Families in Today's World

A Comparative Approach

David Cheal

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781134241460
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

An international textbook designed as a quick introduction for students from around the world studying sociology of family, this text provides comprehensive coverage of the major topics in the sociology of family life.

Written in an easy access style it opens with a chapter on defining family and family structures. It then moves on to discuss over a dozen major topics; from interaction and meaning in families to sexuality. David Cheal provides coverage of these topics by drawing on a variety of international material. Most of the studies focus on contemporary family life but Cheal also presents information on historical changes which have shaped family life as it is known today.

This book an incredibly valuable teaching tool as it presents diversity in family patterns through thinking about family life from a global perspective.

1 Defining family and family structures

Families are found everywhere, but what is family? Defining family has been a controversial topic. That is because different definitions have different implications for which social structures can legitimately lay claim to be recognized as families. To be recognized as living in a family is to have one’s lifestyle socially validated and socially supported. Conversely, to live in a social arrangement that is not recognized as family is to occupy an ambiguous position in social life that runs the risk of being labelled as deviant (Bernardes, 1999).

The classic definition of the family was given by George Murdock, and we can begin there to see how difficult this issue has been (Murdock, 1960). Murdock defined the family as a social group characterized by common residence, economic cooperation, and reproduction. It includes adults of both sexes, at least two of whom maintain a socially approved sexual relationship, and one or more children, own or adopted, of the sexually cohabiting adults. This definition fits many people’s experiences of family life, but not everyone’s. In recent decades, understandings of family have been broadened to include a wider range of social structures.

Murdock’s definition of the family states that the family is characterized by common residence. However, there are families in which one family member commutes regularly, or in which one or more family members spend extended periods of time elsewhere. What, then, should we make of married couples who live apart most of the time, and who maintain only visiting relationships with one another? Such relationships are found where husbands and wives are both committed to occupational careers that require them to live in different parts of the country, or even different parts of the world. They are also found in societies where economic opportunities are poor, and one of the partners (usually the husband) must migrate from a rural area to an urban area, or to another society, in order to earn a living for the family while the other partner (usually the wife) stays behind to bring up the children in their community of origin (Quddus, 1992). It is also the case that mothers sometimes live apart from their children but maintain economic and social relationships with them (Richter, 1996). Child fostering, particularly when women send their young children to grandparents in rural areas to be cared for, has been documented in many parts of the world.

Murdock’s definition also states that the family is characterized by reproduction, and therefore includes children. However, childless couples have become increasingly prevalent in Western societies as fertility rates have fallen, and surely we would want to include these couples as families too. Finally, Murdock’s definition states that the family consists of adults of both sexes. This restrictive definition would exclude single-parent families consisting of one adult plus her or his children. Such families have become increasingly prevalent as divorce rates increased. Once labelled as ‘broken families’, these social structures are widely recognized today as having the right to be recognized as families alongside families with two parents. More controversially, there are also social structures consisting of same-sex couples which have also made claims to be recognized as families. While there has been some resistance to extending the concept of family this far, same-sex couples have been increasingly successful in gaining social and legal recognition.

Restrictive as Murdock’s definition was, his work did at least have the merit of recognizing that there is more than one type of family structure. Murdock stated that there are three types of families. The first type of family is the nuclear family. He said this family typically consists of a married man and woman and their offspring, although in some cases one or more additional persons may reside with them. According to Murdock, the nuclear family is a universal social grouping, either as the sole form of the family or as the basic unit from which more complex forms of family are constructed. The second type of family recognized by Murdock was the polygamous family. According to his definition, this type of family consists of two or more nuclear families that are affiliated because they have one married partner in common. Under polygyny, for instance, one man plays the role of husband and father in several nuclear families and thereby unites them into a larger familial group. Finally, the third type of family recognized by Murdock was the extended family. This consists of two or more nuclear families affiliated through an extension of the parent–child relationship. That is, the nuclear family of a married adult is joined to that of his or her parents.

Writing in the United States in the late 1950s, Murdock concluded that the nuclear family would be most familiar as the type of family recognized to the exclusion of all others by American society. Indeed, the nuclear family was prevalent in the 1950s, and for statistical purposes it was often regarded as the normal type of family. Martha Hill, writing in the USA in the mid-1990s, stated that the model family for designing social policy has been a co-resident nuclear unit with the husband-father as the main breadwinner and death as a prominent reason for losing the main breadwinner (Hill, 1995). In terms of family structure, the key assumption has been that a family is a nuclear family, consisting of a co-resident husband, wife, and (young) children. She concludes that this model has become unrealistic, and it should be considered as a model rather than the model of family.

Hill finds that the model of a co-resident nuclear family does not fit most age groups of adults. The co-resident nuclear family is the modal family situation of US children, but it does not characterize the family situation of about one quarter of them. Sharply rising divorce rates, plus large increases in births to unmarried mothers since the 1960s, make the single-parent household a prominent living arrangement for children. One in eight children is also growing up spending at least some time in an extended household, for example with grandparents or with aunts and uncles. The model of a co-resident nuclear family is an even poorer characterization of the family situation of adults. Adults are not normally in a co-resident nuclear family. Only among those aged 30–39 is the norm to be in a nuclear family with all children living together under one roof. Adults aged 50 or older are rarely in a co-resident nuclear family. In fact, for elderly persons an important living arrangement to take into account is living alone.

Furthermore, Hill points out that not all individuals related by descent, adoption or marriage live together in the same household. Major family ties are unobserved when only the relatives in the household are identified, an approach taken in many surveys and public programmes. Most official surveys are based on the household as the unit of analysis, using definitions of family that derive more from living arrangements than kinship ties. This approach can produce an incomplete accounting of relationships with family members living elsewhere. These relationships not only have emotional significance, but can also have material significance in such things as social support in times of ill-health or financial support in times of need. They are also relevant to the support of children by non-custodial parents, which has become increasingly important due to high rates of divorce and an increasing proportion of births occurring out of wedlock. Sizable segments of men in their 30s and 40s have young children living elsewhere and, hence, obligations that reach outside the nuclear family. On the other side, many young children live apart from one of their parents, but receive support, occasional or regular, from the absent parent. Of course, once they reach adulthood, most children live apart from their parents. Family ties therefore span more than one nuclear family, and many family transactions occur between nuclear families. The structure of linkages connecting non-resident family members has received considerably less attention than co-resident family structures, despite their potential importance.

Similarly, Bernardes, writing in England, has noted that traditional family sociology has adopted a central ideal-type model of a presumed dominant nuclear family (Bernardes, 1985). The reality, he concludes, is one of variation and diversity. He goes on to argue that the traditional family model of the married heterosexual couple with children is part of a family ideology used by influential sections of society, such as the major religious organizations, in forming their own opinions and moral evaluations of family life. The divergence between this ideology and practical experiences of family life has become more open in recent years, as other sections of society have contested the previously dominant conceptualization of family life. Groups such as single mothers by choice, feminists and gays and lesbians have articulated challenges to the nuclear family model, and their voices have increasingly been heard. For example, the flagship journal of the National Council on Family Relations in the United States used to be called the Journal of Marriage and the Family. It is now called the Journal of Marriage and Family, reflecting the idea that there is no longer one dominant model of The Family but a diversity of patterns for family living. This changing viewpoint has reflected recent trends: an overall decline in husband– wife households, with attendant increases in female-headed households, people living alone, and unmarried women and men living together. In addition, the living arrangements of lesbians and gay men have become more visible. As perceptions have changed, so too awareness has grown that not only is there great variation in family structures but our pictures of family structures have been influenced by family ideologies.

Once we begin to view The Family as an ideological unit and recognize it as a moral statement, we can begin to unravel the complex process through which family relationships and The Family as a construct were mutually formed. For example, we can examine how social groups and state institutions have acted to define appropriate social behaviour. Ideologies affect how people behave, and they can be manipulated to produce outcomes favoured by those who possess relatively great social power.

FAMILY CONSTRUCTS

An ideology is a system of beliefs and values that defines social reality. It structures how we see the world and the conclusions that are drawn about appropriate lines of action. Family ideology ensures that certain parts of everyday family life are seen in a certain way, and that other elements of family lives are not seen at all. Ideologies gloss over the diversity, complexity and contradictions in relationships in favour of a unified construct of how the world is thought to really work. One such ideology is that of the nuclear family. This approach defines the nuclear family as the natural basis for family life (Bernardes, 1999). It claims that the nuclear family is a universal social institution that is the basic unit of society, and it recommends policies that encourage the formation of nuclear families. The modern nuclear family with a particular sexual division of labour has been writ large as The Family and elevated as the only desirable and legitimate family form.

Feminists have been especially concerned about the way in which this ideology has often been implicated in ideological definitions about natural gender differences in family life. For example, mothers rather than fathers have been seen as the natural caregivers for children, especially small children. Feminists have challenged ideological assumptions about the family (Thorne, 1982). They have argued against the ideology of the monolithic model of the family, which stresses the nuclear family with a breadwinner husband and a full-time wife and mother as the only natural and legitimate family form (Eichler, 1981). It is claimed that the monolithic model of the family leads to an unwarranted assumption of congruence between specific features of family life which vary in practice. This assumption of congruence generates bias in the data collection process and an inappropriate identification of what constitutes problem families. Feminists have challenged beliefs that any specific family arrangement is natural and inevitable. It is argued that beliefs that most people live in the nuclear family, that adult women usually have husbands to support them, and that motherhood is women’s central vocation have legitimated the subordination of women. For example, lower wages for women have been justified by the assumption that their paid work is secondary to that of men. The belief that women are uniquely suited for domestic caregiving supports a sexual division of occupations in which women do jobs that resemble their roles as wives and mothers. And belief in the nuclear family justifies the idea that women depend upon the presence of a man. In short, the ideology of The Family reinforces women’s domination by men.

Sometimes the family is conceived of more widely than the nuclear family in an ideology of familism. This is the case with policy discourses on family caregiving for the sick and the elderly. As the demand for care of the elderly in particular has risen, policy makers have articulated a vision of the family as the main provider of care. Here, the assumption is that there is a family consisting of a network of kin who are involved in providing care to a person in need (Keating et al., 1994). Once again, a discourse of the family obscures real variations. Treating whole families as sources of support hides the extent to which social interactions shape the practical experiences of family life. There are two problems with such conceptualizations. First, not all close kin are involved in caregiving. For example, caregivers may have relatives whom they believe have obligations to help kin in need but who do not do so. Usually, only a certain proportion of any kinship network are actively involved in caring activities. However, the presumption that the family is (or should be) the main provider of care is part of the ideology of familism which holds that there is a kin group available for caregiving. The assumption that families provide care begs questions such as: which kin are actively supportive; which might be available to help but are not currently helping; which are unable or unwilling to help? The second problem with the ideology of familism in the policy discourse on family caregiving is that the structure of the caregiving family cannot be assumed by the presence or absence of kin, but it is socially constructed. Kin are included or excluded based on the preferences of the care recipients and the primary caregivers. Sometimes the preferred caregivers include non-kin who are close friends or neighbours of the primary caregiver or the care recipient. The caregiving family is not a monolithic entity determined by policy makers, but it is a socially constructed field of interactions with many variations. This includes such matters as the history of relationships, social expectations, and long-standing issues of affection or hostility. For example, the ways in which kin have interacted with one another in the past will set the stage for defining how much of the kinship network is included in the caregiving family.

If the caregiving family is socially constructed, it follows that different individuals may have quite different ideas on who comprises the family. These views may differ between ordinary people and social policy administrators, and among administrators themselves. For example, adult children may not recognize an obligation to help an ailing parent, because they are too busy, have jobs, or have other caregiving commitments. But social services administrators generally behave as if children are potential caregivers, often reducing or withholding services if there are children living locally, especially daughters. Social workers expect kin to help their elderly clients with a number of tasks, ranging from keeping in touch by phone to giving personal care. Or, to take another example, where financial benefits to caregivers are concerned, government regulations defining family for the purposes of administering social policy may exclude siblings even though some siblings provide care to one another in times of need such as ill-health.

The main conclusion to be drawn here is that ‘family’ is something that is socially constructed by particular groups of people in their interactions about the meanings of social relationships. The upshot is that so much variability has been revealed in what the family has been and is, that arriving at a single definition seems futile. Still, family has been and continues to be a meaningful category of human organization (Gubrium and Lynott, 1985). Because the concept of family refers to such a wide range of diverse phenomena, it has no logical basis apart from the everyday usages of social actors. A family is whatever people define it to be in their ongoing social interactions. This includes the definitions of actors in their everyday lives, as well as the definitions of social scientists who engage in formal discussions about family life. Social scientific concepts of families are commonly derived from folk models. When these categories become objects of attention in discussions and debates they acquire common meanings within a shared way of talking, or discourse (Holstein and Gubrium, 1999). The focus therefore is to examine people’s shared language and their intersubjective understandings about family.

Recognizing the social construction of family draws attention to the ways in which people talk about ‘the family’ as they organize social relationships. People talk about the family as a social unit, and the meanings they give to family affect how they define family membership. For example, James Holstein has studied how family usage varies among community mental health and legal professionals as they make decisions about the cases that come before them (Holstein, 1988). Judgements about the presence or absence of family depend upon such factors as what dimensions of family life are stressed by people occupying different organizational positions. For example, a judge whose main concern is with the living arrangements of someone with mental health problems may draw different conclusions about the presence of family to provide such support than a psychiatrist who is more concerned with the level of psychotherapeutic care. Such local and particular definitions of family are instrumental in shaping how organizations respond to individuals in need of care.

According to Holstein, ‘family’ is a category that people use to define social bonds, part of a discourse for assigning meaning to relationships. For example, when a social worker says that a client’s friends and caregivers are ‘like a family’ to her, this statement calls upon shared understandings of family ties to convey the caring and supportive nature of the social network. Or, it may be stated that a woman’s relatives are ‘not really a family’ to her at all, indicating the lack of practical support for the tasks of everyday living. Such discourse not only assigns meanings to specific relationships, but it also constructs an image of the family as a source of support and caregiving, and a ‘haven in a heartless world’ (Gubrium, 1987). In this usage family is defined according to the functions it fulfils, in contrast to defining family on the basis of the structures through which it is enacted.

FAMILY STRUCTURES

Most of our social scientific categorizations of family life are categorizations of family structures. The nuclear family is one type of family structure but it is only one type, as even Murdock recognized. Family structures are sets of relationships in which actors recognize one another, expect certain behaviours from one another, and interact in predictable ways. Interactions may be cooperative, and often are. However, cooperation is not the only predictable form of interaction. Family violence can be as much a part of family structure as love between family members, as we shall see in a later chapter. Families are diverse and show many different characteristics. We will illustrate some of that diversity here by looking at cohabiting couples, single-parent families, extended families, and polygamous families.

Cohabitation

Murdock’s definition of the nuclear family was that of a married man and woman and their offspring. One of the reasons why the nuclear family model no longer fits Western societies well is that more and more men and women are now living together without the benefit of marriage. Referred to by social scientists as cohabitation, this pattern of family living has emerged as a challenge to traditional marriage. In many industrial societies, marriage declined from the late 1960s onwards, and this was accompanied by an increase in non-marital cohabitation. Subsequently, the legal difference between marriage and cohabitation was reduced. The decline of legal marriage as a sacred and indissoluble institution seems to be the most significant trend in the evolution of family life in Western societies in recent decades.

Cohabitation has been notably high in Sweden, where it is a normal way of life. It has become more an alternative lifestyle choice there than a prelude to legal marriage, as it may still be elsewhere. In Sweden, the likelihood of subsequent marriage has declined among cohabitors. In other societies, cohabitation is increasingly common among the young, and those who were previously married. In Canada, for example, one half of women and one third of men enter into a cohabiting relationship by age 25 (Wu, 2000). Rates of cohabitation are also high for men and women who have ended their first marriage.

Cohabitation may have become more prevalent, but it can still be a relatively unstable form of family life. For example, in Canada the family life of children born to parents who at some time have cohabitated seems to be particularly unstable (Marcil-Gratton, 1993). Also, consensual unions are significantly more likely to dissolve than formal marriages in Latin America (Desai, 1992). However, a substantial proportion of informal unions are later legalized into formal marriages. This suggests that an element of trial arrangement is often involved in opting for cohabitation. In Canada, only one third of consensual unions survive for three years. The most common reason for terminating a consensual union is marriage of the partners, as more than one half of cohabiting couples eventually get married. For many young Canadians, cohabitation is a short-lived stage in the life course before making the more profound commitment of marriage. More than one third of cohabiting couples marry within three years of moving in together. Apparently there is still some social pressure in Canada to marry, although Canadians now place less value on marriage than they once did. In fact in Canada the social pressure to marry appears to be weakening as a significant minority of cohabitations do not end in marriage.

The shift towards cohabitation in Canada is particularly noticeable in the Province of Quebec. Cohabitation in Quebec is rapid...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• 1 Defining family and family structures
• 2 Interaction and meaning in families
• 3 Social divisions
• 4 Social change
• 5 Demographic change
• 6 Family, work and money
• 7 Caring
• 8 Violence and sexual abuse
• 9 Family formation
• 10 Parenting
• 11 Family transformations
• 12 Kinship
• 13 Family and state
• 14 Sexuality
• References