Concepts and Definitions of Family for the 21st Century

Barbara H Settles, Suzanne Steinmetz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136602122
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicina
• Subtopic: Teoría, práctica y referencia médicas

Explore the breakdown of the universal family form into new living arrangements and the political and social implications of how they influence the definition of family today! Concepts and Definitions of Family for the 21st Century views families from a US perspective and from many different cultures and societies. You will examine the family as it has evolved from the 1950s traditional family to today's family structures. The controversial question, "What is family?" is thoroughly examined as it has become an increasingly important social policy concern because of the recent change in the traditional family. Scholars and researchers in family studies and sociology will be intrigued by these thought-provoking articles that analyze the definition of the family from a multitude of perspectives. Concepts and Definitions of Family for the 21st Century looks at family in terms of its social construction, variations and the diversity in families, among others. You will examine the negative implications of using the term "The Family" as it implies "The Nuclear Family, " which many powerful lobbies (politics, morality, religion) claim to support and revere. You will also explore family ideology and identity from many different social and cultural contexts. Some of the family issues you will explore in Concepts and Definitions of Family for the 21st Century include:

• marrying, procreating, and divorcing in a traditional Jewish family
• redefining western families by taking into consideration the legal factors, history, tradition and the continued expansion of the definition of family in the US
• addressing family issues in Lithuania, a country amidst many political changes
• challenging and complicating the definition of family with stepfamilies
• exploring the question "What are families after divorce?"
• examining multicultural motives for marriage and how these motives effect courting behavior in Lithuania
• defining families through caregiving patterns Concepts and Definitions of Family for the 21st Century goes in-depth to broaden and interpret the meaning of family in today's society. Through the exploration of legal implications, professional and personal needs this text takes into account the large variety of groups that have close living relationships. Concepts and Definitions of Family for the 21st Century will assist you in answering the difficult and complex question "What is family?"

SECTION III:
FAMILIES AND SUPPORT SYSTEMS

Defining Families Through Caregiving Patterns

Joan Aldous

INTRODUCTION

In the United States, especially during this last few decades of the 20th century, there are enough types of close living relationships in large enough numbers so that we can literally speak of our subject matter as being the study of families rather than the study of the family. Along with families based on intact marriages with no background of divorce, there are also single-parent families, cohabiting couples, married couples in which one or both spouses have been previously married, and step-families that result from remarriages where children from previous unions are present. With such a variety of groups, most of whose members would insist they are families, it is difficult to give a definition that holds for all. One that I have increasingly used is that families are cohabiting groups of some duration, the members of which are usually economically dependent on each other. Moreover, they are composed of persons in intimate relations that are based on biology, law, custom or choice (Aldous & Dumon, 1990).

A functional definition of the family circle also may be provided by the helping patterns among individuals, which often take the form of giving and receiving financial aid as well as caring for physical needs. Watching out for each other is one of the intimate aspects linking members into what we identify as a family.

The particular focus of this paper, therefore, is on families’ and members’ caregiving activities throughout their lives. My concern is with the fairly expectable problems that families face at particular stages of their existence as part of a family development approach (Aldous, 1996). To the extent possible, I shall attempt to provide a sketch of the caregiving challenges that families face over their particular histories. A consideration of family lives will give us an idea of how these capacities vary over time for members of all ages. This schema also includes a discussion concerned with when family members are especially likely to need someone to look out for them. It includes a description of how, over time, families broaden or shrink the boundaries of those they view as members in terms of caregiving. I will conclude with a summary of demographic and social changes that affect caregiving and the persons for whom care is provided.

Definitions

Let me begin by putting family caregiving in perspective and defining some terms. The usual term used for family activities on behalf of ailing or dependent members is caregiving. Caregiving refers to the physical work involved but also includes the accompanying comfort that family members provide each other. We count on caring and the carework to which it gives rise as being found in devoted family relations, especially those for which women are responsible (Graham, 1983).

Caring and caregiving are often seen as the defining characteristics of women. Watching over others involves the warm feelings and private activities that persons stereotypically expect women to display in their customary domestic settings (Osmond & Thorne, 1993). In contrast to this traditional depiction of women, men’s identity has been seen more often as wrapped up in doing things for themselves and by themselves often in public places (Graham, 1983;Brines, 1994). Men often appear to expect someone to watch over them, and that someone, in most cases, is a woman, usually an intimate other, such as a wife or a daughter. A majority of women, including those with young children who join men in the competitive labor force, are still assigned homemaking responsibilities (Hochschild, 1989). With the responsibilities of caring for children and participating in the paid labor force, who will provide the care that women typically provided? As this paper will document, it is spouses and other women, mothers, sisters or daughters, who care for them. Thus, our interest in family caregiving over time more often has less to do with families than it does with women in families.

It is well to note that, just as the neutral term “caregiving” hides its ties to one gender, our knowledge of when families provide such services obscures reality. In one review of the research on care providers, the authors concluded that “most” of the work on the caregiving burden has concerned “primarily” those who help the frail elderly or dementia patients (Raveis, Siegel & Sudet, 1988-1989). There are good reasons why special attention is devoted to the elderly, one of which being that they are more likely to be infirm. One wonders, however, if the disproportionate numbers of articles and books devoted to their condition may not overlook other members in need of special family caregiving attention.

Before addressing specifics, however, it is important to note that the terms generation and cohort appear in the following analysis. By generation and cohort, I will be referring to the consequences of family time. Generations measure time in terms of forebears and descendants-our parents and grandparents, our children and grandchildren. Cohort, in contrast, refers to persons born around the same period within the various families.

FAMILY TIME PERIODS AND THEIR CAREGIVING CHALLENGES

For the purpose of giving an overview of the divisions in family time and their expected caregiving demand, one can demarcate a beginning period when families (of procreation) become started, followed by child bearing and child rearing periods. Children become mature and start leaving home, so that a parent or parents are eventually alone in their middle years to sustain the family. A family of procreation’s life ends, in turn, with the aging and deaths of parents marking the final period (Aldous, 1996).

Having delineated divisions in family time, let me now describe these periods in terms of their problematic aspects. In beginning this consideration of stages in family lives and how family caregiving might fit within them, it is well to note that families in the traditional sense, of those being formed through marriage, continue to exist. Despite the rise in cohabitation rates, half of recent marital partners have cohabited, and most persons eventually marry. Among white women born in the 1950s, estimates are that 91 percent will eventually marry, though ethnic differences exist, with the comparable figure for black women being 75 percent (Cherlin, 1992).

If most people do marry, simply staying together is the overriding problem that newlyweds in the beginning stage of family life must address. Well over half (56%) of all persons born in the early part of the 1950s will divorce, a generalization that applies to the vanguard of the baby boomer generation (Norton & Moorman, 1987). Marital break ups occur fairly early in marriage, with 40 percent of the separations taking place less than five years after the wedding day (Bumpass, Sweet & Castro-Martin, 1990).

The difficulty these divorces create for the former partners and their relatives can be considerable. The emotional and economic stress that couples and their kin experience when they split up is accentuated when children are present. In the first half of the 1980s, almost three-fourths (69 percent) of marital separations involved children (Bumpass, Sweet & Castro-Martin, 1990).

Because women’s economic status after divorce tends to fall by about a third (30%), remarrying is one means to repair their families’ financial situation (Hoffman & Duncan, 1988). Somewhat more than 70% of separated women will remarry after divorce. However, women over 30 and women with children are less likely to remarry (Bumpass, Sweet & Castro-Martin, 1990). These remarriages, in turn, are more likely to dissolve than are first marriages. Among white women married between 1980 and 1985, for example, remarried women were 25 percent more likely to divorce (Castro-Martin & Bumpass, 1989).

We should also not overlook the considerable number of unmarried women in the U.S. who start their families by bearing children. In 1990, 35% of children under 18 who were living in single parent families were living with a never-married parent compared to 37% who were living with a divorced parent (Saluter, 1994). Again, there are racial differences in the likelihood of giving birth as an unmarried parent. In 1993, 20.6% of white women were never-married mothers compared to 2.8% in 1970. In 1993, 55.4% of black mothers had never married as compared to 15.1% in 1970. In 1993, 35.4% of Hispanic mothers had never married; data for the earlier year were not available (Rawlings, 1994).

Poverty more often characterizes these single-mother families, with 39.6% of white single mothers with children under 18 being classified in this manner in 1993. Poverty also characterized 57.7% of black and 60.5% of Hispanic single women householders. (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1995). This is especially true of unmarried mothers who are less likely to be awarded child support from fathers. For example, in 1992, only 27% of never-married mothers received child support as compared with 66% among ever-married mothers. Moreover, of the custodial mothers who were granted awards in 1991, only a little over half (52.3%) of these women received the full amount and almost a fourth (23.7%) received no payment at all (Scoon-Rogers & Lester, 1995). Thus, single mothers who are responsible for families, whether divorced or never married, are likely to be in financial need. Frequently, if employed, these women face child care problems and, even if well off, they are likely to lack emotional support (McLanahan & Sandefur, 1994).

The middle years often find married couple families in better shape financially to help needy, younger families. However, adult children who either remain at home or return home and stay for a prolonged period of time tend to reduce the amount of time that employed mothers and fathers have to devote to elderly parents (Buck & Scott, 1993;Aquilino & Supple, 1991). If their own marriages are in danger, families in the middle years may be seeking solace from kin who are members of other generations. This is particularly true of women who divorce when their children are reaching adulthood. Although fathers are more apt to lose contact with their children, they are more often sources of comfort to their mothers. Consequently, adult children may also find themselves having to assist mothers who have limited financial resources. This flow of financial resources to middle-aged parents comes from members of the generation that are just beginning to establish their own families and themselves in the employment world. However, in most cases, parents are able to help needy elderly or offspring. There is some evidence that persons who are located between the oldest and youngest living family generations are somewhat more likely to contribute to the former than to the latter. Finally, elderly couples are increasingly characterized by sound enough financial and health circumstances to enjoy their declining years (Aldous, 1995). Frequently, they are able to remain independent and assist their descendants longer before reaching the period of frail health that may make them turn to other family members for care.

To summarize the challenges that families face over the course of their existence, families have a greater challenge with respect to caregiving resources in the formation and child rearing stages. The challenges of maintaining marriages, starting parenthood, divorcing, remarrying and preparing youth to leave home may make these family life stages into ‘care seeking’ rather than ‘care giving’ periods. Individuals in the years when children are leaving home are generally better able to handle caregiving demands. Compared to past-times, present-day elderly, except for widows and minorities, are more independent in terms of financial and physical care matters.

MEMBERS’ NEED FOR FAMILY CAREGIVING

The family members most in need of help include individuals who are too young or too old to care for themselves. Children are customarily thought of as dependents, because they are presently unable to carry out daily activities without help and supervision. The elderly often fall into this category due to disability; once able to take care of themselves, some may now need help with daily routines. For example, the National Health Interview Survey of Disability (1983 through 1985) in the United States has defined this circumstance as being a chronic condition or conditions that prevents individuals from performing the activities of daily living. Such activities include self care, keeping house, working or attending school, depending upon the age of the individual (LaPlante, 1988). This survey also found that somewhat over seven and one-half million persons, or 3.6% of the population, according to this definition, were considered to be disabled.

Age makes a great difference in how many are disabled. Among all persons under 25 years of age, less than one percent were in this category (LaPlante, 1988). To keep disability figures according to age in proportion, I should note that the numbers of disabled persons under 65 is substantial (3,207 million), even though the proportion of disabled in the younger group is much less than in the older groups. The total among those 65 and over is 4,369 million or 16.5% of this age group (LaPlante, 1988). The disabled are more likely to have less education, earn lower incomes, and be in poverty than those who are not limited in activities. Those who are 18 years of age and older are also more likely to be in families that are disrupted by death, divorce or separation. As a result, these families are less likely to have members who are able to provide care (LaPlante, 1988).

The Family Caregivers

Having gained some perspective on the persons needing someone to watch over them, let us now turn to the issue “who is actually looking out for them.” The touchy area of finances provides an example of the importance of family aid. If we restrict our inquiry only to persons giving regular money payments to individuals living in other households, figures from a national sample demonstrate that very few American families are involved in such financial transfers. Just under four percent (3.7%) of adults in the population who are 18 years of age and over currently give money to about six percent (5.8%) of the p...