Blog 14 - Extended Families

Blog 13 - Family Transitions

Questions: (1.) According to the research presented by Stephanie Coontz, how does divorce affect children, and what factors account for the variation in these effects? (2.) According to Furstenberg and Cherlin, what factors affect short-term and long-term adjustment of children to divorce? (3.) According to Carr, what three factors are the most important influences on spousal bereavement? How does gender shape the experience of spousal loss?

In Stephanie Coontz’s article, Putting Divorce in Perspective, she examines the variety of affects divorce has on children. She points out that people are usually quick to infer that all children of divorced parents turn out worse than those whose parents stay together. Coontz, however, provides information that illustrates that while some children are significantly affected by divorce in a negative manner other children’s well-beings were hardly affected. Some of the factors that were determined to cause the variations in these effects include: number of divorces and/or remarriages, poverty, financial loss, school relocation and prior history of severe martial conflict (101).
In a number of studies conducted it has been concluded that more children of divorced parents have problems. For example, “it is true that children in divorced and remarried families are more likely to drop out of school, exhibit emotional distress, get in trouble with the law and abuse drugs or alcohol than children who grow up with both biological parents” (99). Furthermore, it has also been reported, in a long-term study published by Judith Wallerstein, that almost half the children from divorced families experienced long-term pain, worry and insecurity that adversely affected their love and work relationships. Some of these problems can be attributed to the fact that divorces can interfere with effective parenting and deprive children of parental resources (98).
Coontz emphasizes the fact that while divorces possess the potential to have disastrous consequences for the children involved it is unfair to say that these problems are caused by solely by the divorce; “many of the problems seen in children of divorced parents are caused not by divorce alone but by other frequently coexisting yet analytically separate factors” (101). Divorce usually triggers financial loss, withdrawal of parental attention, and change of residences or schools. “In this sense it is fair to say that divorce causes many childhood problems by creating these other conditions. But it makes more sense to adopt policies to minimize income loss or school and residence changes than to prohibit divorce across the board, for these are no hard and fast links between family structure, parental behaviors, and children’s outcome” (101). Furthermore, a particular study found that “experiences in a one-parent, mother-headed family seemed to have a positive effect for girls” (103). These girls were found to be caring, competent children who were exceptionally popular, self-confident, well-behaved and academically adept. These girls had the most stable peer friendships and solid relations with adults.

Several studies have been conducted to pinpoint what factors affect short-term and long-term adjustment of children to divorce. The majority of the studies show a wide range of responses to divorce; some children do very well while others fare poorly. Some factors, however, have been isolated to improve the affects divorce has on children.
The first two years following a separation have been labeled by psychologists as a ‘crisis period’ for children as well as adults. In effort to aid children in the short-term adjustment to divorce two essential needs must be met. “First, they need additional emotional support as they struggle to adapt to the breakup. Second, they need the structure provided by a reasonably predictable daily routine” (493). Consequences of the crisis period include both external and internal disorders. External disorders are characterized by heightened levels of problem behavior directed outwards, such as aggression, disobedience, and lying. Internal disorders refer to heightened levels of problem behaviors directed inward, such as depression, anxiety or withdrawal (493). There have been other studies conducted that provide evidence indicating that boys might do worse during this two-year period because they typically live with their opposite-sex parent, their mother.
While almost all children are moderately or severely distressed and experience sadness, confusion and anger when their parents separate many parents are eventually able to stabilize their own as well as their children’s lives. Some children, however, suffer long-term harm; but it is hard to determine the exact problems caused by the divorce because more times than not “all of the problems that emerge after the breakup are blamed on the divorce,” (495). Nonetheless, Sara McLanahan and her colleagues have reported that, “persons who reported living as a child in a single-parent family were more likely subsequently to drop out of high school, marry during their teenage years, have a child before marrying, and experience the disruption of their own marriages” (495). Research has been conducted to help identify factors that affect children’s long-term adjustment to divorce. A critical factor in both short-term and long-term adjustment is how effectively the custodial parent, usually the mother, functions as a parent. The way in which mothers cope with the distress has effects on the children’s well-being. “Quite often their distress is rooted in, or at least intensified by, financial problems. Loss of the father’s income can cause a disruptive, downward spiral in which children must adjust to a declining standard of living, a mother who is less psychologically available and is home less often, an apartment in an unfamiliar neighborhood, a different school, and new friends” (496). Low-level conflict between the mother and father in the subsequent years of a divorce is also a crucial factor to determining children’s long-term adjustment to divorce. Although many researchers have noted that the maintenance of a continuing relationship with the non-custodial parent is critical for children’s successful adjustment, recent studies have concluded that there is not enough evidence to determine whether or not retaining a stable and close relationship with the non-custodial parent significantly influences long-term adjustment.

In Deborah Carr’s article, Good Grief: Bouncing Back from a Spouse’s Death in Late Life, the age of the husband and wife, how the spouse died, and what the couple’s life was like prior to the death are the most important factors that influence spousal bereavement.
The age of the husband and wife is an important factor for a number of reasons. First, losing a spouse is simply inevitable for most older married couples. Older grieving spouses have an important coping resource that is seldom available to younger widows and widowers: friends, peers, and siblings who are also adjusting to such a loss (24). The meaning of life and death also differs for older and younger persons; “death may be viewed as the natural conclusion to an elderly spouse’s long and meaningful life, rather than the interruption of a life yet to be lived” (24).
In addition to age, cause of death also influences spousal bereavement. Many older spouses die of chronic illness, or a long-term illness that causes physical pain or disability and often requires intensive care. As a result of advances in medical technology the life-span of ailing adults has increased; while also increasing the burden on spouses to manage complex care and medication regimes. For example, “many caregivers report high levels of strain and depressive symptoms when their spouses are still alive, yet many bounce back shortly after their spouses die” (25). In conclusion, “for many bereaved spouses, the event of the loss is not as painful as the long death watch period, which is often filled with drawn-out suffering” (25).
What the couple’s life was like prior to the death of a spouse also impacts spousal bereavement. Studies have reported that “people with the most close-knit, loving marriages experience the most severe symptoms of sadness and yearning in the first six months after their loss” contrary to couples who experienced problematic marriages (25). In addition, further studies “show that widows and widowers who had the most problematic marriages show better psychological health following their loss than do their married peers who remain in such troubled relationships (25).
Gender also shapes the experience of spousal loss. The traditional division of labor (men: making home repairs, paying bills, managing finances; women: meal preparation, child care, housework) means that widows and widowers face different challenges. After their husbands die, many widowers experience distress and anxiety about money because their husbands were usually the main source of income. Widowers on the other hand, tend to lose their social networks since their wives the family ‘kinkeepers.’

Blog 12 - Childhood

Questions: (1.) According to Thorne and Luria, what aspect of childhood experience serves as one of the main sources of gender differences? How does it operate? (2.) According to Goldscheider and Waite, how much housework do children do in contemporary families? How does it vary by child’s gender and type of family? (3.) What are the signs of commercialization of childhood presented in Juliet Schor’s article? How does this commercialization affect children’s well-being?

Children’s social relations during play time are an aspect of childhood experiences that serves as one of the main sources of gender differences. “Boys tend to interact in larger and more publicly-visible groups; they more often play outdoors, and their activities take up more space than those of girls. Boys engage in more physically aggressive play and fighting; their social relations tend to be overtly hierarchical and competitive” (139). Girls on the other hand tend to interact in much smaller groups or friendships. “Girls more often engage in turn-taking activities like jump-rope and doing tricks on the bars, and they less often play organized sports. Girls describe their relations using language that stresses cooperation and ‘being nice’ (139). These initial roles act as scripts that they will follow into adulthood. Both girls and boys are helping to socialize one another into primary adult gender roles.
The segregation that girls and boys experience during their childhood greatly influences their experiences later in life. “In their separate gender groups, girls and boys learn somewhat different patterns of bonding – boys sharing the arousal of group rule-breaking; girls emphasizing the construction of intimacy, and themes of romance. Coming to adolescent sexual intimacy from different and symmetric gender subcultures, girls and boys bring somewhat different needs, capacities, and types of knowledge” (147).

In the Goldscheider and Waite article they examined the amount of housework done by children and how their work varies by the child’s gender and family type. It was found that children take relatively little responsibility for most household tasks, about 15% of the total household labor (811). They housework that is performed by children usually consists of washing dishes, cleaning the house, doing laundry, and doing lawn work. Goldscheider and Waite also determined that most families do not give children any responsibility for paperwork, or much responsibility for grocery shopping or child care (811).
The particular tasks of housework performed by children were also found to be significantly dependent on one’s gender and family situation. For example, “families with teenage girls report sharing five times more of these other tasks with children than do families with boys of the same age. In fact, girls ages 12-18 seem to carry the largest share of housework of all children” (813). Furthermore, young adult males contribute no more to housework than do preteen children and do significantly less cooking and child care than children 6-12 years old. “This childhood socialization helps to reproduce the sex segregation of household labor found among husbands and wives. The family is a “gender factory,” serving as a focal point where the importance of the division of labor between the sexes is most strongly reinforced” (813).
Specific family situations/types also influence how much housework is performed by children and who in particular performs those tasks. For example, “families headed by unmarried women, have both less money and less of the mother’s time at home than do families headed by couples. Under these circumstances, families may feel more need to turn to the labor power of the children, both in the home and in market” (814). Furthermore, Goldscheider and Waite reported that many of these mothers say they cannot function without the children’s labor. Although the children in mother-only families take nearly twice as much responsibility for household’s tasks as those in standard nuclear families, there was no change reported in the traditional allocation of tasks between boys and girls. These children, of mother-only families, however, were clearly more central to the family economy in a way that they are not in other families, and as a result, they are likely to feel needed and more responsible (815). Children who live with their mother and stepfather also take a greater role in household chores than do children who live with both their biological parents.

In the contemporary age there are many signs of the commercialization of childhood. “A 2000 Griffin Bacal study found that nearly two-thirds of mothers thought their children were brand aware by age three, one-third said it happened at age two. Kids have clear brand preferences, they know which brands are cool, they covet them, and pay attention to the ads for them. Today’s tweens are the most brand conscious generation in history” (7). This commercialization is due to a variety of factors, however, “underlying them all is a marketing juggernaut characterized by growing reach, effectiveness and audacity” (2). Many companies are investing a lot of time and money into learning more about this new and upcoming market. For example, “hundreds of companies’ representatives come to hear the latest findings about what kids are up to from researchers, psychologists, and ad agency reps” (3). In addition to listening to the latest findings of professionals, “marketers are videotaping children in their private spaces, providing-in-depth analysis of the rituals of daily like. They are taking the streets, to stores, and even going to schools to observe and record. Researchers are paying adults whom kids trust, such as coaches, clergy and youth workers, to elicit information from them. Online, they’re offering money, products, and prizes directly to kids in return for salable consumer information” As a result of all this children-intensive research, marketers now had a better idea of how to reach their potential consumers. Recently, it was found that children now have more of an influence in parental purchases; particularly within the food market. For example, when Fruit Roll-Ups were first introduced the ads had both kid and mom appeal; for moms they called the attention towards the fruit aspect of the snack. After a while however, Fruit Roll-Up marketers realized that this dual messaging was unnecessary. Consequently, ad agencies moved toward targeting their advertisements directly at kids while worrying less about Mom.
The commercialization of childhood has also found been found to affect children’s well-being. Increasingly, children are now found to be suffering from more emotional and mental health problems. “Rates of anxiety and depression went from negligible to 3.6%; attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder rose from 1.4% to 9.2%. Estimates of major depression are as high as 8% for adolescents. [Furthermore] in recent decades, suicide rates have climbed, and suicide is now the fourth leading cause of death among 10-14 year olds” (13). These new statistics are less than comforting and visibly illustrate that children’s mental and psychological health are much worse today than they were ten to twenty years ago.

Blog 11 - Fatherhood

Questions: (1.) According to Joseph Pleck, how did the role of fathers change in the United States over time? What are the expectations about fatherhood today, both according to the article and based on your own observations? (2.) According to Francine Deutsch, why do couples with children decide to work alternating shifts, and how is that decision related to their social class status? How does these families' division of labor compare to their gender ideologies? Would you select an alternating shift arrangement for your family? (3.) According to Dorothy Roberts, what are the societal forces that discourage family participation of Black fathers? What elements of Black fatherhood led to the creation of the myth of the Absent Black Father, and what patterns of Black men’s behavior contradict this myth?

In Joseph Pleck’s chapter, “American Fathering in Historical Perspective,” he clearly illustrates how the role of fathers changed in the Untied States.
In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the father was viewed as the moral overseer. The father was the main parent in the lives of his children. He was seen as the “ultimate source of moral teaching and worldly judgments” (352). The church, a major influential factor, believed that fathers “ought to concern themselves with the moral and religious education of the young and teach reading and writing” (352). Furthermore, the father played a key role in the courtship and marriage making of his children and usually was assigned custody in cases of marital separation.
In the early nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries the predominant role of father began to change. Gradually the role of the mother increased while the more direct role of father decreased. As a new gender ideology emerged, specifically the purity of the female sphere, “the interests of the child were interpreted as justifying if not requiring maternal custody” (353). The effect of industrialization also impacted the role of the father; instead of being the extremely involved in the lives of his children, “being fully a father [now] meant being separated from one’s children for a considerable part of each day” (354). Although the father continued to set the official standard of morality and to be the final arbiter of family discipline, on the whole the father’s authority was reduced significantly.
Today, the dominant model is the father as the bread-winner. However, the image of the “new father” is on the rise: “he is present at the birth, he is involved with his children as infants, not just when they are older; he participates in the actual day-to-day work of child care, and not just play; he is involved with his daughters as much as his sons” (358).
I think that the article emphasizes the “new father” model as an expectation for fathers to emulate today; a sort of balance between the extremely involved father of the colonial period and frequently absent bread-winner father of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I agree with Pleck’s “new father” model and the expectations of fathers today. The balance between the two extremes seems to be a happy medium.

Many couples with children decide to work alternating shifts for different reasons, but mainly because of monetary issues. In Francine Deutsch’s article, “Halving it All: The Mother and Mr. Mom,” the majority of couples attributed their decision to working alternate shifts because it is cheaper to avoid using paid child care. Deutsch even mentioned the tight financial situation of these couples, “the alternating shifters have the lowest incomes among the groups I interviewed” (117). Although many of these couples couldn’t afford child care and thus had to work alternating shifts, there were many couples who “reasoned that it was impractical to spend so much of their income on day care” (117).
Couples also chose to work alternating shifts because they believe that children should only be cared for by family. Many middle class parents avoid day care and opt to work alternating shifts because for psychological reasons; for example, “they believe it doesn’t promote the child’s optimal development or because they think it will damage the bond between parent and child” (118). Furthermore, they also believe that “terrible dangers await children who are cared for by strangers” (118).
Among the working class there is more support for traditional gender ideology than among the more highly educated groups in the United States. “Many blue-collar couples carry with them images of an ideal of traditional family life, featuring the men going to work while their wives stay at home to tend young children” (125). As a result, Deutsch found that among middle class couples, “an overwhelming majority emphasized that, though both parents are employed, the men are the breadwinners in their families” (125). Furthermore, “in almost all the alternating-shift families, the parents stressed men’s breadwinning roles by treating the father’s job as the more important job in the family” (126).
The reality of the mother who works alternating shifts contradicts the ideal of the mother without paid employment. Although many of these alternating-shift mothers work to maintain the family’s economic well-being, many of them stated that given the choice the majority of them preferred being in the paid labor force and wouldn’t chose to be home full time – “yet the prevailing myth in these families is that the mothers work only for financial reasons” (126).
Mothers in alternating-shift families are still regarded as the number-one parent, regardless of how much time fathers spend with their children; “being there when children arrive home from a day at school is part of their image of being a good mother” (129).
Alternating-shift families are breaking grounds by developing new parenting techniques however there is an emphasis on traditional gender identities that there couples tend to hang on to. “They manage marked difference between their behavior and their ideology by maintaining core aspects of parental gender identity. Despite their nontraditional arrangements, they still regard the father as the breadwinner and the mother as the central parent” (132).
I am not sure what I would do in terms of selecting an alternating-shift arrangement for my family. It is extremely economically beneficial and also allows both parents to spend time with their children; however I would imagine that it might put a strain on the relationship between husband and wife. It seems that the time they would have together would be limited and when they find the time to be together either one or both are probably going to be exhausted. The pros and cons seem to be equal so I guess it would depend on the specific situation I found myself to be in at the time.

In Dorothy Roberts’ chapter, “The Absent Black Father,” she notes while black fathers are disparaged for their absence in the family, there are a number of societal factors that discourage family participation of black fathers. First, she points to a Black cultural tradition that is more accepting of unmarried mothers. Along similar lines, people tend to view Black single mothers as resistors against patriarchy. Roberts also indicates that joblessness and incarceration are also strong societal factors that discourage participation of black fathers. The unemployment rates for Black men “are more than double those of White men, and in 1988, there were more Black women in the labor force than Black men” (150). Black men’s declining ability to contribute financially to their households is a major cause of fatherlessness in Black homes. Additionally, Black fathers are also separated from their families by imprisonment; “Blacks, mostly men, make up over half of the one million inmates in American jails” (150). These incarceration rates “not only result from the disproportionate poverty and desperation that plagues Black communities but also from federal and state sentencing policies that are tougher on Black drug offenders” (150). When these Black men are finally let out of prison, ex-convicts have a hard time finding a decent job, which makes it difficult for them ever to become the ideal father.
An important element of Black fatherhood that led to the creation of the myth of the Absent Black Father is that Blacks were not included in the separate spheres ideology; “black men fail to fit the patriarchal model of the husband who sustains his family economically” (151). Furthermore, the term ‘fatherlessness’ is often used interchangeably with ‘single motherhood’ and ‘illegitimacy’ demonstrating that people seem to be far more concerned with castigating unmarried fathers than with examining the actual contributions of married fathers to their children’s well being.
"Many presumably “absent” Black fathers actually play an important role in child rearing. Many Black men stay closely tied to their children even when they are not married to the mother or are unable to provide financial support” (153). Stephanie Coontz even points out that in one national study, “poor African-American, officially absent fathers actually had more contact with their children and gave them informal support than did White, middle-class absent fathers” (153).