Nuclear Family Values, Extended Family Lives

The Power of Race, Class, and Gender

Natalia Sarkisian, Naomi Gerstel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136497476
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Soziologie

Nuclear Family Values, Extended Family Lives shows how the current emphasis on the nuclear family – with its exclusion of the extended family – is narrow, even deleterious, and misses much of family life. This omission is tied to gender, race, and class.

This book is broken down into six chapters. Chapter one discusses how, when promoting "family values" and talking about "family as the basic unit of American society, " social commentators, politicians, and social scientists alike typically ignore extended kin ties and focus only on the nuclear family. Chapters two and three show that the focus on marriage and the nuclear family is a narrow view that ignores the familial practices and experiences of many Americans – particularly those of women who do much of the work of maintaining kin ties and racial/ethnic minorities for whom extended kin are centrally important. Chapter four focuses on class and economic inequality and explores how an emphasis on the nuclear family may actually promulgate a vision of family life that dismisses the very social resources and community ties that are critical to the survival strategies of those in need. In chapter five, the authors argue that marriage actually detracts from social integration and ties to broader communities. Finally, in chapter six, the authors suggest that the focus on marriage and the nuclear family and the inattention to the extended family distort and reduce the power of social policy in the United States.

Glossary/Index

A

Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) 49, 51

Albiston, Catherine 47

All Our Kin 20

Alvirez, David 19

American Sociological Review 3

Anderson, Elijah 21, 28

Andrews, Robert 42

Angel, Jacqueline 48

Anti-Social Family 37

Armenia, Amy 47

Armstrong, Elizabeth 21, 28

Aschenbrenner, Joyce 26

B

Baca Zinn, Maxine 15

Badgett, Lee 53

Bailey, Sandra 52

Bales, Robert 3

Barrett, Michelle 37

Bean, Frank 19

Belkin, Lisa 5

Bengtson, Vern 34–35

Bianchi, Suzanne 9

biology 7, 40

births to unmarried women 14, 16, 18

Black families

births to unmarried women 16

children living with a single parent 16–17

cultural deficiency model and 25, 26

cultural resiliency model and 26–27

“disorganization” argument and 12–14, 23

education, income and poverty rates 30–31

marital status 15–16

men in 14, 20, 21, 22, 23

structural destruction model and 27–28

structural resiliency model and 28

“superorganization” argument and 18–20

and support for extended kin 22–23, 31

women-centered 13, 14, 20–21, 25

work–life balance 19

Black, Timothy 54

Blalock, Lydia 50

Boushey, Heather 5

Brines, Julie 10

Buck, Pearl S. 45

Burton, Linda 49

Bynum, William 26

C

Campbell, Lori 6

Carework: The work of providing paid and unpaid care—from practical to emotional—that maintains children, the elderly, the sick, and the disabled in families, workplaces, and broader communities 3

difficulties in obtaining family leave for 47

gender differences in 6–10

of grandparents 51–52

welfare reform and impact on 50–51

Carrington, Christopher 9

Chatters, Linda 23

Cherlin, Andrew 42

children

adult children 2, 3, 6, 30, 32, 37–38

living in a single-parent household 16–17

raised by grandparents 34–35, 51–52

young children 2–3,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series Foreword
• Preface
• I. The Widespread Focus on Nuclear Families
• II. The Realities of Family Life: Extended Families and Gender
• III. Race and Family Organization
• IV. The Power of Social Class: Structure, Culture, and Families as Strategies for Survival
• V. Marriage and Families
• VI. Social Policies and Families
• References
• Glossary/Index