Lecture 11/7/01
Parenthood and Parenting
Pronatalist society – Most people marry with the expectation that they will have children and they become parents because parenthood brings social approval and because all relevant social structures deem parenting to be a good thing. Having children is not only considered desirable; it is seen as normal and is taken for granted.
Adoption and the Primacy of Genetic Parenthood - In this culture, the biological bond between parents and children is considered by most people to be of paramount importance. In national survey half respondents considered adopting was not quite as good as having one’s own child.
Likewise, emphasis media reinforcement of adopted children finding their biological parent – belief that adopted children are missing a crucial piece of their identity.
Infertility. The ideal of pronatalism is clearly illustrated in the societal response to couples who want genetically related children but are unable to have them. Between one in five and one in 10 couples experience infertility. Involuntary childlessness, as it is sometimes called, is typical considered a multidimensional disability – medical, social and legal (must show proof of infertility to some adoption agencies).
Seek technological cures for infertility – as much as $20,000. These interventions fail more often than they succeed. Moreover, they are not without risk to the mother since she is the focus of the reproductive difficulties. Pregnancies that result from infertility treatment are often high risk and expensive
Surrogate motherhood is perhaps the most controversial infertility treatment. Surrogate motherhood pits our pronatalist values against individual liberties and against attar interest. For instance surrogate motherhood may violate several compelling state interests, such as protection against the possible exploitation of poor women as surrogates. Creates thorny legal issues - Baby M case.
Case in California 2-year girl had no parents in the eyes of the law. Conceived in a laboratory with donor sperm and egg and who had been carried and delivered by a surrogate. The infertile couple divorced a month before she was born. When her mother sought child-support payments, the father claimed he was under no legal obligation to support the child since he had nongenetic ties to her. The judge agreed and went even further, ruling that the mother – also with no genetic ties to the child wasn’t "entitled" to be declared a legal mother either.
Changing conceptions of infertility – openly discussed in society – now a public phenomenon.
Voluntary Childlessness
They violate the cultural expectation in choosing to remain childless.
2 types. One group determines at marriage not to have children. The other group is "chronic postpponers."
Stages of their postponement –
1st stage – deferring childbearing for a specific period of time.
2nd stage – postponing childbearing for an indefinite period of time.
3rd stage- acknowledging a very real possibility of permanent childlessness.
4th stage – accepting childlessness as permanent.
Prontalism and Public Policy. Although the cultural value of parenthood is dominant, not everyone in this society is expected or encouraged to have children. Should parents be licensed? Also – pronatalism and the poor. Long history in the US of discrimination against poor people, racial minorities and people with disabilities.
Contraception encouraged – sometimes ordered for poor women. Sterilization has been used in the past.
Pronatalism is not encouraged for gay and lesbian parents. The oft-hear argument that homosexuality is a threat to the institution of family focuses on the notion that the capacity to reproduced 9though not necessarily the desire or the success) is a fundamental cornerstone of "family" and by extension society.
The Process of Becoming Parents
The Social Construction of Childbirth
Early attitudes toward childbirth –simply seen as normal events in a woman’s life, not as the beginning of an all-encompassing career of parenthood. Female ritual – midwives
The 19th century – medicalization of childbirth
1970s – "natural" childbirth
The transition to parenthood
Societal changes over the past several decades have made the transition to parenthood difficult. Nuclear families have become smaller and are likely to live more isolated lives, often far away from their extended kin. In addition, many young parents today are trying to create families based on a relatively new egalitarian ideology, in which both partners work and both are expected to care for the child. These changes require new arrangements to accommodate the increasing demands on parents of young children.
The Stress of having children –
Children represent a substantial drain on time, energy, privacy, and money. Over half of the couples with new children surveyed in one study experienced either a severe or moderate decline in the quality of their marriage after the child arrived.
The majority of women in a survey said that they had ambivalent feelings about being parents.
Gender and Parenthood -
According to the sociobiological perspective, because males and females are physically and genetically different, they logically have different biologically determined roles in raising children. Since women are better equipped anatomically to take care of infant children, the survival of the species depends on their doing so. They are the ones who get pregnant, give birth, and breast-feed. Consequently they are guided by a different set of parenting expectations than men.
In "Parental Androgyny," Popenoe argues that we damage families by encouraging men and women to adopt interchangeable family roles.
He uses a sociobiolgical argument to reason that the instability of contemporary family life is attributable to social norms pressuring men to adopt the same family roles as women.
Popenoe's argument:
Children need regular interaction and a relationship that develops a strong, mutual, irrational attachment to that child. (Urie Brofenbrenner)
Cites Belsky saying –negative effects of placing infants in group day care.
Others points – Dads can be trained but most dads do not want to be mom, and they do not feel comfortable being mom.
Also – this new type of father actually leads to risk of divorce. He uses Sweden as the comparison. (Although Sweden does not have the high divorce rate of the US)
The basis of sexual and emotional attraction between men and women is based not on sameness but on differences. Childrearing couples who have been able to stay together and remain interested in each other for a long period of time are not likely to be couples who are relentlessly pursuing the ideal of social androgyny.
There appear to be sound biological and sociological reasons why some gender differentiation of roles within childrearing families is necessary for the good of society. Gender differentiation is important for child development, and probably important for marital stability. While the fully equal participation of both parents in childrearing is essential, fathers are not the same as mothers, nor should they be. Rather than strive for parental androgyny in the home, and be continuously frustrated, we would do many betters to acknowledge, accommodate, and appreciate the very different needs, sexual interests, values, and goals of each sex.
Differentiation of roles by gender, however, is now mainly of importance in only one institutional sphere of society – the family – and even there for only the relatively short phase of life when young children are being reared. Gender differentiation no long applies to life in its entirety, as once was the case. This leaves adults (read women) abundant time, in the non-childrearing phases of their lives, for the pursuit of self-fulfillment through social roles of their own choosing.
Rossi argues that biological sex differences exist and affect parental behavior not only during pregnancy but also after birth.
What do other sociologists say in dispute of Popenoe?
However, not all women want to be mothers and not all mothers are nurturant.
Nevertheless, the belief in the primacy of the mother-child bond remains strong. Consider the difference in meaning between mothering and fathering.
Despite significant advances in their societal well-being, women still bear a disproportionately high degree of responsibility for domestic labor and childcare. Regardless of children’s ages, mothers typically are more invested and involved in the day-to-day lives of their children than are fathers. They also do more of the "emotional" work with children and worry more about their well-being. As a result, women are called upon, far more than men, to sacrifice interests and identities outside the family – such as career and education – in order education- in order to devote more time to raising the children are.
Active hands-on parenting is required of mothers but is optional for fathers, whose contribution to parenting – although more visible and more acceptable than ever before – still tends to be defined as "helping."
Mothers never cease being mothers – even when at work.
Images of motherhood - Women are still socialized to value the rewards of motherhood and to believe that having children is a primary source of self-identity. Girls given baby dolls….
Women who downplay the importance of motherhood have always been the object of community or family concern. For example, in the 19th century concern that education would interfere with reproductive capacity.
Motherhood and maternity - To most people, maternity fosters motherhood.
We are stunned when we hear of mothers hurting their children.
Fetal rights vs. mothers’ rights. – One of the great ironies of our cultural conception of motherhood is that while women are believed to be naturally endowed to nurture their children and are expected to place their children’s well-being above all else, they are also seen as the greatest threat to their children before they’re born.
Today pregnant women are usually assumed to have a moral, societal, and legal responsibility to ensure a healthy birth, even perhaps at the cost of their own health.
Concern with the harm mothers pose to their fetuses is particularly strong with regard to the use of drugs and alcohol. Since the late 1980s, over 200 women in thirty sates have been prosecuted for behavior while pregnant that posed danger to their fetuses, the vast majority involving the use of illegal drugs.
Most of these women are poor and black.
Everyone would agree that babies should receive the best possible start in life. However, focusing solely on pregnant women allows us to ignore other threats to the well-being of children that lie outside the mother’s body: poverty, inadequate health care, poor housing, environmental hazards, racism, and so on – not to mention fathers’ unhealthy sperm. Like poverty, homelessness, and crime, the health of children is construed as a matter of freely chosen individual behavior.
Images of fatherhood - Images of fatherhood have also changed over time, In the 18th century fathers rather than mothers were considered the primary parents.
Since the 19th century – common conceptions of fatherhood have lacked the emotional pull of motherhood. Symbolically, fathers are never quite at the center of everyday family life in the same way that mothers are.
Since the 1970s, a new, but not yet dominant culture of fatherhood has emerged. The New Father is a "good father" who is expected to be "an active participant in the details of day-today care.
Recent research suggest that, if given the opportunity, fathers can interact with and care for their children just as well as mothers can. Most child development experts agree that children do better when their fathers take an active, supportive role in their lives.
But many scholars continue to express doubts about the willingness of most men to become fully involved in their families.
In two-parent families with employed mothers, fathers spend about 33 percent as much time as mothers actually engaged in one-to-one interaction with their child. In addition, they spend about 65 percent as much time as mothers being accessible. Finally mothers carry over 90 percent of the responsibility for their children.
The breadwinner/authority father has been marginalized by the new father on the one hand and the deadbeat dad on the other
Moreover, more fathers than ever before are absent from their children’s lives. A growing proportion either deny paternity or shirk parental obligations. In divorced families, contact between children and their noncustodial fathers drops off sharply with the length of time since the parents separated.
At the same time, another cluster of trends points in an opposite direction. The rising rate of divorce and unwed pregnancies is related to weakening bonds between fathers and children. The proportion of children living with two parents has declined from 85% in 1970 to 72% in 1991. Furstenberg found that nearly half of the children had virtually no contact with the non-custodial parent (90% of who were fathers) within the last year.
The contradictions facing men are likely to differ according to social class. The cultural ideal of the new active father has changed much faster, especially in the middle classes, than the reality of the new father in the middle class. For working-class men (whose educated wives are more likely to prefer to stay home, and who cannot afford paid help) often cherish a more traditional ideal but nonetheless do a great deal with home and children. In both cases, men are living with ideals that do not fit the reality of their lives.
Childhood and child rearing
The experience of being a child is influenced, to a large degree, by broader social definitions of childhood. It is a social category, subject to changing definitions and expectations.
Colonial period – to Victorian period
Children as miniature adults
Unsentimental treatment of children probably had something to do with the demographic realities of the time. Since children were so often lost, parents couldn’t allow themselves to get too emotionally attached to them. Many parents of the time referred to a child as "it" until he or she reached an age at which survival was likely. Children were frequently were given the same name as a sibling who had recently died.
Children had an economic component to their family role. Until the late 1800s, child labor was commonly practiced and accepted. Continued in poor rural and poor urban families. Children were exploited for use in robbery and prostitution.
Children as little monsters – children were seen as having naturally evil tendencies. So the task of responsible parents was to stamp out the beast in their children through strict obedience training as well as through the sacraments like Baptism.
This is a sentiment that is still considered today – although somewhat different rationale. The "contemporary image of the "little monster" is likely to refer not so much to natural sin but to the possibilities of children disrupting social life with their animalistic tendencies. Such a conception of childhood is also likely to be associated with negative attitudes toward ‘permissive" parenting.
Children as natural innocents – By the mid-nineteenth century, reformers and child advocates had achieved some success in convincing people that children were either miniature adults nor naturally evil. One the contrary, they argued persuasively that children are naturally weak and need to be treated with care and compassion; that they should be sheltered from the harsh realities of adult life.
This more sympathetic belief in childhood innocence, though, had a darker side: It implied that children are inherently evil, it was that they were easily influence. Without adequate oversight, they might easily succumb and get into trouble. Thus most parents continued to believe that only through harsh discipline could they properly shape their children. Children were often beaten not to subdue the devil inside them but to teach them right from wrong and give them the strength to avoid temptation.
A century later, the dominant model of childhood is that children’s "natural" innocence is to be cherished. It must be protected for as long as possible because once it is gone, it is gone forever. We not take for granted that childhood out to be carefree and full of fun, play, and creativity.
Adolescence -
Like childhood, adolescence is a socially defined stage of life. It marks the transition between childhood and adulthood. Adolescence, as we know it, emerged in the late nineteenth century as a product of social economic and educational changes that extended childhood dependency into the teen years. As industrialization gradually moved paid labor away form the home; the gap between adult responsibilities and children’s activities widened. As young people were removed from the labor market, child labor laws went into effect. The movement to regulate working conditions and set a minimum age at which children were allowed to work outside their own families helped segregate teenagers form the rest of society and extend their dependence on their parents.
Compulsory education became necessary as young people’s free time increased. The age-graded school system created separate worlds for children and youth. High schools separated young people from the rest of society and helped create a youth culture.
These social changes helped make adolescence a legally and psychologically recognizable stage of life.
As adolescence emerged as a recognizable stage of life, family ties between parents and their teenage children intensified. Adolescents began depending more completely and for a loner time on their parents than they had in the past. At the same time, as family size decreased, mothers were encouraged to devote themselves to the nurturing of their children.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, adolescence had become a household word and part of the social structure of modern society. It also became an important stage in an individual’s biography – a recognized intermediate period of being neither a child nor an adult. But this socially recognized stage of life is notoriously problematic for young people.
How much influence do parent have? (The myth of parental determinism) Or is peer culture more influential? Peer culture in which adolescents reside has powerful influences in their sexual decision making.
The social complexities of child rearing –
Child rearing is a developmental process for all involved. We often assume that a child grows, changes, and interacts with a fixed entity: the adult. But parents grow and change too. And children are not just passive recipients of parental influence. They are energetic actors who frequently exert as much influence on their parents’ outlooks, attitudes, and behaviors as parents exert on theirs.
Parental influence over child rearing is also limited by the fact that many of the socializing functions that families provided in the past now commonly occur in other social settings: in school, with peers and friends, in front of the television. The agents of socialization typically become more influential as children get older and are exposed to forces that discourage conformity to parents’ wishes. Indeed, as children mature and spend more and more of their time in school, they collectively construct a "peer culture" – a set of shared activities, routines, artifacts, and values – that becomes significantly more influential than their parents in guiding their behavior.
Culture and Child Rearing
Parents form attitudes about how to raise their children based on cultural definitions of appropriate child rearing strategies.
Most Americans feel that children are innocent and priceless and their upbringing ought to be primarily the responsibility of individual agents and should be centered on the child’s needs.
Culture often combines with social standing to produce unique child rearing philosophies.
Social Class and Child rearing –
Although we don’t have a caste system, a family’s economic standing can also influence the process of raising a child within American society.
Melvin Kohl provides evidence to support the contention that their parents to have different values and outlooks on life socialize children from different classes.
Middle-class parents were more likely to value characteristics that promote self-direction, independence, and curiosity than were the working-class parents.
Conversely, working-class parents were more likely to value characteristics that emphasize conformity to external authority. They want their children to be neat and clean and to follow the rules.
These differences may be related to the conditions that working class and middle-class parents experience in their jobs. Middle-class occupations are likely to involve considerable task complexity, flexibility, discretion, and freedom from supervision. Working-class occupations, on the other hand, typically involve standardized tasks, rigid schedules, and closer supervisions.
Poor parents have their own values and outlook on life, which exert similar influences on their children’s socialization. Poverty poses significant health risks for these children; infant mortality, malnutrition, and homelessness are all higher among poor children than others. Poverty also hinders children’s development of a strong sense of self-worth and self-confidence.
Race, ethnicity, and child rearing.
For racial minorities child rearing occurs within a more complex social environment. Kenneth Clark’s (1947) study was replicated in the late 1980s. 65% of the black children preferred white dolls.
From such findings we can see that minority children live simultaneously in two different worlds: their ethnic community and "mainstream" society. To simply survive, they must become knowledgeable of the dominant, "white culture" as well as their own.
However, significant differences may exist within the same ethnic group. Middle-class African-American parents, for instance, are likely to have high educational and occupational expectations for their children.
So they try to teach them to have positive attitudes toward hard work, thriftiness, and property ownership.
Even with these differences some aspects of child rearing are similar across all groups of American parents. One study of parenting styles, for instance, found that white, African-American, Hispanic, and Asian-American parents are more similar than different in their parenting attitudes, their parenting behaviors, and their involvement with their children.
Gender and Child Rearing - Parents are their children’s first source of information about gender. If you asked parents whether they treated sons any differently form daughters, most would probably say no. Yet considerable evidence shows that parents do and what they say they do are two different things. Gender-typed expectations are so ingrained in American parents that they are often unaware that they are behaving in accordance with them.
In one study when thirty first time parents were asked to describe their newborn infants, they frequently used common gender stereotypes those with daughters describe them as "tiny" soft fine-featured and delicate. Sons were seen as strong, hardy, alert. Parents differ in their interactions – mothers are more emotionally responsive to girls and encourage more independence with boys. Fathers spend more time with their sons and engage in more physical play than with their daughters.
Both boys and girls learn at a very young age to adopt gender as an organizing principle for themselves and the social world in which they live.
Evidence suggests that the instructions for boys are particularly rigid and restrictive in our culture and the social costs for their gender-inappropriate behavior are disproportionately severe. The sissy has much more difficulty during childhood than the tomboy.
As children grow older, parents tend to encourage more gender-typed activities. Research consistently shows that children’s household tasks differ along gender lines. For instance, boys are more likely to mow the lawn, shovel snow, take out the garbage, and do the yardwork, whereas girls tend to clean the house, wash dishes, cook and baby-sit the younger children.
Parents also influence their children’s gender though the things they routinely purchase for them, such as clothing. Clothes direct behavior along traditional gender lines. And encourage or discourage certain gender-typed actions.
Toys serve to distinguish between the sexes.
The sexual orientation of parents – No evidence to suggest that the psychosocial development of children growing up with homosexual parents is compromised. In facet, a review of all the research on this issue reveals not a single study that has found children of lesbian or gay male parents to be disadvantaged in any significant respect. In short, "homosexual" "home environments are just likely to support and enable children’s psychoscial growth as "heterosexual" homes are.
The Issue of Child Care -
Because so many families these days consist of two working parents or a single parent who works, more and more families are finding that they must look to people outside the home for assistance in raising their children. More than half the preschool-age children with working mothers in this society are in some form of day care, whether it’s a private baby-sitter, day care center, or preschool. The rest are cared for by relatives.
Research has found that parents in dual-earner families do spend less time with their children than parents in single-earner, traditional families. A recent national survey found that employed women devote, on average less than 1 hour a day to undivided child care; for employed men the figure is 2.5 hours a week.
But most research suggests that the simple fact that a child spends time each day with a caretaker other than his or her parents is not sufficient to cause harm. Instead, the child’s development is affected by the quality of care both inside and outside the home.
A long-term study by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development found that children who receive good care and a lot of attention at home seem unaffected by day care. And regardless of the quality of the care and the age when the child enters it, the emotional attachments between parent and child do not appear to be damaged by the experience. Only those children who don’t get good parenting at home are less securely attached to their parents. Indeed, high-quality child care offered by sensitive and committed providers can actually enhance a child’s development.
Lack of coherent national policy in U.S.
Unlike child care in Europe, American child care is typically seen as separate from the formal education system. Consequently most organized facilities are perceived merely as places where working parents can send their children so the children won’t go unsupervised.
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