• Pre-marital sex
• One in four births-unmarried mothers (1 in 10 1970)
• ~50% of all children will spend some time in a single parent family (85% African-American).  1995: 21% of  White families, 36% of Hispanic families, 64% of Black families)
• ~25% of pregnancies --abortions
• Increasing rates of unmarried couples (up 6x in the 1960s, up 6x 1970-1991; number of couples doubled from 1980-1993, rate have double for those over age of 50)
• Divorce rate (calculate current (2005) rate=divorce rate/marriage rate)
• Increasing number of people remaining single longer (1 in 4 households).  Still fewer than 10% never marry. Age at marriage (and "cougars") (local copy) (NY Times article: 10/15/09)
• Growing number of "childless" (child-free?) couples.  20% of women in their 30s state that they will never have children.  Married couples without children.  (over 50% of married couples are couples without children at home, 1990)
• Test tube babies
• Working mothers
• Inter-racial Marriages?
• Gay Marriages?
• Networked Families (full report, local copy)

• Tribe/Clan
• Extended
• Nuclear
• Sub-atomic ?

Looking Theoretically at the Family

• Gender Conflict

1. Dominance of men over women-Engels: first class antagonism
2. Women as property

• Social Conflict: Violence as a norm, stress, lack of community, sexism, intergenerational transmission. No single theory is adequate to explain complex dynamic.
• Domestic Violence (Gelles on "Family Violence")
  • Spouse abuse
  • Child abuse
  • Parent abuse
  • Sibling Abuse
  • Murder

• Critical job, no qualifications. Problem of anticipatory socialization. Consensus on child rearing (Corporal punishment).
• Extension of parenthood--adult children coming home
• Living longer--More Grandparents
• Types:
  1. Recreational care givers
  2. Symbolic (geographical separation)
  3. Active-everyday
  4. Divorce and custodial care

• Tradition vs survival
• Authoritative vs Authoritarian
• Growing homogenization

• Black family and creative survival
• Impact of mass media.

• Trends-rate 1992: 51.4%, rate of remarriage-70% of those under 35, 50% within 3 years
• 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.

• Tremendous increases
• Mead--individual marriage and parental marriage.
• Practice marriage?

• $148-$298,000--cost of rearing a child (2007) (other resources)
• 25% of American Families=> Married couple with children; 25% Married without children

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

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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: Monday, August 28, 2000