Baca zinn ch12-lecture

Diversity In Families
NINTH EDITION

Chapter Twelve
Emergent Families in
the Global Era

Copyright ©2011 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Diversity in Families, Ninth Edition
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458
Maxine Baca Zinn • D. Stanley Eitzen • Barbara Wells
All rights reserved.

Chapter Twelve Overview

• The Rise in New Family Arrangement
- Families in Transition
- The Global Revolution in Family Life
• Single Life
- The Singles Population
- Gender, Race, Class
- Experiencing Single Life


Chapter Twelve Overview
• Heterosexual Cohabitation
- The rise of cohabitation
- Who are cohabitators?
- Gender, class and race
• Same-Sex Partners and Families
- Who is gay and what is a gay family?
- Gay couples and families
• Families Separated by Time and Space
- Transnational families
- Commuter Marriages and other long distance
relationships

The Rise in New Family Arrangements

• The percentage of the U.S. population in
family households declined from 85
percent of all households in 1960 to 68
percent in 2003.
• Another major change is a decline in the
percentage of households with children.



• Family Households include families in
which a family member is the householder
– the person who owns or rents the
residence.
• A non family household includes the
householders who live alone or share a
residence with individuals unrelated to the
householder such as a college friend
sharing an apartment.


• There has been a decline in the
percentage of married couple households
with children.
- Two parent households with children dropped
from 40 to 22 percent of all households
between 1970 and 2008 (US Census Bureau,
2009).


Figure 12.1
Household by Type: 1970-2008 (percent distribution)
Sources: Fields, Jason (2004). “America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2003.” Current Population Reports, P20-553.
Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, p. 4; “America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2008.” Current
PopulationSurvey Reports (2009). U.S. Bureau of the Census.
Online: http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/hh-fam/cps2008.html.


The Global Revolution in Family Life

• Five Global Trends in Family Formation:
- Women's age of first marriage and first birth has
risen.
- Families and households are smaller.
- The burden on working age parents of supporting
younger and older dependents has increased.
- The proportion of female-headed households has
increased.
- Women's labor force participation has increased while
men's has decreased; shifting the economic balance
in families.

The Global Revolution in Family Life

• In Europe and North America many family
forms do not have marriage at their core.
• Marriage is less central in organizing and
controlling life course transitions,
individual identities, intimate relations,
living arrangements, childbearing and
child rearing (Thornton and Young-
Demark 2001).


How to Think About Family Diversification

• Family adaptations emerge in response to
changes and constraints in the external world.
• The family field has made the distinction
between the “traditional family” and the
“nontraditional alternatives”.
• Not only does this oversimplify the incredible
array of contemporary family arrangements, it
also miscasts the idealized family as the normal
family or the standard.



• Rather than thinking of varied family
arrangements as alternatives to an
idealized traditional form, we should think
of all family forms in their own right.
• No one family structure is better than
another – it is a question of lifestyles.



• The Question of Lifestyles
- “Although studies of non-marital relationships
are not new phenomena, recent data
facilitate a broader conceptualization of
families than was possible before this decade”
(Seltzer, 2001).



• The Question of Lifestyles continued
- Many non marital living arrangements that
appear new to middle class Americans are
actually family patterns that have been
traditional within African American and other
ethnic communities for generations.
- Practical and legal considerations require that
we modify the conventional definition of the
family.


Single Life
• Single refers to the never married, the divorced,
the separated, and the widowed.
• The rise of single hood has its roots in
urbanization and industrialization.
• Research shows that many married individuals
express loneliness similar to singles.
• Today a growing share of adults are unmarried.
- Since 1970 the postponement of marriage has led to
a substantial increase in the percentage of young,
never married adults.


Single Life
• Demographic and cultural factors combine to
create a "marriage squeeze" that is an
imbalance in the number of women and men
available for marriage.
• Women no longer “have” to get married to
survive – many women chose to remain single
and pursue a career.
• The pool of eligible men shrinks as women age,
especially for professional women .
- Among people aged 65 and older, men are in the
minority.

Single Life: Class, Race and Gender

• Slightly more women than men marry
sometime over the life course.
• 50 million women are now single,
compared to 43 million men.
• The proportion of never married adults has
increased for Whites, Blacks and
Hispanics.


Characteristics of the “New” Single Woman

• She creates a nurturing home where she
feels physically and emotionally
comfortable.
• Her work is satisfying not only financially
but personally as well.
• She is comfortable with her sexuality and
she has fostered an empowering
relationship to sex or has opted for
sensuous celibacy.

Characteristics of the “New” Single Woman

• She connects with the next generation
through the children of friends and
relatives.
• She finds emotional intimacy with friends
and family.
• She builds a supportive community from
various areas of her life.


Experiencing Single Life
• Single life in the US is stigmatized.
• New research finds that single and married
people are really more similar than different.
• Although there has been a sharp rise in the
number of single people, marriage still remains a
viable option for most.
• To know someone is single tells us little about
their living arrangements or their relationship
commitments.
• Today what it means to be single is no longer
clear.

Heterosexual Cohabitation

• There are about 15 million people living
with an unmarried partner in the United
States.
• 60% of all marriages formed in the
nineties began with cohabitation.


• Contemporary cohabiters are primarily young
adults – more prevalent among people younger
than 35.
- A sizeable portion are divorced from a previous mate.
- Increasing proportions of cohabiting couples include
children in their households.
- 2 out of 5 children today live in a cohabiting family at
some point in their childhoods.
• People are much more cautious about marrying.


Figure 12.2
Percentage of High School Seniors Who “Agreed” or “Mostly Agreed”
With the Statement That “It is usually a good idea for a couple to live
together before getting married in order to find out whether they really
get along,” by Period, United States.
Note: From Monitoring the Future surveys conducted by the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan.
Source: “National Marriage Project (2009).” The State of Our Unions 2008: The Social Health of Marriage in America.
Online: http://marriage.rutgers.edu.



• Cohabitation is shaped by gender, class,
and race.
- Cohabiting women are younger than the men
they live with.
- Cohabitors have less traditional notions about
gender roles.



• Men view it more pragmatically, and
women view it more as a step toward
long-term commitment.
• Rates of cohabitation are somewhat
higher among African Americans and
Hispanics.


Figure 12.3
Unmarried-Partner Households by Sex of Partners and Race and
Hispanic Origin of Householder: 2000
(Percent of all coupled households. For information on confidentiality protection, nonsampling error and definitions, see
http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2000/docs/sf1.pdf.)
Note: Percent same-sex partners and percent opposite-sex partners may not add to total percent unmarried-partner households
because of rounding.
Source: Simmons, Tavia, and Martin O’Connell (2003). “Married-Couple and Unmarried-Partner Households: 2000.” Census 2000
Special Reports. U.S. Bureau of the Census (February).



• Another perspective holds that
cohabitation is not a step toward marriage,
but a family form in its own right for
couples who don’t see marriage as a
defining characteristic of their lives.
• Minority cohabitating couples are more
likely to have children than their white
counterparts.


Same-Sex Partners and Families
• The emergence of non-heterosexual
families is a movement with large social,
political and legal ramifications.
• Researchers estimate that four to ten
percent of the adult population are
homosexual.
• Demographic data reveal that homosexual
couples are an overwhelmingly urban
population.

Same-Sex Partners and Families
• Many of the couples include children.
• Domestic partners – two individuals who are in a
long-term committed relationship and are
responsible for each other’s financial and
emotional well-being.
• Gay and Lesbian couples tend to be more highly
educated than their heterosexual counterparts.
• Homosexuals are denied significant legal and
economic benefits by the prohibition on
homosexual marriage.


Same Sex Partners and Families
• Research has long identified social networks as
the distinguishing feature of same sex families.
- Networks are made up of “chosen” family
connections.
- “Chosen” families are formed from networks of lovers,
friends, co parents, children conceived through
artificial insemination, adopted children, children from
previous relationships and other blood kin.
• Gays and Lesbians are broadening the definition
of the family.


Figure 12.4
Same-Sex Couples in the United States, 1990-2007
Sources: Gates, Gary J. (2007). “Geographic Trends among Same-Sex Couples in the U.S. Census and the American
Community
Survey.” The Williams Institute, p. 3. Online: http://repositories.cdlib.org/uclalaw/Williams/census/gates_1; O’Connell, Martin and
Daphne Lofquist (2009). “Counting Same-Sex Couples: Official Estimates and Unofficial Guesses.” U.S. Census Bureau Working
Papers. Online: http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/hh-fam.html.

• Gender:
- Studies comparing lesbian, gay and
heterosexual couples find important contrasts
in their characteristic patterns of intimacy.
- Gender shapes domestic values and
practices more strongly than sexual identity.
- Research highlights the effects of gender on
relationship quality.
- Gay and Lesbian couples tend to be
egalitarian.

• A shifting social context for Same Sex Partners.
- In general gay and lesbian couples face a catch–22.
They are legally prohibited from marrying but they
face serious discrimination because they are not
married.
- The domestic partner movement has been quite
successful in securing employment benefits for same
sex families.
 It has achieved remarkable success in corporate settings.
 90% of employers who offer domestic partner benefits make
them available to both same sex and different sex couples,
thus cohabitating heterosexual couples also benefit.

Figure 12.5
Fortune 500 Companies Providing Domestic Partner Health Benefits by
Year
Source: Human Rights Campaign Foundation (2009). The State of the Workplace, 2007–2008.
Online: http://www.hrc.org/workplace.


Families Separated by Time and Space

• Transnational Families:
- Families that have one or more members in
the U.S. and one or more members in another
country.
- The family spans national boundaries.
- Globalization is creating new immigration
patterns and producing new family forms
around the world.


Families Separated by Time and Space

• Transnational Families Continued:
- Women involved in transnational employment are
frequently mothers. Transnational motherhood is an
arrangement whereby immigrant women work in one
country while their children live in another country.
 This arrangement is difficult for parents and children.
- Transnational families are flexible family
arrangements in which fathers often care for the
children.


Families Separated

• Commuter Marriages:
- Commuter arrangements are largely due to
the changes in technology and the workplace.
- Commuter marriages are those in which dual
career couples set up residences in separate
locations, usually in response to the demands
of their work.
- Many couples view this as a temporary life
style.

Commuter Marriages
• Studies of commuting couples have found both
advantages and disadvantages.
- Benefits can include: A sense of autonomy,
achievement and satisfaction; greater self esteem and
self confidence; the ability to pursue careers without
immediate and everyday family constraints.
- Disadvantages can include: The separation can be
stressful, loneliness and lack of companionship,
missing sense of order, uncertainty about the
relationship, hectic schedules.


Commuting Couples
• Gender
- Women tend to view this arrangement overall less
negatively than men. They are free from schedules
and household chores and they have the ability to
work uninterrupted.
- A study of African American couples found that while
commuting produced stronger identities for both
husbands and wives, gender differences were also
present. Wives’ new identities centered on their
confidence in managing home, career and travel
responsibilities.


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