Lecture 10/03/01 Social Stratification –
Race, class, and gender are macro structures that stratify society and make different opportunities available to individuals and families.
Class, race and gender organize society as a whole and create a variety of contexts for family living through their unequal distribution of social opportunities. The following four points are important:
1. They are hierarchies of stratification.
2. They distribute social rewards and opportunities differently.
3. They are relational systems of power and subordination.
4. They are systems of power and subordination.
Class
Persons occupying the same relative economic rank form a social class. Occupation is the most frequently used indictor of class, yet it does not fully capture the complexities and dynamics of class position.
The Structural Approach – Structural approaches to family diversity look at the ways in which social class shapes the networks of relationships between families, individuals, and the institutions that provide necessary resources.
2 models – The first places families and individuals and families in social classes according to occupation. Each social class is composed of social equals who share a similar lifestyle.
A second model of social class focuses not on occupations but on relationships of power between class groups. The key then is not the occupation itself but the control one has over one’s work, the work of others, decision-making and investments.
Five categories of families to illustrate differing connections with opportunity structures and the resulting advantages or disadvantages
1. The Lower Class - the Lower class families lack the resources to form autonomous households. Households often depend on pooling resources with a wide network of people. Flexibility of family boundaries becomes a way of organizing and sustaining limited resources.
Poor people make the most of their circumstances by expanding their family boundaries in order to stretch and sustain the few resources they have.
2. The Working Class - Strong kinship ties among the working class re governed by expectations of reciprocal assistance. Minority families and those headed by women are likely to be found in this category. Race and gender discrimination account for some of the economic problems experienced by this group.
Those in the working class are more likely than the middle class to be unemployed from time to time and are therefore more likely to fall into poverty. The rates of unemployment vary with the state of the economy. Many working-class families at one time or another live on a combination of wages, unemployment insurance, and Social Security benefits. Like those in the lower class, they may depend on welfare, food stamps, and various sectors of the irregular economy. When these are insufficient, the kin network provides various types of support and assistance.
Many blue-collar families keep themselves above the official poverty line though wives’ employment.
3. The Middle Class - Contemporary middle class families differ from the idealized middle class family of the part in that may wives are employed. Families appear autonomous due to stable resources and connections with nonfamily institutions. Examples, better medical coverage, expense accounts, credit at bank. Gender can create class in inconsistencies middle class marriage because men have better connections than women with society’s opportunity structures.
The middle class exerts power and control in relation to the working class. those in the middle class can control their working conditions in a way that the working class cannot.
4. The Upper Middle Class - A merging of family and work sphere can be observed in this class. Leisure activities often revolve around business concerns or associates. Upper middle class families have economic resources as well as built-in ties with supportive institutions.
In many professional homes, family life is subordinate to the demands of their husband-father’s occupation.
Typical contacts outside the home support the business orientation of upper-middle-class families.
5 The Elite - Among the elite, “family” means not only the nuclear family, but the extended family as well. Family “compounds” serve as community centers for extended kin. Elite families are connected nationally by a web of institutions they control. Boarding schools, exclusive colleges, exclusive clubs and vacation resorts.
Marriage is a means of concentrating capital and maintaining class solidarity.
Family boundaries of the elite are more open than those of the middle class, yet class boundaries are very rigidly drawn.
The Cultural Approach - Each class is viewed as having a distinctive culture. Comparisons between the classes usually turn out to be “deficit” accounts of lower status families.
The “culture of poverty” thesis accounts for poverty using the “deficit” model. This view contends that the poor have a different way of life than the rest of society and that this cultural difference explains their continued poverty. Examples- the poor can’t delay their gratification; lazy, etc.
Cultural explanations often result in “blaming the victim” that is, treating the presumed lifestyle of the poor as the cause of their poverty. Such explanations obscure the social and material realties of class.
Panel Study of Income Dynamics challenge the “culture of poverty” thesis.
Panel Study of income Dynamics – Study in progress of 50,000 people since 1968. In the early years, the purpose was to find out more about the policy makers then called the “culture of poverty” Culture of poverty theorists believed that lack of motivation and other psychological factors were deeply rooted in the poor and kept many of them isolated from society’s mainstream. The panel study measures individual attitudes about achievement, personal effectiveness, and the future with a series of psychological tests.
Findings did not support theories that low motivation contributes to poverty.
What are the factors – divorce sudden unemployment or birth of a child.
This study explored a question that most work on the culture of poverty has failed to test – namely, whether the poor constitute a permanent underclass doomed to continuous poverty.
Contrary to common belief, most poor people are only poor temporarily.
The experience of long-term poverty varies among population groups – elderly, female-headed families black Latinos. Over a 20-year period, 12% of the poverty spells extended 5 or more years and only 5 percent of the poverty spells lasted 7 or more years.
People move in and out of poverty. the study found that after forming their own households, at least four-fifths of the children from poor families moved out of poverty. The culture of poverty hypothesis is further challenged by the Panel Study’s psychological tests of individual attitudes bout achievement, personal effectiveness, and the future. Researchers found no evidence that highly motivated people are more successful at escaping poverty than those with lower scores on these tests.
The Debate over Welfare
Concern that welfare perpetuates dependency on welfare.
Two-tier system Social Security, disability insurance, unemployment insurance, worker’s compensation, Medicare and so on is tied to employment. What we tend to think of as welfare is really the second tier, aid to the poor.
Social scientific evidence does not support the conclusion that welfare causes problems. Recent research points out that higher welfare payments actually hasten the escape from poverty for some single-parent families. Even prior to recent reforms, which sharply limit the amount of time people can be on w3lfare, only 30% of recipients stayed on for more than 2 years and only 7% stayed on for more than 8 years.
In fact states with higher welfare benefits have lower rates of female-headed households and welfare participation.
Does drawing welfare benefits encourage single women to have more babies. Birthrate of women on welfare is actually considerably lower than that of the general population.
National Academy of Sciences found that the overwhelming majority of births to never-married women in general (70%) and to unmarried teenagers in particular (over 85%) were unintended suggesting that most welfare pregnancies are not based on conscious decisions to increase financial benefits.
Work is often unstable
Child care limited
Welfare Reform
1996 workfare after 2 years of receiving assistance – 5year lifetime limit on benefits for any family, a transformation of welfare from an entitlement to a “block grant”
Reduction in food stamps
Other cuts that concentrate on legal immigrants, the disable, and the elderly poor
One study found that people in workfare programs started out at very low wages and increased their salaries by only an average of 6 cents a year. More than half of the women who leave the welfare rolls when they can support themselves with jobs eventually return to welfare because their jobs end or because they aren’t earning enough to make ends meet.
Race - Race is a social category that serves as a basis for differential distribution of power, privilege, and prestige. The characteristics that distinguish races are socially defined and change over time.
The term “racial-ethnic” refers to groups that are socially subordinated and culturally distinct within U.S. society.
Racial-Ethnic Families – The Cultural Approach – Differences between families are explained as group-specific cultural artifacts. Cultural deficiency accounts for the racial ethnic group’s disadvantaged position in society.
The flawed family structure is said to be responsible for that minority group’s status in society.
Example - the Moynihan Report - locating the problems in the so-called matriarchal structure of the Black family, not in the racially stratified society
Shortcomings of the Cultural Approach – This approach erroneously views the family as the primary institution in society, blames the victim, and fails to take into account diversity among racial ethnic families.
Macro Structural Inequalities and Racial Ethnic Families – Racial stratification produces different opportunity structure that shape families in a variety of ways. Racism results in limited economic resources and inferior living conditions for many racial-ethnic families. Observed patterns such as extended kinship systems and informal support networks are not merely cultural preference, but are adaptations to economic hardship.
Blacks are more likely than whites to reside in extended family households. Reliance on kin networks is a strategy for coping with poverty and racism. Family networks also serve important functions for middle class Blacks.
Hispanic Families in the US -
Extended Kinship systems - Familism is the attachment to one’s nuclear and extended families. For decades, Familism has been considered a defining feature of the Mexican-heritage population. Familism is an important survival strategy in the context of both economic deprivation and cultural subordination Familism is both a means of adapting to economic deprivation and a cultural support system.
Gender
The Family as a Gendered Institution - Women, men an children experience the family in gender specific ways that vary by class and race.
How do gender and power influence family life?
Myth of undifferentiated experience – members of the family do not experience the family in the same manner.
Several different family relationships exhibit differences in power; parent and child, husband and wife. In some cases, the power differences are obvious and well accepted, example, parents are allowed to use physical punishment on their children, but physical punishment of the wife is no longer seen as acceptable.
Power is dynamic and changing. As circumstances change – the loss of a job or a dramatic increase in income, the arrival of children, the physical or mental decline of an elderly parent – so too do power relations.
Power is rarely absolute. People in apparently powerless positions are often capable of influencing the behaviors of more powerful others
Men’s higher status in traditional marriages may grant them the power to exert their will, but their wives often have as much influence as they do (or more) over decisions on running the household, handling finances, organizing child care, orchestrating social life, and so on.
Sources of Marital Power –
Men’s power within families, for example, has traditionally been linked with other sources of power. The average American husband is several years older, has more education, has a higher income, and has a more prestigious occupation than the average wife.
In most American families, however, occupying the position of husband no longer guarantees power in the family. Husbands must prove their worth and therefore their legitimacy fulfilling the expectations and obligations that go with the position, such as earning a living and supporting the family. Men who fail to meet these expectations – such as those who are chronically unemployed – risk losing the legitimacy of their family authority.
The influence of social stratification is rather complex. For instance, we usually assume that lower and working-class families are “patriarchal” and “traditional” in structure, whereas middle-class families are more “egalitarian.” We typically expect working class husbands to exert more power and control in their families than middle-class husbands because, in the absence of high wages and prestigious jobs, working-class men have few places other than their families to exercise authority. Middle-class men, on the other hand, typically have more status, wealth, and prestige and therefore more places to exercise power and authority in the larger society. Hence we expect them to have less of a need to exert their masculinity and control within their families.
Some research shows that middle-class husbands are actually more concerned with exerting power over their wives than working-class husbands are. These middle-class husbands feel it is their right to translate material resources and professional status to power. Control of material resources often justifies control over decisions made whiten the family.
Racial and ethnic stratification can also affect legitimate power relations in families. For instance, African-American families may hold more traditional beliefs about family power, but their actual behavior is significantly more egalitarian.
Conflict over the Control of Resources
Exchange Theory –
From this perspective, family power is based on the control of important resources. The more resources individuals believe they contribute to a relationship, relative to their partners, the more power they’re likely to believe they are entitled to.
Since men and women tend to control different types of resources, dependence and power in families are inherently based on gender. Men’s higher earnings and greater access to more prestigious occupations have historically given them more power and privilege inside their families. Women who don’t work outside the home or who are burdened with the care of young children have considerably fewer opportunities to earn money and are particularly likely to be dependent on their partners economically.
But control of money alone is not sufficient to provide people with power in their family relationships. Even traditional male breadwinners, who can use their economic wherewithal as power over their wives, still may depend on their wives to provide the physical, psychological, and emotional support necessary to maintain their ability to work. In short, they can be as emotionally dependent on their wives as their wives are economically dependent on them.
Cultural ideology can also overshadow the effect of monetary resources of family power. It’s highly unlikely that, if there were a sudden redistribution of income so that women began earning more than men, women would be able to claim the lion’s share of power and influence in families.
One example of a cultural ideology that can affect power is the belief that promoting the husband’s career rather than the wife’s is the most efficient way to serve the interests of all family members.
Women’s economic gains may also be off-set by cultural ideologies that value women primarily for the noneconomic resources they provide – the emotional work of the family
The consequences of power - In traditional male-breadwinner/female homemaker families, is taken for granted that husbands have the final say in all important decisions. But research consistently shows that when women enter the workforce, they participate more forcefully than when they are not employed.
But decision making is not a perfect indicator of power. Sociologists distinguish between orchestration power, making decisions about what will be done, from implementation power, making decisions about how it will get done.
Lillian Rubin _”When you get laid off, It’s like you Lose a Part of Yourself" .
Men – When father loses his job, it’s likely to be a crushing blow to the family economy. And partly, also, it’s because the issues unemployment raises are different for men and form women. For most women, identity is multifaceted, which mean that the loss of a job isn’t equivalent to the loss of self.
No matter how invested a woman may be in her work, no matter how much her sense of self and competence are connected to it, work remains only part of identity
For men work is likely to be connected to the core of self.
The struggles around the division of labor shift somewhat when father loses his job. Father may help out – some relief for the working mother
For American men – men who have been nurtured and nourished in the belief that they’re masters of their fate – it’s almost impossible to bear such feelings of helplessness. His sense of his manhood, already under threat because he can’t support his family, is eroded further by his wife’s complaints
We know that the incident of physical abuse against women and children rises with unemployment of men.
We know that the incidence of divorce rises
Somatic and mental health problems increase with the rise of unemployment.
Study found that in the same year that unemployment rose from 6.5% to 9.2% there was a 30% increase in the number of couple seeking advice from marriage counselors about their waning sex lives.
When income drops 25 percent, divorce rises by more than 10%
Children suffer too. – Relative deprivation – moves to new neighborhoods, less material resources
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