Posted: March 12th, 2023

Social Problems

Chapter 5: Family Problems

Learning Objectives

After studying this chapter, you will be able to do the following:

1.Give examples of how family forms and norms vary around the world.

2 Describe at least five trends, patterns, and/or variations in contemporary U.S. families, and differentiate between the marital decline and marital resiliency perspectives.

3 Explain how structural functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interaction help us understand the family institution, divorce, and domestic violence and abuse.

4 Discuss the social causes of divorce and its consequences for children and adults.

5 Identify the different forms of abuse in relationships, and describe the effects of violence and abuse on victims and the factors that contribute to domestic violence and abuse.

6 Discuss strategies to strengthen families, including expanding the definition of family, workplace and economic supports, relationship literacy education, covenant marriage, divorce mediation, divorce education programs, and domestic violence and abuse prevention and policies.

7 List ways in which divorce and domestic violence impact society and identify what many family scholars say is the “fundamental issue” in solving family problem

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Chapter 5

Problems in Families

9/16/2020

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What Is the Family?
The U.S. Census Bureau defines family as two or more individuals related by blood, marriage, or adoption living in the same household.
According to sociologists, a family is defined as a social group whose members are bound by legal, biological, or emotional ties, or a combination of all three.
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People in what sociologists define as a family may or may not share a household but always are interdependent and have a sense of mutual responsibility for one another’s care. This more open-ended definition takes into account the diversity among today’s families.

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What Is the Family? (cont’d)
An extended family is a large group of kin, defined as relatives or relations usually related by common descent. Extended families usually including at least three generations living either in one household or in close proximity.
A nuclear family is a heterosexual couple with one or more children living in a single household.

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Extended family most commonly includes a family with children and one or more sets of grandparents, although that is not the only arrangement. When you think of kin, you might think of the family that you see at a reunion. You may know some of the people that you see, but there are also probably people you don’t know, or at least that you don’t know well. However, some common ancestry ties you together and makes you kin or kinfolk.
When we think of nuclear families, we tend to think of “traditional” families; however, it is important to note that nuclear families don’t necessarily include a married couple. There are many different ways that a nuclear family can be formed, but you can think of it as a heterosexual, two-parent household with children.

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Sociological Perspectives on Families
Structural functionalism views
the family as one of the basic institutions that keeps society running smoothly by providing functions such as producing and socializing children, economic production, instrumental and emotional support, and sexual control.
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This perspective views the high rate of divorce and the rising number of single-parent households as constituting a “breakdown” of the family institu- tion. This supposed breakdown of the family is considered a primary social problem that leads to secondary social problems such as crime, poverty, and substance abuse.
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Sociological Perspectives on Families (cont’d)
Conflict theorists believe that society revolves around conflict over scarce resources, and that conflict within the family is also about the competition for resources: time, energy, and the leisure to pursue recreational activities.
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Conflict theory focuses on how capitalism, social class, and power influence marriages and families. Feminist theory is concerned with how gender inequalities influence and are influenced by marriages and families. Feminists are critical of the traditional male domination of families—a system known as patriarchy.
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Sociological Perspectives on Families (cont’d)
Symbolic interactionists examine the types of social dynamics and interactions that create and sustain families, emphasizing the ways that our experiences of family bonds are socially created rather than naturally existing.
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The symbolic interactionist perspective emphasizes that interaction with family mem-bers, including parents, grandparents, siblings, and spouses, has a powerful effect on our self-concepts. For example, negative self-concepts may result from verbal abuse in the family, whereas positive self-concepts may develop in families in which interactions are supportive and loving.
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Mate Selection
Homogamy means “like marries like,” and is demonstrated by the fact that we tend to choose mates who are similar to us in class, race, ethnicity, age, religion, education, and even levels of attractiveness.
Propinquity is the tendency to marry or have relationships with people in close geographic proximity.

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The process of selecting mates is largely determined by society. Two concepts (homogamy and propinquity) tell us a lot about how this process works.
Propinquity is logical; we are likely to find possible mates among the people in our neighborhood, at work, or at school. The internet makes courtship and romance possible across much greater geographical areas, as we can now meet and converse with people in all parts of the world, so our pool of potential mates moves beyond local boundaries. But even this technology may intensify homogamy by bringing together people with very specific interests and identities.

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Mate Selection (cont’d)

Endogamy refers to marriage to someone within one’s social group (such as race, ethnicity, class, education, religion, region, or nationality).
Exogamy refers to marriage to someone from a different social group.
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Endogamy tends to be more common for a variety of reasons.
From the time of slavery through the 1960s, many states had antimiscegenation laws (the prohibition of interracial marriage, cohabitation, or sexual interaction). Antimiscegenation laws were effectively ended by the Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967). This was a landmark civil rights case in which the United States Supreme Court, by a 9–0 vote, declared Virginia’s antimiscegenation statute, the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, unconstitutional, thereby ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.
Yet, we still tend to have de facto segregation in our society (as a result of housing patterns, economic patterns, etc.), so we tend to meet people of similar backgrounds.
There are also social pressures to marry people of similar backgrounds.
Exogamy is becoming more commonly acceptable, but is still less common than endogamy.

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Mate Selection (cont’d)

Monogamy, the practice of marrying (or being in a relationship with) one person at a time, is still considered the only legal form of marriage in modern western culture.
Polygamy: a system of marriage that allows people to have more than one spouse at a time
Polyamory: a system of multiple-person partnership
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Monogamy is the most common, and only legal, form of romantic relationship in the United States.
Polygamy is practiced among some subcultures around the world, but is not widely acknowledged as a legitimate form of marriage. You may hear of polygamous relationships, even in the United States. Individuals may claim to be married to multiple people, but those ties have no legal meaning and would not hold up in a court. There are two types of polygamy.
The more common form of polygamy is polygyny, which is a system of marriage that allows men to have multiple wives.
Polyandry, a system of marriage that allows women to have multiple husbands, is a more rare form of polygamy.
Polyamory is a type of multiple-person partnership where each person is in a relationship with each of the other individuals belonging to the group.
Discussion: Ask students why they think that polygyny is more commonly practiced than polyandry.

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Relationship Trends
Increases have occurred in the numbers of:
single people.
people who are cohabitating.
single parents.
people who are living in intentional communities.

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Married couples were the dominant household model through the 1950s, but their numbers have decreased from nearly 80 percent in 1960 to 48 percent in 2014.
Currently, 28 percent of all households are made up of people who live alone.
Currently, more than 8 million people are about 5 percent of all households are occupied by couples who are cohabitating, living together as a romantically involved, unmarried couple, which includes both same-sex and opposite-sex couples.
Currently, one-quarter of all first births are to unmarried partners.
Intentional communities are any of a variety of groups of people who form communal living arrangements outside marriage.

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Why might this be the case?

Breaking Up
In 2014, 127 million persons (50 percent) were married while about 25 million (10 percent) were divorced.
Remarriage is common; 64 percent of previously married men remarry, compared to 52 percent of previously married women.
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The percentage of adults who were married at 18 in 2016 is smaller than the percentage of adults who were married in 2016.

Education and Marriage
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People with more education are more likely to get married.

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What social forces might contribute to people “not being able to find the right person” or “not being financially stable”?

What social forces might contribute to people “not being able to find the right person” or “not being financially stable”?
Too many options
Student loans and jobs with low pay;
Cost to have a wedding

Why do you think more people who are 50 and older are getting divorced more?
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It is not true that approximately 50 percent of all marriages now end in divorce. For marriages formed in the 1970s and 1980s, nearly 50 percent ended in divorce, but marriages formed in the 1990s and 1980s are dissolving at slower rates.

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Divorce rate per 1,000 persons

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Within the group of people who are 50 and older, they are more likely to divorce if they have been married for a shorter period of time or if they have been married more than once.

Interracial Marriage
Randall Kennedy (2003)
Black-white marriage is increasing, especially between 1960 and 2000
Overall, black-white interracial marriage is rare
The rate of black intermarriage is lower than that of any minority group
Numerous social factors contribute to low rates of intermarriage for blacks, such as beauty, status, personality, comfort, marriageability, etc.

Advertisements
Interracial couples used to entice people to shop at different places
TV Programming
Executives at older networks were afraid of airing shows with interracial couples because it might alienate advertisers and some local affiliates might not broadcast the shows.
Black men are asexual when in interracial relationships in movies
Organization
People fight for the ability to identify as biracial, specifically in regards to the census

continued
Roland Fryer (2007)
Explores marriage between blacks, whites, and Asians. He argues that political and social reasons impact trends of interracial marriage.

The number of interracial marriages is still fairly small at 7 percent
Interracial marriage rates: 1% whites, 5% black, 14% of Asian
In the past, people with less education were more likely to intermarry
Today, interracial marriage is concentrated among those with more education

Intermarriage Patterns

The ability of all people to interracially did not come until 1967
Times series
1880: Intermarriage were rare for all groups
White more likely to intermarry with blacks than Asians
White male-Asian female marriages quite rare from 1880-1960
Levels started to rise dramatically in 1960
1970-2000: Black-white marriages increased significantly
Asian men were more likely to intermarry until 1960, in 2000 Asian women twice as likely as Asian men to marry a white person

Veterans have higher rates of intermarriage

Breaking Up
Mothers still disproportionately receive custody (physical and legal responsibility for children, assigned by a court), but there is now a trend toward joint custody.
Women are more likely to suffer downward economic mobility after divorce, especially if they retain custody of their children.
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This relates to “the feminization of poverty” that we discussed previously. Being the sole provider has a negative financial implication on women, which tends to lower their socioeconomic status and earning potential.
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Trouble in Families

Domestic abuse is by far the most common form of family violence. It includes behaviors abusers use to gain and maintain power over their victims.
Forms of Abuse:
Physical
Verbal
Financial
Sexual
Psychological
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Feminist and conflict perspectives on domestic violence suggest that the unequal distribution of power among women and men and the historical view of women as the property of men con tribute to wife battering. When wives violate or challenge the male head of household’s authority, the male may react by “disciplining” his wife or using anger and violence to reassert his position of power in the family.

The symbolic interactionist perspective is useful in understanding the dynamics of domestic violence and abuse. For example, some abusers and their victims learn to define intimate partner violence as an expression of love (Lloyd 2000). Emotional abuse often involves using negative labels (e.g., stupid, whore) to define a partner or family member. Such labels negatively affect the self-concept of abuse victims, often convincing them that they deserve the abuse.
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Trouble in Families (cont’d)
Rates of domestic abuse are about equal across racial and ethnic groups, sexual orientations, and religious groups.
People are more likely to be killed or attacked by family members than anyone else.

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We tend to think of attacks or murders being committed by total strangers in dark alleys, but the reality is that this kind of violence is far more common among people who know one another. It is also important to recognize that this kind of violence can occur on college campuses. Most colleges have resources or counselors available to help students in troubled situations. It could serve as a learning tool to ask students to find out if your college has such resources and report back. If not, could students find resources in the local community, or even online?
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Trouble in Families (cont’d)

Children and the parent abuse may also suffer at the hands of abusive family members.
Child and parent abuse are underreported, due in part to the relative powerlessness of the victims and the private settings of the abuse.
Neglect―a form of abuse in which the caregiver fails to provide adequate nutrition, sufficient clothing or shelter, or hygienic and safe living conditions, affects children and the elderly―accounts for 80 percent of child abuse.
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Another form of child abuse is incest (proscribed sexual contact between family members; this is a form of child abuse when it occurs between a child and a caregiver).
Elder abuse can include violence and abuse, as well as financial exploitation, theft, neglect, and abandonment.
Many states have special laws that give extra protection to elderly or minor individuals. For instance, the punishment for child abuse or elder abuse may be harsher than for the abuse of an individual who is neither a child nor elderly.
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