American Families
Change, Continuity, Redefinition
readings
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How the family has changed in Teacher Mitchell's lifetime
பைடு நூலகம்
Cf China—did I get this right?
• 大姨 • 二姨 • 三姨 • Aunt • Aunt • Aunt
• • • •
哥 妹 家姐 表弟
• • • •
Brother Sister Cousin Cousin
Immediate or ―nuclear‖ family
• The traditional American family is composed on two parents and the children. It is not common in the USA for grandparents to live with a family. It was not common, until current economic problems, for adult children to live with parents.
Family arrangements
Western families: immediate family
• • • • • • • • Mother: a female parent Father: a male parent Son: a male child of the parent(s) Daughter: a female child of the parent(s) Brother: a male child of the same parent(s) Sister: a female child of the same parent(s) Grandfather: father of a father or mother Grandmother: mother of a father or mother
Egalitarian model replacing traditional model
• Education Co-educative schools, same content of classes for girls and boys, same qualification for men and women. Profession For women, career is just as important as for men; Therefore equal professional opportunities for men and women are necessary. Housework All housework is done by both parties to the marriage in equal shares. Decision making Neither partner dominates; solutions do not always follow the principle of finding a concerted decision; status quo is maintained if disagreement occurs. Child care and education Man and woman share these functions equally.
Adoption
• Adoption is changing the way people form families, as well as affecting the way society perceives the fundamental concepts of life such as nature vs. nurture and the role of biological relations with an adoptive family member. Because of changes in adoption over the last few decades – changes that include open adoption, gay adoption, international adoptions and trans-racial adoptions, and a focus on moving children out of the foster care system into adoptive families – the impact of adoption on the basic unit of society, the family, has been enormous.
Gender roles
• Traditional roles: Men went out to work: bringing home the bacon • Women stayed at home and kept house and raised the children: angel in the house.
• In a simple stepfamily, only one stepparent has a prior child or children. • Stepbrothers and stepsisters exist in a blended, or complex stepfamily. • Any subsequent children fathered through the new marriage are one's half-siblings instead of stepsiblings, being related through one blood line, that of the one biological parent.
Children under 18
• • • • • living with 2 married parents: 68% Living with only the mother: 23% Living only with the father: 3% Living with 2 unmarried parents: 3% Living with neither parent: 4%
For example, courtship and marraiage
Parents have little control and no authority over whom their children marry. They do not arrange marriage, Often are only informed after the decision has been made.
Marriage judged by happiness
Happiness comes from companionship. Unhappiness can be reason for divorce. About ½ of marriages end in divorce. When I was young, American believed in staying together for the sake of the children; this is no longer common.
• 1960: the norm is a working father with a mother who stays at home and two or more children. • 2009: Only 68% of children live in homes with two parents • Single parent families • Families with both parents working • Childless marriages
• Families with adopted children • Gay and lesbian parents
Purpose of family
American view of family
• It exists to advance the happiness of individual members of the family. • --not to advance the family as a group; not to establish and advance the family name. • Few families function as an economic unit. • Americans resent outside control. This includes attempts by family members to control them— aunts and uncles, older siblings, grandparents, even parents.
Stepfamilies
• a stepfamily is the family one acquires when a parent enters a new marriage, whether the parent was widowed or divorced. For example, if one's mother dies and one's father marries another woman, the new woman is one's stepmother. • ―Stepfamilies are born out of loss.‖