12/12/01
Changing American Families
Sources of Social Change –
Population Pressures - Baby boomers have left a particularly influential mark on families, e.g. this generation was the first to redefine families to include a variety of living arrangements like cohabitation, domestic partnerships, and never-married women with dependent children. By the year 2030 one of every 3 Americans will be over 65. Institutions that deal with issues of later life- pension plans, social security; medical care will be seriously stressed.
Technological Innovation - Artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood, amniocentesis have changed families and will continue to do so. Technological innovation can increase the moral choices families must make - e.g. genetic engineering.
Cultural Diffusion - the process by which beliefs, customs, and other cultural items are spread from one group or society to another.
Institutional Diffusion - changes that occur in one social institution usually create changes in other institutions. Example. - Slow-growing or stagnant economy, encourages people to maintain close networks with other relatives and may discourage young people from moving out of their parents’ home
Ideology - Traditionalist family ideology vs. Progressive family ideology. The dominant ideology will impact on political institutions.
Future Family Trends
Risks of Sexual Freedom - e.g. Sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS
Increasing Life Expectancy - Low death rates coupled with low birthrates will result in a larger proportion of the population being over 75. The aging of the American population will have serious implications for the way people live their lives within families.
Marriage, Divorce and Remarriage - Marriage is here to stay. This fact, couple with consistently high rates of divorce, means that a growing proportion of the population in the 21st century will marry more than once. Families and stepfamilies will continue to grow in complexity. Consequently, the culture will no doubt have to develop standard, institutionalized ways of defining and supporting stepfamily relationships.
Complexities of Gender Equity - As dual-earner families become more common, fewer people will publicly condemn working mothers as negligent parents. With regard to the household division, sociologist argues that changes in the gender-based division of labor will propel us toward equality between men and women a t home.
The Science of Childbearing - Advances in reproductive technology will also combine with increased longevity to shatter what were once thought to be impenetrable boundaries of biological parenthood. Another technology with significant ramifications for childbearing is genetic engineering.
The Disappearance of Childhood - From all indications, the duration of childhood will continue to shrink. Children will continue to be exposed to even more events, devices, and ideas that would have been inconceivable to their parents when they were children. Death, illness, violence, and sexuality will continue to be revealed to children in their homes, in their schools, in their neighborhoods, on their computers, and on television.
Ethnic Diversity - Whether American families in the future become more similar to one another or more diverse depends on whether the formation of families across racial, religious, or social class lines becomes more common than it is today.
The Influence of Globalization - Competitive pressures of the international capitalist marketplace have forced many employers to make greater use of so-called disposable workers - those who work part-time or on temporary contract. These jobs offer no benefits and no security and thus create instability in family life.
Family Policy
Unlike other industrialized countries, the United States lacks a national family policy. Ironically, some of our most cherished "family values" (for instance, family privacy and autonomy) prevent the establishment of a coherent state policy.
At the forefront of political debate over future family trends will be the government’s role in family life.
Should we emphasize "traditional" family values?
Should we promote parental responsibility?
Should we expand the government’s responsibility for helping families raise children?
The place of biology in reproduction, custody, and access. What, if any claims should those people with biological ties to a child have regarding the conception, gestation, birth, and custody of that child?
Sexual orientation - what relations between adult homosexual partners, and among homosexual parents and minor children, should the state permit or promote?
The preference or privilege accorded to legal families compared to families formed informally.
The role of the economic marketplace in forming family relationships.
The role of government money in providing supports for families.
The relationship between the workplace and family life.
The relative power of family members in family-related decision making.
Racial and religious identities.
Dependency, disability, and illness.
“Wishful Thinking and Harmful Tinkering? Sociological Reflections on Family Policy”
Carol Smart
C. Wright Mills makes a distinction between personal troubles and public issues. He views troubles as private matters, occurring when an individual experiences a threat to cherished values. With social issues, historic or a cultural trends threaten values cherished by the wider public.
If we assume that changes in family life are caused by changes individual values, then the way to “fix” families is to punish those individuals who don’t comply with society’s expectations. If, however, we assume that changes in family life are the result of changes in social conditions, then we must look to “fix” society, not individuals.
Smart adds yet a third possible assumption. Maybe the individuals in families are actually the engine for change in society. As families take on new structures and roles, they create new norms, which eventually become the status quo, forcing social institutions to adapt to the changes initiated by families.
Smart looks at the ongoing debate regarding “Family decline” and “Declining family values.”
She argues that the family changes as a result from other social transformations, but we treat families as though they were unaffected by these changes and then we admonish family members for their failure to stand still while the conditions that supported the family in the past are demolished.
Those that support the family decline perspective discuss it from two models: One arises from a post-war psychology that seeks to find the cause of social problems in the psyches of individuals who do not conform to a moral or statistical norm. So they believe that people have become selfish and uncaring or that people now need to be trained in parenthood. The other arises from the politic-moralism of the New Right that recognizes only one kind of family organization as legitimate.
In political terms, divorce has been redefined as a social problem while for the many it is the only solution to a problem marriage. Problem marriages must be understood in terms of wider social processes such as changing employment patterns, changes to welfare, changes in expectations, etc. Thus both marriage and divorce are forms of social action not simply “unbridled individual choice.”
Divorce continues to be seen as a personal event and a symptom of individual failure. Few people are asking wider questions such as how can joint parenting be achieved under current social conditions? Or how can we achieve joint parenting on divorce when here are no structural supports for it even during marriage.
In the attempt to impose a different normative order on married life under the mistaken assumption that patterns of divorce arise from a modern immorality, it may be that marriage itself will continue to decline in “popularity” and rather than achieving a renewed compliance, this combination of wishful thinking and harmful tinkering will only produce the outcome that is ironically the most unwelcome – a flight from marriage.
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