than did individuals in nuclear
households. With respect to region and urbanicity, the respondents in the Southern
and North Central regions and those in rural areas had a greater concentration of rela-
tives closer at hand than did the respondents in other regions and those in urban areas.
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430 Part IV Families in Society
However, proximity to relatives and their concentration nearby did not translate directly
into actual kin networks or extended family functioning:
Complex relationships were found across age, income, and type of household. From these
data came a picture of the Black elderly with high psychological connectedness to family
in the midst of relative geographical and interactional isolation from them. The image
of female single-parent households is, on the other hand, the reverse or negative of this
picture. Female heads were geographically closer to kin, had more contact with them,
and received more help from family but did not perceive as much family solidarity or
psychological connectedness. ( Hatchett et al., 1991, p. 81)
The nature and frequency of mutual aid among kin were also assessed in this survey.
More than two thirds of the respondents reported receiving some assistance from family
members, including financial support, child care, goods and services, and help during
sickness and at death. Financial assistance and child care were the two most frequent
types of support reported by the younger respondents, whereas goods and services were
the major types reported by older family members. The type of support the respondents
received from their families was determined, to some extent, by needs defined by the
family life cycle.
In sum, the results of the NSBA document the wide variety of family configurations
and households in which African Americans reside and suggest, along with other stud-
ies, that the diversity of structures represents adaptive responses to the variety of social,
economic, and demographic conditions that African Americans have encountered over
time (Billingsley, 1968; Farley & Allen, 1987).
Although Hatchett et al. (1991) focused on extended or augmented African
American families in their analysis of the NSBA data, only 1 in 5 households in this
survey contained persons outside the nuclear family. The majority of households was
nuclear, containing one or both parents with their own children.
Between 1970 and 1990, the number of all U.S. married-couple families with chil-
dren dropped by almost 1 million, and their share of all family households declined from
40% to 26% ( U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1995). The proportion of married-couple fami-
lies with children among African Americans also declined during this period, from 41%
to 26% of all African American families. In addition, the percentage of African American
families headed by women more than doubled, increasing from 33% in 1970 to 57%
in 1990. By 1995, married-couple families with children constituted 36% of all African
American families, while single-parent families represented 64% ( U.S. Bureau of the
Census, 1996). The year 1980 was the first time in history that African American female-
headed families with children outnumbered married-couple families. This shift in the
distribution of African American families by type is associated with a number of complex,
interrelated social and economic developments, including increases in age at first mar-
riage, high rates of separation and divorce, male joblessness, and out-of-wedlock births.
Marriage, Divorce, and Separation
In a reversal of a long-time trend, African Americans are now marrying at a much later
age than are persons of other races. Thirty years ago, African American men and women
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Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 431
were far more likely to have married by ages 20 24 than were white Americans. In 1960,
56% of African American men and 36% of African American women aged 20 24 were
never married; by 1993, 90% of all African American men and 81% of African American
women in this age cohort were never married ( U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1994).
The trend toward later marriages among African Americans has contributed to
changes in the distribution of African American families by type. Delayed marriage tends
to increase the risk of out-of-wedlock childbearing and single parenting ( Hernandez,
1993). In fact, a large proportion of the increase in single-parent households in recent
years is accounted for by never-married women maintaining families ( U.S. Bureau of the
Census, 1990).
The growing proportion of never-married young African American adults is partly
a result of a combination of factors, including continuing high rates of unemployment,
especially among young men; college attendance; military service; and an extended pe-
riod of cohabitation prior to marriage (Glick, 1997; Testa & Krogh, 1995; Wilson, 1987).
In their investigation of the effect of employment on marriage among African American
men in the inner city of Chicago, Testa and Krogh (1995) found that men in stable jobs
were twice as likely to marry as were men who were unemployed, not in school, or in the
military. Hence, it has been argued that the feasibility of marriage among African Ameri-
cans in recent decades has decreased because the precarious economic position of African
American men has made them less attractive as potential husbands and less interested in
becoming husbands, given the difficulties they are likely to encounter in performing the
provider role in marriage (Tucker & Mitchell-Kernan, 1995).
However, other research has indicated that economic factors are only part of the
story. Using census data from 1940 through the mid-1980s, Mare and Winship (1991)
sought to determine the impact of declining employment opportunities on marriage rates
among African Americans and found that although men who were employed were more
likely to marry, recent declines in employment rates among young African American
men were not large enough to account for a substantial part of the declining trend in
their marriage rates. Similarly, in their analysis of data from a national survey of young
African American adults, Lichter, McLaughlin, Kephart, and Landry (1992) found that
lower employment rates among African American men were an important contribut-
ing factor to delayed marriageand perhaps to nonmarriageamong African American
women. However, even when marital opportunities were taken into account, the re-
searchers found that the rate of marriage among young African American women in the
survey was only 50% to 60% the rate of white women of similar ages.
In addition to recent declines in employment rates, an unbalanced sex ratio has
been identified as an important contributing factor to declining marriage rates among
African Americans. This shortage of men is due partly to high rates of mortality and
incarceration of African American men (Kiecolt & Fossett, 1995; Wilson & Neckerman,
1986). Guttentag and Secord (1983) identified a number of major consequences of the
shortage of men over time: higher rates of singlehood, out-of-wedlock births, divorce,
and infidelity and less commitment among men to relationships. Among African Ameri-
cans, they found that in 1980 the ratio of men to women was unusually low; in fact, few
populations in the United States had sex ratios as low as those of African Americans.
Because African American women outnumber men in each of the age categories 20 to 49,
Ch-11.indd 431 7/8/2008 12:35:30 PM
432 Part IV Families in Society
the resulting marriage squeeze puts African American women at a significant disadvan-
tage in the marriage market, causing an unusually large proportion of them to remain
unmarried. However, Glick (1997) observed a reversal of the marriage squeeze among
African Americans in the age categories 18 to 27 during the past decade: In 1995, there
were 102 African American men for every 100 African American women in this age
range. Thus, [w]hereas the earlier marriage squeeze made it difficult for Black women
to marry, the future marriage squeeze will make it harder for Black men (Glick, 1997,
p. 126). But, as Kiecolt and Fossett (1995) observed, the impact of the sex ratio on marital
outcomes for African Americans may vary, depending on the nature of the local marriage
market. Indeed, marriage markets are local, as opposed to national, phenomena which
may have different implications for different genders . . . [for example,] men and women
residing near a military base face a different sex ratio than their counterparts attending a
large university (Smith, 1995, p. 137).
African American men and women are not only delaying marriage, but are spend-
ing fewer years in their first marriages and are slower to remarry than in decades past.
Since 1960, a sharp decline has occurred in the number of years African American women
spend with their first husbands and a corresponding rise in the interval of separation and
divorce between the first and second marriages (Espenshade, 1985; Jaynes & Williams,
1989). Data from the National Fertility Surveys of 1965 and 1970 disclosed that twice as
many African American couples as white couples (10% versus 5%) who reached their 5th
wedding anniversaries ended their marriages before their 10th anniversaries (Thornton,
1978), and about half the African American and a quarter of the white marriages were dis-
solved within the first 15 years of marriage (McCarthy, 1978). Similarly, a comparison of
the prevalence of marital disruption (defined as separation or divorce) among 13 racial-
ethnic groups in the United States based on the 1980 census revealed that of the women
who had married for the first time 10 to 14 years before 1980, 53% of the African Ameri-
can women, 48% of the Native American women, and 37% of the non-Hispanic white
women were separated or divorced by the 1980 census (Sweet & Bumpass, 1987).
Although African American women have a higher likelihood of separating from their
husbands than do non-Hispanic white women, they are slower to obtain legal divorces
(Chertin, 1996). According to data from the 1980 census, within three years of separating
from their husbands, only 55% of the African American women had obtained divorces,
compared to 91% of the non-Hispanic white women (Sweet & Bumpass, 1987). Cherlin
speculated that, because of their lower expectations of remarrying, African American
women may be less motivated to obtain legal divorces. Indeed, given the shortage of Af-
rican American men in each of the age categories from 20 to 49, it is not surprising that
the proportion of divorced women who remarry is lower among African American than
among non-Hispanic white women (Glick, 1997). Overall, the remarriage rate among
African Americans is about one fourth the rate of whites (Staples & Johnson, 1993).
Cherlin (1996) identified lower educational levels, high rates of unemployment, and
low income as importance sources of differences in African American and white rates of
marital dissolution. However, as he pointed out, these factors alone are insufficient to ac-
count for all the observed difference. At every level of educational attainment, African
American women are more likely to be separated or divorced from their husbands than
are non-Hispanic white women. Using data from the 1980 census, Jaynes and Williams
Ch-11.indd 432 7/8/2008 12:35:30 PM
Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 433
(1989) compared the actual marital-status distributions of African Americans and whites,
controlling for differences in educational attainment for men and women and for income
distribution for men. They found that when differences in educational attainment were
taken into account, African American women were more likely to be formerly married
than White women and much less likely to be living with a husband (p. 529). Moreover,
income was an important factor in accounting for differences in the marital status of Af-
rican American and white men. Overall, Jaynes and Williams found that socioeconomic
differences explained a significant amount of the variance in marital status differences be-
tween African Americans and whites, although Bumpass, Sweet, and Martin (1990) noted
that such differences rapidly diminish as income increases, especially for men. As Glick
(1997) reported, African American men with high income levels are more likely to be in
intact first marriages by middle age than are African American women with high earnings.
This relationship between income and marital status, he stated, is strongest at the lower
end of the income distribution, suggesting that marital permanence for men is less depen-
dent on their being well-to-do than on their having the income to support a family.
As a result of sharp increases in marital disruption and relatively low remarriage
rates, less than half (43%) the African American adults aged 18 and older were currently
married in 1995, down from 64% in 1970 ( U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1996). Moreover,
although the vast majority of the 11.6 million African Americans households in 1995
were family households, less than half (47%) were headed by married couples, down
from 56% in 1980. Some analysts expect the decline in marriage among African Ameri-
cans to continue for some time, consistent with the movement away from marriage as
a consequence of modernization and urbanization (Espenshade, 1985) and in response
to continuing economic marginalization. But African American culture may also play a
role. As a number of writers have noted (Billingsley, 1992; Cherlin, 1996), blood ties and
extended families have traditionally been given primacy over other types of relationships,
including marriage, among African Americans, and this emphasis may have influenced
the way many African Americans responded to recent shifts in values in the larger so-
ciety and the restructuring of the economy that struck the African American community
especially hard.
Such is the interpretation of Cherlin (1992, p. 112), who argued that the institution
of marriage has been weakened during the past few decades by the increasing economic
independence of women and men and by a cultural drift toward a more individualistic
ethos, one which emphasized self-fulfillment in personal relations. In addition, Wilson
(1987) and others described structural shifts in the economy (from manufacturing to
service industries as a source of the growth in employment) that have benefited African
American women more than men, eroding mens earning potential and their ability to
support families. According to Cherlin, the way African Americans responded to such
broad sociocultural and economic changes was conditioned by their history and culture:
Faced with difficult times economically, many Blacks responded by drawing upon a model
of social support that was in their cultural repertoire. . . . This response relied heavily on
extended kinship networks and deemphasized marriage. It is a response that taps a tradi-
tional source of strength in African-American society: cooperation and sharing among a
large network of kin. (p. 113)
Ch-11.indd 433 7/8/2008 12:35:30 PM
434 Part IV Families in Society
Thus, it seems likely that economic developments and cultural values have contributed
independently and jointly to the explanation of declining rates of marriage among Afri-
can Americans in recent years (Farley & Allen, 1987).
Single-Parent Families
Just as rates of divorce, separation, and out-of-wedlock childbearing have increased over
the past few decades, so has the number of children living in single-parent households.
For example, between 1970 and 1990, the number and proportion of all U.S. single-
parent households increased threefold, from 1 in 10 to 3 in 10. There were 3.8 million
single-parent families with children under 18 in 1970, compared to 11.4 million in 1994.
The vast majority of single-parent households are maintained by women (86% in 1994),
but the number of single-parent households headed by men has more than tripled: from
393,000 in 1970 to 1.5 million in 1994 ( U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1995).
Among the 58% of African American families with children at home in 1995, more
were one-parent families (34%) than married-couple families (24%). In 1994, single-
parent families accounted for 25% of all white family groups with children under age 18,
65% of all African American family groups, and 36% of Hispanic family groups ( U.S.
Bureau of the Census, 1995).
Single-parent families are created in a number of ways: through divorce, marital
separation, out-of-wedlock births, or death of a parent. Among adult African American
women aged 25 44, increases in the percentage of never-married women and disrupted
marriages are significant contributors to the rise in female-headed households; for white
women of the same age group, marital dissolution or divorce is the most important factor
(Demo, 1992; Jaynes & Williams, 1989). Moreover, changes in the living arrangements
of women who give birth outside marriage or experience marital disruption have also
been significant factors in the rise of female-headed households among African American
and white women. In the past, women who experienced separation or divorce, or bore
children out of wedlock were more likely to move in with their parents or other rela-
tives, creating subfamilies; as a result, they were not classified as female headed. In recent
decades, however, more and more of these women have established their own households
(Parish, Hao, & Hogan, 1991).
An increasing proportion of female-headed householders are unmarried teenage
mothers with young children. In 1990, for example, 96% of all births to African American
teenagers occurred outside marriage; for white teenagers, the figure was 55% ( National
Center for Health Statistics, 1991). Although overall fertility rates among teenage women
declined steadily from the 1950s through the end of the 1980s, the share of births to
unmarried women has risen sharply over time. In 1970, the proportion of all births to
unmarried teenage women aged 1519 was less than 1 in 3; by 1991, it had increased
to 2 in 3.
Differences in fertility and births outside marriage among young African Ameri-
can and white women are accounted for, in part, by differences in sexual activity, use of
contraceptives, the selection of adoption as an option, and the proportion of premarital
pregnancies that are legitimated by marriage before the childrens births (Trusell, 1988).
Compared to their white counterparts, African American teenagers are more likely to be
Ch-11.indd 434 7/8/2008 12:35:30 PM
Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 435
sexually active and less likely to use contraceptives, to have abortions when pregnant, and
to marry before the babies are born. In consequence, young African American women
constitute a larger share of single mothers than they did in past decades. This devel-
opment has serious social and economic consequences for children and adults because
female-headed households have much higher rates of poverty and deprivation than do
other families (Taylor, 1991b).
Family Structure and Family Dynamics
As a number of studies have shown, there is a strong correspondence between organiza-
tion and economic status of families, regardless of race (Farley & Allen, 1987). For both
African Americans and whites, the higher the income, the greater the percentage of fami-
lies headed by married couples. In their analysis of 1980 census data on family income
and structure, Farley and Allen (1987) found that there were near linear decreases in the
proportions of households headed by women, households where children reside with a
single parent, and extended households with increases in economic status (p. 185). Yet,
socioeconomic factors, they concluded, explained only part of the observed differences
in family organization between African Americans and whites. Cultural factorsthat is,
family preferences, notions of the appropriate and established habitsalso help explain
race differences in family organization (p. 186).
One such difference is the egalitarian mode of family functioning in African Ameri-
can families, characterized by complementarity and flexibility in family roles (Billingsley,
1992; Hill, 1971). Egalitarian modes of family functioning are common even among
low-income African American families, where one might expect the more traditional pa-
triarchal pattern of authority to prevail. Until recently, such modes of family functioning
were interpreted as signs of weakness or pathology because they were counternormative
to the gender-role division of labor in majority families (Collins, 1990). Some scholars
have suggested that role reciprocity in African American families is a legacy of slavery, in
which the traditional gender division of labor was largely ignored by slaveholders, and
Black men and women were equal in the sense that neither sex wielded economic power
over the other ( Jones, 1985, p. 14). As a result of historical experiences and economic
conditions, traditional gender distinctions in the homemaker and provider roles have
been less rigid in African American families than in white families (Beckett & Smith,
1981). Moreover, since African American women have historically been involved in the
paid labor force in greater numbers than have white women and because they have had a
more significant economic role in families than their white counterparts, Scott-Jones
and Nelson-LeGall (1986, p. 95) argued that African Americans have not experienced
as strong an economic basis for the subordination of women, either in marital roles or in
the preparation of girls for schooling, jobs, and careers.
In her analysis of data from the NSBA, Hatchett (1991) found strong support for an
egalitarian division of family responsibilities and tasks. With respect to attitudes toward
the sharing of familial roles, 88% of the African American adults agreed that women
and men should share child care and housework equally, and 73% agreed that both
men and women should have jobs to support their families. For African American men,
support for an egalitarian division of labor in the family did not differ by education or
Ch-11.indd 435 7/8/2008 12:35:30 PM
436 Part IV Families in Society
socioeconomic level, but education was related to attitudes toward the sharing of family
responsibilities and roles among African American women. College-educated women
were more likely than were women with less education to support the flexibility and
interchangeability of family roles and tasks.
Egalitarian attitudes toward familial roles among African Americans are also re-
flected in child-rearing attitudes and practices (Taylor, 1991a). Studies have indicated
that African American families tend to place less emphasis on differential gender-role so-
cialization than do other families (Blau, 1981). In her analysis of gender-role socialization
among southern African American families, Lewis (1975) found few patterned differences
in parental attitudes toward male and female roles. Rather, age and relative birth order
were found to be more important than gender as determinants of differential treatment
and behavioral expectations for children. Through their socialization practices, African
American parents seek to inculcate in both genders traits of assertiveness, independence,
and self-confidence (Boykin & Toms, 1985; Lewis, 1975). However, as children mature,
socialization practices are adapted to reflect more closely the structure of expectations
and opportunities provided for Black men and women by the dominant society (Lewis,
1975, p. 237)that is, geared to the macrostructural conditions that constrain familial
role options for African American men and women.
However, such shifts in emphasis and expectations often lead to complications in
the socialization process by inculcating in men and women components of gender-role
definitions that are incompatible or noncomplementary, thereby engendering a potential
source of conflict in their relationships. Franklin (1986) suggested that young African
American men and women are frequently confronted with contradictory messages and
dilemmas as a result of familial socialization. On the one hand, men are socialized to
embrace an androgynous gender role within the African American community, but, on
the other hand, they are expected to perform according to the white masculine gender-
role paradigm in some contexts. According to Franklin, this dual orientation tends to
foster confusion in some young men and difficulties developing an appropriate gender
identity. Likewise, some young African American women may receive two different and
contradictory messages: One message states, Because you will be a Black woman, it is
imperative that you learn to take care of yourself because it is hard to find a Black man
who will take care of you. A second message . . . that conflicts with the first . . . is your
ultimate achievement will occur when you have snared a Black man who will take care
of you (Franklin, 1986, p. 109). Franklin contended that such contradictory expecta-
tions and mixed messages frequently lead to incompatible gender-based behaviors among
African American men and women and conflicts in their relationships.
Despite the apparently greater acceptance of role flexibility and power sharing in
African American families, conflict around these issues figures prominently in marital
instability. In their study of marital instability among African American and white couples
in early marriages, Hatchett, Veroff, and Douvan (1995) found young African American
couples at odds over gender roles in the family. Anxiety over their ability to function in
the provider role was found to be an important source of instability in the marriages for
African American husbands, but not for white husbands. Hatchett (1991) observed that
marital instability tended to be more common among young African American couples
if the husbands felt that their wives had equal power in the family and if the wives felt
Ch-11.indd 436 7/8/2008 12:35:30 PM
Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 437
there was not enough sharing of family tasks and responsibilities. Hatchett et al. (1991)
suggested that African American mens feelings of economic anxiety and self-doubt may
be expressed in conflicts over decisional power and in the mens more tenuous commit-
ment to their marriages vis--vis African American women. Although the results of their
study relate to African American couples in the early stages of marriage, the findings
may be predictive of major marital difficulties in the long term. These and other findings
(see, for example, Tucker & Mitchell-Kernan, 1995) indicate that changing attitudes and
definitions of familial roles among young African American couples are tied to social
and economic trends (such as new and increased employment opportunities for women
and new value orientations toward marriage and family) in the larger society.
African American Families, Social
Change, and Public Policy
Over the past three decades, no change in the African American community has been
more fundamental and dramatic than the restructuring of families and family relation-
ships. Since the 1960s, unprecedented changes have occurred in rates of marriage, di-
vorce, and separation; in the proportion of single and two-parent households and births
to unmarried mothers; and in the number of children living in poverty. To be sure, these
changes are consistent with trends for the U.S. population as a whole, but they are more
pronounced among African Americans, largely because of a conflux of demographic and
economic factors that are peculiar to the African American community.
In their summary of findings from a series of empirical studies that investigated the
causes and correlates of recent changes in patterns of African American family formation,
Tucker and Mitchell-Kernan (1995) came to several conclusions that have implications
for future research and social policy. One consistent finding is the critical role that sex
ratiosthe availability of matesplay in the formation of African American families.
Analyzing aggregate-level data on African American sex ratios in 171 U.S. cities, Samp-
son (1995) found that these sex ratios were highly predictive of female headship, the per-
centage of married couples among families with school-age children, and the percentage
of African American women who were single. In assessing the causal effect of sex ratios
on the family structure of African Americans and whites, he showed that the effect is
five times greater for the former than the latter. Similarly, Kiecolt and Fossetts (1995)
analysis of African American sex ratios in Louisiana cities and counties disclosed that they
had strong positive effects on the percentage of African American women who were mar-
ried and had husbands present, the rate of marital births per thousand African American
women aged 20 29, the percentage of married-couple families, and the percentage of
children living in two-parent households.
Another consistent finding is the substantial and critical impact of economic fac-
tors on African American family formation, especially mens employment status. Analy-
ses by Sampson (1995) and Darity and Myers (1995) provided persuasive evidence that
economic factors play a major and unique role in the development and maintenance
of African American families. Using aggregate data, Sampson found that low employ-
ment rates for African American men in cities across the United States were predictive
of female headship, the percentage of women who were single, and the percentage of
Ch-11.indd 437 7/8/2008 12:35:30 PM
438 Part IV Families in Society
married-couple families among family households with school-age children. Moreover,
comparing the effect of mens employment on the family structure of African American
and white families, he found that the effect was 20 times greater for African Americans
than for whites. Similar results are reported by Darity and Myers, who investigated the
effects of sex ratio and economic marriageabilityWilson and Neckermans (1986) Male
Marriageability Pool Indexon African American family structure. They found that, al-
though both measures were independently predictive of female headship among African
Americans, a composite measure of economic and demographic factors was a more stable
and effective predictor. Moreover, Sampson found that the strongest independent effect
of these factors on family structure was observed among African American families in
poverty. That is, the lower the sex ratio and the lower the male employment rate the
higher the rate of female-headed families with children and in poverty (p. 250). It should
be noted that neither rates of white mens employment nor white sex ratios was found
to have much influence on white family structure in these analyses, lending support to
Wilsons (1987) hypothesis regarding the structural sources of family disruption among
African Americans.
Although the findings reported here are not definitive, they substantiate the unique
and powerful effects of sex ratios and mens employment on the marital behavior and
family structure of African Americans and point to other problems related to the eco-
nomic marginalization of men and family poverty in African American communities.
Some analysts have predicted far-reaching consequences for African Americans and for
society at large should current trends in marital disruption continue unabated. Darity and
Myers (1996) predicted that the majority of African American families will be headed by
women by the beginning of the next decade if violent crime, homicide, incarceration,
and other problems associated with the economic marginalization of African American
men are allowed to rob the next generation of fathers and husbands. Moreover, they
contended, a large number of such families are likely to be poor and isolated from the
mainstream of American society.
The growing economic marginalization of African American men and their ability
to provide economic support to families have contributed to their increasing estrange-
ment from family life (Bowman, 1989; Tucker & Mitchell-Kernan, 1995) and are identi-
fied as pivotal factors in the development of other social problems, including drug abuse,
crime, homicide, and imprisonment, which further erode their prospects as marriageable
mates for African American women.
In addressing the structural sources of the disruption of African American fami-
lies, researchers have advanced a number of short- and long-term proposals. There is
considerable agreement that increasing the rate of marriage alone will not significantly
improve the economic prospects of many poor African American families. As Ehrenreich
(1986) observed, given the marginal economic position of poor African American men,
impoverished African American women would have to be married to three such men
simultaneouslyto achieve an average family income! Thus, for many African American
women, increasing the prevalence of marriage will not address many of the problems they
experience as single parents.
With respect to short-term policies designed to address some of the more deleteri-
ous effects of structural forces on African American families, Darity and Myers (1996)
Ch-11.indd 438 7/8/2008 12:35:30 PM
Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 439
proposed three policy initiatives that are likely to produce significant results for African
American communities. First, because research has indicated that reductions in welfare
benefits have failed to stem the rise in female-headed households, welfare policy should
reinstate its earlier objective of lifting the poor out of poverty. In Darity and Myerss
view, concerns about the alleged disincentives of transfer payments are moot in light of
the long-term evidence that Black families will sink deeper into a crisis of female head-
ship with or without welfare. Better a world of welfare-dependent, near-poor families
than one of welfare-free but desolate and permanently poor families (p. 288). Second,
programs are needed to improve the health care of poor women and their children. One
major potential benefit of such a strategy is an improvement in the sex ratio because the
quality of prenatal and child care is one of the determinants of sex ratios. By assuring
quality health care now, we may help stem the tide toward further depletion of young
Black males in the future (p. 288). A third strategy involves improvements in the quality
of education provided to the poor, which are key to employment gains.
Although these are important initiatives with obvious benefits to African American
communities, in the long term, the best strategy for addressing marital disruptions and
other family-related issues is an economic-labor market strategy. Because much of cur-
rent social policy is ideologically driven, rather than formulated on the basis of empirical
evidence, it has failed to acknowledge or address the extent to which global and national
changes in the economy have conspired to marginalize significant segments of the Afri-
can American population, both male and female, and deprive them of the resources to
form or support families. Although social policy analysts have repeatedly substantiated
the link between the decline in marriages among African Americans and fundamental
changes in the U.S. postindustrial economy, their insights have yet to be formulated into
a meaningful and responsive policy agenda. Until these structural realities are incorpo-
rated into governmental policy, it is unlikely that marital disruption and other adverse
trends associated with this development will be reversed.
There is no magic bullet for addressing the causes and consequences of marital
decline among African Americans, but public policies that are designed to improve the
economic and employment prospects of men and women at all socioeconomic levels have
the greatest potential for improving the lot of African American families. Key elements
of such policies would include raising the level of education and employment training
among African American youth, and more vigorous enforcement of antidiscrimination
laws, which would raise the level of employment and earnings and contribute to higher
rates of marriage among African Americans (Burbridge, 1995). To be sure, many of the
federally sponsored employment and training programs that were launched during the
1960s and 1970s were plagued by a variety of administrative and organizational problems,
but the effectiveness of some of these programs in improving the long-term employment
prospects and life chances of disadvantaged youth and adults has been well documented
(Taylor et al., 1990).
African American families, like all families, exist not in a social vacuum but in com-
munities, and programs that are designed to strengthen community institutions and pro-
vide social support to families are likely to have a significant impact on family functioning.
Although the extended family and community institutions, such as the church, have been
important sources of support to African American families in the past, these community
Ch-11.indd 439 7/8/2008 12:35:31 PM
440 Part IV Families in Society
support systems have been overwhelmed by widespread joblessness, poverty, and a pleth-
ora of other problems that beset many African American communities. Thus, national ef-
forts to rebuild the social and economic infrastructures of inner-city communities would
make a major contribution toward improving the overall health and well-being of African
American families and could encourage more young people to marry in the future.
Winning support for these and other policy initiatives will not be easy in a political
environment that de-emphasizes the role of government in social policy and human wel-
fare. But without such national efforts, it is difficult to see how many of the social condi-
tions that adversely affect the structure and functioning of African American families will
be eliminated or how the causes and consequences of marital decline can be ameliorated.
If policy makers are serious about addressing conditions that destabilize families, under-
mine communities, and contribute to a host of other socially undesirable outcomes, new
policy initiatives, such as those just outlined, must be given higher priority.
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R E A DI NG 3 3
Diversity within Latino Families:
New Lessons for Family Social Science
Maxine Baca Zinn and Barbara Wells
Who are Latinos? How will their growing presence in U.S. society affect the family field?
These are vital questions for scholars who are seeking to understand the current social
and demographic shifts that are reshaping society and its knowledge base. Understand-
ing family diversity is a formidable task, not only because the field is poorly equipped to
deal with differences at the theoretical level, but because many decentering efforts are
themselves problematic. Even when diverse groups are included, family scholarship can
distort and misrepresent by faulty emphasis and false generalizations.
Latinos are a population that can be understood only in terms of increasing hetero-
geneity. Latino families are unprecedented in terms of their diversity. In this [reading],
we examine the ramifications of such diversity on the history, boundaries, and dynam-
ics of family life. We begin with a brief look at the intellectual trends shaping Latino
family research. We then place different Latino groups at center stage by providing a
framework that situates them in specific and changing political and economic settings.
Next, we apply our framework to each national origin group to draw out their different
family experiences, especially as they are altered by global restructuring. We turn, then,
to examine family structure issues and the interior dynamics of family living as they vary
by gender and generation. We conclude with our reflections on studying Latino families
and remaking family social science. In this [reading], we use interchangeably terms that
are commonly used to describe Latino national-origin groups. For example, the terms
Mexican American, Mexican, and Mexican-origin population will be used to refer to the
same segment of the Latino population. Mexican-origin people may also be referred to
as Chicanos.
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444 Part IV Families in Society
INTELLECTUAL TRENDS,
CRITIQUES, AND CHALLENGES
Origins
The formal academic study of Latino families originated in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries with studies of Mexican immigrant families. As the new social scientists of the
times focused their concerns on immigration and social disorganization, Mexican-origin
and other ethnic families were the source of great concern. The influential Chicago
School of Sociology led scholars to believe that Mexican immigration, settlement, and
poverty created problems in developing urban centers. During this period, family study
was emerging as a new field that sought to document, as well as ameliorate, social prob-
lems in urban settings (Thomas & Wilcox, 1987). Immigrant families became major
targets of social reform.
Interwoven themes from race relations and family studies gave rise to the view of
Mexicans as particularly disorganized. Furthermore, the family was implicated in their
plight. As transplants from traditional societies, the immigrants and their children were
thought to be at odds with social requirements in the new settings. Their family arrange-
ments were treated as cultural exceptions to the rule of standard family development.
Their slowness to acculturate and take on Western patterns of family development left
them behind as other families modernized (Baca Zinn, 1995).
Dominant paradigms of assimilation and modernization guided and shaped re-
search. Notions of traditional and modern forms of social organization joined the
new family social sciences preoccupation with a standard family form. Compared to
mainstream families, Mexican immigrant families were analyzed as traditional cultural
forms. Studies of Mexican immigrants highlighted certain ethnic lifestyles that were said
to produce social disorganization. Structural conditions that constrained families in the
new society were rarely a concern. Instead, researchers examined (1) the families foreign
patterns and habits, (2) the moral quality of family relationships, and (3) the prospects for
their Americanization (Bogardus, 1934).
Cultural Preoccupations
Ideas drawn from early social science produced cultural caricatures of Mexican fami-
lies that became more exaggerated during the 1950s, when structural functionalist
theories took hold in American sociology. Like the previous theories, structural func-
tionalisms strategy for analyzing family life was to posit one family type (by no means the
only family form, even then) and define it as the normal family (Boss & Thorne, 1989).
With an emphasis on fixed family boundaries and a fixed division of roles, structural func-
tionalists focused their attention on the group-specific characteristics that deviated from
the normal or standard family and predisposed Mexican-origin families to deficiency.
Mexican-origin families were analyzed in isolation from the rest of social life, described
in simplistic terms of rigid male dominance and pathological clannishness. Although
the earliest works on Mexican immigrant families reflected a concern for their eventual
adjustment to American society, the new studies virtually abandoned the social realm.
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Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 445
They dealt with families as if they existed in a vacuum of backward Mexican traditional-
ism. Structural functionalism led scholars along a path of cultural reductionism in which
differences became deficiencies.
The Mexican family of social science research ( Heller, 1966; Madsen, 1964; Rubel,
1966) presented a stark contrast with the mythical standard family. Although some
studies found that Mexican family traditionalism was fading as Mexicans became ac-
culturated, Mexican families were stereotypically and inaccurately depicted as the chief
cause of Mexican subordination in the United States.
New Directions
In the past 25 years, efforts to challenge myths and erroneous assumptions have produced
important changes in the view of Mexican-origin families. Beginning with a critique of
structural functionalist accounts of Mexican families, new studies have successfully chal-
lenged the old notions of family life as deviant, deficient, and disorganized.
The conceptual tools of Latino studies, womens studies, and social history have
infused the new scholarship to produce a notable shift away from cultural preoccupations.
Like the family field in general, research on Mexican-origin families has begun to de-
vote greater attention to the social situations and contexts that affect Mexican families
( Vega, 1990, p. 1015). This revisionist strategy has moved much Latino family research
to a different planeone in which racial-ethnic families are understood to be constructed
by powerful social forces and as settings in which different family members adapt in a
variety of ways to changing social conditions.
Current Challenges
Despite important advances, notable problems and limitations remain in the study of La-
tino families. A significant portion of scholarship includes only Mexican-origin groups
(Massey, Zambrana, & Bell, 1995) and claims to generalize the findings to other Latinos.
This practice constructs a false social reality because there is no Latino population in the
same sense that there is an African American population. However useful the terms Latino
and Hispanic may be as political and census identifiers, they mask extraordinary diversity.
The category Hispanic was created by federal statisticians to provide data on people of
Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, and other Hispanic origins in the United States. There is
no precise definition of group membership, and Latinos do not agree among themselves on
an appropriate group label (Massey, 1993). While many prefer the term Latino, they may
use it interchangeably with Hispanic to identify themselves (Romero, 1996). These terms
are certainly useful for charting broad demographic changes in the United States, but when
used as panethnic terms, they can contribute to misunderstandings about family life.
The labels Hispanic or Latino conceal variation in the family characteristics of
Latino groups whose differences are often greater than the overall differences between
Latinos and non-Latinos (Solis, 1995). To date, little comparative research has been
conducted on Latino subgroups. The systematic disaggregation of family characteristics
by national-origin groups remains a challenge, a necessary next step in the development
of Latino family research.
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446 Part IV Families in Society
We believe that the lack of a comprehensive knowledge base should not stand
in the way of building a framework to analyze family life. We can use the burgeoning
research on Latinos in U.S. social life to develop an analytical, rather than just a descrip-
tive, account of families. The very complexity of Latino family arrangements begs for
a unified (but not unitary) analysis. We believe that we can make good generalizations
about Latino family diversity. In the sections that follow, we use a structural perspective
grounded in intergroup differences. We make no pretense that this is an exhaustive re-
view of research. Instead, our intent is to examine how Latino family experiences differ
in relation to socially constructed conditions.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Conventional family frameworks, which have never applied well to racial-ethnic families,
are even less useful in the current world of diversity and change. Incorporating multiplic-
ity into family studies requires new approaches. A fundamental assumption guiding our
analysis is that Latino families are not merely an expression of ethnic differences but, like
all families, are the products of social forces.
Family diversity is an outgrowth of distinctive patterns in the way families and their
members are embedded in environments with varying opportunities, resources, and re-
wards. Economic conditions and social inequalities associated with race, ethnicity, class,
and gender place families in different social locations. These differences are the key to
understanding family variation. They determine labor market status, education, marital
relations, and other factors that are crucial to family formation.
Studying Latino family diversity means exposing the structural forces that impinge
differently on families in specific social, material, and historical contexts. In other words,
it means unpacking the structural arrangements that produce and often require a range of
family configurations. It also requires analyzing the cross-cutting forms of difference that
permeate society and penetrate families to produce divergent family experiences. Several
macrostructural conditions produce widespread family variations across Latino groups:
(1) the sociohistorical context; (2) the structure of economic opportunity; and (3) global
reorganization, including economic restructuring and immigration.
The Sociohistorical Context
Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and other Latino groups have varied histories that
distinguish them from each other. The timing and conditions of their arrival in the
United States produced distinctive patterns of settlement that continue to affect their
prospects for success. Cubans arrived largely between 1960 and 1980; a group of Mexi-
cans indigenous to the Southwest was forcibly annexed into the United States in 1848,
and another has been migrating continually since around 1890; Puerto Ricans came
under U.S. control in 1898 and obtained citizenship in 1917; Salvadorans and Guate-
malans began to migrate to the United States in substantial numbers during the past
two decades.
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Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 447
The Structure of Economic Opportunity
Various forms of labor are needed to sustain family life. Labor status has always been the
key factor in distinguishing the experiences of Latinos. Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans,
and others are located in different regions of the country where particular labor markets
and a groups placement within them determine the kind of legal, political, and social
supports available to families. Different levels of structural supports affect family life,
often producing various domestic and household arrangements. Additional complexity
stems from gendered labor markets. In a society in which men are still assumed to be the
primary breadwinners, jobs generally held by women pay less than jobs usually held by
men. Womens and mens differential labor market placement, rewards, and roles create
contradictory work and family experiences.
Global Reorganization, Including Economic
Restructuring and Immigration
Economic and demographic upheavals are redefining families throughout the world.
Four factors are at work here: new technologies based primarily on the computer chip,
global economic interdependence, the flight of capital, and the dominance of the in-
formation and service sectors over basic manufacturing industries (Baca Zinn & Eitzen,
1998). Latino families are profoundly affected as the environments in which they live
are reshaped and they face economic and social marginalization because of under-
employment and unemployment. Included in economic globalization are new demands
for immigrant labor and the dramatic demographic transformations that are Hispaniciz-
ing the United States. Family flexibility has long been an important feature of the im-
migrant saga. Today, Latino immigration is adding many varieties to family structure
(Moore & Vigil, 1993, p. 36).
The macrostructural conditions described earlier provide the context within which
to examine the family experiences of different Latino groups. They set the foundation
for comparing family life across Latino groups. These material and economic forces
help explain the different family profiles of Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and oth-
ers. In other words, they enable sociologists to understand how families are bound up
with the unequal distribution of social opportunities and how the various national-origin
groups develop broad differences in work opportunities, marital patterns, and household
structures. However, they do not explain other important differences in family life that
cut across national-origin groups. People of the same national origin may experience
family differently, depending on their location in the class structure as unemployed,
poor, working class or professional; their location in the gender structure as female or
male; and their location in the sexual orientation system as heterosexual, gay, lesbian, or
bisexual (Baca Zinn & Dill, 1996). In addition to these differences, family life for Latinos
is shaped by age, generation living in the United States, citizenship status, and even skin
color. All these differences intersect to influence the shape and character of family and
household relations.
While our framework emphasizes the social context and social forces that con-
struct families, we do not conclude that families are molded from the outside in. What
Ch-11.indd 447 7/8/2008 12:35:32 PM
448 Part IV Families in Society
happens on a daily basis in family relations and domestic settings also constructs families.
Latinos themselveswomen, men, and childrenhave the ability actively to shape their
family and household arrangements. Families should be seen as settings in which people
are agents and actors, coping with, adapting to, and changing social structures to meet
their needs (Baca Zinn & Eitzen, 1996).
Sociohistorical Context for Family
Diversity among Mexicans
Families of Mexican descent have been incorporated into the United States by both
conquest and migration. In 1848, at the end of the Mexican War, the United States
acquired a large section of Mexico, which is now the southwestern United States. With
the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the Mexican population in that region
became residents of U.S. territory. Following the U.S. conquest, rapid economic growth
in that region resulted in a shortage of labor that was resolved by recruiting workers from
Mexico. So began the pattern of Mexican labor migration that continues to the present
(Portes & Rumbaut, 1990). Some workers settled permanently in the United States, and
others continued in cycles of migration, but migration from Mexico has been continuous
since around 1890 (Massey et al., 1995).
Dramatic increases in the Mexican-origin population have been an important part
of the trend toward greater racial and ethnic diversity in the United States. The Mexican
population tripled in size in 20 years, from an estimated 4.5 million in 1970 to 8.7 mil-
lion in 1980 to 13.5 million in 1990 (Rumbaut, 1995; Wilkinson, 1993). At present,
approximately two thirds of Mexicans are native born, and the remainder are foreign
born (Rumbaut, 1995). Important differences are consistently found between the social
experiences and economic prospects of the native born and the foreign born (Morales &
Ong, 1993; Ortiz, 1996). While some variation exists, the typical Mexican migrant to
the United States has low socioeconomic status and rural origins (Ortiz, 1995; Portes &
Rumbaut, 1990). Recent immigrants have a distinct disadvantage in the labor market
because of a combination of low educational attainment, limited work skills, and limited
English language proficiency. Social networks are vital for integrating immigrants into
U.S. society and in placing them in the social class system (Fernandez-Kelly & Schauf-
fler, 1994). Mexicans are concentrated in barrios that have social networks in which vital
information is shared, contacts are made, and job referrals are given. But the social-
class context of these Mexican communities is overwhelmingly poor and working class.
Mexicans remain overrepresented in low-wage occupations, especially service, manual
labor, and low-end manufacturing. These homogeneous lower-class communities lack
the high-quality resources that could facilitate upward mobility for either new immi-
grants or second- and later-generation Mexicans.
The common assumption that immigrants are assimilated economically by taking
entry-level positions and advancing to better jobs has not been supported by the Mexican
experience (Morales & Ong, 1993; Ortiz, 1996). Todays Mexican workers are as likely
as ever to be trapped in low-wage unstable employment situations (Ortiz, 1996; Sassen,
1993). Studies (Aponte, 1993; Morales & Ong, 1993; Ortiz, 1996) have found that high
labor force participation and low wages among Mexicans have created a large group of
Ch-11.indd 448 7/8/2008 12:35:32 PM
Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 449
working poor. Households adapt by holding multiple jobs and pooling wages ( Velez-
Ibaez & Greenberg, 1992).
Mexicans are the largest Latino group in the United States; 6 of 10 Latinos have
Mexican origins. This group has low family incomes, but high labor force participation
for men and increasing rates for women. Mexicans have the lowest educational attain-
ments and the largest average household size of all Latino groups. (See Table 33.1 and
Figure 33.1 for between-group comparisons.)
Puerto Ricans
The fortunes of Puerto Rico and the United States were joined in 1899 when Puerto Rico
became a U.S. possession in the aftermath of Spains defeat in the Spanish-American War.
Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens and, as such, have the right to migrate to the mainland
without regulation. A small stream of migrants increased dramatically after World War II
for three primary reasons: high unemployment in Puerto Rico, the availability of inex-
pensive air travel between Puerto Rico and the United States, and labor recruitment by
U.S. companies (Portes & Rumbaut, 1990). Puerto Ricans were concentrated in or near
their arrival pointNew York Cityalthough migrant laborers were scattered through-
out the Northeast and parts of the Midwest. They engaged in a variety of blue-collar
occupations; in New York City, they were particularly drawn into the textile and garment
industries (Torres & Bonilla, 1993). The unique status of Puerto Rico as a commonwealth
of the United States allows Puerto Ricans to engage in a circulating migration between
Puerto Rico and the mainland (Feagin & Feagin, 1996).
TABLE 33.1 Social and Economic Population Characteristics
Labor Force Participation
Median
Income Poverty
% Female
Head of
Household Male Female
High
School
Graduate
Average
Household
Mexican 23,609 29.6 19.9 80.9 51.8 46.5 3.86
Puerto Rican 20,929 33.2 41.2 70.6 47.4 61.3 2.91
Cuban 30,584 13.6 21.3 69.9 50.8 64.7 2.56
Central/
South American
28,558 23.9 25.4 79.5 57.5 64.2 3.54
Other Hispanic 28,658 21.4 29.5 68.4
All Hispanic 24,313 27.8 24 79.1 52.6 53.4 2.99
All U.S. 38,782 11.6 12 75 58.9 81.7 2.65
1994 1994 1995 1995 1995 1995 1995
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1996 (116th ed.), Washington,
D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1996, Tables 53, 68, 241, 615, 622, 723, 738.
Ch-11.indd 449 7/8/2008 12:35:32 PM
450 Part IV Families in Society
Puerto Ricans are the most economically disadvantaged of all major Latino groups.
The particular context of Puerto Ricans entry into the U.S. labor market helps explain
this groups low economic status. Puerto Ricans with limited education and low occu-
pational skills migrated to the eastern seaboard to fill manufacturing jobs (Ortiz, 1995);
their economic well-being was dependent on opportunities for low-skill employment
(Aponte, 1993). The region in which Puerto Ricans settled has experienced a major de-
cline in its manufacturing base since the early 1970s. The restructuring of the economy
means that, in essence, the jobs that Puerto Ricans came to the mainland to fill have
largely disappeared. Latinos who have been displaced from manufacturing have generally
been unable to gain access to higher-wage service sector employment (Carnoy, Daly, &
Ojeda, 1993).
Compared to Mexicans and Cubans, Puerto Ricans have the lowest median family
incomes and the highest unemployment and poverty rates. Puerto Ricans also have a high
rate of female-headed households.
Cubans
The primary event that precipitated the migration of hundreds of thousands of Cubans
to the United States was the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power in 1959. This
revolution set off several waves of immigration, beginning with the former economic and
political elite and working progressively downward through the class structure. Early
Female Labor
Force
Male Labor
Force
High School
Graduate
Female Head
of Household
Family
Poverty
Central/South America
(includes other Hispanics)
Puerto-Rican
Cuban
Mexican
All U.S.
0 20 40 60 80 100
Percentage
0 0.5 1 1.5 2
Average Household Size
2.5 3 3.5 4
FIGURE 33.1 Social and Economic Population Characteristics
Ch-11.indd 450 7/8/2008 12:35:32 PM
Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 451
Cuban immigrants entered the United States in a highly politicized cold-war context as
political refugees from communism. The U.S. government sponsored the Cuban Refu-
gee Program, which provided massive supports to Cuban immigrants, including resettle-
ment assistance, job training, small-business loans, welfare payments, and health care
(Dominguez, 1992; Perez-Stable & Uriarte, 1993). By the time this program was phased
out after the mid-1970s, the United States had invested nearly $1 billion in assistance to
Cubans fleeing from communism (Perez-Stable & Uriarte, 1993, p. 155). Between 1960
and 1980, nearly 800,000 Cubans immigrated to the United States (Dominguez, 1992).
The Cuban population is concentrated in south Florida, primarily in the Miami
area, where they have established a true ethnic enclave in which they own businesses;
provide professional services; and control institutions, such as banks and newspapers
(Perez, 1994). The unique circumstances surrounding their immigration help explain
the experience of Cubans. U.S. government supports facilitated the economic successes
of early Cuban immigrants (Aponte, 1993; Fernandez-Kelley & Schauffler, 1994). High
rates of entrepreneurship resulted in the eventual consolidation of an enclave economy
(Portes & Truelove, 1987).
Immigrants, women, and minorities have generally supplied the low-wage, flexible
labor on which the restructured economy depends (Morales & Bonilla, 1993). However,
Cubans embody a privileged migration in comparison to other Latino groups (Mo-
rales & Bonilla, 1993, p. 17). Their social-class positions, occupational attainments, and
public supports have insulated them from the effects of restructuring. Yet Cubans in
Miami are not completely protected from the displacements of the new economic order.
As Perez-Stable and Uriarte (1993) noted, the Cuban workforce is polarized, with one
segment moving into higher-wage work and the other remaining locked in low-wage
employment.
Cuban families have higher incomes and far lower poverty rates than do other
major Latino groups. Cubans are the most educated major Latino group and have the
smallest average household size.
Other Latinos
In each national-origin group discussed earlier, one finds unique socioeconomic, political
and historical circumstances. But the diversity of Latinos extends beyond the differences
between Mexican Americans, Cuban Americans, and mainland Puerto Ricans. One finds
further variation when one considers the experiences of other Latino national-origin groups.
Although research on other Latinos is less extensive than the literature cited earlier, we
consider briefly contexts for diversity in Central American and Dominican families.
Central Americans. Political repression, civil war, and their accompanying economic
dislocations have fueled the immigration of a substantial number of Salvadorans, Guate-
malans, and Nicaraguans since the mid-1970s ( Hamilton & Chinchilla, 1997). The U.S.
population of Central Americans more than doubled between the 1980 and 1990 censuses
and now outnumbers Cubans ( U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1993). These Latinos migrated
under difficult circumstances and face a set of serious challenges in the United States
(Dorrington, 1995). Three factors render this population highly vulnerable: (1) a high
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452 Part IV Families in Society
percentage are undocumented (an estimated 49% of Salvadorans and 40% of Guatema-
lans), (2) they have marginal employment and high poverty rates, and (3) the U.S. gov-
ernment does not recognize them as political refugees (Lopez, Popkin, & Telles, 1996).
The two largest groups of Central Americans are Salvadorans and Guatemalans,
the majority of whom live in the Los Angeles area. Lopez et al.s (1996) study of Central
Americans in Los Angeles illumined the social and economic contexts in which these
Latinos construct their family lives. In general, the women and men have little formal
education and know little English, but have high rates of labor force participation. Sal-
vadorans and Guatemalans are overrepresented in low-paying service and blue-collar
occupations. Salvadoran and Guatemalan women occupy a low-wage niche in private
service (as domestic workers in private homes). Central Americans, especially the un-
documented who fear deportation and usually have no access to public support, are des-
perate enough to accept the poorest-quality, lowest-paying work that Los Angeles has to
offer. These immigrants hold the most disadvantageous position in the regional economy
(Scott, 1996). Lopez et al. predicted that in the current restructured economy, Central
Americans will continue to do the worst of the dirty work necessary to support the
lifestyles of the high-wage workforce.
Dominicans. A significant number of Dominicans began migrating to the U.S. in the
mid-1960s. What Grasmuck and Pessar (1996) called the massive displacement of Do-
minicans from their homeland began with the end of Trujillos 30-year dictatorship and
the political uncertainties that ensued. Dominican immigrant families did not fit the con-
ventional image of the unskilled, underemployed peasant. They generally had employed
breadwinners who were relatively well educated by Dominican standards; the majority
described themselves as having urban middle-class origins (Mitchell, 1992).
The Dominican population is heavily concentrated in New York City. They entered
a hostile labor market in which their middle class aspirations were to remain largely un-
fulfilled because the restructured New York economy offers low-wage, marginal, mostly
dead-end employment for individuals without advanced education (Torres & Bonilla,
1993). Dominicans lacked the English language competence and educational credentials
that might have facilitated their upward mobility (Grasmuck & Pessar, 1996). More than
two thirds of the Dominican-origin population in the United States is Dominican born.
As a group, Dominicans have high rates of poverty and female-headed families. Approxi-
mately 4 in 10 family households are headed by women.
THE STRUCTURE OF
ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY
Latino families remain outside the economic mainstream of U.S. society. Their median
family income stands at less than two thirds the median family income of all U.S. families
( U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1996). But the broad designation of Latino obscures im-
portant differences among national-origin groups. In this section, we explore variations
in the structure of economic opportunity and consider how particular economic contexts
shape the lives of different groups of Latino families.
Ch-11.indd 452 7/8/2008 12:35:33 PM
Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 453
Class, Work, and Family Life
A number of studies (see, for example, Cardenas, Chapa, & Burek, 1993; Grasmuck &
Pessar, 1996; Lopez et al., 1996; Ortiz, 1995; Perez, 1994) have documented that diverse
social and economic contexts produce multiple labor market outcomes for Latino fami-
lies. The quality, availability, and stability of wage labor create a socioeconomic context in
which family life is constructed and maintained. Cuban American families have fared far
better socioeconomically than have other Latino families. Scholars consistently cite the
role of the Cuban enclave in providing a favorable economic context with advantages that
other groups have not enjoyed (Morales & Bonilla, 1993; Perez, 1994; Perez-Stable &
Uriarte, 1993). Cuban families have the highest incomes, educational attainments, and
levels of upper-white-collar employment. Puerto Rican, Mexican, and Central American
families cluster below Cubans on these socioeconomic indicators, with Puerto Ricans the
most disadvantaged group.
The structure of Mexican American economic opportunity stands in sharp contrast
to that of Cubans. Betancur, Cordova, and Torres (1993) documented the systematic ex-
clusion of Mexicans from upward-mobility ladders, tracing the incorporation of Mexican
Americans into the Chicago economy to illustrate the historic roots of the concentra-
tion of Mexicans in unstable, poor-quality work. Throughout the 20th century Mexican
migrants have constituted a transient workforce that has been continually vulnerable to
fluctuations in the labor market and cycles of recruitment and deportation. Betancur et
al.s study highlighted the significance of the bracero program of contract labor migration
in institutionalizing a segmented market for labor. The bracero program limited Mexican
workers to specific low-status jobs and industries that prohibited promotion to skilled
occupational categories. Mexicans were not allowed to compete for higher-status jobs,
but were contracted to fill only the most undesirable jobs. Although formal bracero-era
regulations have ended, similar occupational concentrations continue to be reproduced
among Mexican American workers.
The effects of these diverging social-class and employment contexts on families are
well illustrated by Fernandez-Kellys (1990) study of female garment workersCubans
in Miami and Mexicans in Los Angelesboth of whom placed a high value on mar-
riage and family; however, contextual factors shaped differently their abilities to sustain
marital relationships over time. Fernandez-Kelly contended that the conditions neces-
sary for maintaining long-term stable unions were present in middle-class families but
were absent in poor families. That is, the marriages of the poor women were threatened
by unemployment and underemployment. Among these Mexican women, there was a
high rate of poor female-headed households, and among the Cuban women, many were
members of upwardly mobile families.
Womens Work
Several studies (Chavira-Prado, 1992; Grasmuck & Pessar, 1991; Lamphere, Zavella,
Gonzales, & Evans, 1993; Stier & Tienda, 1992; Zavella, 1987) that have explored
the intersection of work and family for Latinas have found that Latinas are increas-
ingly likely to be employed. Labor force participation is the highest among Central
Ch-11.indd 453 7/8/2008 12:35:33 PM
454 Part IV Families in Society
American women and the lowest among Puerto Rican women, with Mexican and Cuban
women equally likely to be employed. Not only do labor force participation rates dif-
fer by national origin, but the meaning of womens work varies as well. For example,
Fernandez-Kellys (1990) study demonstrated that for Cuban women, employment was
part of a broad family objective to reestablish middle-class status. Many Cuban immi-
grants initially experienced downward mobility, and the women took temporary jobs
to generate income while their husbands cultivated fledgling businesses. These women
often withdrew from the workforce when their families economic positions had been
secured. In contrast, Mexican women in Los Angeles worked because of dire economic
necessity. They were drawn into employment to augment the earnings of partners who
were confined to secondary-sector work that paid less than subsistence wages or worse,
to provide the primary support for their households. Thus, whereas the Cuban women
expected to work temporarily until their husbands could resume the role of middle-
class breadwinner, the Mexican women worked either because their partners could not
earn a family wage or because of the breakdown of family relationships by divorce or
abandonment.
GLOBAL REORGANIZATION
Economic Restructuring
The economic challenges that Latinos face are enormous. A workforce that has always
been vulnerable to exploitation can anticipate the decline of already limited mobility
prospects. A recent body of scholarship (see, for example, Lopez et al., 1996; Morales &
Bonilla, 1993; Ortiz, 1996) has demonstrated that the restructuring of the U.S. economy
has reshaped economic opportunities for Latinos.
Torres and Bonillas (1993) study of the restructuring of New York Citys economy
is particularly illustrative because it focused on Puerto Ricans, the Latino group hit hard-
est by economic transformations. That study found that restructuring in New York City
is based on two processes that negatively affect Puerto Ricans. First, stable jobs in both
the public and private sectors have eroded since the 1960s because many large corpora-
tions that had provided long-term, union jobs for minorities left the New York area and
New York Citys fiscal difficulties restricted the opportunities for municipal employment.
Second, the reorganization of light manufacturing has meant that new jobs offer low
wages and poor working conditions; new immigrants who are vulnerable to exploitation
by employers generally fill these jobs. The restructuring of the economy has resulted in
the exclusion or withdrawal of a substantial proportion of Puerto Ricans from the labor
market (Morales & Bonilla, 1993).
Families are not insulated from the effects of social and economic dislocations. Re-
search that has tracked this major social transformation has considered how such changes
affect family processes and household composition (Grasmuck & Pessar, 1996; Lopez
et al., 1996; Rodriguez & Hagan, 1997). What Sassen (1993) called the informalization
and casualization of urban labor markets will, in the end, shape families in ways that
deviate from the nuclear ideal. The marginalization of the Puerto Rican workforce is
Ch-11.indd 454 7/8/2008 12:35:33 PM
Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 455
related not only to high unemployment and poverty rates, but to high rates of nonmarital
births and female-headed households (Fernandez-Kelly, 1990; Morrissey, 1987).
Contrasting the experience of Dominicans to that of Puerto Ricans indicates that
it is impossible to generalize a unitary Latino experience even within a single labor
marketNew York City. Torres and Bonilla (1993) found that as Puerto Ricans were dis-
placed from manufacturing jobs in the 1970s and 1980s, new Dominican immigrants came
into the restructured manufacturing sector to fill low-wage jobs. Dominicans were part
of a pool of immigrant labor that entered a depressed economy, was largely ineligible for
public assistance, and was willing to accept exploitative employment. Grasmuck and Pes-
sar (1991, 1996) showed how the incorporation of Dominicans into the restructured New
York economy has affected families. Although the rate of divorce among early immigrants
was high, relationships have become increasingly precarious as employment opportuni-
ties have become even more constrained. Currently, rates of poverty and female-headed
households for Dominicans approximate those of Puerto Ricans (Rumbaut, 1995).
A Latino Underclass? Rising poverty rates among Latinos, together with the alarmist
treatment of female-headed households among minorities, have led many policy mak-
ers and media analysts to conclude that Latinos have joined inner-city African Ameri-
cans to form part of the underclass. According to the underclass model, inner-city
mens joblessness has encouraged nonmarital childbearing and undermined the economic
foundations of the African American family ( Wilson, 1987, 1996). Researchers have also
been debating for some time whether increases in the incidence of female-headed house-
holds and poverty among Puerto Ricans are irreversible (Tienda, 1989). Recent thinking,
however, suggests that applying the underclass theory to Latinos obscures more than it
reveals and that a different analytical model is needed to understand poverty and fam-
ily issues in each Latino group (Massey et al., 1995). Not only do the causes of poverty
differ across Latino communities, but patterns of social organization at the community
and family levels produce a wide range of responses to poverty. According to Moore and
Pinderhughes (1993), the dynamics of poverty even in the poorest Latino barrios differ
in fundamental ways from the conventional portrait of the under-class. Both African
Americans and Puerto Ricans have high rates of female-headed households. However,
Sullivans (1993) research in Brooklyn indicated that Puerto Ricans have high rates of
cohabitation and that the family formation processes that lead to these household pat-
terns are different from those of African Americans. Other case studies have underscored
the importance of family organization. For example, Velez-Ibaez (1993) described a
distinctive family form among poor Mexicans of South Tucsoncross-class household
clusters surrounded by kinship networks that stretch beyond neighborhood boundaries
and provide resources for coping with poverty.
Immigration
Families migrate for economic reasons, political reasons, or some combination of the
two. Immigration offers potential and promise, but one of the costs is the need for fami-
lies to adapt to their receiving community contexts. A growing body of scholarship has
focused on two areas of family change: household composition and gender relations.
Ch-11.indd 455 7/8/2008 12:35:33 PM
456 Part IV Families in Society
Household Composition. Immigration contributes to the proliferation of family forms
and a variety of household arrangements among Latinos ( Vega, 1995). Numerous stud-
ies have highlighted the flexibility of Latino family households. Chavez (1990, 1992)
identified transnational families, binational families, extended families, multiple-family
households, and other arrangements among Mexican and Central American immigrants.
Landale and Fennelly (1992) found informal unions that resemble marriage more than
cohabitation among mainland Puerto Ricans, and Guarnizo (1997) found binational
households among Dominicans who live and work in both the United States and the
Dominican Republic. Two processes are at work as families adapt their household struc-
tures. First, family change reflects, for many, desperate economic circumstances ( Vega,
1995), which bring some families to the breaking point and lead others to expand their
household boundaries. Second, the transnationalization of economies and labor has cre-
ated new opportunities for successful Latino families; for example, Guarnizo noted that
Dominican entrepreneurs sometimes live in binational households and have de facto
binational citizenship (p. 171).
Immigration and Gender. Several important studies have considered the relationship
between immigration and gender (Boyd, 1989; Grasmuck & Pessar, 1991; Hondagneu-
Sotelo, 1994). In her study of undocumented Mexican immigrants, Hondagneu-Sotelo
(1994) demonstrated that gender shapes migration and immigration shapes gender rela-
tions. She found that family stage migration, in which husbands migrate first and wives
and children follow later, does not fit the household-strategy model. Often implied in
this model is the assumption that migration reflects the unanimous and rational collective
decision of all household members. However, as Hondagneu-Sotelo observed, gender
hierarchies determined when and under what circumstances migration occurred; that
is, men often decided spontaneously, independently, and unilaterally to migrate north
to seek employment. When Mexican couples were finally reunited in the United States,
they generally reconstructed more egalitarian gender relations. Variation in the form
of gender relations in the United States is partially explained by the circumstances sur-
rounding migration, such as the type and timing of migration, access to social networks,
and U.S. immigration policy.
FAMILY DYNAMICS ACROSS LATINO GROUPS
Familism
Collectivist family arrangements are thought to be a defining feature of the Latino popu-
lation. Presumably, a strong orientation and obligation to the family produces a kinship
structure that is qualitatively different from that of all other groups. Latino familism,
which is said to emphasize the family as opposed to the individual, is linked to many of
the pejorative images that have beset discussions of the Hispanic family ( Vega, 1990,
p. 1018). Although themes of Latino familism figure prominently in the social science
literature, this topic remains problematic owing to empirical limitations and conceptual
confusion.
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Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 457
Popular and social science writing contain repeated descriptions of what amounts
to a generic Latino kinship form. In reality, a Mexican-origin bias pervades the research
on this topic. Not only is there a lack of comparative research on extended kinship
structures among different national-origin groups, but there is little empirical evidence
for all but Mexican-origin families. For Mexican-origin groups, studies are plentiful (for
reviews, see Baca Zinn, 1983; Vega, 1990, 1995), although they have yielded inconsistent
evidence about the prevalence of familism, the forms it takes, and the kinds of supportive
relationships it serves.
Among the difficulties in assessing the evidence on extended family life are the
inconsistent uses of terms like familism and extended family system. Seeking to clarify the
multiple meanings of familism, Ramirez and Arce (1981) treated familism as a multidi-
mensional concept comprised of such distinct aspects as structure, behavior, norms and
attitudes, and social identity, each of which requires separate measurement and analysis.
They proposed that familism contains four key components: (1) demographic familism,
which involves such characteristics as family size; (2) structural familism, which mea-
sures the incidence of multigenerational (or extended) households; (3) normative fami-
lies, which taps the value that Mexican-origin people place on family unity and solidarity;
and (4) behavioral familism, which has to do with the level of interaction between family
and kin networks.
Changes in regional and local economies and the resulting dislocations of Latinos
have prompted questions about the ongoing viability of kinship networks. Analyzing
a national sample of minority families, Rochelle (1997) argued that extended kinship
networks are declining among Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and African Americans. On
the other hand, a large body of research has documented various forms of network par-
ticipation by Latinos. For three decades, studies have found that kinship networks are
an important survival strategy in poor Mexican communities (Alvirez & Bean, 1976;
Hoppe & Heller, 1975; Velez-Ibaez, 1996) and that these networks operate as a system
of cultural, emotional, and mental support (Keefe, 1984; Mindel, 1980; Ramirez, 1980),
as well as a system for coping with socioeconomic marginality (Angel & Tienda, 1982;
Lamphere et al., 1993).
Research has suggested, however, that kinship networks are not maintained for
socioeconomic reasons alone (Buriel & De Ment, 1997). Familistic orientation among
Mexican-origin adults has been associated with high levels of education and income
(Griffith & Villavicienco, 1985). Familism has been viewed as a form of social capital
that is linked with academic success among Mexican-heritage adolescents ( Valenzuela &
Dornbusch, 1994).
The research on the involvement of extended families in the migration and settle-
ment of Mexicans discussed earlier (Chavez, 1992; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1994; Hondagneu-
Sotelo & Avila, 1997) is profoundly important. In contrast to the prevailing view that family
extension is an artifact of culture, this research helps one understand that the structural
flexibility of families is a social construction. Transnational families and their networks
of kin are extended in space, time, and across national borders. They are quintessential
adaptationsalternative arrangements for solving problems associated with immigration.
Despite the conceptual and empirical ambiguities surrounding the topic of familism,
there is evidence that kinship networks are far from monolithic. Studies have revealed
Ch-11.indd 457 7/8/2008 12:35:33 PM
458 Part IV Families in Society
that variations are rooted in distinctive social conditions, such as immigrant versus non-
immigrant status and generational status. Thus, even though immigrants use kin for
assistance, they have smaller social networks than do second-generation Mexican Ameri-
cans who have broader social networks consisting of multigenerational kin ( Vega, 1990).
Studies have shown that regardless of class, Mexican extended families in the United
States become stronger and more extensive with generational advancement, accultura-
tion, and socioeconomic mobility ( Velez-Ibaez, 1996). Although an assimilationist per-
spective suggests that familism fades in succeeding generations, Velez-Ibaez found that
highly elaborated second- and third-generation extended family networks are actively
maintained through frequent visits, ritual celebrations, and the exchange of goods and
services. These networks are differentiated by the functions they perform, depending on
the circumstances of the people involved.
Gender
Latino families are commonly viewed as settings of traditional patriarchy and as different
from other families because of machismo, the cult of masculinity. In the past two decades,
this cultural stereotype has been the impetus for corrective scholarship on Latino fami-
lies. The flourishing of Latina feminist thought has shifted the focus from the determin-
ism of culture to questions about how gender and power in families are connected with
other structures and institutions in society. Although male dominance remains a central
theme, it is understood as part of the ubiquitous social ordering of women and men. In
the context of other forms of difference, gender exerts a powerful influence on Latino
families.
New research is discovering gender dynamics among Latino families that are both
similar to and different from those found in other groups. Similarities stem from so-
cial changes that are reshaping all families, whereas differences emerge from the varied
locations of Latino families and the women and men in them. Like other branches of
scholarship on Latino families, most studies have been conducted with Mexican-origin
populations. The past two decades of research have shown that family life among all
Latino groups is deeply gendered. Yet no simple generalizations sum up the essence of
power relations.
Research has examined two interrelated areas: (1) family decision making and
(2) the allocation of household labor. Since the first wave of revisionist works (Zavella,
1987) conducted in the 1970s and 1980s (Baca Zinn, 1980; Ybarra, 1982), researchers
have found variation in these activities, ranging from patriarchal role-segregated patterns
to egalitarian patterns, with many combinations in between. Studies have suggested that
Latinas employment patterns, like those of women around the world, provide them
with resources and autonomy that alter the balance of family power (Baca Zinn, 1980;
Coltrane & Valdez, 1993; Pesquera, 1993; Repack, 1997; Williams, 1990; Ybarra, 1982;
Zavella, 1987). But, as we discussed earlier, employment opportunities vary widely, and
the variation produces multiple work and family patterns for Latinas. Furthermore,
womens employment, by itself, does not eradicate male dominance. This is one of the
main lessons of Zavellas (1987) study of Chicana cannery workers in Californias Santa
Clara Valley. Womens cannery work was circumscribed by inequalities of class, race, and
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Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 459
gender. As seasonal, part-time workers, the women gained some leverage in the home,
thereby creating temporary shifts in their day-to-day family lives, but this leverage did
not alter the balance of family power. Fernandez-Kelly and Garcias (1990) compara-
tive study of womens work and family patterns among Cubans and Mexican Americans
found strikingly different configurations of power. Employed womens newfound rights
are often contradictory. As Repacks study (1997) of Central American immigrants re-
vealed, numerous costs and strains accompany womens new roles in a new landscape.
Family relations often became contentious when women pressed partners to share do-
mestic responsibilities. Migration produced a situation in which women worked longer
and harder than in their countries of origin.
Other conditions associated with varying patterns in the division of domestic labor
are womens and mens occupational statuses and relative economic contributions to their
families. Studies by Pesquera (1993), Coltrane and Valdez (1993), and Coltrane (1996)
found a general inside/outside dichotomy ( wives doing most housework, husbands
doing outside work and sharing some child care), but women in middle-class jobs re-
ceived more help from their husbands than did women with lower earnings.
Family power research should not be limited to womens roles, but should study
the social relations between women and men. Recent works on Latino mens family lives
have made important strides in this regard (Coltrane & Valdez, 1993; Shelton & John,
1993). Still, there is little information about the range and variety of Latino mens fam-
ily experiences (Mirande, 1997) or of their interplay with larger structural conditions.
In a rare study of Mexican immigrant men, Hondagneu-Sotelo and Messner (1994)
discussed the diminution of patriarchy that comes with settling in the United States.
They showed that the key to gender equality in immigrant families is womens and mens
relative positions of power and status in the larger society. Mexican immigrant mens
status is low owing to racism, economic marginality, and possible undocumented status.
Meanwhile, as immigrant women move into wage labor, they develop autonomy and
economic skills. These conditions combine to erode patriarchal authority.
The research discussed earlier suggested some convergences between Latinos and
other groups in family power arrangements. But intertwined with the shape of domestic
power are strongly held ideals about womens and mens family roles. Ethnic gender iden-
tities, values, and beliefs contribute to gender relations and constitute an important but
little understood dimension of families. Gender may also be influenced by Latinos ex-
tended family networks. As Lamphere et al. (1993) discovered, Hispanas in Albuquerque
were living in a world made up largely of Hispana mothers, sisters, and other relatives.
Social scientists have posited a relationship between dense social networks and gender
segregation. If this relationship holds, familism could well impede egalitarian relations
in Latino families (Coltrane, 1996; Hurtado, 1995).
Compulsory heterosexuality is an important component of both gender and fam-
ily systems. By enforcing the dichotomy of opposite sexes, it is also a form of inequality
in its own right, hence an important marker of social location. A growing literature on
lesbian and gay identity among Latinas and Latinos has examined the conflicting chal-
lenges involved in negotiating a multiple minority status (Alarcon, Castillo, & Moraga,
1989; Almaguer, 1991; Anzalda, 1987; Carrier, 1992; Moraga, 1983; Morales, 1990).
Unfortunately, family scholarship on Latinos has not pursued the implications of lesbian
Ch-11.indd 459 7/8/2008 12:35:33 PM
460 Part IV Families in Society
and gay identities for understanding family diversity. In fact, there have been no stud-
ies in the social sciences in the area of sexual orientation and Latino families ( Hurtado,
1995). But although the empirical base is virtually nonexistent and making families the
unit of analysis no doubt introduces new questions (Demo & Allen, 1996), we can glean
useful insights from the discourse on sexual identity. Writing about Chicanos, Almaguer
(1991) identified the following obstacles to developing a safe space for forming a gay or
lesbian identity: racial and class subordination and a context in which ethnicity remains a
primary basis of group identity and survival. Moreover Chicano family life [italics added]
requires allegiance to patriarchal gender relations and to a system of sexual meanings
that directly mitigate against the emergence of this alternative basis of self identity
(Almaguer, p. 88). Such repeated references to the constraints of ethnicity, gender, and
sexual orientation imposed by Chicano families (Almaguer, 1991; Moraga, 1983) raise
important questions. How do varied family contexts shape and differentiate the develop-
ment of gay identities among Latinos? How do they affect the formation of lesbian and
gay families among Latinas and Latinos? This area is wide open for research.
Children and Their Parents
Latinos have the highest concentration of children and adolescents of all major racial and
ethnic groups. Nearly 40% of Latinos are aged 20 or younger, compared to about 26% of
non-Hispanic whites ( U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1996). Among Latino subgroups, the
highest proportions of children and adolescents are among Mexicans and Puerto Ricans
and the lowest among Cubans (Solis, 1995).
Latino socialization patterns have long held the interest of family scholars (Marti-
nez, 1993). Most studies have focused on the child-rearing practices of Mexican families.
Researchers have questioned whether Mexican families have permissive or authoritar-
ian styles of child rearing and the relationship of childrearing styles to social class and
cultural factors (Martinez, 1993). Patterns of child rearing were expected to reveal the
level of acculturation to U.S. norms and the degree of modernization among traditional
immigrant families. The results of research spanning the 1970s and 1980s were mixed
and sometimes contradictory.
Buriels (1993) study brought some clarity to the subject of child-rearing practices
by situating it in the broad social context in which such practices occur. This study of
Mexican families found that child-rearing practices differ by generation. Parents who
were born in Mexico had a responsibility-oriented style that was compatible with
their own life experience as struggling immigrants. U.S.-born Mexican parents had a
concern-oriented style of parenting that was associated with the higher levels of educa-
tion and income found among this group and that may also indicate that parents com-
pensate for their childrens disadvantaged standing in U.S. schools.
Mainstream theorizing has generally assumed a middle-class European-American
model for the socialization of the next generation (Segura & Pierce, 1993). But the
diverse contexts in which Latino children are raised suggest that family studies must
take into account multiple models of socialization. Latino children are less likely than
Anglo children to live in isolated nuclear units in which parents have almost exclusive
responsibility for rearing children and the mothers role is primary. Segura and Pierce
Ch-11.indd 460 7/8/2008 12:35:33 PM
Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 461
contended that the pattern of nonexclusive mothering found in some Latino families
shapes the gender identities of Latinos in ways that conventional thinking does not con-
sider. Velez-Ibaez & Greenberg (1992) discussed how the extensive kinship networks of
Mexican families influence child rearing and considered the ramifications for educational
outcomes. Mexican children are socialized into a context of thick social relations. From
infancy onward, these children experience far more social interaction than do children
who are raised in more isolated contexts. The institution of educationsecond only
to the family as an agent of socializationis, in the United States, modeled after the
dominant society and characterized by competition and individual achievement. Latino
students who have been socialized into a more cooperative model of social relations often
experience a disjuncture between their upbringing and the expectations of their schools
( Velez-Ibaez & Greenberg, 1992).
Social location shapes the range of choices that parents have as they decide how
best to provide for their children. Latino parents, who are disproportionately likely to
occupy subordinate social locations in U.S. society, encounter severe obstacles to provid-
ing adequate material resources for their children. To date, little research has focused on
Latino fathers (Powell, 1995). Hondagneu-Sotelo and Avilas (1997) study documented
a broad range of mothering arrangements among Latinas. One such arrangement is
transnational mothering, in which mothers work in the United States while their chil-
dren remain in Mexico or Central America; it is accompanied by tremendous costs and
undertaken when options are extremely limited. The researchers found that transnational
mothering occurred among domestic workers, many of whom were live-in maids or child
care providers who could not live with their children, as well as mothers who could bet-
ter provide for their children in their countries of origin because U.S. dollars stretched
further in Central America than in the United States. Other mothering arrangements
chosen by Latinas in the study included migrating with their children, migrating alone
and later sending for their children, and migrating alone and returning to their children
after a period of work.
Intrafamily Diversity
Family scholars have increasingly recognized that family experience is differentiated
along the lines of age and gender (Baca Zinn & Eitzen, 1996; Thorne, 1992). Members
of particular familiesparents and children, women and menexperience family life
differently. Scholarship that considers the internal differentiation of Latino families is
focused on the conditions surrounding and adaptations following immigration.
While immigration requires tremendous change of all family members, family ad-
aptation to the new context is not a unitary phenomenon. Research has found patterns
of differential adjustment as family members adapt unevenly to an unfamiliar social en-
vironment (Gold, 1989). Gil and Vegas (1996) study of acculturative stress in Cuban and
Nicaraguan families in the Miami area identified significant differences in the adjustment
of parents and their children. For example, Nicaraguan adolescents reported more initial
language conflicts than did their parents, but their conflicts diminished over time, whereas
their parents language conflicts increased over time. This difference occurred because
the adolescents were immediately confronted with their English language deficiency in
Ch-11.indd 461 7/8/2008 12:35:34 PM
462 Part IV Families in Society
school, but their parents could initially manage well in the Miami area without a facil-
ity with English. The authors concluded that family members experience the aversive
impacts of culture change at different times and at variable levels of intensity (p. 451).
Differential adjustment creates new contexts for parent-child relations. Immigrant
children who are school-aged generally become competent in English more quickly than
do their parents. Dorrington (1995) found that Salvadoran and Guatemalan children
often assume adult roles as they help their parents negotiate the bureaucratic structure
of their new social environment; for example, a young child may accompany her parents
to a local utility company to act as their translator.
Immigration may also create formal legal distinctions among members of Latino
families. Frequently, family members do not share the same immigration status. That is,
undocumented Mexican and Central American couples are likely, over time, to have chil-
dren born in the United States and hence are U.S. citizens; the presence of these children
then renders the undocumented family label inaccurate. Chavez (1992, p. 129) used
the term binational family to refer to a family with both members who are undocumented
and those who are citizens or legal residents.
Not only do family members experience family life differently, but age and gender
often produce diverging and even conflicting interests among them (Baca Zinn & Ei-
tzen, 1996). Both Hondagneu-Sotelos (1994) and Grasmuck and Pessars (1991) studies
of family immigration found that Latinas were generally far more interested in settling
permanently in the United States than were their husbands. In both studies, the women
had enhanced their status by migration, while the men had lost theirs. Hondagneu-
Sotelo noted that Mexican women advanced the permanent settlement of their families
by taking regular, nonseasonal employment; negotiating the use of public and private
assistance; and forging strong community ties. Grasmuck and Pessar observed that Do-
minican women tried to postpone their families return to the Dominican Republic by
extravagantly spending money that would otherwise be saved for their return and by
establishing roots in the United States.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
The key to understanding diversity in Latino families is the uneven distribution of con-
straints and opportunities among families, which affects the behaviors of family members
and ultimately the forms that family units take (Baca Zinn & Eitzen, 1996). Our goal in
this review was to call into question assumptions, beliefs, and false generalizations about
the way Latino families are. We examined Latino families not as if they had some
essential characteristics that set them apart from others, but as they are affected by a
complex mix of structural features.
Our framework enabled us to see how diverse living arrangements among Latinos
are situated and structured in the larger social world. Although this framework embraces
the interplay of macro- and microlevels of analysis, we are mindful that this review de-
voted far too little attention to family experience, resistance, and voice. We do not mean
to underestimate the importance of human agency in the social construction of Latino
families, but we could not devote as much attention as we would have liked to the various
Ch-11.indd 462 7/8/2008 12:35:34 PM
Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 463
ways in which women, men, and children actively produce their family worlds. Given the
sheer size of the literature, the non-comparability of most contemporary findings and
the lack of a consistent conceptual groundwork ( Vega, 1990, p. 102), we decided that
what is most needed is a coherent framework within which to view and interpret diversity.
Therefore, we chose to focus on the impact of social forces on family life.
The basic insights of our perspective are sociological. Yet a paradox of family so-
ciology is that the field has tended to misrepresent Latino families and those of other
racial-ethnic groups. Sociology has distorted Latino families by generalizing from the
experience of dominant groups and ignoring the differences that make a difference. This
is a great irony. Family sociology, the specialty whose task it is to describe and understand
social diversity, has marginalized diversity, rather than treated it as a central feature of
social life (Baca Zinn & Eitzen, 1993).
As sociologists, we wrote this [reading] fully aware of the directions in our dis-
cipline that hinder the ability to explain diversity. At the same time, we think the core
insight of sociology should be applied to challenge conventional thinking about families.
Reviewing the literature for this [reading] did not diminish our sociological convictions,
but it did present us with some unforeseen challenges. We found a vast gulf between
mainstream family sociology and the extraordinary amount of high-quality scholarship
on Latino families. Our review took us far beyond the boundaries of our discipline,
making us cross disciplinary migrants (Stacey, 1995). We found the new literature in
diverse and unlikely locations, with important breakthroughs emerging in the border-
lands between social science disciplines. We also found the project to be infinitely more
complex than we anticipated. The extensive scholarship on three national-origin groups
and others was complicated by widely varying analytic snapshots. We were, in short,
confronted with a kaleidoscope of family diversity. Our shared perspective served us well
in managing the task at hand. Although we have different family specializations and con-
trasting family experiences, we both seek to understand multiple family and household
forms that emanate from structural arrangements.
What are the most important lessons our sociological analysis holds for the family
field? Three themes offer new directions for building a better, more inclusive, family
social science. First, understanding Latino family diversity does not mean simply ap-
preciating the ways in which families are different; rather, it means analyzing how the
formation of diverse families is based on and reproduces social inequalities. At the heart
of many of the differences between Latino families and mainstream families and the dif-
ferent aggregate family patterns among Latino groups are structural forces that place
families in different social environments. What is not often acknowledged is that the
same social structuresrace, class, and other hierarchiesaffect all families, albeit in
different ways. Instead of treating family variation as the property of group difference,
recent sociological theorizing (Baca Zinn, 1994; Dill, 1994; Glenn, 1992; Hill Collins,
1990, 1997) has conceptualized diverse family arrangements in relational terms, that
is, mutually dependent and sustained through interaction across racial and class bound-
aries. The point is not that family differences based on race, class, and gender simply
coexist. Instead, many differences in family life involve relationships of domination
and subordination and differential access to material resources. Patterns of privilege
and subordination characterize the historical relationships between Anglo families and
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464 Part IV Families in Society
Mexican families in the Southwest (Dill, 1994). Contemporary diversity among La-
tino families reveals new interdependences and inequalities. Emergent middle-class and
professional lifestyles among Anglos and even some Latinos are interconnected with a
new Latino servant class whose family arrangements, in turn, must accommodate to the
demands of their labor.
Second, family diversity plays a part in different economic orders and the shifts
that accompany them. Scholars have suggested that the multiplicity of household types
is one of the chief props of the world economy (Smith, Wallerstein, & Evers, 1985).
The example of U.S.-Mexican cross-border households brings this point into full view.
This household arrangement constitutes an important part of the emerging and dy-
namic economic and technological transformations in the region ( Velez-Ibaez, 1996,
p. 143). The structural reordering required by such families is central to regional eco-
nomic change.
Finally, the incredible array of immigrant family forms and their enormous capacity
for adaptation offer new departures for the study of postmodern families. Binational,
transnational, and multinational families, together with border balanced house-
holds and generational hopscotching, are arrangements that remain invisible even in
Staceys (1996) compelling analysis of U.S. family life at the centurys end. And yet the
experiences of Latino familiesflexible and plasticas far back as the late 1800s (Gris-
wold del Castillo, 1984), give resonance to the image of long-standing family fluidity
and of contemporary families lurching backward and forward into the postmodern age
(Stacey, 1990). The shift to a postindustrial economy is not the only social transformation
affecting families. Demographic and political changes sweeping the world are engender-
ing family configurations that are yet unimagined in family social science.
These trends offer new angles of vision for thinking about family diversity. They
pose new opportunities for us to remake family studies as we uncover the mechanisms
that construct multiple household and family arrangements.
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R E A DI NG 3 4
Cultural Diversity and Aging Families
Rona J. Karasik and Raeann R. Hamon
It is not by the gray of the hair that one knows the age of the heart.
Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
In thinking about aging and older families, it is important to consider that aging is not
a single experience. Many equate aging with the physiological changes our bodies go
through over time. Some focus on diseases that, while not age related, are often thought
to be associated with old age. Aging, however, is much more than the accumulation of
wrinkles, gray hair, and the possibility of one or more chronic health conditions. Aging
is also about how we view people (including ourselves) based on how we look and act and
even by the number of candles on our birthday cakes. Aging is also about relationships
how they are sustained, how they change, and how new relationships are formed.
We have many stereotypes about aging and older persons. While our expectations
are often negative, in reality, there are both positive and negative aspects to aging. The
way in which we age is affected by a wide range of personal and social factors. Older
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470 Part IV Families in Society
persons are a highly heterogeneous group, and the family relationships of older persons
are highly diverse as well. This chapter will focus on how culture and ethnicity interplay
with a variety of factors to affect aging and older families.
WHY FOCUS ON CULTURAL
DIVERSITY IN OLDER FAMILIES?
We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and
not in another, unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm,
childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward,
or fix us in the present.
Anas Nin
There are many reasons to try to understand the diverse impact of aging on families.
First and foremost is the size and ongoing growth of the older population in the United
States. In 2002, 35.6 million persons (12.3 percent of the U.S. population) were aged 65
and older (Administration on Aging, 2003). By 2030, the older population is expected to
grow to 20 percent of the U.S. populationroughly 71.5 million persons will be aged
65 and older. Not surprisingly, the U.S. older population is not just growing in size but
in ethnic diversity as well. In 2000, 17.2 percent of adults 65 and older in the United
States reported being ethnic minorities. African American elders made up the largest
ethnic minority elder group (8.1 percent), followed by 2.7 percent identifying as Asian
or Pacific Islanders, and less than 1 percent identifying themselves as American Indian
or Alaskan Native. Older persons identifying themselves as Hispanic ( who may be of any
race) composed 5.5 percent of the population, and 0.5 percent of older adults indicated
being of two or more races. By 2030, the proportion of ethnic minority elders is expected
to grow to 26.4 percent of the older population (Administration on Aging, 2003).
While these demographics clearly reflect a rapidly growing and increasingly diverse
older population, numbers do not tell the whole story. Diversity within each racial and
ethnic group is considerable. Most data on race and ethnicity, however, are reported in
the overly broad categories of White, Black, American Indian/Alaskan Native, Asian or
Pacific Islander, and Hispanic ( U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2002). Moreover, while the
census requests write-in information on a persons ancestry or ethnic origin, rarely
are these data included in descriptions of the aging population. As such, we know very
little about how culture and ethnicity affect the aging experiences of many groups in the
United States.
Salari (2002), for example, notes the invisibility in aging research of the diverse
groups in the United States who have Middle Eastern origins as well as of those who
practice Islam. For many groups, religion is a vital concern in how we understand the
impact of cultural diversity on aging. Thus, a second reason to explore the cultural di-
versity of the older population is to understand how factors of culture, ethnicity, and
race interplay with the other factors that make aging uniqueincluding religion (Salari,
2002), gender (Conway-Turner, 1999), sexual orientation (Cooney & Dunne, 2001; Orel,
2004), health (Diwan & Jonnalagadda, 2001; Johnson & Smith, 2002; Li & Fries, 2005;
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Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 471
Zhan & Chen, 2004), socioeconomic status (Angel, 2003), family relationships (Shawler,
2004), social support ( Johnson & Tripp-Reimer, 2001; Jordan-Marsh & Harden, 2005),
geographic location (Applewhite & Torres, 2003; Barusch & TenBarge, 2003; Himes,
Hogan, & Eggebeen, 1996), and life experiences (Moriarty & Butt, 2004). None of these
factors alone makes a person or family. Rather, all are important for us to understand who
our older population is and what their increasing numbers will mean.
Finally, considerations for how best to meet the needs of this rapidly growing
and changing population are a third reason for exploring the impact of cultural diver-
sity. Many call attention to the need for cultural competencea system that provides ap-
propriate, effective, high-quality services for all persons regardless of racial or ethnic
background (Geron, 2002). Defining what constitutes cultural competence and how we
can achieve it, however, can be challenging and perhaps a bit overwhelming. Capitman
(2002), therefore, suggests starting with cultural humility, where we begin by acknowl-
edging what we do not know about each other as individuals and members of multiple
cultural groups (p. 12). Such an approach, however, still requires working not only to-
ward understanding the needs of all older adults, but also toward the improved provision
of culturally appropriate services. Saying we know little about a group is not enough. We
must continuously seek to learn more about the diverse experiences, strengths, and needs
of older adults and their families.
THEORETICAL APPROACHES TO
UNDERSTANDING CULTURAL
DIVERSITY AND AGING FAMILIES
It is theory that decides what can be observed.
Albert Einstein
In selecting a framework to examine cultural diversity in older families, we must be sensi-
tive to how our own expectations and biases affect not only the questions we ask but also
the way in which we interpret the responses. Currently, much of the research on diversity
in aging takes a preliminary, primarily descriptive approach (e.g., what? who? and
how many?). Several studies, however, have taken the next step of grounding their
research into a particular theoretical framework.
Many theories focus on the problems experienced by culturally diverse aging fami-
lies. Sands and Goldberg-Glen (2000), for example, employ stress theory to explore fac-
tors that affect levels of stress experienced by grandparents who serve as parents to their
grandchildren. Not surprisingly, research conducted under such an approach can result
in lists of problems to be fixed by programs, services, and more research.
Other studies employ broader theoretical frameworks, such as the life course per-
spective, where the focus is on age norms and the timing of life transitions ( Hagestad &
Neugarten, 1985). From this perspective, family life transitions (e.g., marriage, widow-
hood, grandparenthood) are placed into social and historical context (e.g., as on-time
or off-time). Individual life experiences and their outcomes are then interpreted with
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472 Part IV Families in Society
regard to the impact of such timing. Some recent studies using this framework have ex-
panded the perspective to include how factors such as race and ethnicity affect the timing
and interpretation of such experiences (Burton, 1996).
While also considering changes over the life span, selectivity theory focuses on
the evolving function of social interaction and emotional closeness within relationships.
Carstensen (2001) suggests that older persons become more selective in their choice of
social partners, often directing their attention to, and thus placing more importance on,
relationships with available close family and friends. Such an approach may be seen as an
adaptive way to deal with shrinking social networks.
Also seeking to focus on positive adaptation, some frame their research in terms
of the shared strengths and challenges certain social and historical circumstances bring
about. Conway-Turner (1999) uses a feminist perspective to examine the lives of older
women of color. Her approach is grounded in the notion that while women of color may
come from very different backgrounds, they share experiences of discrimination based on
race, ethnicity, gender, and age. Conway-Turners approach also calls for exploring the
cumulative effects of these variables as they both positively and negatively interact with
the later-life and family experiences of women of color.
More recently, Pillemer and Lscher (2004) suggest that societies, and the individ-
uals within them, are characteristically ambivalent about relationships between parents
and children in adulthood (p. 6). They propose an ambivalence framework for studying
dilemmas and contradictions in late-life families in an empirical and systematic fashion,
both at the sociological and psychological levels. Though it has not yet been explicitly
applied to family relationships among ethnically or culturally diverse families, Boss and
Kaplan (2004) assert that the ambiguous loss of a parent with dementia provides fertile
ground for increased ambivalence in intergenerational relations (p. 207), making the
model particularly relevant. So, too, ambivalence is a useful construct when consider-
ing adult childrens filial role or sense of responsibility for the well-being of their aging
parents (Lang, 2004).
Finally, Gibsons work (2005) is one of a handful of studies looking at aging fami-
lies from an Afrocentric perspective. Such an approach focuses on traditional African
philosophical assumptions, which emphasize holistic, interdependent, and spiritual con-
ceptions of people and their environment and focuses on family strengths within the
culture of people of African descent (p. 293). Thus, in contrast to a life course perspec-
tive that might view the event of grandparents parenting their grandchildren as off-
time, or stress theory, which might look at the negative impact parenting duties have
on grandparents (Sands & Goldberg-Glen, 2000), Gibson looks at the positive aspects
gained from this grand-parenting role and focuses, instead, on ways to strengthen the
existing grandparent-as-parent relationships. Similarly, Minkler and Fuller-Thomson
(2005) emphasize the value of theories of intersectionality or those that stress the con-
nection of class, race, and gender (p. S82), particularly when examining later-life family
topics like care provided by grandparents in African American communities.
Each of the above theoretical frameworks has a place in helping us to understand
the experiences of culturally diverse older families. Certainly, aging families face many
challenges as well as possess unique strengths. These theoretical approaches help to place
the current research findings into context as well guide new research questions.
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Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 473
RESEARCH ON DIVERSITY
IN LATER-LIFE FAMILIES
We have become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different
beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.
Jimmy Carter
Despite the rather large but separate bodies of research on aging families (Allen, Bliesz-
ner, & Roberto, 2000; Walker, Manoogian-ODell, McGraw, & White, 2001) and di-
versity in older populations (Capitman, 2002; Harris, 1998) there has been only limited
research focusing on the intersections of race, ethnicity, and cultural background in
aging families. Thus, much of the research presented here was not specifically designed
to address culturally diverse aging families.
Additionally, in examining this research, it is important to recognize that culture
and ethnicity do not operate in a vacuum. Time, history, immigration ( Wilmoth, 2001),
acculturation (Silverstein & Chen, 1999), and societal pressure continuously make and
remake cultures role. For example, while Harris (1998) notes that the traditions of
many groups (e.g., African American, Asian, Hispanic, Native American) focus on col-
lectivity and interdependenceplacing the needs of the family above the needs of the
individualchanging societal influences have altered the meaning and outcome of these
traditions. Whereas elders in such families might expect to hold central roles (e.g.,
teacher, guide, tradition bearer), many find themselves in conflict with current societal
pressure to focus on youth and individualism. Many also face the paradox of wanting
their children and grandchildren to become fully assimilated into the dominant culture
and to have a better life than they did, while still adhering to their cultural traditions as
well (Patterson, 2003). The goal of this section, therefore, is to highlight areas where
culture, ethnicity, and aging families intersect, while also considering how such influ-
ences continue to change in todays society.
PARTNERSHIPS IN LATER LIFE
Newlyweds become oldyweds, and oldyweds are the reasons that families work.
Author unknown
Despite media images of lonely older adults, over half of adults age 65 and over are mar-
ried. There are, however, significant discrepancies in marital status between men and
women. Older women, who outnumber older men by a ratio of 141:100, are much less
likely to be married than older men. In fact, in 2002, 73 percent of older men and only
41 percent of older women were currently married (Administration on Aging, 2003).
These gender disparities also hold true when looking across broad racial and ethnic
categories. While older White males were more likely to be married (74.3 percent) than
older Hispanic males (67.5 percent) and older Black males (53.9 percent), males in gen-
eral were still more likely to be married than females. As such, 42.9 percent of White
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474 Part IV Families in Society
older women, 38 percent of Hispanic older women, and 25 percent of older Black women
were currently married ( U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2002).
Conversely, older women (46 percent) were over four times as likely to be widowed
as older men (14 percent) (Administration on Aging, 2003). With regard to race and eth-
nicity, older Black women (54.6 percent) were the most likely to be widowed, followed by
White older women (44.4 percent) and Hispanic older women (39.4 percent). Similarly,
older Black men (21 percent) were more likely to be widowed than older Hispanic men
(15 percent) and older White men (13.9 percent) ( U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2002).
Some of the gender difference in marital status has been attributed to the discrep-
ancy in overall numbers and life expectancy between men and women, with women living
an average of six years longer than men (Administration on Aging, 2003; Arias, 2004).
Life expectancy differences, however, are not the only factor here. Social and cultural
expectations about marriage and remarriage, which can vary among different groups,
have also been cited in the higher rates of continued widowhood for women. The pool
of socially acceptable potential mates for widowed women (their age and older) continues
to diminish, while the pool for men (their age and younger) is potentially endless. Social
norms about race and acceptable marriage partners may also contribute to this disparity
(Pienta, Hayward, & Jenkins, 2000), as well as pervasive media images of older women
as unattractive and men as ageless. Regardless of the cause, women of all ethnic groups
are much more likely to live alone in later life than men (Administration on Aging, 2003;
Himes et al., 1996). Furthermore, older women living alone, particularly older Hispanic
women, have the highest rates of poverty among older adults (Administration on Aging,
2003). Factors of education and employment status, however, are also found to interact
with marital status and ethnicity in regard to rates of income and poverty ( Wilson &
Hardy, 2002).
In addition to widowhood, divorce is another factor that places older women of
all ethnic backgrounds at higher risk both of living alone and experiencing poverty. In
2002, approximately 10 percent of older persons were currently divorced, a rate that
has almost doubled since 1980 (Administration on Aging, 2003). With regard to data
on race and ethnicity, however, some gender differences appear, with the percentage of
currently divorced older Hispanic women (11.1 percent) being somewhat higher than for
older Hispanic men (8.4 percent) and older Black women (8.9 percent) and older Black
men (8.4 percent). The number of currently divorced older White women (7.1 percent)
was also slightly higher than for older White men (6.0 percent) ( U.S. Bureau of the
Census, 2002).
Finally, an often overlooked area is the highly diverse group of older adults who
have remained ever-single (Cooney & Dunne, 2001), accounting for about 4 percent
of older men and 4 percent of older women (Administration on Aging, 2003). Older
Black men (9.1 percent) were the most likely group not to marry, followed by older
Black women (5.9 percent) and older Hispanic women (5.6 percent). An equal percent-
age of older White men (3.8 percent) and older Hispanic men (3.8 percent) remained
ever-single, while older White women (3.5 percent) were the least likely to never marry.
Currently, few studies focus on older ever-singlesand even fewer, if any, focus on cul-
ture and ethnicity in older ever-singles. The reasons why a person might remain single,
however, and also in who we as a society label as single, are important factors in later-life
Ch-11.indd 474 7/8/2008 12:35:35 PM
Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 475
experiences. Careers, lack of opportunity, and relatively high percentage of Latinos who
live in informal unions; these individuals may not appear in demographic studies as
married. Similarly, some stay single because marriage is not a legal option, not because
they are not involved in a partnership. While growing attention is being given to gay
and lesbian partnerships in later life (Grossman, DAugelli, & Hershberger, 2000; Orel,
2004), few studies focus specifically on issues of culture and ethnicity (McFarland &
Sanders, 2003).
Beyond the above demographic descriptions, research directed specifically at the
intersections of race, culture, ethnicity, and later-life family partnerships is limited. Pi-
enta et al. (2000) looked at the effects of marriage on health for White, African American,
and Latino adults and found that married older adults had better health than widowed
and divorced persons, although these findings were less distinct for Whites than for per-
sons of color. Kitson (2000) found similarly complex outcomes looking at how widows
adjust to the death of their spouses, with age, race, and cause of death interacting. Of note
is that Black widows of spouses who died of suicide expressed more distress than similar
White widows, suggesting a greater stigma against suicide among Blacks.
SIBLINGS IN LATER LIFE
To the outside world we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other
as we always were.
Clara Ortega
The sibling relationship is typically one of the longest lasting of all family relationships,
with most current older adults having at least one living siblingsomething that may
change as smaller families become the norm. Later-life sibling relationships tend to de-
crease in intensity and contact during the childbearing and rearing years, followed by
increased contact in the later years (Goetting, 1986). Studies suggest gender, geographic
proximity, and individual differences mediate the amount and type of contact siblings
have in later life (Connidis & Campbell, 2001). Campbell, Connidis, and Davies (1999)
discovered the centrality of the confidant role as well as emotional and instrumental sup-
port among siblings; companionship is a less critical function for siblings. So, too, they
found that single, childless, and widowed women tend to have greater involvement with
their siblings. Gold (1990) found that race also had an impact on later sibling relation-
ships, finding that Black sibling dyads tended to be more positive than White sibling
dyads. Other findings that include culture and race, however, are somewhat mixed. For
example, many studies find that sister-sister ties hold the strongest bonds (Connidis &
Campbell, 2001). John (1991), however, found ties between brothers to be stronger in his
study of siblings in the Prairie Band Potawatomi, a Native American tribe.
While few studies focus directly on the impact of culture and ethnicity on later-life
sibling relationships, several studies on the social support networks of culturally diverse
older adults also find that siblings play an important role. Becker, Beyene, Newsom, and
Mayen (2003) found that siblings were an important part of mutual support networks
for older African Americans, Latinos, and Filipino Americans. Similarly, Johnson (1999)
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476 Part IV Families in Society
found strong bonds between older Black men and their siblings. Williams (2001), on the
other hand, found that the impoverished older Mexican American men in her sample had
little interaction with their extended families, including their siblings.
GRANDPARENTHOOD
Grandchildren are the dots that connect the lines from generation to generation.
Lois Wyse
While there have always been some who have lived long enough to become grandparents,
the evolution of grandparenthood is fairly new. Todays ever-increasing life expectancies
have created unprecedented numbers of three-, four-, and even five-generation families.
Szinovacz (1998) calls grandparenthood a near universal experience (pp. 48 49), with
most older adults having an average of five to six grandchildren. Szinovacz also notes,
however, that about 15 percent of Black and Hispanic men report that they are not
grandparents (p. 49). In suggesting that some of these men may be unaware of their
grandparent status due to loss of contact with their families ( via immigration, divorce,
and other means), Szinovacz raises two important concerns.
First, much of the data on grandparenthood is self-reported. Even the census,
which recently added questions on the number of grandparents living with grandchil-
dren, relies on measures of self-report (Simmons & Dye, 2003). A second concern is the
question of who is a grandparent. Is grandparenthood solely a biological event, or must
one acknowledge the bond for it to exist? Also, is a biological bond required? In some
groups, the titles mother and grandmother are used as a sign of respect for all elder
women or to designate fictive kin (Gibson, 2005; Jordan-Marsh & Harden, 2005) and is
not necessarily reserved for blood kin.
Additionally, the roles grandparents play and their impacts on families are quite
varied. Several factors can influence the shape grandparent roles may take, including gen-
der, age, culture, and ethnicity (Bengtson, 1985; Fingerman, 2004). Cherlin and Fursten-
berg (1992) describe three grandparenting stylesremote, companionate, and involved.
Remote relationships were characterized as largely symbolic, with little if any direct
contact. Often geographic distance and/or divorce were factors in limiting the amount of
grandparent-grandchild contact. Companionate grand-relationships tend to focus more
on leisure activities and friendship, while involved grandparents took a more active role
in their grandchildrens lives, often taking on a more parental role. Weibel-Orlando
(2001) found similar grandparenting styles among Native American elders, adding two
additional stylesceremonial grandparents, who lived distant from their grandchildren
but had frequent, culturally endowed contact, and cultural conservator grandparents, who
actively sought contact and temporary coresidence with their grandchildren for the
expressed purpose of exposing them to the American Indian way of life (p. 143).
In another study, Silverstein and Chen (1999) examined how acculturation, defined
as the erosion of traditional cultural language, values, and practices (p. 196) affected the
quality of the grandparent-grandchild relationship in Mexican American families. Using
data from the study of three-generational Mexican American families, Silverstein and Chen
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Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 477
found that gaps in cultural values between generations reduced the social interaction and
intimacy of these Mexican American grandparents and grandchildren over time. While
language barriers appeared to add to this gap, language was not the sole cause of the rela-
tionship distance. Of additional note is that while the grandchildren in this study reported
a reduction in their grandparent-grandchild relationship, their grandparents did not.
Other research focuses on the small but growing trend involving coresidence among
grandparents and grandchildren. The 2000 census found that 3.6 percent of adults (or
5.8 million people) were living with grandchildren under the age of 18 (Simmons &
Dye, 2003). Some of these relationships may be characterized as coparenting ( where the
parent also lives with the grandparent and grandchild) and others (2.4 million, or 42 per-
cent) were described as custodial grandparent caregivers. Census rates of coresidence,
either as coparent or as caregiver, varied considerably by racial and ethnic category. Only
2 percent of non-Hispanic Whites reported coresiding with a grandchild, compared with
6 percent of Asian Americans, 8 percent of American Indian and Native Alaskans, 8 per-
cent of people who are Black, 8 percent who are Hispanic, and 10 percent of Pacific
Islanders (Simmons & Dye, 2003).
Several researchers have looked at the phenomenon of grandparents raising grand-
children (Erera, 2002). Fuller-Thomson, Minkler, and Driver (1997) note that while
custodial grandparenting was not limited to any single group, a disproportionate number
of single women, African Americans, recently bereaved parents, and persons with low in-
come were found in this role. African American grandparent caregivers, especially grand-
mothers, were particularly vulnerable in that they experienced elevated rates of poverty
and were more likely than their noncaregiving peers to report functional limitations
(Minkler & Fuller-Thomson, 2005, p. S90). Examinations of the impact on grandpar-
ents providing care for grandchildren suggest that the role involves some level of stress
(Musil, 1998), but that a variety of factors, including caregiving context and family sup-
port (Sands & Goldberg-Glen, 2000) as well as ethnicity (Goodman & Silverstein, 2002),
moderate just how much stress caregiving grandparents experience.
Taking a somewhat different approach, Gibson (2005), focused on the positive im-
pact parenting African American grandparents can have on their grandchildren and iden-
tified seven themes or potential strengths of such relationships, including maintaining
effective communication, taking a strong role in their grandchildrens education, provid-
ing socioemotional support, involving the extended family, involving grandchildren in
the community, working with the vulnerabilities of the grandchildren, and acknowledg-
ing the absence of the grandchildrens biological parent(s). Strom, Carter, and Schmidt
(2004) and Strom, Heeder, and Strom (2005) similarly found that African American
grandparents often take a strong role in their grandchildrens lives, particularly with re-
gard to being a teacher and role model. These studies suggest that teaching is a strength
of Black grandmothers, and that grandparents should be encouraged to help support the
education of their grandchildren.
Taken together, these findings suggest that grandparenthood is an important yet
highly variable aspect of later-life families. The range of variables, including cultural
and ethnic diversity, that affect grandparent-hood suggest further research with broader
samples from a variety of backgrounds is warranted (Fingerman, 2004; Hayslip &
Kaminski, 2005).
Ch-11.indd 477 7/8/2008 12:35:36 PM
478 Part IV Families in Society
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R E A DI NG 3 5
Gay and Lesbian Families:
Queer Like Us
Judith Stacey
Until recently, gay and lesbian families seemed quite a queer concept, if not oxymoronic,
not only to scholars and the general public but even to most lesbians and gay men. The
grass roots movement for gay liberation of the late 1960s and early 1970s struggled
along with the militant feminist movement of that period to liberate gays and women
from perceived evils and injustices represented by the family, rather than for access to
its blessings and privileges. Early marches for gay pride and womens liberation flaunted
provocative, countercultural banners, like Smash the Family and Smash Monogamy.
Their legacy is a lasting public association of gay liberation and feminism with family
subversion. Today, however, gays and lesbians are in the thick of a vigorous profamily
movement of their own.
Ch-11.indd 480 7/8/2008 12:35:36 PM
Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 481
Gay and lesbian families are indisputably here. By the late 1980s an astonishing
gay-by boom had swelled the ranks of children living with at least one gay or lesbian
parent.
1
Family Values, the title of a popular 1993 book by and about a lesbians successful
struggle to become a legal second mother to the son she and his biological mother have
coparented since his birth,
2
is also among the most popular themes of contemporary
Gay Pride marches. In 1989, Denmark became the first nation in the world to legalize a
form of gay marriage, termed registered partnerships, and its Nordic neighbors, Nor-
way and Sweden, soon followed suit. In April 2001, the Netherlands leap-frogged ahead
to become the first nation in the world to grant full legal marriage rights to same-sex
couples. Meanwhile, in 1993, thousands of gay and lesbian couples participated in a mass
wedding ceremony on the Washington Mall during the largest demonstration for gay
rights in U.S. history. That same year, the Hawaiian state supreme court issued a ruling
that raised the prospect that Hawaii would become the first state in the United States to
legalize same-sex marriage. As a result, controversies over gay and lesbian families began
to receive center stage billing in U.S. electoral politics.
Gay and lesbian families come in different sizes, shapes, ethnicities, races, religions,
resources, creeds, and quirks, and even engage in diverse sexual practices.
3
The gay and
lesbian family label primarily marks the cognitive dissonance, and even emotional threat,
that much of the nongay public experiences upon recognizing that gays can participate in
family life at all. What unifies such families is their need to contend with the particular
array of psychic, social, legal, practical, and even physical challenges to their very exis-
tence that institutionalized hostility to homosexuality produces. Paradoxically, the label
gay and lesbian family might become irrelevant if the nongay population could only
get used to it.
In this [reading] I hope to facilitate such a process of normalization, ironically,
perhaps, to make using the marker gay and lesbian to depict a family category seem
queeras queer, that is, as it now seems to identify a family, rather than an individual
or a desire, as heterosexual.
4
I will suggest that this historically novel category of family
crystallizes widespread processes of family diversification and change that characterize
the postmodern family conditions.
5
Gay and lesbian families represent such a new, em-
battled, visible, and, necessarily, self-conscious genre of kinship, that they help to expose
the widening gap between the complex reality of contemporary family forms and the
dated family ideology that still undergirds most public rhetoric, policy, and law concern-
ing families. Nongay families, family scholars, and policymakers alike can learn a great
deal from examining the experience, struggles, conflicts, needs, and achievements of
contemporary gay and lesbian families.
BRAVE NEW FAMILY PLANNING
History rarely affords a social scientist an opportunity to witness during her own lifetime
the origins and evolution of a dramatic and significant cultural phenomenon in her field.
For a family scholar, it is particularly rare to be able to witness the birth of a historically
unprecedented variety of family life. Yet the emergence of the genus gay and lesbian
family as a distinct social category, and the rapid development and diversification of
Ch-11.indd 481 7/8/2008 12:35:36 PM
482 Part IV Families in Society
its living species, have occurred during the past three decades, less than my lifetime.
Same-sex desire and behavior, on the other hand, have appeared in most human socie-
ties, including all Western ones, as well as among most mammalian species; homosexual
relationships, identities, and communities have much longer histories than most Western
heterosexuals imagine; and historical evidence documents the practice of sanctioned and /
or socially visible same-sex unions in the West, as well as elsewhere, since ancient times.
6

Nonetheless, the notion of a gay or lesbian family is decidedly a late-twentieth-century
development, and several particular forms of gay and lesbian families were literally in-
conceivable prior to recent developments in reproductive technology.
Indeed, before the Stonewall rebellion in 1969, the family lives of gays and lesbians
were so invisible, both legally and socially, that one can actually date the appearance of
the first identifiable species of gay family lifea unit that includes at least one self-
identified gay or lesbian parent and children from a former heterosexual marriage. Only
one U.S. child custody case reported before 1950 involved a gay or lesbian parent, and
only five more gays or lesbians dared to sue for custody of their children between 1950
and 1969. Then, immediately after Stonewall, despite the predominantly anti family
ethos of the early gay liberation period, gay custody conflicts jumped dramatically, with
fifty occurring during the 1970s and many more since then.
7
Courts consistently denied
parental rights to these early pioneers, rendering them martyrs to a cause made visible by
their losses. Both historically and numerically, formerly married lesbian and gay parents
who came out after marriage and secured at least shared custody of their children rep-
resent the most significant genre of gay families. Such gay parents were the first to level
a public challenge against the reigning cultural presumption that the two terms, gay
and parent are antithetical. Their family units continue to comprise the vast majority
of contemporary gay families and to manifest greater income and ethnic diversity than
newer categories of lesbian and gay parents. Moreover, studies of these families provide
the primary data base of the extant research on the effects of gay parenting on child
development.
It was novel, incongruous, and plain brave for lesbian and gay parents to struggle
for legitimate family status during the height of the antinatalist, antimaternalist, anti-
family fervor of grass roots feminism and gay liberation in the early 1970s. Fortunately
for their successors, such fervor proved to be quite short-lived. Within very few years
many feminist theorists began to celebrate womens historically developed nurturing
capacities, not coincidentally at a time when aging, feminist baby-boomers had begun
producing a late-life boomlet of their own.
8
During the middle to late seventies, the
legacy of sexual revolution and feminist assertions of female autonomy combined with
the popularization of alternative reproductive technologies and strategies to embolden a
first wave of out lesbians to join the burgeoning ranks of women actively choosing to
have children outside of marriage.
Fully intentional childbearing outside of heterosexual unions represents one of
the only new, truly original, and decidedly controversial genres of family formation and
structure to have emerged in the West during many centuries. While lesbian variations
on this cultural theme include some particularly creative reproductive strategies, they
nonetheless represent not deviant, but vanguard manifestations of much broader late-
twentieth-century trends in Western family life. Under postmodern conditions, processes
Ch-11.indd 482 7/8/2008 12:35:36 PM
Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 483
of sexuality, conception, gestation, marriage, and parenthood, which once appeared to
follow a natural, inevitable progression of gendered behaviors and relationships, have
come unhinged, hurtling the basic definitions of our most taken-for-granted familial
categorieslike mother, father, parent, offspring, sibling, and, of course, family itself
into cultural confusion and contention.
The conservative turn toward profamily and postfeminist sensibilities of the
Reagan-Bush era, combined with the increased visibility and confidence of gay and les-
bian communities, helped to fuel the gay-by boom that escalated rapidly during the
1980s. It seems more accurate to call this a lesbaby boom, because lesbians vastly
outnumber the gay men who can, or have chosen to, become parents out of the closet.
Lesbian planned parenthood strategies have spread and diversified rapidly during the
past two decades. With access to customary means to parenthood denied or severely lim-
ited, lesbians necessarily construct their chosen family forms with an exceptional degree
of reflection and intentionality. They have been choosing motherhood within a broad
array of kinship structures. Some become single mothers, but many lesbians choose to
share responsibility for rearing children with a lover and/or with other coparents, such
as sperm donors, gay men, and other friends and relatives. Several states expressly pro-
hibit adoptions and/or foster care by lesbians and gay men, and many states and adop-
tion agencies actively discriminate against them. Consequently, independent adoption
provided the first, and still traveled, route to planned lesbian maternity, but increasing
numbers of lesbians have been choosing to bear children of their own. In pursuit of
sperm, some lesbians resort quite instrumentally to heterosexual intercoursewith or
without the knowledge of the man involvedbut most prefer alternative insemination
strategies, locating known or anonymous donors through personal networks or through
private physicians or sperm banks.
Institutionalized heterosexism and married-couple biases pervade the medically
controlled fertility market. Many private physicians and many sperm banks in the United
States, as well as the Canadian and most European health services, refuse to inseminate
unmarried women in general, and lesbians particularly. More than 90 percent of U.S.
physicians surveyed in 1979 denied insemination to unmarried women, and a 1988 fed-
eral government survey of doctors and clinics reported that homosexuality was one of
their top four reasons for refusing to provide this service.
9
Thus, initially, planned lesbian
pregnancies depended primarily upon donors located through personal networks, very
frequently involving gay men or male relatives who might also agree to participate in
child rearing, in varying degrees. Numerous lesbian couples solicit sperm from a brother
or male relative of one woman to impregnate her partner, hoping to buttress their tenu-
ous legal, symbolic, and social claims for shared parental status over their turkey-baster
babies.
Despite its apparent novelty, turkey-baster insemination for infertility dates back
to the late eighteenth century, and, as the nickname implies, is far from a high-tech
procedure requiring medical expertise.
10
Nonetheless, because the AIDS epidemic and
the emergence of child custody conflicts between lesbians and known sperm donors
led many lesbians to prefer the legally sanitized, medical route to anonymous donors,
feminist health care activists mobilized to meet this need. In 1975 the Vermont Womens
Health Center added donor insemination to its services, and in 1980 the Northern
Ch-11.indd 483 7/8/2008 12:35:36 PM
484 Part IV Families in Society
California Sperm Bank opened in Oakland expressly to serve the needs of unmarried,
disabled, or nonheterosexual women who want to become pregnant. The clinic ships
frozen semen throughout North America, and more than two-thirds of the clinics clients
are not married.
11
The absence of a national health system in the United States commercializes access
to sperm and fertility services. This introduces an obvious class bias into the practice
of alternative insemination. Far more high-tech, innovative, expensive, and, therefore,
uncommon is a procreative strategy some lesbian couples now are adopting in which an
ovum from one woman is fertilized with donor sperm and then extracted and implanted
in her lovers uterus. In June 2000, one such couple in San Francisco became the first to
receive joint recognition as the biological and legal co-mothers of their infant. The irony
of deploying technology to assert a biological, and thereby a legal, social, and emotional
claim to maternal and family status throws the contemporary instability of all the relevant
categoriesbiology, technology, nature, culture, maternity, familyinto bold relief.
While the advent of AIDS inhibited joint procreative ventures between lesbians
and gay men, the epidemic also fostered stronger social and political solidarity between
the two populations and stimulated gay men to keener interest in forming families. Their
ranks are smaller and newer than those of lesbian mothers, but by the late eighties gay
men were also visibly engaged in efforts to become parents, despite far more limited
opportunities to do so. Not only do men still lack the biological capacity to derive per-
sonal benefits from most alternative reproductive technologies, but social prejudice also
severely restricts gay male access to children placed for adoption, or even into foster care.
Ever since Anita Bryants Save the Children campaign against gay rights in 1977, right-
wing mobilizations in diverse states, including Florida, Utah, New Hampshire, and Mas-
sachusetts, have successfully cast gay men, in particular, as threats to children and families
and denied them the right to adopt or foster the young. In response, some wishful gay
fathers have resorted to private adoption and surrogacy arrangements, accepting the most
difficult-to-place adoptees and foster children, or entering into shared social parent-
ing arrangements with lesbian couples or single women. During the 1990s, Growing
Generations, the worlds first gay and lesbian-owned surrogacy agency, opened in Los
Angeles to serve an international constituency of prospective gay parents.
Compelled to proceed outside conventional channels, lesbian and gay male planned
parenthood has become an increasingly complex, creative, and politicized, self-help en-
terprise. Because gays forge kin ties without established legal protections or norms,
relationships between gay parents and their children suffer heightened risks. By the
mideighties many lesbians and gays found themselves battling each other, as custody
conflicts between lesbian coparents or between lesbian parents and sperm donors and/or
other relatives began to reach the dockets and to profoundly challenge family courts.
12

Despite a putative best interests of the child standard, a bias favoring the heterosexual
family guided virtually all the judges who heard these early cases. Biological claims of kin-
ship nearly always trumped those of social parenting, even in heartrending circumstances
of custody challenges to bereaved lesbian widows who, with their deceased lovers, had
jointly planned for, reared, loved, and supported children since their birth.
13
Likewise,
judges routinely honored fathers rights arguments by favoring parental claims of donors
who had contributed nothing more than sperm to their offspring over those of lesbians
Ch-11.indd 484 7/8/2008 12:35:37 PM
Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 485
who had coparented from the outset, even when these men had expressly agreed to abdicate
paternal rights or responsibilities. The first, and still rare, exception to this rule involved
a donor who did not bring his paternity suit until the child was ten years old.
14
While
numerous sperm donors have reneged on their prenatal custody agreements with lesbian
parents, thus far no lesbian mother has sued a donor to attain parental terms different
from those to which he first agreed. On the other hand, in the first case in which a lesbian
biological mother sought financial support from her former lesbian partner, a New York
court found the nonbiological coparent to be a parent. Here, the states fiduciary interest
rather than gay rights governed the decision.
15
Perhaps the most poignant paradox in gay and lesbian family history concerns how
fervently many lesbians and gay men have had to struggle for family status precisely when
forces mobilized in the name of The Family conspire to deny this to them. The widely
publicized saga of the Sharon Kowalski case, in which the natal family of a lesbian who
had been severely disabled in a car crash successfully opposed her guardianship by her
chosen life-companion, proved particularly galvanizing in this cause, perhaps because all
of the contestants were adults. After eight years of legal and political struggle, Sharons
lover, Karen Thompson, finally won a reversal, in a belated, but highly visible, landmark
victory for gay family rights.
16
Gay family struggles rapidly achieved other significant victories, like the 1989
Braschi decision by New York States top court, which granted protection against eviction
to a gay man by explicitly defining family in inclusive, social terms, to rest upon
the exclusivity and longevity of the relationship, the level of emotional and financial com-
mitment, the manner in which the parties have conducted their everyday lives and held
themselves out to society, and the reliance placed upon one another for daily family ser-
vices . . . it is the totality of the relationship as evidenced by the dedication, caring and
self-sacrifice of the parties which should, in the final analysis, control.
17
More recently, in 2000, Vermont became the first state in the United States to
grant same-sex couples the right to enter a civil union, a status that confers all of the
legal benefits of marriage except those denied by federal law, and numerous state legis-
latures will be considering similar proposals. The struggle for second-parent adoption
rights, which enable a lesbian or gay man to adopt a lovers children without removing
the lovers custody rights, represents one of the most active, turbulent fronts in the
struggle for gay family rights. In more than half of the 50 states, individual lesbian
and gay male couples have won petitions for second-parent adoptions at the trial court
level. However, many trial judges deny such petitions, and only a handful of states have
granted this right at the appeals court level. In 2000, a Pennsylvania appeals court de-
cision denied such an appeal, thereby setting back the drive for gay parental rights in
that state. Even the Nordic countries explicitly excluded adoption rights when they first
legalized gay registered partnerships, but since then the Netherlands, Denmark, and
Iceland have granted these rights, and other European and Commonwealth countries
are beginning to follow suit.
The highly politicized character of family change in the United States renders
struggles for gay parenting rights painfully vulnerable to unfavorable political winds.
Ch-11.indd 485 7/8/2008 12:35:37 PM
486 Part IV Families in Society
For example, state barriers to lesbian and gay second-parent adoptions in California
rise and fall with the fortunes of Republican and Democratic gubernatorial campaigns.
The National Center for Lesbian Rights considers second-parent adoptions right to be
so crucial to the lesbian profamily cause that it revoked its former policy of abstain-
ing from legal conflicts between lesbians over this issue. Convinced that the long-term,
best interests of lesbian parents and their children depend upon defining parenthood in
social rather than biological terms, the center decided to represent lesbian parents who
are denied custody of their jointly reared children when their former lovers exploit the
biological and homophobic prejudices of the judiciary.
18
Here again, gay family politics crystallize, rather than diverge from, pervasive cul-
tural trends. Gay second-parent adoptions, for example, trek a kin trail blazed by court
responses to families reconstituted after divorce and remarriage. Courts first allowed
some stepparents to adopt their new spouses children without terminating the custody
rights of the childrens former parents. Gay family rights law also bears a kind of sec-
ond cousin tie to racial kin case law. Gay and lesbian custody victories rely heavily on a
milestone race custody case, Palmore v. Sidoti (1984), which restored the custody rights
of a divorced, white mother who lost her children after she married a black man. Even
though Palmore was decided on legal principles governing race discrimination, which
do not yet apply to gender or sexual discrimination, several successful gay and lesbian
custody decisions rely on its logic. The first successful second-parent adoption award to
a lesbian couple actually was a third-parent adoption on the new model of stepparent
adoption after divorce, which Mary Ann Mason discusses in [Reading 18]. The court
granted coparent status to the nonbiological mother without withdrawing it from the
sperm donor father, a Native American, in order to honor the shared desires of all three
parents to preserve the childs bicultural inheritance.
19
As U.S. tabloid and talk show fare testify daily, culturally divisive struggles over
babies secured or lost through alternative insemination, in vitro fertilization, ovum ex-
traction, frozen embryos, surrogacy, transracial adoption, not to mention mundane pro-
cesses of divorce and remarriage are not the special province of a fringe gay and lesbian
minority. We now inhabit a world in which technology has upended the basic premises
of the old nature-nurture debate by rendering human biology more amenable to inter-
vention than human society. Inevitably, therefore, contests between biological and social
definitions of kinship, such as depicted in the chapters on adoption and stepfamilies, will
continue to proliferate and to rub social nerves raw.
Thus while one can discern a gradual political and judicial trend toward granting
parental and family rights to gays, the legal situation in the fifty states remains uneven,
volatile, and replete with major setbacks for gay and lesbian parents.
20
Forces opposed to
gay parenting continue to introduce statewide initiatives and regulations to rescind such
rights. The crucial fact remains that numerous states still criminalize sodomy, supported
by the 1986 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Bowers v. Hardwick, which upheld the consti-
tutionality of this most basic impediment to civil rights for gay relationships. One decade
later, however, in May 1996, the court struck down a Colorado antigay rights initiative in
Romer v. Evans, raising the hopes of gays and lesbians that it might soon reconsider the
detested Bowers ruling. As of 2002, however, such wishes remain unfulfilled.
Ch-11.indd 486 7/8/2008 12:35:37 PM
Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 487
A MORE, OR LESS, PERFECT UNION?
Much nearer at hand, however, than most ever dared to imagine is the momentous pros-
pect of legal gay marriage. The idea of same-sex marriage used to draw nearly as many
jeers from gays and lesbians as from nongays. As one lesbian couple recalls,
In 1981, we were a very, very small handful of lesbians who got married. We took a lot
of flak from other lesbians, as well as heterosexuals. In 1981, we didnt know any other
lesbians, not a single one, who had had a ceremony in Santa Cruz, and a lot of lesbians
live in that city. Everybody was on our case about it. They said, What are you doing, How
heterosexual. We really had to sell it.
21
Less than a decade later, gay and lesbian couples would proudly announce their wed-
dings and anniversaries, not only in the gay press, which now includes specialized maga-
zines for gay and lesbian couples and parents, like Partners Magazine, but even in such
mainstream, midwestern newspapers as the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
22
Jewish rabbis,
Protestant ministers, Quaker meetings, and even some Catholic priests regularly perform
gay and lesbian wedding or commitment ceremonies, and the phenomenon has become
a fashionable pop culture motif. In December 1995, the long-running, provocative TV
sitcom program Roseanne featured a gay male wedding, and one month later, the popular
sitcom Friends aired a lesbian wedding on primetime television. A few years later, a high
profile made-for-TV HBO movie starring Vanessa Redgrave, Michelle Williams, Ellen
DeGeneres, and Sharon Stone, If These Walls Could Talk 2, expanded on the theme by
highlighting difficulties experienced by lesbian couples who cannot be legally married.
Such popular culture breakthroughs have helped normalize what once seemed inconceiv-
able to gay and straight audiences alike.
Gradually, major corporations, universities, and nonprofit organizations are pro-
viding spousal benefits to the domestic mates of their gay and lesbian employees, and
a small but growing number of U.S. municipalities, states, and increasing numbers of
European and Commonwealth nations have legalized domestic partnerships, which grant
legal status and varying rights and responsibilities to cohabiting couples, irrespective of
gender or sexual identity.
When the very first social science research collection about gay parents was pub-
lished in 1987, its editor concluded that however desirable such unions might be, it is
highly unlikely that marriages between same-sex individuals will be legalized in any state
in the foreseeable future.
23
Yet, almost immediately thereafter, precisely this specter
began to exercise imaginations across the political spectrum. A national poll reported
by the San Francisco Examiner in 1989 found that 86 percent of lesbians and gay men
supported legalizing same-sex marriage.
24
A few years later, the Hawaiian supreme court
issued a ruling that made such a prospect seem imminent. Amidst rampant rumors
that thousands of mainland gay and lesbian couples were stocking their hope chests
with Hawaiian excursion fares, posed to fly to tropical altars the instant the first gay
matrimonial bans falter, right-wing Christian groups began actively to mobilize resis-
tance. Utah became the first state to pass legislation refusing recognition to same-sex
Ch-11.indd 487 7/8/2008 12:35:37 PM
488 Part IV Families in Society
marriages if they were performed in other states. Soon a majority of states were consid-
ering similar bills.
On May 8, 1996, gay marriage galloped onto the nations center political stage
when Republicans introduced the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) to define marriage
in exclusively heterosexual terms as a legal union between one man and one woman as
husband and wife. Introduced primarily as a wedge issue in the Republican 1996 elec-
toral strategy, DOMA passed both houses of Congress in a landslide vote, and President
Clinton promptly signed it, despite his personal support for gay rights.
As with child custody, the campaign for gay marriage clings to legal footholds
planted by racial justice pioneers. It is startling to recall how recent it was that the Su-
preme Court finally struck down antimiscegenation laws. Not until 1967, that is only two
years before the Stonewall rebellion, did the high court, in Loving v. Virginia, find state
restrictions on interracial marriages to be unconstitutional. (Twenty states still had such
restrictions on the books in 1967, a greater number than currently prohibit sodomy.)
A handful of gay couples quickly sought to marry in the 1970s through appeals to this
precedent, but until three lesbian and gay male couples sued Hawaii in Baehr v. Lewin
for equal rights to choose marriage partners without restrictions on gender, all U.S.
courts had dismissed the analogy. In a historic ruling in 1993, the Hawaii Supreme Court
remanded this suit to the trial court, requiring the state to demonstrate a compelling
interest in prohibiting same-sex marriage, a strict scrutiny standard that the state was
unable to meet when the case was retried. Significantly, the case was neither argued nor
adjudicated as a gay rights issue. Rather, just as ERA opponents once had warned and
advocates had denied, passage of an equal rights amendment to Hawaiis state constitu-
tion in 1972 paved the legal foundation for Baehr.
25
Although backlash forces succeeded in preventing the legalization of gay marriage
in Hawaii, this global struggle keeps achieving milestone victories at a breathless pace.
Marriage rights in all but name are now available throughout most of Western Europe
and Canada, as well as in Vermont. In 2001, the Netherlands assumed world leadership
in fully legalizing same-sex marriage at the national level, and similar developments
appear imminent in the Nordic nations, Canada, and perhaps in South Africa. Clearly
this issue is on the historical agenda for the twenty-first century. Not all gay activ-
ists or legal scholars embrace this prospect with enthusiasm. Although most of their
constituents desire the right to marry, gay activists and theorists continue to debate
vigorously the politics and effects of this campaign. An articulate, vocal minority seeks
not to extend the right to marry, but to dismantle an institution they regard as inher-
ently, and irredeemably, hierarchical, unequal, conservative, and repressive.
26
A second
perspective supports legal marriage as one long-term goal of the gay rights movement
but voices serious strategic objections to making this a priority before there is sufficient
public support to sustain a favorable ruling in any state or the nation. Such critics fear
that a premature victory will prove pyrrhic, because efforts to defend it against the
vehement backlash it has already begun to incite are apt to fail, after sapping resources
and time better devoted to other urgent struggles for gay rights. Rather than risk a
major setback for the gay movement, some leaders advocate an incremental approach
to establishing legal family status for gay and lesbian kin ties through a multifaceted
struggle for family diversity.
27
Ch-11.indd 488 7/8/2008 12:35:37 PM
Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 489
However, the largest, and most diverse, contingent of gay activist voices now sup-
ports the marriage rights campaign, perhaps because gay marriage can be perceived as
harmonizing with virtually every hue on the gay ideological spectrum. Progay marriage
arguments range from profoundly conservative to liberal humanist to radical and de-
constructive. Conservatives, like those radicals who still oppose marriage, view it as an
institution that promotes monogamy, commitment, and social stability, along with inter-
ests in private property, social conformity, and mainstream values.
28
Liberal gays support
legal marriage, of course, not only to affirm the legitimacy of their relationships and help
sustain them in a hostile world but as a straightforward matter of equal civil rights. They
also recognize the social advantages of divorce law. I used to say, Why do we want to
get married? It doesnt work for straight people, one gay lawyer comments. But now
I say we should care: They have the privilege of divorce and we dont. Were left out
there to twirl around in pain.
29
Some feminist and other critical gay legal theorists craft more radical defenses of
gay marriage. Nan Hunter, for example, rejects feminist colleague Nancy Polikoff s be-
lief that marriage is an unalterably sexist and heterosexist institution. Hunter argues that
legalized same-sex marriage would have enormous potential to destabilize the gendered
definition of marriage for everyone.
30
Likewise, Evan Wolfson, director of the Mar-
riage Project of the gay legal rights organization Lambda Legal Defense, who served as
co-counsel in Baehr, argues that marriage is neither inherently equal nor unequal, but
depends upon an ever-changing cultural and political context.
31
(Anyone who doubts
this need only consider such examples as polygamy, arranged marriage, or the same-
sex unions in early Western history documented by the late Princeton historian John
Boswell.)
Support for gay marriage, not long ago anathema to radicals and conservatives, gays
and nongays alike, now issues forth from ethical and political perspectives as diverse, and
even incompatible, as these. The cultural and political context has changed so dramati-
cally since Stonewall that it now seems easier to understand why marriage has come to
enjoy overwhelming support in the gay community than to grasp the depth of resistance
to the institution that characterized the early movement.
Gay marriage, despite its apparent compatibility with mainstream family values
sentiment, raises far more threatening questions than does military service about gen-
der relations, sexuality, and family life. Few contemporary politicians, irrespective of
their personal convictions, display the courage to confront this contradiction, even when
urged to do so by gay conservatives. Gay marriage would strengthen the ranks of those
endangered two-parent, intact, married-couples families whose praises conservative,
profamily enthusiasts tirelessly sing. Unsurprisingly, however, this case has won few
nongay conservative converts to the cause. After all, homophobia is a matter of passion,
politics, and prejudice, not logic.
Surveys suggest, however, that while a majority of citizens still oppose legalizing
gay marriage, the margin of opposition is declining slowly but surely. In a 1994 Time
magazine/CNN poll, 64 percent of respondents did not want to legalize gay marriages.
32

A Newsweek poll conducted right after the DOMA was introduced in May 1996 reported
that public opposition to gay marriage had declined to 58 percent, and a Gallup poll
conducted June 2001 indicated a further drop to 52 percent.
33
Ch-11.indd 489 7/8/2008 12:35:37 PM
490 Part IV Families in Society
Despite the paucity of mainstream political enthusiasm for legalizing gay marriage,
there are good reasons to believe that gays and lesbians will eventually win this right and
to support their struggle to do so. Legitimizing gay and lesbian marriages would promote
a democratic, pluralist expansion of the meaning, practice, and politics of family life in
the United States, helping to supplant the destructive sanctity of The Family with respect
for diverse and vibrant families. To begin with, the liberal implications of legal gay mar-
riage are far from trivial, as the rush to nullify them should confirm. For example, legal
gay marriage in one state could begin to threaten antisodomy laws in all the others. Polic-
ing marital sex would be difficult to legitimate, and differential prosecution of conjugal
sex among same-sex couples could violate equal protection legislation. Likewise, if gay
marriage were legalized, the myriad of state barriers to child custody, adoption, fertility
services, inheritance, and other family rights that lesbians and gay men currently suffer
could also become subject to legal challenge. Moreover, it seems hard to overestimate the
profound cultural implications for the struggle against the injurious effects of legally con-
doned homophobia that would ensue were lesbian and gay relationships to be admitted
into the ranks of legitimate kinship. In a society that forbids most public school teachers
and counselors even the merest expression of tolerance for homosexuality, while lesbian
and gay youth attempt suicide at rates estimated to be at least three times greater than
other youth,
34
granting full legal recognition to lesbian and gay relationships could have
dramatic, and salutary, consequences.
Moreover, while it is unlikely that same-sex marriage can in itself dismantle the
patterned gender and sexual injustices of the institution, I believe it could make a potent
contribution to those projects, as the research on gay relationships I discuss later seems
to indicate. Admitting gays to the wedding banquet invites gays and nongays alike to
consider the kinds of place settings that could best accommodate the diverse needs of
all contemporary families. Subjecting the conjugal institution to this sort of heightened
democratic scrutiny could help it to assume varied, creative, and adaptive contours. If we
begin to value the meaning and quality of intimate bonds over their customary forms,
people might devise marriage and kinship patterns to serve diverse needs. For example,
the companionate marriage, a much celebrated, but less often realized, ideal of modern
sociological lore, could take on new life. Two friends might decide to marry without
basing their bond on erotic or romantic attachment, as Dorthe, a prominent Danish
lesbian activist who had initially opposed the campaign for gay marriage, fantasized after
her nations parliament approved gay registered partnerships: If I am going to marry it
will be with one of my oldest friends in order to share pensions and things like that. But
Id never marry a lover. That is the advantage of being married to a close friend. Then,
you never have to marry a lover!
35
While conservative advocates of gay marriage scoff at such radical visions, they cor-
rectly realize that putative champions of committed relationships and children who op-
pose gay marriage can be charged with gross hypocrisy on this score. For access to legal
marriage not only would promote long-term, committed intimacy and economic security
among gay couples but also would afford invaluable protection to the children of gay
parents. Public legitimacy for gay relationships would also provide indirect protection to
closeted gay youth who reside with nongay parents. Clearly, only through a process of
massive denial of the fact that millions of children living in gay and lesbian families are
Ch-11.indd 490 7/8/2008 12:35:37 PM
Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 491
here, and here to stay, can anyone genuinely concerned with the best interests of children
deny their parents the right to marry.
IN THE BEST INTERESTS
OF WHOSE CHILDREN?
The most cursory survey of the existing empirical research on gay and lesbian families
reveals the depth of sanctioned discrimination they continue to suffer and the absence of
evidence to justify this iniquity. To be sure, substantial limitations mar the social science
research on this subject, which is barely past its infancy. Mainstream journals, even those
specializing in family research, warmed to this subject startlingly late and little, relegat-
ing the domain primarily to sexologists, clinicians, and a handful of movement scholars
and their sympathizers and opponents. In 1995, a survey of the three leading journals of
family research in the United States found only 12 of the 2598 articles published between
1980 and 1993, that is less than .05 percent, focused on the families of lesbians and gay
men, which, even by conservative estimates make up at least 3 percent of U.S. families.
36

The research that does exist, moreover, has deficiencies that skew results so as to exag-
gerate rather than understate any defects of gay and lesbian families. Until very recently,
most investigators began with a deviance perspective, seeking, whether homophobically
or defensively, to test the validity of the popular prejudice that gay parenting is harmful
to children. In other words, the reigning premise has been that gay and lesbian families
are dangerously, and prima facie, queer in the pejorative sense, unless proven other-
wise. Taking children reared by nongay parents as the unquestioned norm, most studies
asymmetrically ask whether lesbian and gay parents hinder their childrens emotional,
cognitive, gender, or sexual development. Because lesbian and gay planned parenthood
is so new, and its progeny so young, nearly all of the studies to date sample the ranks of
formerly married parents who had children before they divorced and came out of the
closet. The studies are generally small-scale and draw disproportionately from urban,
white, middle-class populations. Frequently they make misleading comparisons between
divorced lesbian and nongay, single-mother households by ignoring the presence or ab-
sence of lesbian life partners or other caretakers in the former.
37
Despite such limitations, psychologists, social psychologists, and sociologists have
by now conducted dozens of studies which provide overwhelming support for the proven
otherwise thesis. Almost without exception they conclude, albeit in defensive tones, that
lesbian and gay parents do not produce inferior, nor even particularly different kinds of
children than do other parents. Generally they find no significant differences in school
achievement, social adjustment, mental health, gender identity, or sexual orientation be-
tween the two groups of children. As Joan Lairds overview of research on lesbian and
gay parents summarizes:
a generation of research has failed to demonstrate that gays or lesbians are any less fit to
parent than their heterosexual counterparts. Furthermore, a substantial number of stud-
ies on the psychological and social development of children of lesbian and gay parents
have failed to produce any evidence that children of lesbian or gay parents are harmed
Ch-11.indd 491 7/8/2008 12:35:37 PM
492 Part IV Families in Society
or compromised or even differ from, in any significant ways along a host of psychosocial
developmental measures, children raised in heterosexual families.
38
The rare small differences between gay and nongay parents reported tend to favor gay
parents, portraying them as somewhat more nurturant and tolerant, and their children,
in turn, more tolerant and empathic, and less aggressive than those reared by nongay
parents.
39
In April 1995, British researchers published the results of their unusual
sixteen-year-long study which followed twenty-five children brought up by lesbian moth-
ers and twenty-one brought up by heterosexual mothers from youth to adulthood. They
found that the young adults raised in lesbian households had better relationships with
their mothers lesbian partners than the young adults brought up by heterosexual single
mothers had with their mothers male partners.
40
Published research to date seems to
vindicate one ten-year-old girl who, rather apologetically, deems herself privileged to
be the daughter of two lesbian parents: But I think you get more love with two moms.
I know other kids have a mom and a dad, but I think that moms give more love than dads.
This may not be true, but its what I think. Her opinion is shared by a six-year-old girl
from another lesbian family: I dont tell other kids at school about my mothers because
I think they would be jealous of me. Two mothers is better than one.
41
In light of the inhospitable, often outrightly hostile climate which gay families typi-
cally encounter, this seems a remarkable achievement. One sign that mainstream social
scientists have begun to recognize the achievement is the inclusion of Lairds chapter,
Lesbian and Gay Families, in the 1993 edition of a compendium of research, Normal
Family Processes, whose first edition, in 1982, ignored the subject.
42
Researchers have
begun to call for, and to initiate, a mature, creative, undefensive approach to studying
the full range of gay and lesbian families. Coming to terms with the realities of the
postmodern family condition, such studies begin with a pluralist premise concerning the
legitimacy and dignity of diverse family structures. They ask whether and how gay and
lesbian families differ, rather than deviate, from nongay families; they attend as much
to the differences among such families as to those dividing them from nongays; and
they explore the particular benefits as well as the burdens such families bestow on their
members.
43
This kind of research has begun to discover more advantages of gay and lesbian
family life for participants and our society than have yet been explored. Most obvious,
certainly, are mental health rewards for gay and lesbian youth fortunate enough to come
of age in such families. Currently most youth who experience homosexual inclinations
either conceal their desires from their immediate kin or risk serious forms of rejection.
State hostility to gay parents can have tragic results. In 1994, for example, the Nebraska
Department of Social Services adopted a policy forbidding lesbian or gay foster homes,
and the next day a seventeen-year-old openly gay foster child committed suicide, because
he feared he would be removed from the supportive home of his gay foster parents.
44
Of course, this speaks precisely to the heart of what homophobes most fear, that
public acceptance of lesbian and gay families will spawn an epidemic of gay youth.
As Pat Robertson so crudely explained to a Florida audience: That gang of idiots run-
ning the ACLU, the National Education Association, the National Organization of
Women, they dont want religious principles in our schools. Instead of teaching the
Ch-11.indd 492 7/8/2008 12:35:37 PM
Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 493
Ten Commandments, they want to teach kids how to be homosexuals.
45
Attempting to
respond to such anxieties, most defenders of gay families have stressed the irrelevance of
parental sexual identity to that of their children. Sympathetic researchers repeatedly, and
in my view misguidedly, maintain that lesbian and gay parents are no more likely than
nongay parents to rear lesbian and gay children. Laird, for example, laments:
One of the most prevalent myths is that children of gay parents will themselves grow
up gay; another that daughters will be more masculine and sons more feminine than
normal children. A number of researchers have concluded that the sexual orientations/
preferences of children of gay or lesbian parents do not differ from those whose parents
are heterosexual.
46
Increasingly this claim appears illogical, unlikely, and unwittingly anti-gay. Ironi-
cally, it presumes the very sort of fixed definition of sexuality that the best contemporary
gay and lesbian scholarship has challenged. Although it is clearly true that, until now,
nearly all homosexuals, like almost everyone else, have been reared by nongays, it is
equally clear that sexual desire and identity do not represent a singular fixed trait that
expresses itself free of cultural context. However irresolvable eternal feuds over the rela-
tive weight of nature and nurture may forever prove to be, historical and anthropological
data leave no doubt that culture profoundly influences sexual meanings and practices.
Homophobes are quite correct to believe that environmental conditions incite or inhibit
expressions of homosexual desire, no matter its primary source. If culture had no influ-
ence on sexual identity, there would not have emerged the movement for gay and lesbian
family rights that inspired me to write this [reading].
Contrary to what most current researchers claim, public acceptance of gay and
lesbian families should, in fact, slightly expand the percentage of youth who would dare
to explore their same-sex desires. In fact, a careful reading of the studies does suggest just
this.
47
Children reared by lesbian or gay parents feel greater openness to homosexuality
or bisexuality. In January 1996, the researchers who conducted the long-term British
study conceded this point, after issuing the obligatory reassurance that, the commonly
held assumption that children brought up by lesbian mothers will themselves grow up to
be lesbian or gay is not supported by the findings. Two of the twenty-five young adults
in the study who were reared by lesbians grew up to identify as lesbians, but none of the
twenty-one who were reared in the comparison group of heterosexual mothers identify as
lesbian or gay. More pertinent, in my view, five daughters and one son of lesbian mothers,
but none of the children of heterosexual mothers, reported having had a same-sex erotic
experience of some sort, prompting the researchers to acknowledge that, It seems that
growing up in an accepting atmosphere enables individuals who are attracted to same-sex
partners to pursue these relationships.
48
This prospect should disturb only those whose
antipathy to homosexuality derives from deeply held religious convictions or irrational
prejudice.
The rest of us could benefit from permission to explore and develop sexually free
from the rigid prescriptions of what Adrienne Rich memorably termed compulsory
heterosexuality.
49
Currently, lesbian and gay parents grant their children such permis-
sion much more generously than do other parents. Not only do they tend to be less
Ch-11.indd 493 7/8/2008 12:35:38 PM
494 Part IV Families in Society
doctrinaire or phobic about sexual diversity than heterosexual parents, but, wishing to
spare their children the burdens of stigma, some gay parents actually prefer that their
youngsters do not become gay. Indeed, despite the ubiquity of Pat Robertsons sort of
alarmist, propagandistic warnings, advice on how to help your kids turn out gay, as
cultural critic Eve Sedgwick sardonically puts it, not to mention your students, your
parishioners, your therapy clients, or your military subordinates, is less ubiquitous than
you might think.
50
Heterosexual indoctrination is far more pervasive and far the greater danger. Con-
temporary adolescent culture is even more mercilessly homophobic, or perhaps less hypo-
critically so, than most mainstream adult prejudices countenance. Verbal harassment,
ridicule, hazing, and ostracism of faggots, bull-dykes, and queersquotidien fea-
tures of our popular cultureare particularly blatant among teens. Sometimes I feel like
no one really knows what Im going through, one fifteen-year-old daughter of a lesbian
laments: Dont get me wrong. I really do love my mom and all her friends, but being
gay is just not acceptable to other people. Like at school, people make jokes about dykes
and fags, and it really bothers me. I mean I bite my tongue, because if I say anything, they
wonder, Why is she sticking up for them?
51
In a 1995 survey, nearly half the teen victims
of reported violent physical assaults identified their sexual orientation as a precipitating
factor. Tragically, family members inflicted 61 percent of these assaults on gay youth.
52
Little wonder such disproportionate numbers of gay youth commit suicide. Stud-
ies claim that gay youth commit one-third of all teenage suicide attempts.
53
To evade
harassment, most of the survivors suffer their clandestine difference in silent isolation,
often at great cost to their self-esteem, social relationships, and to their very experience
of adolescence itself. One gay man bought his life partner a Fathers Day card, because he
realized that in a lot of ways weve been brother and father to each other since weve had
to grow up as adults. Because of homophobia, gay people dont have the same opportunity
as heterosexuals to be ourselves when we are teenagers. A lot of times you have to postpone
the experiences until youre older, until you come out.
54
The increased social visibility and community-building of gays and lesbians have
vastly improved the quality of life for gay adults. Ironically, however, Linnea Due, au-
thor of a book about growing up gay in the nineties, was disappointed to find that this
improvement has had contradictory consequences for gay teens. Due expected to find
conditions much better for gay youth than when she grew up in the silent sixties. In-
stead, many teens thought their circumstances had become more difficult, because, as
one young man put it, now they know were here.
55
While most youth with homosexual desires will continue to come of age closeted
in nongay families into the foreseeable future, they would surely gain some comfort from
greater public acceptance of gay and lesbian families. Yet in 1992, when the New York
City Board of Education tried to introduce the Rainbow multicultural curriculum guide
which advocated respect for lesbian and gay families in an effort to help increase the
tolerance and acceptance of the lesbian/gay community and to decrease the staggering
number of hate crimes perpetrated against them, public opposition became so vehement
that it contributed to the dismissal of Schools Chancellor Joseph Fernandez.
56
Indeed, the major documented special difficulties that children in gay families ex-
perience derive directly from legal discrimination and social prejudice. As one, otherwise
Ch-11.indd 494 7/8/2008 12:35:38 PM
Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 495
well-adjusted, sixteen-year-old son of a lesbian puts it: If I came out and said my mom
was gay, Id be treated like an alien.
57
Children of gay parents are vicarious victims
of homophobia and institutionalized heterosexism. They suffer all of the considerable
economic, legal, and social disadvantages imposed on their parents, sometimes even
more harshly. They risk losing a beloved parent or coparent at the whim of a judge.
They can be denied access to friends by the parents of playmates. Living in families
that are culturally invisible or despised, the children suffer ostracism by proxy, forced
continually to negotiate conflicts between loyalty to home, mainstream authorities,
and peers.
However, as the Supreme Court belatedly concluded in 1984, when it repudiated
discrimination against interracial families in Palmore v. Sidoti, and as should be plain
good sense, the fact that children of stigmatized parents bear an unfair burden provides
no critique of their families. The sad social fact of prejudice and discrimination indicts
the family values of the bigoted society, not the stigmatized family. In the words of the
Court: private biases may be outside the reach of the law, but the law cannot, directly
or indirectly, give them effect.
58
Although the strict scrutiny standards that now govern
race discrimination do not apply to sexual discrimination, several courts in recent years
have relied on the logic of Palmore in gay custody cases. These decisions have approved
lesbian and gay custody awards while explicitly acknowledging that community disap-
proval of their parents sexual identity would require greater than ordinary fortitude
from the children, but that in return they might more readily learn that, people of
integrity do not shrink from bigots. The potential benefits that children might derive
from being raised by lesbian or gay parents which a New Jersey court enumerated could
serve as child-rearing ideals for a democracy:
emerge better equipped to search out their own standards of right and wrong, better able
to perceive that the majority is not always correct in its moral judgments, and better able
to understand the importance of conforming their beliefs to the requirements of reason
and tested knowledge, not the constraints of currently popular sentiment or prejudice.
59
The testimony of one fifteen-year-old daughter of a lesbian mother and gay father indi-
cates just this sort of outcome:
I think I am more open-minded than if I had straight parents. Sometimes kids at school
make a big deal out of being gay. They say its stupid and stuff like that. But they dont
really know, because they are not around it. I dont say anything to them, but I know they
are wrong. I get kind of mad, because they dont know what they are talking about.
60
However, literature suggests that parents and children alike who live in fully clos-
eted lesbian and gay families tend to suffer more than members of out gay families
who contend with stigma directly.
61
Of course, gay parents who shroud their families in
closets do so for compelling cause. Some judges still make the closet an explicit condi-
tion for awarding custody or visitation rights to gay or lesbian parents, at times imposing
direct restrictions on their participation in gay social or political activity.
62
Or, fearing
judicial homophobia, some parents live in mortal terror of losing their children, like one
Ch-11.indd 495 7/8/2008 12:35:38 PM
496 Part IV Families in Society
divorced lesbian in Kansas City whose former, violent husband has threatened an ugly
custody battle if anyone finds out about her lesbianism.
63
Heroically, more and more brave new queer families are refusing the clandestine
life. If the survey article, The Families of Lesbians and Gay Men: A New Frontier in
Family Research,
64
is correctly titled, then research on fully planned lesbian and gay
families is its vanguard outpost. Researchers estimate that by 1990, between five thou-
sand and ten thousand lesbians in the United States had given birth to chosen children,
and the trend has been increasing ever since.
65
Although this represents a small fraction
of the biological and adopted children who live with lesbian parents, planned lesbian
births, as Kath Weston suggests, soon, began to overshadow these other kinds of de-
pendents, assuming a symbolic significance for lesbians and gay men disproportionate
to their numbers.
66
Lesbian turkey-baster babies are equally symbolic to those who
abhor the practice. National Fatherhood Initiative organizer David Blankenhorn, for
example, calls for restricting sperm bank services to infertile married couples in order to
inhibit the production of such radically fatherless children, and similar concerns have
been expressed in such popular publications as U.S. News and World Report and Atlantic
Monthly.
67
(Interestingly, restrictions that limit access to donor sperm exclusively to mar-
ried women remain widespread in Europe, even in most of the liberal Nordic nations.)
Because discrimination against prospective gay and lesbian adoptive parents leads most
to conceal their sexual identity, it is impossible to estimate how many have succeeded in
adopting or fostering children, but this, too, has become a visible form of gay planned
parenthood.
68
Research on planned gay parenting is too young to be more than suggestive, but
initial findings give more cause for gay pride than alarm. Parental relationships tend to
be more cooperative and egalitarian than among heterosexual parents, child rearing more
nurturant, children more affectionate.
69
On the other hand, lesbian mothers do encoun-
ter some particular burdens. Like straight women who bear children through insemina-
tion, they confront the vexing question of how to negotiate their childrens knowledge of
and relationship to sperm donors. Some progeny of unknown donors, like many adopted
children, quest for contact with their genetic fathers. One ten-year-old girl, conceived by
private donor insemination, explains why she was relieved to find her biological father:
I wanted to find my dad because it was hard knowing I had a dad but not knowing who
he was. It was like there was a missing piece.
70
Lesbian couples planning a pregnancy contend with some unique decisions and
challenges concerning the relationship between biological and social maternity. They
must decide which woman will try to become pregnant and how to negotiate feelings of
jealousy, invisibility, and displacement that may be more likely to arise between the two
than between a biological mother and father. Struggling to equalize maternal emotional
stakes and claims, some couples decide to alternate the childbearing role, others attempt
simultaneous pregnancies, and some, as we have seen, employ reproductive technology
to divide the genetic and gestational components of procreation. Some nongestational
lesbian mothers stimulate lactation, so that they can jointly breastfeed the babies their
partners bear, some assume disproportionate responsibility for child care to compensate
for their biological disadvantage, and others give their surnames to their partners
offspring.
Ch-11.indd 496 7/8/2008 12:35:38 PM
Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 497
Planned lesbian and gay families, however, most fully realize the early planned
Parenthood goal, every child a wanted child, as one twelve-year-old son of a lesbian
recognized: I think that if you are a child of a gay or lesbian, you have a better chance
of having a great parent. If you are a lesbian, you have to go through a lot of trouble to
get a child, so that child is really wanted.
71
Disproportionately queer families choose
to reside in and construct communities that support family and social diversity. Partly be-
cause fertility and adoption services are expensive and often difficult to attain, intentional
gay parents are disproportionately white, better educated, and more mature than other
parents. Preliminary research indicates that these advantages more than offset whatever
problems their special burdens cause their children.
72
Clearly, it is in the interest of all
our children to afford their families social dignity and respect.
If we exploit the research with this aim in mind, deducing a rational wish list for
public policy is quite a simple matter. A straightforward, liberal, equal rights agenda for
lesbians and gays would seem the obvious and humane course. In the best interests of
all children, we would provide lesbian and gay parents equal access to marriage, child
custody, adoption, foster placements, fertility services, inheritance, employment, and all
social benefits. We would adopt rainbow curricula within our schools and our public
media that promote the kind of tolerance and respect for family and sexual diversity that
Laura Sebastian, an eighteen-year-old reared by her divorced mother and her mothers
lesbian lover, advocates:
A happy child has happy parents, and gay people can be as happy as straight ones. It
doesnt matter what kids havefathers, mothers, or boththey just need love and support.
It doesnt matter if you are raised by a pack of dogs, just as long as they love you! Its about
time lesbians and gays can have children. Its everybodys right as a human being.
73
OUR QUEER POSTMODERN FAMILIES
Far from esoteric, the experiences of diverse genres of gay and lesbian families we
choose bear on many of the most feverishly contested issues in contemporary family
politics. They can speak to our mounting cultural paranoia over whether fathers are
expendable, to nature-nurture controversies over sexual and gender identities and the
gender division of labor, to the meaning and purpose of voluntary marriage, and, most
broadly, to those ubiquitous family values contests over the relative importance for
children of family structure or process, of biological or psychological parents.
From the African-American Million Man March in October 1995, the stadium
rallies of Christian male Promise Keepers that popularized the subject of responsible
fatherhood in evangelical churches across the nation, and the National Fatherhood Ini-
tiative, to congressional hearings on the Fathers Responsibility Act in 2001, the nation
seems to be gripped by cultural obsession over the decline of dependable dads. Here
research on lesbian families, particularly on planned lesbian couple families, could prove
of no small import. Thus far, as we have seen, such research offers no brief for Blanken-
horns angst over radically fatherless children. Also challenging to those who claim that
the mere presence of a father in a family confers significant benefits on his children are
Ch-11.indd 497 7/8/2008 12:35:38 PM
498 Part IV Families in Society
surprising data reported in a study of youth and violence commissioned by Kaiser Per-
manente and Children Now. The study of 1000 eleven to seventeen-year-olds and of 150
seven to ten-year-olds found that, contrary to popular belief, 68 percent of the young
people exposed to higher levels of health and safety threats were from conventional two-
parent families. Moreover, poignantly, fathers were among the last people these troubled
teens would turn to for help, even when they lived in such families. Only 10 percent of
the young people in these two-parent families said they would seek their fathers advice
first, compared with 44 percent who claimed they would turn first to their mothers, and
26 percent who would first seek help from friends. Many more youth were willing to
discuss concerns over their health, safety, and sexuality with nurses or doctors.
74
Thus,
empirical social science to date, like the historical record, gives us impeccable cause to
regard fathers and mothers alike as expendable. The quality, not the gender, of parent-
ing is what truly matters.
Similarly, research on the relationships of gay male and lesbian couples depicts
diverse models for intimacy from which others could profit. Freed from normative
conventions and institutions that govern heterosexual gender and family relationships,
self-consciously queer couples and families, by necessity, have had to reflect much
more seriously on the meaning and purpose of their intimate commitments. Studies that
compare lesbian, gay male, and heterosexual couples find intriguing contrasts in their
characteristic patterns of intimacy. Gender seems to shape domestic values and practices
more powerfully than sexual identity, so that same-sex couples tend to be more compat-
ible than heterosexual couples. For example, both lesbian and straight women are more
likely than either gay or straight men to value their relationships over their work. Yet
both lesbian and gay male couples agree that both parties should be employed, while
married men are less likely to agree with wives who wish to work. Predictably, same-sex
couples share more interests and time together than married couples. Also unsurprising,
lesbian couples have the most egalitarian relationships, and married heterosexual couples
the least. Lesbian and gay male couples both share household chores more equally and
with less conflict than married couples, but they share them differently. Lesbian couples
tend to share most tasks equally, while gay males more frequently assign tasks to each
according to his abilities, schedules, and preferences.
75
Each of these modal patterns for
intimacy has its particular strengths and vulnerabilities. Gender conventions and gen-
der fluidity alike have advantages and limitations, as Blumstein and Schwartz and other
researchers have discussed. Accepting queer families does not mean converting to any
characteristic patterns of intimacy, but coming to terms with the collapse of a monolithic
cultural regime governing our intimate bonds. It would mean embracing a genuinely
pluralist understanding that there are diverse, valid ways to form and sustain these.
Perhaps what is truly distinctive about lesbian and gay families is how unambigu-
ously the substance of their relationships takes precedence over their form, emotional
and social commitments over genetic claims. Compelled to exercise good, old-fashioned
American ingenuity to fulfill familial desires, gays and lesbians improvisationally as-
semble a patchwork of blood and intentional relationsgay, straight, and otherinto
creative, extended kin bonds.
76
Gay communities more adeptly integrate singles into
their social worlds than does mainstream heterosexual society, a social skill quite valu-
able in a world in which divorce, widowhood, and singlehood are increasingly normative.
Ch-11.indd 498 7/8/2008 12:35:38 PM
Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 499
Because queer families must continually, self-consciously migrate in and out of the
closet, they hone bicultural skills particularly suitable for life in a multicultural society.
77

Self-identified queer families serve on the front lines of the postmodern family condition,
commanded directly by its regime of improvisation, ambiguity, diversity, contradiction,
self-reflection, and flux.
Even the distinctive, indeed the definitional, burden that pervasive homophobia
imposes on lesbian and gay families does not fully distinguish them from other con-
temporary families. Unfortunately, prejudice, intolerance, and disrespect for different
or other families is all too commonplace in the contemporary world. Ethnocentric
familism afflicts the families of many immigrants, interracial couples, single mothers (be
they unwed or divorced, impoverished or affluent), remarried couples, childless yuppie
couples, bachelors and spinsters, househusbands, working mothers, and the home-
less. It even places that vanishing, once-hallowed breed of full-time homemakers on the
(Im-just-a-housewife) defensive.
Gay and lesbian families simply brave intensified versions of ubiquitous contempo-
rary challenges. Both their plight and their pluck expose the dangerous disjuncture be-
tween our family rhetoric and policy, on the one hand, and our family and social realties,
on the other. In stubborn denial of the complex, pluralist array of contemporary families
and kinship, most of our legal and social policies atavistically presume to serve a singu-
lar, normal family structurethe conventional, heterosexual, married-couple, nuclear
family. In the name of children, politicians justify decisions that endanger children, and
in the name of The Family, they cause grave harm to our families. It is time to get used
to the queer, post-modern family condition we all now inhabit.
Notes
1. An estimate that at least six million children would have a gay parent by 1985 appeared in J. Schu-
lenberg, Gay Parenting ( New York: Doubleday, 1985) and has been accepted or revised upwards
by most scholars since then. See, for example, F. W. Bozett (ed.), Gay and Lesbian Parents ( New
York: Praeger, 1987), 39; C. Patterson, Children of Lesbian and Gay Parents, Child Development
63:10251042; K. R. Allen and D. H. Demo, The Families of Lesbians and Gay Men: A New
Frontier in Family Research, Journal of Marriage and the Family 57 (February 1995):111127.
Nevertheless, these estimates are based upon problematic assumptions and calculations, so the
actual number could be considerably lowerespecially if we exclude children whose parents have
not acknowledged to anyone else in the family that they are gay or lesbian. Still, even a conserva-
tive estimate would exceed one million.
2. P. Burke, Family Values: A Lesbian Mothers Fight for Her Son ( New York: Random House, 1993).
3. For a sensitive discussion of the definitional difficulties involved in research on gay and lesbian
families, see Allen and Demo, Families of Lesbians and Gay Men, 112113.
4. Many gay activist groups and scholars, however, have begun to reclaim the term queer as a
badge of pride, in much the same way that the black power movement of the 1960s reclaimed the
formerly derogatory term for blacks.
5. In J. Stacey, Brave New Families ( New York: Basic Books, 1990), I provide a book-length, ethno-
graphic treatment of postmodern family life in the Silicon Valley.
6. For historical and cross-cultural treatments of same-sex marriages, relationships, and practices in
the West and elsewhere, see J. Boswell, Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe ( New York: Villard
Books, 1994) and W. N. Eskridge Jr., A History of Same-Sex Marriage, Virginia Law Review
79:14191451, 1993.
Ch-11.indd 499 7/8/2008 12:35:38 PM
500 Part IV Families in Society
7. R. R. Rivera, Legal Issues in Gay and Lesbian Parenting, in Bozett, ed., Gay and Lesbian Parents.
8. Among the influential feminist works of this genre were: N. Chodorow, The Reproduction of Moth-
ering (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978); C. Gilligan, In a Different
Voice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982); and S. Ruddick, Maternal Thinking (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1989).
9. See R. Rosenbloom (ed.), Unspoken Rules: Sexual Orientation and Womens Human Rights (San Fran-
cisco: International Gay and Lesbian Human Right Commission, 1995), 226 (fn22); and L. Ben-
kov, Reinventing the Family ( New York: Crown, 1994), 117.
10. D. Wikler and N. J. Wikler, Turkey-baster Babies: The Demedicalization of Artificial Insemina-
tion, Milbank Quarterly 69(1):10, 1991.
11. Ibid.
12. The first known custody battle involving a lesbian couple and a sperm donor was Loftin v. Flournoy
in California. For a superb discussion of the relevant case law, see N. Polikoff, This Child Does
Have Two Mothers, Georgetown Law Journal 78(1990):459575.
13. Polikoff, Two Mothers provides detailed discussion of the most significant legal cases of cus-
tody contests after death of the biological lesbian comother. In both the most prominent cases,
higher courts eventually reversed decisions that had denied custody to the surviving lesbian par-
ent, but only after serious emotional harm had been inflicted on the children and parents alike.
See pp. 527532.
14. V. L. Henry, A Tale of Three Women, American Journal of Law & Medicine XIX, 3:297, 1993.
15. Ibid., 300; Polikoff, This Child Does Have Two Mothers, 492.
16. J. Griscom, The Case of Sharon Kowalski and Karen Thompson, in P. S. Rothenberg (ed.), Race,
Class, and Gender in the United States ( New York: St. Martins Press, 1992).
17. See W. B. Rubenstein (ed.), Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Law ( New York: New Press, 1993), 452.
18. National Center for Lesbian Rights, Our Day in CourtAgainst Each Other, in Rubenstein,
561562.
19. M. Gil de Lamadrid, Expanding the Definition of Family: A Universal Issue, Berkeley Womens
Law Journal v. 8:178, 1993.
20. The Sharon Bottoms case in Virginia is the most prominent of current setbacks. In 1994, Sharon
Bottoms lost custody of her two-year-old son because the trial court judge deemed her lesbianism
to be immoral and illegal. In April 1995, the Virginia state supreme court upheld the ruling, which
at this writing is being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
21. Quoted in S. Sherman (ed.), Lesbian and Gay Marriage (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1992), 191.
22. Ibid., 173.
23. Bozett, epilogue to Gay and Lesbian Parents, 232.
24. Cited in Sherman, Lesbian and Gay Marriage, 9 (fn. 6). A more recent poll conducted by The Ad-
vocate suggests that the trend of support for gay marriage is increasing. See E. Wolfson, Crossing
the Threshhold, Review of Law & Social Change XXI, 3:583, 1994 95.
25. The decision stated that the sexual orientation of the parties was irrelevant because same-sex
spouses could be of any sexual orientation. It was the gender discrimination involved in lim-
iting ones choice of spouse that violated the state constitution. See Wolfson, Crossing the
Threshold, 573.
26. See, for example, Nancy Polikoff, We Will Get What We Ask For: Why Legalizing Gay and
Lesbian Marriage Will Not Dismantle the Legal Structure of Gender in Every Marriage. Vir-
ginia Law Review 79:15491550, 1993.
27. Law professor Thomas Coleman, executive director of the Family Diversity Project in Cali-
fornia, expresses these views in Sherman, 128129. Likewise, Bob Hattoy, a gay White House
aide in the Clinton administration, believed that to support same-sex marriage at this particular
cultural moment in America is a loser. Quoted in Francis X. Clines, In Gay-Marriage Storm,
Weary Clinton Aide Is Buffeted on All Sides, New York Times, May 29, 1996, A16.
28. A. Sullivan, Here Comes the Groom: A Conservative Case for Gay Marriage, New Republic
201(9):20 22, August 28, 1989; J. Rauch, A Pro-Gay, Pro-Family Policy, Wall Street Journal,
November 29, 1995, A22.
29. Kirk Johnson, quoted in Wolfson, 567.
Ch-11.indd 500 7/8/2008 12:35:38 PM
Chapter 11 Dimensions of Diversity 501
30. N. D. Hunter, Marriage, Law and Gender: A Feminist Inquiry, Law & Sexuality 1(1):12, 1991.
31. Wolfson, Crossing the Threshhold.
32. Some Progress Found in Poll on Gay Rights, San Francisco Chronicle, June 20, 1994.
33. Support for Clintons Stand on Gay Marriage, San Francisco Cbronicle, May 25, 1996, A6; Avail-
able online at www.gallup.com/poll/releases/pr010604.asp.
34. G. Remafedi (ed.), Deatb by Denial (Boston: Alyson Publications, 1994).
35. Quoted in Miller, Out in the World, 350.
36. The three journals were Journal of Marriage and the Family, Family Relations, and Journal of Family
Issues; Allen and Demo, Families of Lesbians and Gay Men, 119.
37. For overviews of the research, see Patterson, Children of Lesbian and Gay Parents; J. Laird,
Lesbian and Gay Families, in Walsh (ed.), Normal Family Processes 2nd ed. ( New York: Guilford
Press, 1993), 282328; Allen and Demo, Families of Lesbians and Gay Men.
38. Laird, Lesbian and Gay Families, 316 317.
39. Ibid., 317; D. H. Demo and K. Allen, Diversity within Lesbian and Gay Families, Journal of
Social and Personal Relationships 13(3):26, 1996; F. Tasker and S. Golombok, Adults Raised as
Children in Lesbian Families, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 65:203215, 1998.
40. Tasker and Golombok, Adults Raised as Children in Lesbian Families.
41. Quoted in L. Rafkin, Different Mothers (Pittsburgh: Cleis Press, 1990), 34.
42. Laird, Lesbian and Gay Families.
43. See, for example, Patterson; Demo and Allen; Benkov; K. Weston, Families We Cboose ( New York:
Columbia University Press, 1991); and L. Peplau, Research on Homosexual Couples: An Over-
view, in J. P. De Cecco (ed.), Gay Relationships ( New York: Hayworth Press, 1988).
44. S. Minter, U.S.A., in Rosenbloom (ed.), Unspoken Rules, 219.
45. Quoted in Maralee Schwartz & Kenneth J. Cooper, Equal Rights Initiative in Iowa Attacked,
Washington Post, Aug 23, 1992, A15.
46. Laird, 315316.
47. See, for example, Judith Stacey and Timothy Biblarz, Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents
Matter? American Sociological Review 66(2):159183, April 2001.
48. As Tasker and Golombok concede, Young adults from lesbian homes tended to be more willing
to have a sexual relationship with someone of the same gender if they felt physically attracted to
them. They were also more likely to have considered the possibility of developing same-gender
sexual attractions or relationships. Having a lesbian mother, therefore, appeared to widen the
adolescents view of what constituted acceptable sexual behavior to include same-gender sexual
relationships, 212.
49. A. Rich, Compulsory Heterosexuality and the Lesbian Continuum, Signs 5(4):Summer 1980:
631 660.
50. Eve Sedgwick, How to Bring Your Kids Up Gay, in Warner (ed.), Fear of a Queer Planet (Min-
neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 76.
51. Quoted in Rafkin, Different Mothers, 64 65.
52. Minter, U.S.A., 222.
53. Remafedi, Death by Denial.
54. Quoted in Sherman, 70.
55. L. Due, Joining the Tribe ( New York: Doubleday, 1996).
56. See J. M. Irvine, A Place in the Rainbow: Theorizing Lesbian and Gay Culture, Sociological
Theory 12(2):232, July 1994.
57. Quoted in Rafkin, Different Mothers, 24.
58. Quoted in Polikoff, This Child Does Have Two Mothers, 569570.
59. Quoted in Polikoff, 570.
60. Quoted in Rafkin, 81.
61. Benkov, Reinventing the Family, chap. 8.
62. L. Kurdek and J. P. Schmitt, Relationship Quality of Gay Men in Closed or Open Relationships,
Journal of Homosexuality 12(2):8599, 1985; and F. R. Lynch, Nonghetto Gays: An Ethnogra-
phy of Suburban Homosexuals, in Herdt (ed.), Gay Culture in America (Boston: Beacon Press,
1992), 165201.
63. Rafkin, 39.
Ch-11.indd 501 7/8/2008 12:35:38 PM
502 Part IV Families in Society
64. Allen and Demo.
65. Polikoff, This Child Does Have Two Mothers, 461 (fn.2).
66. Weston, Parenting in the Age of AIDS, 159.
67. D. Blankenhorn, Fatherless America ( New York: Basic Books, 1995), 233; J. Leo, Promoting No-
Dad Families, U.S. News and World Report, May 15, 1995:26; and S. Seligson, Seeds of Doubt,
Atlantic Monthly, March 1995:28.
68. Bozett, p. 4 discusses gay male parenthood strategies. Also, available on-line at www.growing-
generations.com.
69. Stacey and Biblarz, Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter?; Maureen Sullivan, Rozzie
and Harriet?: Gender and Family Patterns of Lesbian Coparents, Gender & Society 10(6):747767,
December 1996.
70. Quoted in Rafkin, 33.
71. Ibid., 53.
72. Stacey and Biblarz, Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter? 176.
73. Rafkin, 174.
74. T. Moore, Fear of Violence Rising among 1990s Youth, San Francisco Chronicle, December 7,
1995, A1, A15.
75. L. Kurdek, The Allocation of Household Labor in Gay, Lesbian, and Heterosexual Married
Couples, Journal of Social Issues 49(3):127139, 1993; P. Blumstein and P. Schwartz, American
Couples ( New York: William Morrow, 1983); Peplau, 193; Stacey and Biblarz, Does the Sexual
Orientation of Parents Matter, 173174; Sullivan, Rozzie and Harriet?; Gillian Dunne, Opt-
ing into Motherhood: Lesbians Blurring the Boundaries and Transforming the Meaning of Par-
enthood and Kinship, Gender & Society 14(1):1135, 2000.
76. See Weston, Families We Choose, for an ethnographic treatment of these chosen kin ties.
77. As Allen and Demo suggest, An aspect of biculturalism is resilience and creative adaptation in
the context of minority group oppression and stigma, and this offers a potential link to other
oppressed groups in American society. Families of Lesbians and Gay Men, 122.
Ch-11.indd 502 7/8/2008 12:35:39 PM
503
12 Trouble in the Family
R E A DI NG 3 6
Prisoners Families and Children
Jeremy Travis
As the nation debates the wisdom of a fourfold increase in our incarceration rate over the
past generation, one fact is clear: Prisons separate prisoners from their families. Every in-
dividual sent to prison leaves behind a network of family relationships. Prisoners are the
children, parents, siblings, and kin to untold numbers of relatives who are each affected
differently by a family members arrest, incarceration, and ultimate homecoming.
Little is known about imprisonments impact on these family networks. Descriptive
data about the children of incarcerated parents only begin to tell the story. During the
1990s, as the nations prison population increased by half, the number of children who
had a parent in prison also increased by halffrom 1 million to 1.5 million. By the end
of 2002, 1 in 45 minor children had a parent in prison ( Mumola 2004).
1
These children
represent 2 percent of all minor children in America, and a sobering 7 percent of all
African-American children ( Mumola 2000). With little if any public debate, we have
extended prisons reach to include hundreds of thousands of young people who were not
the prime target of the criminal justice policies that put their parents behind bars.
In the simplest human terms, prison places an indescribable burden on the rela-
tionships between these parents and their children. Incarcerated fathers and mothers
must learn to cope with the loss of normal contact with their children, infrequent visits
in inhospitable surroundings, and lost opportunities to contribute to their childrens de-
velopment. Their children must come to terms with the reality of an absent parent, the
stigma of parental imprisonment, and an altered support system that may include grand-
parents, foster care, or a new adult in the home. In addition, in those communities where
incarceration rates are high, the experience of having a mother or father in prison is now
quite commonplace, with untold consequences for foster care systems, multigenerational
households, social services delivery, community norms, childhood development, and par-
enting patterns.
Ch-12.indd 503 7/8/2008 12:35:52 PM
504 Part IV Families in Society
Imprisonment profoundly affects families in another, less tangible way. When young
men and women are sent to prison, they are removed from the traditional rhythms of
dating, courtship, marriage, and family formation. Because far more men than women are
sent to prison each year, our criminal justice policies have created a gender imbalance
( Braman 2002), a disparity in the number of available single men and women in many
communities. In neighborhoods where incarceration and reentry have hit hardest, the
gender imbalance is particularly striking. Young women complain about the shortage of
men who are suitable marriage prospects because so many of the young men cycle in and
out of the criminal justice system. The results are an increase in female-headed house-
holds and narrowed roles for fathers in the lives of their children and men in the lives of
women and families in general. As more young men grow up with fewer stable attach-
ments to girlfriends, spouses, and intimate partners, the masculine identity is redefined.
The family is often depicted as the bedrock of American society. Over the years, we
have witnessed wave after wave of social policy initiatives designed to strengthen, reunite,
or simply create families. Liberals and conservatives have accused each other of espous-
ing policies that undermine family values. In recent years, policymakers, foundation
officers, and opinion leaders have also decried the absence of fathers from the lives of
their children. These concerns have translated into a variety of programs, governmental
initiatives, and foundation strategies that constitute a fatherhood movement. Given the
iconic stature of the family in our vision of American life and the widespread consensus
that the absence of father figures harms future generations, our national experiment
with mass incarceration seems, at the very least, incongruent with the rhetoric behind
prevailing social policies. At worst, the imprisonment of millions of individuals and the
disruption of their family relationships has significantly undermined the role that families
could play in promoting our social well-being.
The institution of family plays a particularly important role in the crime policy
arena. Families are an integral part of the mechanisms of informal social control that
constrain antisocial behavior. The quality of family life (e.g., the presence of supportive
parent-child relationships) is significant in predicting criminal delinquency ( Loeber and
Farrington 1998, 2001). Thus, if families suffer adverse effects from our incarceration
policies, we would expect these harmful effects to be felt in the next generation, as chil-
dren grow up at greater risk of engaging in delinquent and criminal behavior. The insti-
tution of marriage is another important link in the mechanism of informal social control.
Marriage reduces the likelihood that ex-offenders will associate with peers involved in
crime, and generally inhibits a return to crime ( Laub, Nagin, and Sampson 1998). In
fact, marriage is a stronger predictor of desistance from criminal activity than simple
cohabitation, and a quality marriageone based on a strong mutual commitmentis
an even stronger predictor ( Horney, Osgood, and Marshall 1995). Thus, criminal justice
policies that weaken marriage and inhibit spousal commitments are likely to undermine
the natural processes of desistance, thereby causing more crime. In short, in developing
crime policies, families matter. If our crime policies have harmful consequences for fami-
lies, we risk undermining the role families can play in controlling criminal behavior.
This [reading] examines the impact of incarceration and reentry on families. We
begin by viewing the antecedents to the creation of familiesthe relationships between
young men and young womenin communities where the rates of arrest, removal,
Ch-12.indd 504 7/8/2008 12:35:52 PM
Chapter 12 Trouble in the Family 505
incarceration, and reentry are particularly high. Then we discuss imprisonments impact
on relationships between an incarcerated parent and his or her children. Next we examine
the effects of parental incarceration on the early childhood and adolescent development
of children left behind. We then observe the familys role in reentry. We close with
reflections on the impact of imprisonment on prisoners family life, ways to mitigate
incarcerations harmful effects, and ways to promote constructive connections between
prisoners and their families.
THE GENDER IMBALANCE
To understand the magnitude of the criminal justice systems impact on the establishment
of intimate partner relationships, we draw upon the work of Donald Braman (2002, 2004),
an anthropologist who conducted a three-year ethnographic study of incarcerations im-
pact on communities in Washington, D.C. In the District of Columbia, 7 percent of the
adult African-American male population returns to the community from jail or prison
each year. According to Bramans estimates, more than 75 percent of African-American
men in the District of Columbia can expect to be incarcerated at some point during their
lifetime. One consequence of these high rates of incarceration is what Braman calls a
gender imbalance, meaning simply that there are fewer men than women in the hardest
hit communities. Half of the women in the nations capital live in communities with low
incarceration rates. In these communities, there are about 94 men for every 100 women.
For the rest of the women in D.C.whose neighborhoods have higher incarceration
ratesthe ratio is about 80 men for every 100 women. Furthermore, 10 percent of the
Districts women live in neighborhoods with the highest incarceration rates, where more
than 12 percent of men are behind bars. In these neighborhoods, there are fewer than
62 men for every 100 women.
This gender imbalance translates into large numbers of fatherless families in com-
munities with high rates of incarceration. In neighborhoods with a 2 percent male in-
carceration rate, Braman (2002) found that fathers were absent from more than one-half
of the families. But in the communities with the highest male incarceration ratesabout
12 percentmore than three-quarters of the families had a father absent. This phenom-
enon is not unique to Washington, D.C., however. In a national study, Sabol and Lynch
(1998) also found larger numbers of female-headed families in counties receiving large
numbers of returning prisoners.
Clearly, mass incarceration results in the substantial depletion in the sheer numbers
of men in communities with high rates of imprisonment. For those men who are arrested,
removed, and sent to prison, life in prison has profound and long-lasting consequences
for their roles as intimate partners, spouses, and fathers. In the following sections, we
will document those effects. Viewing this issue from a community perspective, how-
ever, reminds us that incarceration also alters the relationships between the men and
women who are not incarcerated. In her research on the marriage patterns of low-income
mothers, Edin (2000) found that the decision to marry (or remarry) depends, in part,
on the economic prospects, social respectability, and reliability of potential husbands
attributes that are adversely affected by imprisonment. Low marriage rates, in turn, affect
Ch-12.indd 505 7/8/2008 12:35:52 PM
506 Part IV Families in Society
the life courses of men who have been imprisoned, reducing their likelihood of desistance
from criminal activity. Thus, the communities with the highest rates of incarceration
are caught in what Western, Lopoo, and McLanahan (2004, 21) call the high-crime/
low-marriage equilibrium. In these communities, women will be understandably averse
to marriage because their potential partners bring few social or economic benefits to
the table. Men, who remain unmarried or unattached to stable households, are likely to
continue their criminal involvement.
Braman quotes two of his community informants to illustrate these ripple effects
of the gender imbalance. David described how the shortage of men affected dating
patterns:
Oh, yeah, everybody is aware of [the male shortage]. . . . And the fact that [men] know
the ratio, and they feel that the ratio allows them to take advantage of just that statistic.
Well, this woman I dont want to deal with, really because there are six to seven women
to every man. (2002, 166)
The former wife of a prisoner commented that women were less discerning in their
choices of partners because there were so few men:
Women will settle for whatever it is that their man [wants], even though you know that
man probably has about two or three women. Just to be wanted, or just to be held, or
just to go out and have a date makes her feel good, so shes willing to accept. I think now
women accept a lot of thingsthe fact that he might have another woman or the fact that
they cant clearly get as much time as they want to. The person doesnt spend as much
time as you would [like] him to spend. The little bit of time that you get you cherish.
(2002, 167)
The reach of our incarceration policies thus extends deep into community life.
Even those men and women who are never arrested pay a price. As they are looking for
potential partners in marriage and parenting, they find that the simple rituals of dating
are darkened by the long shadow of imprisonment.
THE IMPACT OF INCARCERATION
ON PARENT-CHILD RELATIONSHIPS
The Family Profile of the Prisoner Population
Before turning to a closer examination of the effects of imprisonment on the relation-
ships between incarcerated parents and their children, we should first describe the family
circumstances of the nations prisoners. In 1997, about half (47 percent) of state prisoners
reported they had never been married. Only 23 percent reported they were married at
the time of their incarceration, while 28 percent said they were divorced or separated
( Figure 36.1). Yet most prisoners are parents. More than half (55 percent) of all state
prisoners reported having at least one minor child. Because the overwhelming majority of
state prisoners are men, incarcerated parents are predominantly male (93 percent). The
Ch-12.indd 506 7/8/2008 12:35:52 PM
Chapter 12 Trouble in the Family 507
number of incarcerated mothers, however, has grown dramatically in the past decade.
Between 1991 and 2000, the number of incarcerated mothers increased by 87 percent,
compared with a 60 percent increase in the number of incarcerated fathers. Of the men
in state prison, 55 percent have childrena total of about 1.2 millionunder the age of
18. About 65 percent of women in state prison are mothers to children younger than 18;
their children number about 115,500 ( Mumola 2000).
A mothers incarceration has a different impact on living arrangements than does
that of a father. Close to two-thirds (64 percent) of mothers reported living with their
children before incarceration, compared with slightly less than half (44 percent) of fathers
in 1997. Therefore, as the percentage of women in prison increases, more children expe-
rience a more substantial disruption. We should not conclude, however, that the impris-
onment of a nonresident father has little impact on his children. Research has shown that
nonresident fathers can make considerable contributions to the development and well-
being of their children (Amato and Rivera 1999; Furstenberg 1993). They contribute to
their childrens financial support, care, and social support even when they are not living
in the childrens home ( Edin and Lein 1997; Hairston 1998; Western and McLanahan
2000). Therefore, a depiction of families living arrangements only begins to describe the
nature of the parenting roles played by fathers before they were sent to prison.
The national data on incarcerated parents also fail to capture the diversity of parent-
child relationships. According to research conducted by Denise Johnston (2001) at the
Center for Children of Incarcerated Parents, it is not uncommon for both incarcerated
Married
23%
Divorced
21%
Separated
7%
Widowed
2%
Never
married
47%
FIGURE 36.1 Marital Status of Parents in State Prison, 1997
Source: Mumola (2000).
Ch-12.indd 507 7/8/2008 12:35:52 PM
508 Part IV Families in Society
fathers and mothers to have children by more than one partner. Furthermore, these
parents may have lived with some but not all of their children prior to their incarcera-
tion. This perspective leads to another conclusion: Individuals who are incarcerated may
also have served as parent figures to children not their ownas stepparents or surrogate
parents in families that blend children into one household.
We know little about the nature of these parent-child relationships. As was noted
above, even absent fathers can provide emotional and financial support prior to their in-
carceration. However, the profiles of incarcerated parents also point to indicia of stress
and dysfunction within these families. More than three-quarters of parents in state prison
reported a prior conviction and, of those, more than half had been previously incarcer-
ated. During the time leading up to their most current arrest and incarceration, nearly
half were out of prison on some type of conditional release, such as probation or parole,
in 1997. Nearly half (46 percent) of incarcerated fathers were imprisoned for a violent
crime, as were one-quarter (26 percent) of the mothers. Mothers in prison were much
more likely than fathers to be serving time for drug offenses (35 percent versus 23 per-
cent). Nearly one-third of the mothers reported committing their crime to get either
drugs or money for drugs, compared with 19 percent of fathers. More than half of all
parents in prison reported using drugs in the month before they were arrested, and
more than a third were under the influence of alcohol when they committed the crime.
Nearly a quarter of incarcerated mothers (23 percent) and about a tenth (13 percent) of
incarcerated fathers reported a history of mental illness ( Mumola 2000). Clearly, these
individuals were struggling with multiple stressors that, at a minimum, complicated their
role as parents.
The portrait of prisoners extended family networks is also sobering. According to
findings from the Urban Institutes Returning Home ( Visher, La Vigne, and Travis 2004)
study in Maryland, these networks exhibit high rates of criminal involvement, substance
abuse, and family violence ( La Vigne, Kachnowski, et al. 2003). In interviews conducted
with a sample of men and women just prior to their release from prison and return to
homes in Baltimore, the Institutes researchers found that about 40 percent of the pris-
oners reported having at least one relative currently serving a prison sentence. Nine
percent of the women said they had been threatened, harassed, or physically hurt by their
husband, and 65 percent of those who reported domestic violence also reported being
victimized by a nonspouse intimate partner. No male respondents reported this kind of
abuse. The women reported that, other than their partners, the highest level of abuse
came from other women in their familiestheir mothers, stepmothers, or aunts. Nearly
two-thirds of inmates (62 percent) reported at least one family member with a substance
abuse or alcohol problem and more than 16 percent listed four or more family members
with histories of substance abuse. These characteristics highlight the high levels of risks
and challenges in the families prisoners leave behind.
The Strain of Incarceration on Families
We turn next to a discussion of the impact of parental incarceration on the families left
behind. One obvious consequence is that the families have fewer financial resources. Ac-
cording to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 1997 most parents in state prison (71 percent)
Ch-12.indd 508 7/8/2008 12:35:52 PM
Chapter 12 Trouble in the Family 509
reported either full-time or part-time employment in the month preceding their current
arrest ( Mumola 2002). Wages or salary was the most common source of income among
incarcerated fathers before imprisonment, 60 percent of whom reported having a full-
time job. Mothers, on the other hand, were less likely to have a full-time job (39 percent).
For them, the most common sources of income were wages (44 percent) or public assis-
tance (42 percent). Very few mothers reported receiving formal child support payments
(6 percent) ( Mumola 2000). During incarceration, the flow of financial support from the
incarcerated parents job stops, leaving the family to either make do with less or make up
the difference, thereby placing added strains on the new caregivers. Eligibility for welfare
payments under the TANF ( Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) program ceases
as soon as an individual is no longer a custodial parenti.e., upon incarceration. In some
cases, a caregiver may continue to receive TANF payments when the incarcerated parent
loses eligibility, but because these benefits are now child-only, they are lower than full
TANF benefits. Food stamps are also unavailable to incarcerated individuals.
New caregivers often struggle to make ends meet during the period of parental
incarceration. Bloom and Steinhart (1993) found that in 1992 nearly half (44 percent) of
families caring for the children of an incarcerated parent were receiving welfare payments
under TANFs predecessor program, AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children).
Under the recent welfare reform laws, however, TANF support is more limited than in
the past, as lifetime eligibility has been capped at 60 months, work requirements have
been implemented, and restrictions have been placed on TANF funds for those who have
violated probation or parole, or have been convicted of certain drug crimes ( Phillips and
Bloom 1998). Even under the old AFDC program, most caregivers reported that they did
not have sufficient resources to meet basic needs ( Bloom and Steinhart 1993). Moreover,
these economic strains affect more than the familys budget. According to several studies,
financial stress can produce negative consequences for caretakers behavior, including
harsh and inconsistent parenting patterns, which, in turn, cause emotional and behavioral
problems for the children ( McLoyd 1998).
Other adjustments are required as well. Because most prisoners are men, and 55 per-
cent of them are fathers, the first wave of impact is felt by the mothers of their children.
Some mothers struggle to maintain contact with the absent father, on behalf of their chil-
dren as well as themselves. Others decide that the incarceration of their childrens father
is a turning point, enabling them to start a new life and cut off ties with the father. More
fundamentally, Furstenberg (1993) found that a partner left behind often becomes more
independent and self-sufficient during the period of incarceration, changes that may ulti-
mately benefit the family unit or lead to the dissolution of the relationship. At a minimum,
however, these changes augur a significant adjustment in roles when the incarcerated
partner eventually returns home.
In some cases, the incarceration period can have another, longer-lasting effect on
the legal relationships between parents and children. In 1997, Congress enacted the
Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) to improve the safety and well-being of children
in the foster care system as well as to remove barriers to the permanent placement, par-
ticularly adoption, of these children.
2
The ASFA stipulates that permanency decisions
(determinations about a childs ultimate placement) should be made within 12 months
of the initial removal of the child from the home. With limited exceptions, foster care
Ch-12.indd 509 7/8/2008 12:35:52 PM
510 Part IV Families in Society
placements can last no longer than 15 months, and if a child has been in foster care for
15 out of the previous 22 months, petitions must be filed in court to terminate parental
rights. At least half the states now include incarceration as a reason to terminate paren-
tal rights (Genty 2001).
This new legislation has far-reaching consequences for the children of incarcerated
parents. According to BJS, 10 percent of mothers in prison, and 2 percent of fathers, have
at least one child in foster care ( Mumola 2000). Because the average length of time served
for prisoners released in 1997 was 28 months (Sabol and Lynch 2001), the short timelines
set forth in ASFA establish a legal predicate that could lead to increases in the termination
of parental rights for parents in prison ( Lynch and Sabol 2001). Philip Genty (2001), a
professor at Columbia University Law School, made some rough calculations of ASFAs
impact. Looking only at reported cases discoverable through a Lexis search, he found,
in the five years following ASFAs enactment, a 250 percent increase in cases terminating
parental rights due to parental incarceration, from 260 to 909 cases.
In addition to those legal burdens placed on incarcerated parents, the new family
caregivers face challenges in forging relationships with the children left behind. Some
of these new caregivers may not have had much contact with the children before the
parents incarceration, so they must establish themselves as de facto parents and develop
relationships with the children. Contributing to the trauma of this changing family struc-
ture, prisoners children are sometimes separated from their siblings during incarceration
because the new network of caregivers cannot care for the entire sibling group ( Hairston
1995).
In short, when the prison gates close and parents are separated from their children,
the network of care undergoes a profound realignment. Even two-parent families experi-
ence the strain of lost income, feel the remaining parents sudden sole responsibility for
the children and the household, and suffer the stigma associated with imprisonment.
However, prisoners family structures rarely conform to the two-parent model and are
more often characterized by nonresident fathers, children living with different parents,
and female-headed households. In these circumstances, the ripple effects of a mother or
father going to prison reach much farther, and grandparents, aunts and uncles, and the
foster care system must step into the breach. In addition, these extended networks feel
the financial, emotional, and familial weight of their new responsibilities.
Incarceration has yet one more effect on the structure of prisoners families. One
of the important functions that families perform is to create assets that are passed along
to the next generation. These assets are sometimes quite tangible: Money is saved, real
estate appreciates in value, and businesses are built. These tangible assets can typically
be transferred to ones children. Sometimes the assets are intangible: Social status is
achieved, professional networks are cultivated, and educational milestones are reached.
These intangible assets can also translate into economic advantage by opening doors
for the next generation. Braman asks whether the minimal intergenerational transfer of
wealth in black families is related to the high rates of incarceration among black men.
Taking a historical view, he concludes:
The disproportionate incarceration of black men . . . helps to explain why black fami-
lies are less able to save money and why each successive generation inherits less wealth
Ch-12.indd 510 7/8/2008 12:35:53 PM
Chapter 12 Trouble in the Family 511
than their white counterparts. Incarceration acts like a hidden tax, one that is visited
disproportionately on poor and minority families; and while its costs are most directly
felt by the adults closest to the incarcerated family member, the full effect is eventually felt
by the next generation as well. (2004, 156)
The ripple effects of incarceration on the family are far-reaching. The gender im-
balance disturbs the development of intimate relationships that might support healthy
families. Families financial resources and relationship capabilities are strained at the
same time they are scrambling for more assets to support their incarcerated loved one.
Yet, despite the hardships of incarceration, families can play an important role in improv-
ing outcomes for prisoners and prisoners children. Several studies have shown that the
quality of care children receive following separation and their ongoing relationships
with parents are instrumental forces in shaping outcomes for children ( Hairston 1999,
205). According to one study (Sack 1977), the behavioral problems displayed by chil-
dren of incarcerated fathers diminished once the children got to spend time with their
fathers.
On the other hand, in a small percentage of cases, continued parental involvement
may not be in the childs best interests. For example, BJS (Greenfeld et al. 1998) reports
that 7 percent of prisoners convicted of violent crimes were convicted of intimate partner
violence. Even more disturbing are those cases involving child abuse and neglect, where
the childs best interests argue against parental involvement. According to BJS, among
inmates who were in prison for a sex crime against a child, the child was the prisoners
own child or stepchild in a third of the cases ( Langan, Schmitt, and Durose 2003). Yet
there has been very little research on the nexus between this form of family violence,
incarceration, and reentry.
Discussion of prisoners convicted of violence within the family only raises larger
questionsquestions not answered by current researchabout whether some parent-
child relationships are so troubled and so characterized by the patterns of parental sub-
stance abuse, criminal involvement, mental illness, and the intrusions of criminal justice
supervision that parental removal is a net benefit for the child. It is undoubtedly true
that removing a parent involved in certain types of child abuse is better for the child. But
we know little about the critical characteristics of the preprison relationships between
children and their incarcerated parents, especially as to what kind of parents they were,
and how their removal affects their children.
Even without a deeper understanding of the parenting roles played by Americas
prisoners, we still must face several incontrovertible, troubling facts. First, expanding the
use of prison to respond to crime has put more parents in prison. Between 1991 and 1999,
a short eight-year period, the number of parents in state and federal prisons increased
by 60 percent, from 452,500 to 721,500 ( Mumola 2000). By the end of 2002, 3.7 mil-
lion parents were under some form of correctional supervision ( Mumola 2004). Second,
many children are left behind when parents are incarcerated. By 1999, 2 percent of all
minor children in the United Statesabout 1.5 millionhad a parent in state or federal
prison. ( If we include parents who are in jail, on probation or parole, or recently released
from prison, the estimate of children with a parent involved in the criminal justice system
reaches 7 million, or nearly 10 percent of all minor children in America [Mumola 2000].)
Ch-12.indd 511 7/8/2008 12:35:53 PM
512 Part IV Families in Society
Third, the racial disparities in Americas prison population translate into substantial, dis-
turbing racial inequities in the population of children affected by our current levels of
imprisonment. About 7 percent of all African-American minor children and nearly 3 per-
cent of all Hispanic minor children in America have a parent in prison. In comparison,
barely 1 percent of all Caucasian minor children have a parent in prison ( Mumola 2000).
Finally, most of the children left behind are quite young. Sixty percent are under age 10,
while the average child left behind is 8 years old.
In this era of mass incarceration, our criminal justice system casts a wide net that
has altered the lives of millions of children, disrupting their relationships with their
parents, altering the networks of familial support, and placing new burdens on such
governmental services as schools, foster care, adoption agencies, and youth-serving or-
ganizations. As Phillips and Bloom succinctly concluded, by getting tough on crime, the
United States has gotten tough on children (1998, 539). These costs are rarely included
in our calculations of the costs of justice.
Parent-Child Relationships during Imprisonment
When a parent is arrested and later incarcerated, the childs world undergoes significant,
sometimes traumatic, disruption. Most children are not present at the time of their par-
ents arrest, and arrested parents typically do not tell the police that they have minor
children (ABA 1993). Family members are often reluctant to tell the children that their
parent has been incarcerated because of social stigma ( Braman 2003). Therefore, the
immediate impact of an arrest can be quite traumatizinga child is abruptly separated
from his or her parent, with little information about what happened, why it happened,
or what to expect.
The arrest and subsequent imprisonment of a parent frequently results in a sig-
nificant realignment of the familys arrangements for caring for the child, depicted in
Figure 36.2. Not surprisingly, the nature of the new living arrangements depends heavily
on which parent is sent to prison. Recall that about two-thirds of incarcerated mothers
in state prison lived with their children before they were imprisoned. Following the
mothers incarceration, about a quarter (28 percent) of their children remain with their
fathers. Most children of incarcerated mothers, however, are cared for by an extended
family that is suddenly responsible for another mouth to feed and child to raise. More
than half of these children (53 percent) will live with a grandparent, adding burdens to
a generation that supposedly has already completed its child-rearing responsibilities.
Another quarter of these children (26 percent) will live with another relative, placing
new duties on the extended family. Some children have no familial safety net: almost
10 percent of incarcerated mothers reported that their child was placed in foster care
( Mumola 2000).
3
The story for incarcerated fathers is quite different. Less than half (44 percent)
lived with their children before prison; once they are sent to prison, most of their chil-
dren (85 percent) will live with the childrens mother. Grandparents (16 percent) and
other relatives (6 percent) play a much smaller role in assuming child care responsibilities
when a father is incarcerated. Only 2 percent of the children of incarcerated men enter
the foster care system. In sum, a child whose father is sent to prison is significantly less
Ch-12.indd 512 7/8/2008 12:35:53 PM
Chapter 12 Trouble in the Family 513
likely to experience a life disruption, such as moving in with another family member or
placement in a foster home.
The nations foster care system has become a child care system of last resort for
many children with parents in prison. Research by the Center for Children of Incarcer-
ated Parents ( Johnston 1999) found that, at any given time, 10 percent of children in
foster care currently have a motherand 33 percent have a fatherbehind bars. Even
more striking, 70 percent of foster children have had a parent incarcerated at one time
or another during their time in foster care.
When a parent goes to prison, the separation between parent and child is expe-
rienced at many levels. First, there is the simple fact of distance. The majority of state
prisoners (62 percent) are held in facilities located more than 100 miles from their homes
( Mumola 2000). Because prison facilities for women are scarce, mothers are incarcerated
an average of 160 miles away from their children ( Hagan and Coleman 2001). The dis-
tance between prisoners and their families is most pronounced for District of Columbia
residents. As a result of the federal takeover of the Districts prison system, defendants
sentenced to serve felony time are now housed in facilities that are part of the far-flung
network of federal prisons. In 2000, 12 percent of the Districts inmates were held in
federal prisons more than 500 miles from Washington. By 2002, that proportion had
risen to 30 percent. Nineteen percent are in prisons as far away as Texas and California
(Santana 2003). Not surprisingly, in an analysis of BJS data, Hairston and Rollin (2003,
68) found a relationship between this distance and family visits: The distance prisoners
Other parent
of child
Grandparent
of child
Other
relatives
Child's Current Caregiver
Foster home
or agency
Friends,
others
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
P
e
r
c
e
n
t
a
g
e

o
f

C
h
i
l
d
r
e
n
Total
Male
Female
FIGURE 36.2 Living Arrangements of Minor Children of State Inmates prior to
Incarceration
Figures do not total 100 percent because some prisoners had children living with multiple caregivers.
Source: Mumola (2000).
Ch-12.indd 513 7/8/2008 12:35:53 PM
514 Part IV Families in Society
were from their homes influenced the extent to which they saw families and friends. The
farther prisoners were from their homes, the higher the percentage of prisoners who had
no visitors in the month preceding the survey. . . . Those whose homes were closest to
the prison had the most visits.
Geographic distance inhibits families from making visits and, for those who make
the effort, imposes an additional financial burden on already strained family budgets.
Donald Braman tells the story of Lilly, a District resident whose son Anthony is incarcer-
ated in Ohio ( Braman 2002). When Anthony was held in Lorton, a prison in Virginia that
formerly housed prisoners from the District, she visited him once a week. Since the fed-
eral takeover, she manages to make only monthly visits, bringing her daughter, Anthonys
sister. For each two-day trip, she spends between $150 and $200 for car rental, food, and
a motel. Added to these costs are her money orders to supplement his inmate account
and the care packages that she is allowed to send twice a year. She also pays about $100 a
month for the collect calls he places. She lives on a fixed income of $530 a month.
Given these realities, the extent of parent-child contact during incarceration is note-
worthy. Mothers in prison stay in closer contact with their children than do fathers. Ac-
cording to BJS, nearly 80 percent of mothers have monthly contact and 60 percent have
at least weekly contact. Roughly 60 percent of fathers, by contrast, have monthly contact,
and 40 percent have weekly contact with their children ( Mumola 2000). These contacts
take the form of letters, phone calls, and prison visits. Yet, a large percentage of prisoners
serve their entire prison sentence without ever seeing their children. More than half of all
mothers, and 57 percent of all fathers, never receive a personal visit from their children
while in prison.
Particularly disturbing is Lynch and Sabols finding (2001) that the frequency of
contact decreases as prison terms get longer. Between 1991 and 1997, as the length of
prison sentences increased, the level of contact of all kindscalls, letters, and visits
decreased ( Figure 36.3). This is especially troubling in light of research showing that the
average length of prison sentences is increasing in America, reflecting more stringent
sentencing policies. Thus, prisoners coming home in the future are likely to have had
fewer interactions with their children, a situation that further weakens family ties and
makes family reunification even more difficult.
In addition to the significant burden imposed by the great distances between pris-
oners and their families, corrections policies often hamper efforts to maintain family ties
across the prison walls. The Womens Prison Association (1996) has identified several
obstacles to constructive family contacts, some of which could easy be solved. The asso-
ciation found that it is difficult to get simple information on visiting procedures, and
correctional administrators provide little help in making visiting arrangements. The vis-
iting procedures themselves are often uncomfortable or humiliating. Furthermore, little
attention is paid to mitigating the impact on the children of visiting a parent in prison.
Elizabeth Gaynes, director of the Osborne Association in New York City, tells a
story that captures the emotional and psychological impact of a particular correctional
policy upon a young girl who had come to visit her father. Because inmates were not
allowed to handle money, the prison had drawn a yellow line three feet in front of the
soda vending machines. Only visitors could cross that line. The father could not per-
form the simple act of getting his daughter a soda. If he wanted one, he had to ask his
daughter to get it. According to Ms. Gaynes, this interaction represented an unnecessary
Ch-12.indd 514 7/8/2008 12:35:53 PM
Chapter 12 Trouble in the Family 515
and damaging role transformation; the child had become the provider, the parent had
become the child.
4
Family Contact during Imprisonment:
Obstacles and Opportunities
For a number of reasons, it is difficult to maintain parent-child contact during a period of
incarceration. For one thing, many prisons narrowly define the family members who are
granted visiting privileges. The State of Michigans corrections department, for example,
promulgated regulations in 1995 restricting the categories of individuals who are allowed
to visit a prisoner. The approved visiting list may include minor children under the age
of 18, but only if they are the prisoners children, stepchildren, grandchildren, or siblings.
Prisoners who are neither the biological parents nor legal stepparents of the children
More than 5 years
1 to 5 years
Less than 5 years
V
i
s
i
t
s
More than 5 years
1 to 5 years
Less than 5 years
L
e
t
t
e
r
s
More than 5 years
1 to 5 years
Less than 5 years
C
a
l
l
s
1997 cohort
1991 cohort
0 10 20 30 40
Percent
50 60 70 80
FIGURE 36.3 Level of Prisoners Weekly Contact with Children, by Method and Length
of Stay, 1991 and 1997
Prisoners to be released in the next 12 months.
Source: Lynch and Sabol (2001).
Ch-12.indd 515 7/8/2008 12:35:53 PM
516 Part IV Families in Society
they were raising do not have this privilege. Finally, a child authorized to visit must be
accompanied by either an adult who is an immediate family member of the child or of
the inmate, or who is the childs legal guardians.
5
Many prisoners extended family net-
works, including girlfriends and boyfriends who are raising prisoners children, are not
recognized in these narrow definitions of family.
6
Limitations on visiting privileges are
commonly justified on security or management grounds, but fail to recognize the com-
plexity of the prisoners familial networks. Rather than allowing the prisoner to define
the family relationships that matter most, the arbitrary distinctions of biology or legal
status are superimposed on the reality of familial networks, limiting meaningful contact
that could make a difference to both prisoner and child.
Telephone contact is also burdened by prison regulations and by controversial re-
lationships between phone companies and corrections departments. Prisoners are typi-
cally limited in the number of calls they can make. Their calls can also be monitored.
The California Department of Corrections interrupts each call every 20 seconds with a
recorded message: This is a call from a California prison inmate. Most prisons allow
prisoners to make only collect calls, and those calls typically cost between $1 and $3 per
minute, even though most phone companies now charge less than 10 cents per minute
for phone calls in the free society ( Petersilia 2003). Telephone companies also charge
between $1.50 and $4 just to place the collect call, while a fee is not charged for collect
calls outside of prison.
The high price of collect calls reflects sweetheart arrangements between the
phone companies and corrections agencies, under which the prisons receive kickbacks
for every collect call, about 40 to 60 cents of every dollar. This arrangement translates
into a substantial revenue source for corrections budgets. In 2001, for example, Califor-
nia garnered $35 million, based on $85 million of total revenue generated from prison
calls. Some states require, by statute or policy, that these revenues pay for programs
for inmates. Most states simply deposit this money into the general budget for their
department of corrections.
Yet who bears these additional costs for maintaining phone contact with prisoners?
The families of prisoners do, of course. In a study conducted by the Florida House of
Representatives Corrections Committee (1998), family members reported spending an
average amount of $69.19 per month accepting collect phone calls. According to this
report, Several family members surveyed stated that, although they wanted to continue
to maintain contact with the inmate, they were forced to remove their names from the
inmates approved calling list because they simply could not afford to accept the calls
(1998, 23).
This monopolistic arrangement between phone companies and prisons makes fam-
ilies the unwitting funders of the prisons holding their loved ones. In essence, the states
have off-loaded upwards of hundreds of millions of dollars of prison costs on to prison-
ers families. Subsequently, families are placed in the unacceptable position of either
agreeing to accept the calls, thereby making contributions to prison budgets, or ceasing
phone contact with their loved ones. Of course, there are other, deeper costs attached to
this practice. If a family chooses to limit (or stop) these phone calls, then family ties are
weakened and the support system that could sustain the prisoners reintegration is dam-
aged. If the family chooses to pay the phone charges, then those financial resources are
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Chapter 12 Trouble in the Family 517
not available for other purposes, thereby adding to the strain the household experiences.
In recent years, efforts to reform prison telephone policies have been successful in several
states.
7
Yet, while these reform efforts are under way, tens of thousands of families are
setting aside large portions of their budgets to pay inflated phone bills to stay in touch
with their imprisoned family members.
Fortunately, a number of communities have implemented programs designed to
overcome the barriers of distance, cost, and correctional practices that reduce contact
between prisoners and their families. For example, Hope House, an organization in
Washington, D.C., that connects incarcerated fathers with their children in the District,
hosts summer camps at federal prisons in North Carolina and Maryland where children
spend several hours a day for a week visiting with their fathers in prison. Hope House
has also created a teleconference hookup with federal prisons in North Carolina, Ohio,
and New Mexico so that children can go to a neighborhood site to talk to their fathers in
prison. In another instance, a Florida program called Reading and Family TiesFace
to Face also uses technology to overcome distance. Incarcerated mothers and their
children transmit live video recordings via the Internet. These sessions occur each week,
last an hour, and are available at no cost to the families. In addition, the U.S. Depart-
ment of Justice in 1992 initiated the Girl Scouts Beyond Bars program, the first mother-
daughter visitation program of its kind. Twice a month, more than 500 girls across the
country, much like other girls their age, participate in Girl Scout programs, but in this
program these Girl Scouts meet their mothers in prison. Finally, in Washington State,
the McNeil Island Correction Center has launched a program that teaches incarcerated
fathers the skills of active and involved parenting, encourages them to provide financial
support for their children, and facilitates events to bring prisoners together with their
families.
These programsand many others like themdemonstrate that, with a little cre-
ativity and a fair amount of commitment, corrections agencies can find ways to foster on-
going, constructive relationships between incarcerated parents and their children. It seems
particularly appropriate, in an era when technology has overcome geographical bound-
aries, to harness the Internet to bridge the divide between prisons and families. Yet the
precondition for undertaking such initiatives is the recognition that corrections agencies
must acknowledge responsibility for maintaining their prisoners familial relationships. If
these agencies embraced this challenge for all inmatesand were held accountable to the
public and elected officials for the results of these effortsthe quality of family life for
prisoners and their extended family networks would be demonstrably improved.
Notes
l. This is a single-day prevalence and does not take into account minor children whose parents were
previously incarcerated; it accounts only for those who are currently incarcerated in state and
federal prisons in 2002.
2. Public Law 105-89.
3. Figures do not total 100 percent because some prisoners had children living with multiple
caregivers.
4. Elizabeth Gaynes, conversation with the author, June 22, 2004. Cited with permission.
Ch-12.indd 517 7/8/2008 12:35:54 PM
518 Part IV Families in Society
5. The Michigan restrictions were challenged in court as unconstitutional because they violated the
Fourteenth Amendments guarantee of due process, the First Amendments guarantee of free as-
sociation, and the Eighth Amendments prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. The
Supreme Court upheld the regulations, finding that the restrictions bear a rational relation to the
[department of corrections] valid interests in maintaining internal security and protecting child
visitors from exposure to sexual or other misconduct or from accidental injury. . . . To reduce the
number of child visitors, a line must be drawn, and the categories set out by these regulations are
reasonable (Overton v. Bazzetta, 539 U.S. 94 [2003]).
6. The definition of who can visit or take children to visit is an even bigger problem in light of
cultural traditions, i.e., the extended family network and fictive kin arrangements that exist in
many African-American families. Family duties and responsibilities are shared among a group of
individuals; e.g., a young uncle may be expected to take on the fathers role and do things such as
take the child to a game or on a prison visit while the grandmother provides day-to-day care and
an aunt with a good job provides financial subsidies. Apparently this perspective was either not
presented or ignored as unimportant in the Michigan case ( Personal communication with Creasie
Finney Hairston, January 6, 2004).
7. Missouri has announced that its next contract with prison telephone systems will not include a
commission for the state. The Ohio prison system entered into a contract that will reduce the cost
of prison phone calls by 15 percent. California will reduce most prisoner phone calls by 25 per-
cent. In 2001, the Georgia Public Service Commission ordered telephone providers to reduce
the rates for prisoner calls from a $3.95 connection fee and a rate of $0.69 per minute to a $2.20
connection fee and a rate of $0.35 per minute. The new telephone contract for the Pennsylvania
Department of Corrections will reduce the average cost of a 15-minute telephone call by 30 per-
cent. And litigation has been initiated in a number of statesincluding Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky,
Ohio, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, South Dakota, Washington, Wisconsin, and the
District of Columbiato reduce the cost of prison phone calls and kickbacks to the state (eTc
Campaign 2003).
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520 Part IV Families in Society
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R E A DI NG 3 7
Unmarried with Children
Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas
Jen Burke, a white tenth-grade dropout who is 17 years old, lives with her stepmother,
her sister, and her 16-month-old son in a cramped but tidy row home in Philadelphias
beleaguered Kensington neighborhood. She is broke, on welfare, and struggling to com-
plete her GED. Wouldnt she and her son have been better off if she had finished high
school, found a job, and married her sons father first?
In 1950, when Jens grandmother came of age, only 1 in 20 American children was
born to an unmarried mother. Today, that rate is 1 in 3and they are usually born to
those least likely to be able to support a child on their own. In our book, Promises I Can
Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage, we discuss the lives of 162 white,
African American, and Puerto Rican low-income single mothers living in eight destitute
neighborhoods across Philadelphia and its poorest industrial suburb, Camden. We spent
five years chatting over kitchen tables and on front stoops, giving mothers like Jen the
opportunity to speak to the question so many affluent Americans ask about them: Why
do they have children while still young and unmarried when they will face such an uphill
struggle to support them?
ROMANCE AT LIGHTNING SPEED
Jen started having sex with her 20-year-old boyfriend Rick just before her 15th birthday.
A month and a half later, she was pregnant. I didnt want to get pregnant, she claims.
He wanted me to get pregnant. As soon as he met me, he wanted to have a kid with
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Chapter 12 Trouble in the Family 521
me, she explains. Though Jens college-bound suburban peers would be appalled by such
a declaration, on the streets of Jens neighborhood, it is something of a badge of honor.
All those other girls he was with, he didnt want to have a baby with any of them, Jen
boasts. I asked him, Why did you choose me to have a kid when you could have a kid
with any one of them? He was like, I want to have a kid with you. Looking back, Jen
says she now believes that the reason he wanted me to have a kid that early is so that
I didnt leave him.
In inner-city neighborhoods like Kensington, where child-bearing within marriage
has become rare, romantic relationships like Jen and Ricks proceed at lightning speed.
A young mans avowal, I want to have a baby by you, is often part of the courtship ritual
from the beginning. This is more than idle talk, as their first child is typically conceived
within a year from the time a couple begins kicking it. Yet while poor couples pil-
low talk often revolves around dreams of shared children, the news of a pregnancythe
first indelible sign of the huge changes to comeputs these still-new relationships into
overdrive. Suddenly, the would-be mother begins to scrutinize her mate as never before,
wondering whether he can get himself togetherfind a job, settle down, and become
a family manin time. Jen began pestering Rick to get a real job instead of picking up
day-labor jobs at nearby construction sites. She also wanted him to stop hanging out with
his neer-do-well friends, who had been getting him into serious trouble for more than
a decade. Most of all, she wanted Rick to shed what she calls his kiddie mentalityhis
habit of spending money on alcohol and drugs rather than recognizing his growing fi-
nancial obligations at home.
Rick did not try to deny paternity, as many would-be fathers do. Nor did he aban-
don or mistreat Jen, at least intentionally. But Rick, who had been in and out of juvenile
detention since he was 8 years old for everything from stealing cars to selling drugs,
proved unable to stay away from his unsavory friends. At the beginning of her seventh
month of pregnancy, an escapade that began as a drunken lark landed Rick in jail on a
carjacking charge. Jen moved back home with her stepmother, applied for welfare, and
spent the last two-and-a-half months of her pregnancy without Rick.
Rick sent penitent letters from jail. I thought he changed by the letters he wrote
me. I thought he changed a lot, she says. He used to tell me that he loved me when he
was in jail. . . . It was always gonna be me and the baby when he got out. Thus, when
Ricks alleged victim failed to appear to testify and he was released just days before Colins
birth, the couples reunion was a happy one. Often, the magic moment of childbirth calms
the troubled waters of such relationships. New parents typically make amends and resolve
to stay together for the sake of their child. When surveyed just after a childs birth, eight
in ten unmarried parents say they are still together, and most plan to stay together and
raise the child.
Promoting marriage among the poor has become the new war on poverty, Bush
style. And it is true that the correlation between marital status and child poverty is strong.
But poor single mothers already believe in marriage. Jen insists that she will walk down the
aisle one day, though she admits it might not be with Rick. And demographers still project
that more than seven in ten women who had a child outside of marriage will eventually
wed someone. First, though, Jen wants to get a good job, finish school, and get her son
out of Kensington.
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522 Part IV Families in Society
Most poor, unmarried mothers and fathers readily admit that bearing children
while poor and unmarried is not the ideal way to do things. Jen believes the best time to
become a mother is after youre out of school and you got a job, at least, when youre
like 21. . . . When youre ready to have kids, you should have everything ready, have your
house, have a job, so when that baby comes, the baby can have its own room. Yet given
their already limited economic prospects, the poor have little motivation to time their
births as precisely as their middle-class counterparts do. The dreams of young people
like Jen and Rick center on children at a time of life when their more affluent peers plan
for college and careers. Poor girls coming of age in the inner city value children highly,
anticipate them eagerly, and believe strongly that they are up to the job of mothering
even in difficult circumstances. Jen, for example, tells us, People outside the neighbor-
hood, theyre like, Youre 15! Youre pregnant? Im like, its not none of their business.
Im gonna be able to take care of my kid. They have nothing to worry about. Jen says
she has concluded that some people . . . are better at having kids at a younger age. . . .
I think its better for some people to have kids younger.
WHEN I BECAME A MOM
When we asked mothers like Jen what their lives would be like if they had not had children,
we expected them to express regret over foregone opportunities for school and careers.
Instead, most believe their children saved them. They describe their lives as spinning
out of control before becoming pregnantstruggles with parents and peers, wild, risky
behavior, depression, and school failure. Jen speaks to this poignantly. I was just real bad.
I hung with a real bad crowd. I was doing pills. I was really depressed. . . . I was drink-
ing. That was before I was pregnant. I think, she reflects, if I never had a baby or
anything, . . . I would still be doing the things I was doing. I would probably still be doing
drugs. Id probably still be drinking. Jen admits that when she first became pregnant, she
was angry that she couldnt be out no more. Couldnt be out with my friends. Couldnt
do nothing. Now, though, she says, Im glad I have a son . . . because I would still be
doing all that stuff.
Children offer poor youth like Jen a compelling sense of purpose. Jen paints a
before-and-after picture of her life that was common among the mothers we interviewed.
Before, I didnt have nobody to take care of. I didnt have nothing left to go home
for. . . . Now I have my son to take care of. I have him to go home for. . . . I dont have to
go buy weed or drugs with my money. I could buy my son stuff with my money! . . . I have
something to look up to now. Children also are a crucial source of relational intimacy,
a self-made community of care. After a nasty fight with Rick, Jen recalls, I was crying.
My son came in the room. He was hugging me. Hes 16 months and he was hugging me
with his little arms. He was really cute and happy, so I got happy. Thats one of the good
things. When youre sad, the babys always gonna be there for you no matter what.
Lately she has been thinking a lot about what her life was like back then, before the baby.
I thought about the stuff before I became a mom, what my life was like back then. I used
to see pictures of me, and I would hide in every picture. This baby did so much for me.
My son did a lot for me. He helped me a lot. Im thankful that I had my baby.
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Chapter 12 Trouble in the Family 523
Around the time of the birth, most unmarried parents claim they plan to get mar-
ried eventually. Rick did not propose marriage when Jens first child was born, but when
she conceived a second time, at 17, Rick informed his dad, Its time for me to get mar-
ried. Its time for me to straighten up. This is the one I wanna be with. I had a baby with
her, Im gonna have another baby with her. Yet despite their intentions, few of these
couples actually marry. Indeed, most break up well before their child enters preschool.
ID LIKE TO GET MARRIED, BUT . . .
The sharp decline in marriage in impoverished urban areas has led some to charge that
the poor have abandoned the marriage norm. Yet we found few who had given up on the
idea of marriage. But like their elite counterparts, disadvantaged women set a high finan-
cial bar for marriage. For the poor, marriage has become an elusive goalone they feel
ought to be reserved for those who can support a white picket fence lifestyle: a mort-
gage on a modest row home, a car and some furniture, some savings in the bank, and
enough money left over to pay for a decent wedding. Jens views on marriage provide
a perfect case in point. If I was gonna get married, I would want to be married like my
Aunt Nancy and my Uncle Pat. They live in the mountains. She has a job. My Uncle
Pat is a state trooper; he has lots of money. They live in the [ Poconos]. Its real nice out
there. Her kids go to Catholic school. . . . Thats the kind of life I would want to have.
If I get married, I would have a life like [theirs]. She adds, And I would wanna have a
big wedding, a real nice wedding.
Unlike the women of their mothers and grandmothers generations, young women
like Jen are not merely content to rely on a mans earnings. Instead, they insist on being
economically set in their own right before taking marriage vows. This is partly because
they want a partnership of equals and they believe money buys say-so in a relationship.
Jen explains, Im not gonna just get into marrying him and not have my own house!
Not have a job! I still wanna do a lot of things before I get married. He [already] tells me
I cant do nothing. I cant go out. Whats gonna happen when I marry him? Hes gonna
say he owns me!
Economic independence is also insurance against a marriage gone bad. Jen explains,
I want to have everything ready, in case something goes wrong. . . . If we got a divorce,
that would be my house. I bought that house, he cant kick me out or he cant take my
kids from me. Thats what I want in case that ever happens. I know a lot of people that
happened to. I dont want it to happen to me. These statements reveal that despite her
desire to marry, Ricks role in the familys future is provisional at best. We get along,
but we fight a lot. If hes there, hes there, but if hes not, thats why I want a job . . . a job
with computers . . . so I could afford my kids, could afford the house. . . . I dont want to
be living off him. I want my kids to be living off me.
Why is Jen, who describes Rick as the love of my life, so insistent on planning an
exit strategy before she is willing to take the vows she firmly believes ought to last for-
ever? If love is so sure, why does mistrust seem so palpable and strong? In relationships
among poor couples like Jen and Rick, mistrust is often spawned by chronic violence
and infidelity, drug and alcohol abuse, criminal activity, and the threat of imprisonment.
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524 Part IV Families in Society
In these tarnished corners of urban America, the stigma of a failed marriage is far worse
than an out-of-wedlock birth. New mothers like Jen feel they must test the relationship
over three, four, even five years time. This is the only way, they believe, to insure that
their marriages will last.
Trust has been an enormous issue in Jens relationship with Rick. My son was
born December 23rd, and [Rick] started cheating on me again . . . in March. He started
cheating on me with some girlAmanda. . . . Then it was another girl, another girl,
another girl after. I didnt wanna believe it. My friends would come up to me and be like,
Oh yeah, your boyfriends cheating on you with this person. I wouldnt believe it. . . .
I would see him with them. He used to have hickies. He used to make up some excuse
that he was drunkthat was always his excuse for everything. Things finally came to a
head when Rick got another girl pregnant. For a while, I forgave him for everything.
Now, I dont forgive him for nothing. Now we begin to understand the source of Jens
hesitancy. He wants me to marry him, [but] Im not really sure. . . . If I cant trust him,
I cant marry him, cause we would get a divorce. If youre gonna get married, youre
supposed to be faithful! she insists. To Jen and her peers, the worst thing that could
happen is to get married just to get divorced.
Given the economic challenges and often perilously low quality of the romantic
relationships among unmarried parents, poor women may be right to be cautious about
marriage. Five years after we first spoke with her, we met with Jen again. We learned that
Jens second pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. We also learned that Rick was out of the
pictureapparently for good. You know that bar [down the street?] It happened in that
bar. . . . They were in the bar, and this guy was like badmouthing [ Ricks friend] Mikey,
talking stuff to him or whatever. So Rick had to go get involved in it and start with this
guy. . . . Then he goes outside and fights the guy [and] the guy dies of head trauma. They
were all on drugs, they were all drinking, and things just got out of control, and thats
what happened. He got fourteen to thirty years.
THESE ARE CARDS I DEALT MYSELF
Jen stuck with Rick for the first two and a half years of his prison sentence, but when
another girls name replaced her own on the visitors list, Jen decided she was finished
with him once and for all. Readers might be asking what Jen ever saw in a man like Rick.
But Jen and Rick operate in a partner market where the better-off men go to the better-
off women. The only way for someone like Jen to forge a satisfying relationship with a
man is to find a diamond in the rough or improve her own economic position so that she
can realistically compete for more upwardly mobile partners, which is what Jen is trying
to do now. Theres this kid, Donny, he works at my job. He works on C shift. Hes a
supervisor! Hes funny, three years older, and hes not a geek or anything, but hes not a
real preppy good boy either. But hes not [a player like Rick] and them. He has a job, you
know, so thats good. He doesnt do drugs or anything. And he asked my dad if he could
take me out!
These days, there is a new air of determination, even pride, about Jen. The aimless
high school dropout pulls ten-hour shifts entering data at a warehouse distribution center
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Chapter 12 Trouble in the Family 525
Monday through Thursday. She has held the job for three years, and her aptitude and
hard work have earned her a series of raises. Her current salary is higher than anyone in
her household commands$10.25 per hour, and she now gets two weeks of paid vaca-
tion, four personal days, 60 hours of sick time, and medical benefits. She has saved up
the necessary $400 in tuition for a high school completion program that offers evening
and weekend classes. Now all that stands between her and a diploma is a passing grade
in mathematics, her least favorite subject. My plan is to start college in January. [ This
month] I take my math test . . . so I can get my diploma, she confides.
Jen clearly sees how her life has improved since Ricks dramatic exit from the
scene. Thats when I really started [to get better] because I didnt have to worry about
what he was doing, didnt have to worry about him cheating on me, all this stuff. [It
was] then I realized that I had to do what I had to do to take care of my son. . . . When
he was there, I think that my whole life revolved around him, you know, so I always
messed up somehow because I was so busy worrying about what he was doing. Like
I would leave the [GED] programs I was in just to go home and see what he was doing.
My mind was never concentrating. Now, she says, a lot of people in my family look
up to me now, because all my sisters dropped out from school, you know, nobody
went back to school. I went back to school, you know? . . . I went back to school, and
I plan to go to college, and a lot of people look up to me for that, you know? So that
makes me happy . . . because five years ago nobody looked up to me. I was just like
everybody else.
Yet the journey has not been easy. Being a young mom, being 15, its hard, hard,
hard, you know. She says, I have no life. . . . I work from 6:30 in the morning until 5:00
at night. I leave here at 5:30 in the morning. I dont get home until about 6:00 at night.
Yet she measures her worth as a mother by the fact that she has managed to provide
for her son largely on her own. I dont depend on nobody. I might live with my dad
and them, but I dont depend on them, you know. She continues, There [used to] be
days when Id be so stressed out, like, I cant do this! And I would just cry and cry and
cry. . . . Then I look at Colin, and hell be sleeping, and Ill just look at him and think
I dont have no [reason to feel sorry for myself]. The cards I have Ive dealt myself so
I have to deal with it now. Im older. I cant change anything. Hes my responsibilityhes
nobody elses but mineso I have to deal with that.
Becoming a mother transformed Jens point of view on just about everything. She
says, I thought hanging on the corner drinking, getting highI thought that was a
good life, and I thought I could live that way for eternity, like sitting out with my friends.
But its not as fun once you have your own kid. . . . I think it changes [you]. I think,
Would I want Colin to do that? Would I want my son to be like that . . . ? It was fun
to me but its not fun anymore. Half the people I hung with are either . . . Some have
died from drug overdoses, some are in jail, and some people are just out there living
the same life that they always lived, and they dont look really good. They look really
bad. In the end, Jen believes, Colins birth has brought far more good into her life than
bad. I know 1 could have waited [to have a child], but in a way I think Colins the best
thing that could have happened to me. . . . So I think I had my son for a purpose be-
cause I think Colin changed my life. He saved my life, really. My whole life revolves
around Colin!
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526 Part IV Families in Society
PROMISES I CAN KEEP
There are unique themes in Jens storymost fathers are only one or two, not five years
older than the mothers of their children, and few fathers have as many glaring problems
as Rickbut we heard most of these themes repeatedly in the stories of the 161 other
poor, single mothers we came to know. Notably, poor women do not reject marriage; they
revere it. Indeed, it is the conviction that marriage is forever that makes them think that
divorce is worse than having a baby outside of marriage. Their children, far from being
liabilities, provide crucial social-psychological resourcesa strong sense of purpose and
a profound source of intimacy. Jen and the other mothers we came to know are coming
of age in an America that is profoundly unequalwhere the gap between rich and poor
continues to grow. This economic reality has convinced them that they have little to lose
and, perhaps, something to gain by a seemingly ill-timed birth.
The lesson one draws from stories like Jens is quite simple: Until poor young
women have more access to jobs that lead to financial independenceuntil there is rea-
son to hope for the rewarding life pathways that their privileged peers pursuethe poor
will continue to have children far sooner than most Americans think they should, while
still deferring marriage. Marital standards have risen for all Americans, and the poor want
the same things that everyone now wants out of marriage. The poor want to marry too,
but they insist on marrying well. This, in their view, is the only way to avoid an almost
certain divorce. Like Jen, they are simply not willing to make promises they are not sure
they can keep.
Recommended Resources
Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas. Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage
( University of California Press, 2005). An account of how low-income women make sense of their
choices about marriage and motherhood.
Christina Gibson, Kathryn Edin, and Sara McLanahan. High Hopes but Even Higher Expectations:
A Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis of the Marriage Plans of Unmarried Couples Who Are
New Parents. Working Paper 03-06-FF, Center for Research on Child Wellbeing, Princeton
University, 2004. Online at http://crcw.princeton.edu/workingpapers/ WP03-06-FF-Gibson.pdf.
The authors examine the rising expectations for marriage among unmarried parents.
Sharon Hays. Flat Broke with Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform (Oxford University Press,
2003). How welfare reform has affected the lives of poor moms.
Annette Lareau. Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life ( University of California Press, 2003).
A fascinating discussion of different childrearing strategies among low-income, working-class,
and middle-class parents.
Timothy J. Nelson, Susan Clampet-Lundquist, and Kathryn Edin. Fragile Fatherhood: How Low-
Income, Non-Custodial Fathers in Philadelphia Talk About Their Families. In The Handbook
of Father Involvement: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Catherine Tamis-LeMonda and Natasha
Cabrera ( Lawrence Earlbaum Associates, 2002). What poor, single men think about fatherhood.
Ch-12.indd 526 7/8/2008 12:35:55 PM
Chapter 12 Trouble in the Family 527
R E A DI NG 3 8
Domestic Violence: The Intersection
of Gender and Control
Michael P. Johnson
[F]or over thirty years there have been reputable social scientists who have been willing
to argue that women are as violent in intimate relationships as are men, and that domestic
violence has nothing to do with gender. Suzanne Steinmetzs controversial paper on the
battered husband syndrome started this line of argument with the following conclusion:
An examination of empirical data [from a 1975 general survey] on wives use of physical
violence on their husbands suggests that husband-beating constitutes a sizable proportion
of marital violence (Steinmetz 197778, p. 501). A paper published in December 2005
provides a contemporary example (among many) of the same argument: These consid-
erations suggest the need for a broadening of perspective in the field of domestic violence
away from the view that domestic violence is usually a gender issue involving male perpe-
trators and female victims. . . . ( Fergusson, Horwood, and Ridder 2005, 1116).
Actually, despite thirty years of sometimes acrimonious debate, the research evi-
dence does clearly indicate that what we typically think of as domestic violence is primar-
ily male-perpetrated and most definitely a gender issue. However, this conclusion is clear
only if one breaks out of the standard assumption that intimate partner violence is a uni-
tary phenomenon. Once one makes some basic distinctions among types of intimate part-
ner violence, the confusion that characterizes this literature melts away ( Johnson 2005).
The first major section of this [reading] will demonstrate how attention to distinc-
tions among types of intimate partner violence makes sense of ostensibly contradictory
data regarding mens and womens violence in intimate relationships. The second section
describes the basic structure of the types of intimate partner violence that most people
associate with the term domestic violence, violence that is associated with coercive
control, i.e., one partners attempt to take general control over the other. The third sec-
tion presents a theory of domestic violence that is focused on the relationship between
gender and coercive control. The fourth section addresses the role of gender in the type
of intimate partner violence that does not involve an attempt to take general control over
ones partner. The final section of the [reading] deals with some of the intervention and
policy implications of what we know about these types of intimate partner violence and
their relationship to gender.
GENDER AND THE PERPETRATION
OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF INTIMATE
PARTNER VIOLENCE
How is it that 30 years of social science research on domestic violence has not produced a
definitive answer to the question of whether or not men and women are equally involved
Ch-12.indd 527 7/8/2008 12:35:55 PM
528 Part IV Families in Society
in intimate partner violence? The reason is that the field has been caught up in a de-
bate about the nature of intimate partner violenceas if it were a unitary phenomenon.
Those who had reason to believe that intimate partner violence was perpetrated equally
by both men and women cited evidence from large-scale survey research that showed
rough gender symmetry in intimate partner violence. Those who believed that intimate
partner violence was perpetrated almost entirely by men against their female partners
cited contrary evidence from studies carried out in hospital emergency rooms, police
agencies, divorce courts, and womens shelters. And each group argued that the others
evidence was biased. However, both groups can be right if (a) there are multiple forms
of intimate partner violence, (b) some of the types are gender-symmetric and some are
not, and (c) general surveys are biased in favor of the gender-symmetric types and agency
studies are biased in favor of the asymmetric types. There is considerable evidence that
this is in fact the case. There are three major types of intimate partner violence, they are
not equally represented in the different types of samples studied by social scientists, and
they differ dramatically in terms of gender asymmetry.
The most important distinctions among types of intimate partner violence have to
do with the role of coercive control as a context for violence. Two of the three major
types of intimate partner violence involve general power and control issues. Intimate ter-
rorism is an attempt to take general control over ones partner; violent resistance is the use
of violence in response to such an attempt. Situational couple violence, the third type of
intimate partner violence, does not involve an attempt to take general control on the part
of either partner.
Although there were always clues to be found in the domestic violence literature
of the 1970s and 1980s that there was more than one type of intimate partner violence
( Johnson 1995), researchers have only recently begun to do research specifically focused
on these distinctions. In order to make these distinctions, researchers ask questions not
only about the violence itself, but also about non-violent control tactics. They then use
the answers to those questions to distinguish between violence that is embedded in a
general pattern of power and control (intimate terrorism and violent resistance) and
violence that is not (situational couple violence). The specific measures used have varied
from study to study, but the findings have been quite consistent.
Studies in both the United States and England have shown that the intimate part-
ner violence in general surveys is heavily biased in favor of situational couple violence,
while the intimate partner violence in agency samples is biased in favor of male intimate
terrorism and female violent resistance (Graham-Kevan and Archer 2003a, 2003b; John-
son 2001). For example, Johnson (2001), using data from a 1970s Pittsburgh survey,
found that situational couple violence comprised 89% of the male violence in the gen-
eral survey sample, 29% in a court sample, and only 19% in the shelter sample. Why is
this? The bias in general surveys comes from two sources: (a) the reality that situational
couple violence is much more common than intimate terrorism and violent resistance,
and (b) the biasing effect of the fact that as many as 40% of individuals approached in
general surveys refuse to participate ( Johnson 1995). Potential respondents who are ter-
rorizing their partners are unlikely to agree to participate in a survey about family life
for fear that they will be exposed. Their violently resisting partners are unlikely to agree
out of fear of being punished by their intimate terrorist partner for their participation
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Chapter 12 Trouble in the Family 529
in such a survey. Thus, general surveys include very little intimate terrorism or violent
resistance. In contrast with general surveys, agency samples are biased because intimate
terrorism is more likely than situational couple violence to involve the sort of frequent
and severe violence that comes to the attention of shelters, hospitals, the courts, and
the police. Thus, agency samples include mostly cases of intimate terrorism and violent
resistance.
Data from these studies also clearly demonstrate a strong relationship between gen-
der and the different types of intimate partner violence. For example, in the Pittsburgh
study intimate terrorism is almost entirely male-perpetrated (97%), and violent resis-
tance is therefore female-perpetrated (96%), while situational couple violence is roughly
gender-symmetric (56% male, 44% female).
When one puts together these findings regarding gender, type of intimate partner
violence, and sample biases, the history of dissension regarding the gender symmetry of
intimate partner violence is explained. Family violence theorists who have argued that
domestic violence is gender-symmetric have relied largely on general surveys, which are
biased heavily in favor of situational couple violence, and they have found rough gender
symmetry in their research, leading them to the false conclusion that domestic violence is
not about gender. Feminist researchers, in contrast, have relied largely on agency samples
that are heavily biased in favor of intimate terrorism (and violent resistance), showing
a heavily gendered pattern with men as the primary perpetrators of intimate terrorism,
women sometimes resisting with violence. I would argue that intimate terrorism is what
most people mean when they use the term domestic violence, and it is indeed primarily
perpetrated by men against their female partners.
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE ( INTIMATE
TERRORISM ) AS GENDERED VIOLENCE
In intimate terrorism, violence is one control tactic in an array of tactics that are deployed
in an attempt to take general control over ones partner. The control sought in intimate
terrorism is general and long-term. Although each particular act of intimate violence may
appear to have any number of short-term, specific goals, it is embedded in a larger pat-
tern of power and control that permeates the relationship. It is this type of intimate
partner violence that comes to mind for most people when they hear the term domestic
violence, and it is this type that receives the most media attention, in movies such as
Sleeping with the Enemy and Enough, in television talk shows and documentaries
that deal with intimate partner violence, and in newspaper and magazine articles that ad-
dress the problem of domestic violence.
Figure 38.1 is a widely used graphical representation of such partner violence de-
ployed in the service of general control ( Pence and Paymar 1993). A brief tour of the wheel,
starting with economic abuse and moving through the other forms of control, might help
to capture what Catherine Kirkwood calls a web of abuse ( Kirkwood 1993).
It is not unusual for an intimate terrorist to deprive his
1
partner of control over
economic resources. He controls all the money. She is allowed no bank account and no
Ch-12.indd 529 7/8/2008 12:35:55 PM
530 Part IV Families in Society
credit cards. If she works for wages, she has to turn over her paychecks to him. He keeps
all the cash and she has to ask him for money when she needs to buy groceries or clothes
for herself or their children. He may require a precise accounting of every penny, de-
manding to see the grocery bill and making sure she returns every bit of the change.
This economic abuse may be justified through the next form of control, male privi-
lege: I am the man of the house, the head of the household, the king in my castle. Of
course, this use of male privilege can cover everything. As the man of the house, his word
is law. He doesnt have to explain. She is to do his bidding without question. And dont
talk back. All of this holds even more rigidly in public, where he is not to be humiliated
by back-talk from his woman.
How does he use the children to support his control? First of all, they too know he
is the boss. He makes it clear that he controls not only them, but their mother as well. He
may use them to back him up, to make her humiliation more complete by forcing them
into the room to assist him as he confronts her, asking them if he isnt right, and making
them support his control of her. He may even have convinced them that he should be in
charge, that he does know what is best (father knows best), and that she is incompetent
or lazy or immoral. In addition, he may use her attachment to the children as a means of
FIGURE 38.1 Domestic Violence/Intimate Terrorism
Source: Adapted from Pence & Paymar, 1993.
P
H
Y
S
IC
A
L
V
IO
LENCE
S
E
X
U
A
L

P
H
Y
S
I
C
A
L
V
IO
LENC
E
S
E
X
U
A
L

Power
and
Control
Coercion
and Threats
Economic
Abuse
Emotional
Abuse
Male
Privilege
Isolation
Intimidation
Children
Minimizing,
Denying, and
Blaming
Ch-12.indd 530 7/8/2008 12:35:55 PM
Chapter 12 Trouble in the Family 531
control, by threatening to take them away from her or hurt them if she isnt a good wife
and mother. Of course, being a good wife and mother means doing as he says.
Then theres isolation. He keeps her away from everyone else. He makes himself
her only source of information, of affection, of money, of everything. In a rural setting
he might be able to literally isolate her, moving to a house trailer in the woods, with one
car that he controls, no phone, keeping her there alone. In an urban setting, or if he
needs her to go out to work, he can isolate her less literally, by driving away her friends
and relatives and intimidating the people at work, so that she has no one to talk to about
whats happening to her.
When shes completely isolated, and what he tells her about herself is all she ever
hears about herself, he can tell her over and over again that shes worthlesshumiliating
her, demeaning her, emotionally abusing her. Shes ugly, stupid, a slut, a lousy wife, an
incompetent mother. She only manages to survive because he takes care of her. Shed be
helpless without him. And who else is there to tell her otherwise? Maybe he can even
convince her that she cant live without him.
If she resists, he can intimidate her. Show her what might happen if she doesnt
behave. Scream at her. Swear at her. Let her see his rage. Smash things. Or maybe a little
cold viciousness will make his point. Kick her cat. Hang her dog. That ought to make
her think twice before she decides not to do as he says. Or threaten her. Threaten to hit
her, or to beat her, or to pull her hair out, or to burn her. Or tell her hell kill her, and
maybe the kids too.
Pull all these means of control together, or even a few of them, and the abuser
entraps and enslaves his partner in a web of control. If she manages to thwart one means
of control, there are others at his disposal. Wherever she turns, there is another way he
can control her. She is ensnared by multiple strands. She cant seem to escapeshe is
trapped. But with the addition of violence there is more to power and control than en-
trapment. There is terror.
For this reason the diagram does not include the violence as just another means of
control, another spoke in the wheel. The violence is depicted, rather, as the rim of the
wheel, holding all the spokes together. When violence is added to such a pattern of power
and control, the abuse becomes much more than the sum of its parts. The ostensibly
nonviolent tactics that accompany that violence take on a new, powerful, and frighten-
ing meaningcontrolling the victim not only through their own specific constraints,
but also through their association with the knowledge that her partner will do anything
to maintain control of the relationship, even attack her physically. Most obviously, the
threats and intimidation are clearly more than idle threats if he has beaten her before.
But even his request to see the grocery receipts becomes a warning if he has put her
into the hospital this year. His calling her a stupid slut may feel like the beginning of a
vicious physical attack. As battered women often report, All he had to do was look at me
that way, and Id jump. What is for most of us the safest place in our worldhomeis
for her a place of constant fear.
Violent Resistance
What is a woman to do when she finds herself terrorized in her own home? At some
point, most women in such relationships do fight back physically. For some, this is an
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532 Part IV Families in Society
instinctive reaction to being attacked, and it happens at the first blowalmost without
thought. For others, it doesnt happen until it seems he is going to continue to assault her
repeatedly if she doesnt do something to stop him. For most women, the size difference
between them and their male partner ensures that violent resistance wont help, and may
make things worse, so they turn to other means of coping. For a few, eventually it seems
that the only way out is to kill their partner.
Violence in the face of intimate terrorism may arise from any of a variety of mo-
tives. She may (at least at first) believe that she can defend herself, that her violent resis-
tance will keep him from attacking her further. That may mean that she thinks she can
stop him right now, in the midst of an attack, or it may mean that she thinks that if she
fights back often enough he will eventually decide to stop attacking her physically. Even
if she doesnt think she can stop him, she may feel that he shouldnt be allowed to attack
her without being hurt himself. This desire to hurt him in return even if it wont stop
him can be a form of communication ( What youre doing isnt right and Im going to
fight back as hard as I can) or it may be a form of retaliation or payback, along the lines
of Hes not going to do that without paying some price for it. In a few cases, she may
be after serious retaliation, attacking him when he is least expecting it and doing her best
to do serious damage, even killing him. But there is sometimes another motive for such
premeditated attacksescape. Sometimes, after years of abuse and entrapment, a victim
of intimate terrorism may feel that the only way she can escape from this horror is to kill
her tormenter ( Walker 1989).
It is clear that most women who are faced with intimate terrorism do escape from
it. For example, Campbells research finds that within two and a half years two thirds
of women facing intimate terrorism are no longer in violent relationships (Camp-
bell et al. 1998). The evidence also indicates, however, that escaping safely from such
relationships can take time. Intimate terrorists entrap their partners using the same
tactics they use to control them. If a woman has been so psychologically abused that
she believes that her partner really can take her children away from her, how can she
leave and abandon them to him? If a woman has no access to money or a job, how can
she feed and clothe herself and her children when they escape? If she is monitored
relentlessly and isolated from others, how can she get away and where can she go? If
her partner has threatened to kill her and the children if she tries to leave, how can
she leave safely?
What women in such situations typically do is to gradually gather the resources
they need to escape safely, sometimes doing this on their own, more often seeking help
from others. They hide away small amounts of money until they have enough to get
a small start, and they start working or going to school to develop a viable source of
income, and they make plans with friends or a shelter to hide them during the period
immediately after their escape, and they involve the police and courts for protection,
and they join support groups to help them with their transition to independence and the
emotional trauma produced by the psychological abuse, and on and on. The process is
not a simple one. Catherine Kirkwood ( Kirkwood 1993) describes it as a spiral in which
women leave multiple times, only to return, but each time garnering information and
resources that will eventually allow them to leave for good. The process is complicated
not only by the intimate terrorists commitment to keeping her, but also by the gender
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Chapter 12 Trouble in the Family 533
structure of institutions that may make it more difficult to leave than it would be in a
more equitable society.
A GENDER THEORY OF DOMESTIC
VIOLENCE ( INTIMATE TERRORISM )
Let me begin with a reminder that the discussion above indicates that in heterosexual
relationships the strongest correlate of type of intimate partner violence is gender. In
heterosexual relationships intimate terrorism is perpetrated almost entirely by men and,
of course, the violent resistance to it is from their female partners. The gendering of situ-
ational couple violence is less clear and will be addressed in the next section.
To a sociologist, the tremendous gender imbalance in the perpetration of intimate
terrorism suggests important social structural causes that go beyond simple differences
between men and women. For over two decades now, feminist sociologists have argued
that gender must be understood as an institution, not merely an individual characteristic.
Although some gender theorists have couched this argument in terms of rejecting gender
as an individual characteristic in favor of focusing at the situational or institutional level
of analysis (e.g., Ferree 1990), I prefer a version of gender theory that incorporates gen-
der at all levels of social organization, from the individual level of sex differences in iden-
tities and attitudes, and even physical differences, through the situational enforcement of
gender in social interaction to the gender structure of organizational and societal con-
texts ( Ferree, Lorber, and Hess 2000; Risman 2004). The application of gender theory
to intimate terrorism that follows will start with individual sex differences and work up
to the gender structure of the economy, the family, and the criminal justice system.
Why is intimate terrorism (and violent resistance to it) so clearly a matter of men
abusing women in heterosexual relationships? First, gender affects the use of violence
to control ones partner in heterosexual relationships simply because of average sex dif-
ferences in size and strength. The use of violence as one tactic in an attempt to exercise
general control over ones partner requires more than the willingness to do violence. It
requires a credible threat of a damaging violent response to noncompliance. Such a threat
is, of course, more credible coming from a man than a woman simply because of the size
difference in most heterosexual couples. Furthermore, still at the level of individual dif-
ferences but focusing on gender socialization rather than physical differences, individual
attitudes toward violence and experience with violence make such threats more likely and
more credible from a man than from a woman. Put simply, the exercise of violence is
more likely to be a part of boys and mens experience than girls and womensin sports,
fantasy play, and real-life conflict.
Second, individual misogyny and gender traditionalism are clearly implicated in
intimate terrorism. Although critics of feminist theory often claim that there is no rela-
tionship between attitudes towards women and domestic violence ( Felson 2002, p. 106),
the research that has addressed this question in fact clearly supports the position that
individual mens attitudes toward women affect the likelihood that they will be involved
in intimate terrorism. One example is Holtzworth-Munroes work that shows that both
of her two groups of intimate terrorists are more hostile toward women than are either
Ch-12.indd 533 7/8/2008 12:35:56 PM
534 Part IV Families in Society
non-violent men or men involved in situational couple violence (e.g., Holtzworth-
Munroe et al. 2000). More generally, Sugarman and Frankel (1996) conducted a thor-
ough review of the research on this question, using a statistical technique that allowed
them to combine the findings of all of the studies that had been published up to that time.
While Holtzworth-Munroe demonstrated an effect of hostility toward women, Sugarman
and Frankel focused on the effects of mens attitudes toward the role of women in social
life, and found that traditional men were more likely to be involved in attacks on their
partners than were non-traditional men. The details of the Sugarman and Frankel review
provide further support for the important role of attitudes toward women in intimate
terrorism. They found that mens attitudes toward women were much more strongly re-
lated to violence in studies using samples that were dominated by intimate terrorism than
in studies that were dominated by situational couple violence. Of course, this is exactly
what a feminist theory of domestic violence would predict. It is intimate terrorism that
involves the attempt to control ones partner, an undertaking supported by traditional or
hostile attitudes toward women.
Third, at the level of social interaction rather than individual attitudes, our cultures
of masculinity and femininity ensure that whatever the level of violence, its meaning
will differ greatly depending upon the gender of the perpetrator (Straus 1999). When a
woman slaps her husband in the heat of an argument, it is unlikely to be interpreted by
him as a serious attempt to do him physical harm. In fact, it is likely to be seen as a quaint
form of feminine communication. Womens violence is taken less seriously, is less likely
to produce fear, and is therefore less likely either to be intended as a control tactic or to
be successful as one (Swan and Snow 2002).
Fourth, general social norms regarding intimate heterosexual partnerships, al-
though certainly in the midst of considerable historical change, are heavily gendered
and rooted in a patriarchal heterosexual model that validates mens power ( Dobash and
Dobash 1979, 1992; Yll and Bograd 1988). These norms affect the internal function-
ing of all relationships, regardless of the individual attitudes of the partners, because
couples social networks are often involved in shaping the internal workings of personal
relationships ( Klein and Milardo 2000). When those networks support a male-dominant
style of marriage or a view of marriage as a commitment for better or worse, they can
contribute to the entrapment of women in abusive relationships.
Finally, the gendering of the broader social context within which the relationship is
embedded affects the resources the partners can draw upon to shape the relationship and
to cope with or escape from the violence. For example, the gender gap in wages can cre-
ate an economic dependency that enhances mens control over women and contributes
to womens entrapment in abusive relationships. The societal assignment of caregiving
responsibilities primarily to women further contributes to this economic dependency,
placing women in a subordinate position within the family, and creating a context in
which institutions such as the church that could be a source of support for abused women
instead encourage them to stay in abusive relationshipsfor the sake of the children or
for the sake of the marriage. Then there is the criminal justice system, heavily dominated
by men, and involving a culture of masculinity that has not always been responsive to
the problems of women experiencing intimate terrorism, which was often treated as if it
were situational couple violence ( Buzawa 2003). On a more positive note, there have
been major changes in all of these systems as a result of the womens movement in
Ch-12.indd 534 7/8/2008 12:35:56 PM
Chapter 12 Trouble in the Family 535
general, and the battered womens movement in particular ( Dobash and Dobash 1992).
These changes are probably a major source of the recent dramatic decline in non-fatal
intimate partner violence against women and fatal intimate partner violence against men
in the United States ( Rennison 2003).
2
WHAT ABOUT SITUATIONAL
COUPLE VIOLENCE?
It is not surprising that the institution of gender, in which male domination is a central
element, is implicated in the structure of intimate terrorism, which is about coercive
control. In contrast, situational couple violence, which is the most common type of part-
ner violence, does not involve an attempt on the part of one partner to gain general con-
trol over the other, and by some criteria it appears to be more gender-symmetric. The
violence is situationally-provoked, as the tensions or emotions of a particular encounter
lead one or both of the partners to resort to violence. Intimate relationships inevitably
involve conflicts, and in some relationships one or more of those conflicts turns into an
argument that escalates into violence. The violence may be minor and singular, with one
encounter at some point in the relationship escalating to the level that someone pushes
or slaps the other, is immediately remorseful, apologizes and never does it again. Or the
violence could be a chronic problem, with one or both partners frequently resorting to
violence, minor or severe, even homicidal. In general, there is considerable variability
in the nature of situational couple violence, a variability that has not yet been explored
adequately enough to allow us to make confident statements about its causes.
Nevertheless, some researchers have made confident statements about one aspect of
situational couple violenceits gender symmetry, a symmetry that in my view is mythi-
cal. The myth of gender symmetry in situational couple violence has been supported
by the widespread use of a particularly meaningless measure of symmetry (incidence).
Respondents in a survey are presented with a list of violent behaviors ranging from a
push or a slap to an attack with a weapon. They are then asked to report how often they
have committed each violent act against their partner (or their partner against them)
in the previous twelve months. Incidence of partner violence is then defined as the
percentage of a group (e.g., men or women) who have committed the act (or some set
of the acts, often identified as mild or severe violent acts) at least once in the previous
twelve months. The much touted gender symmetry of situational couple violence is gen-
der symmetry only [in] this narrow sense. For example, in the 1975 National Survey of
Family Violence that initiated the gender symmetry debate 13% of women and 11% of
men had committed at least one of the acts listed in the Conflict Tactics Scales (Stein-
metz 197778). However, by any sensible measure of the nature of the violence, such as
the specific acts engaged in, the injuries produced, the frequency of the violence, or the
production of fear in ones partner, intimate partner violence (even situational couple vio-
lence) is not gender-symmetric (Archer 2000; Brush 1990; Hamberger and Guse 2002;
Johnson 1999; Morse 1995; Tjaden and Thoennes 2000).
Thus, although situational couple violence may not be as gendered as intimate ter-
rorism and violent resistance which both involve the patriarchal norms regarding domi-
nance that still influence heterosexual relationships, many of the gender factors discussed
Ch-12.indd 535 7/8/2008 12:35:56 PM
536 Part IV Families in Society
above are also implicated in the patterning of situational couple violence. For example,
in situational couple violence the likelihood of injury or fear is influenced by size dif-
ferences. A slap from a woman is still perceived as an entirely different act than is one
from a man. Most importantly, our cultures of masculinity and femininity contribute to
the couple communication problems that are often associated with situational couple
violence ( Johnson in press).
POLICY AND INTERVENTION
Different problems require different solutions. The fact that there is more than one type
of intimate partner violence means that to some extent we must tailor our policies and
intervention strategies to the specific characteristics of each of the types. Although situ-
ational couple violence is much more common than intimate terrorism (surveys indicate
that one out of every eight married couples in the U.S. experiences some form of situ-
ational couple violence each year), most of our policies and interventions are designed to
address intimate terrorism rather than situational couple violence. This focus on intimate
terrorism has developed for a number of reasons: (a) the womens movement has been
extremely effective in educating both the public and the criminal justice system about the
nature of intimate terrorism, ( b) intimate terrorism is more likely to come to the atten-
tion of agencies because it so often involves chronic and /or severe violence and because
victims of intimate terrorism are more likely than victims of situational couple violence to
need help in order to cope with the violence or to escape from it, and (c) the significant
percentage of partner homicides that are a product of intimate terrorism emphasize the
need for effective intervention in such situations.
Although conservative mens groups have decried this dominant focus on intimate
terrorism because it ignores the violence of women (which they do not acknowledge is al-
most always either violent resistance or situational couple violence), the safest approach to
intervention is to start with the assumption that every case of intimate partner violence in-
volves intimate terrorism. The reason is that interventions for situational couple violence
(such as couples counseling) are likely to put a victim of intimate terrorism at considerable
risk. If we were to do as one recent article suggested, and recommend counseling that
would help couples to work together to harmonize their relationships ( Fergusson, Hor-
wood, and Ridder 2005), we would be asking women who are terrorized by their partners
to go into a counseling situation that calls for honesty, encouraging victims to tell the truth
to a partner who in many cases has beaten them severely in response to criticism, and who
might well murder them in response to their attempt to harmonize ( Johnson 2005).
Thus, our understanding of the differences among these types of intimate partner
violence suggests that the best strategy in individual cases is to assume intimate terror-
ism and to work closely with the victim only (not the couple) until it is absolutely clear
that the violence is situational couple violence. In the shelter movement, which for the
most part works on a feminist empowerment model, this means working with the victim
on coping with the violence within the relationship, providing safe temporary shelter,
involving the courts through arrest or protection from abuse orders, developing a safety
plan for the immediate future, andif the victim so wishesdeveloping the strategies
and resources needed to escape from the relationship safely.
Ch-12.indd 536 7/8/2008 12:35:56 PM
Chapter 12 Trouble in the Family 537
How can we as a society work to reduce the incidence of intimate partner violence?
First, we need to send the message that violence against intimate partners will not be
tolerated. Arrest and prosecution would send that message both to the general public and
to the individuals who are arrested. Second, the educational programs about relationship
violence that have been developed in the battered womens movement and presented in
many school districts around the country could become a regular part of our school cur-
ricula, teaching children and adolescents about equality and respect in our personal rela-
tionships. Finally, we can work to increase support for programs in hospitals, shelters, and
the courts that screen for intimate partner violence and help its victims either to stop the
violence or to escape from it safely.
Notes
1. I am going to use gendered pronouns here because the vast majority of intimate terrorists are
men terrorizing female partners. That does not mean that women are never intimate terrorists.
There are a small number of women who do terrorize their male partners (Steinmetz 197778),
and there are also women in same-sex relationships who terrorize their female partners ( Renzetti
and Miley 1996).
2. It is important to note that this discussion of gender is relevant only to heterosexual relationships.
In same-sex relationships, some aspects of gender may still be important (e.g., gender differences
in attitudes toward and experience with violence might produce more violence in gay mens re-
lationships than in lesbian relationships), others will be largely irrelevant (e.g., gay and lesbian
relationship norms are more egalitarian, and sex differences in size and strength will be less likely
to be significant), and some will play themselves out in quite different ways (e.g., reactions of
the criminal justice system may be affected by officers attitudes toward gay men and lesbians).
Although we know considerably less about same-sex relationships than we do about heterosexual
relationships, there is a growing literature that is important not only in its own right, but also
because it sheds light on some of the inadequacies of theories rooted in research on heterosexual
relationships ( Renzetti, 1992, 2002; Renzetti and Miley 1996).
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