Descent and Inheritance

Determining Kinship

• Patrilineal
• Matrilineal
• Bilateral

Form

• Tribe/Clan
• Extended
• Nuclear
• Sub-atomic?
• Multigenerational Families (full report)
  • Children raised by grandparents (10% in 2010)(full report)
• The Changing American Family (full report, local copy)
  
  
  

Functionalism:

• Basic building block of Society
• Reproduction
• Care and protection
• Socialization
• Regulation of sexual behavior
• Affection and companionship
• Social placement
• Crisis vs. Change
• Cultivation Theory

Conflict:

1. Dominance of men over women-Engels: first class antagonism (2005: 1 stay-at-home dad for every 38 stay-at-home moms)
2. Women as property

Interactionism

• Self-fulfillment and self-definition
• The Dyad
• Authority versus intimacy: communication between family members
• Social exchange: marriage and courtship negotiations, changing levels of assessment: Females- from physical attractiveness to financial resources (see: Macionis, "Sociology" 6th edition, 1997; and Blau, "Exchange and Power in Social Life," 1964)
• Variation in interaction in the family--two-parent/single parent/step-parents.
• Networked Families (full report, local copy)
• Multigenerational Families (full report)
• Six Facts about American Fathers, Pew Research Center Fact Tank 6/16/2016.

• Critical job, no qualifications. Problem of anticipatory socialization. Consensus on child rearing (Corporal punishment).
• Raising Kids and Running a Household: How Working Parents Share the Load (local copy)(Pew Research Center: Social and Demographic Trends)(November 4, 2015)
• Extension of parenthood--adult children coming home
• Living longer--More Grandparents
  • Children raised by grandparents (10% in 2010)(full report)
  • Types:
    1. Recreational care givers
    2. Symbolic (geographical separation)
    3. Active-everyday
    4. Divorce and custodial care

Adoption

• Legal transfer of rights and responsibilities--functionalism: solution to births out of wedlock, help for infertile couples.
• Conflict--children transferred from the poor to the wealthy: Buying the children of the poor.
• Myth of the "parent surplus," but declining number of children available (birth control, abortion, lowered stigma on single mothers).
• Adoption Timeline
• Statistics on Adoption
• National Survey of Adoptive Parents, 2009
• Child Welfare.gov Resources
• Historical Statistics
  

Dual career families

• Incomes: $53,600 vs. $65,200 (2014)
• 3.6 million couples Living apart (1 out of every 33)(2007)

Class variations

Racial and ethnic variations

Divorce

• Trends
  • rate 1992: 51.4%, rate of remarriage-70% of those under 35, 50% within 3 years
  • 2008: "50-State Tour" (49.3%)
• Stations: emotional, legal, economic, coparental, community, psychic
• Stages of Divorce
• Factors predicting a higher probability of Divorce:
  1. Young age
  2. Short acquaintance
  3. Short engagement
  4. Parental and friend disapproval
  5. Dissimilar backgrounds
  6. Low level of education
  7. Conflicting role expectations
  8. Urban.
  9. Inheriting Divorce
  10. Is Divorce Contagious?

Cohabitation:

Singlehood:

• High age of first marriage
• Many remaining single 7-10%
• Choice and reality
• Freedom, excitement, career.

Gay families:

• Lesbian and Gay Parenting
• Adoption
• Joint Marriage Rights
• Housework
• Research on Same-Sex Couples

Child free marriages

• ~$210,000--cost of rearing a child (2015) (other resources)
• 25% of American Families=> Married couple with children; 25% Married without children
• Boomeranged

Single-parent families

Networked Families (full report, local copy)

The Family and Education

Coleman: Family and Schools

1. Industrialization and the Transformation of the Household: Gender roles.  family as unit of consumption vs. unit of production.  Work outside of the home.
2. Shift from family responsibility to External responsibility: Rise of other Institutions.   Income levels for families with children have declined, DINKs, Government Bureaucracy,  Costs of education, After-school and Summer programs, decline of parental authority, shift in locus of socialization
3. Schools and Community (schools as "constructed" institutions, schools as unable to fulfill all the demands of the socialization process).
4. Schools provide: opportunities, demands, and rewards. Families/communities provide attitudes, efforts, and conceptions of self.
5. Social Capital versus Individual Capital.
6. Recent study by the Center on Education Policy (2007) suggests type of school, private vs. public, has little effect on student success.
7. The State of Unequal Educational Opportunity: The Coleman Report 50 Years Later. Edited by Margot I. Jackson and Susan L. Moffitt. Sage. The ANNALS November 2017.

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URL: http://www.umsl.edu/~keelr/010/family.html
Owner: Robert O. Keel rok@umsl.edu
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Last Updated: Wednesday, April 4, 2018 10:13