Article

Nuclear Family Values, Extended Family Lives: The Power of Race, Class, and Gender

Authors:
To read the full-text of this research, you can request a copy directly from the author.

Abstract

Nuclear Family Values, Extended Family Lives shows how the current emphasis on the nuclear family - with its exclusion of the extended family - is narrow, even deleterious, and misses much of family life. This omission is tied to gender, race, and class.

No full-text available

Request Full-text Paper PDF

To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.

... The context in which such gendered behaviors are most likely to be manifest is the family, where norms of kinkeeping and caregiving remain strong for women (Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2012;. Further, women, relative to men, are both more involved in their social relations within and outside of the family and are affected more intensely by those relationships (Antonucci, 2001;. ...
... We propose that the arguments made in the previous section regarding gender differences in attention to interpersonal relations may also apply to the ways in which parents' gender shapes sibling tension during bereavement. In particular, we suggest that the death of the mother represents the loss of the primary family kinkeeper-a role much more likely to be enacted by mothers than fathers (Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2012;. Although the kinkeeping literature emphasizes maintaining ties among family members (Gerstel & Gallagher, 1993;Leach & Braithwaite, 1996;Rosenthal, 1985), we suggest that peacemaking is likely to be essential to fostering such associational solidarity, through both emphasizing harmony and attempting to reduce the conflict among family members that kinkeepers often encounter (Leach & Braithwaite, 1996). ...
Article
Objective This study investigates gender differences in the effect of parents' deaths on sibling tension among bereaved adult children. Background Previous scholarship on adult sibling relations following the deaths of parents presents inconsistent results. These disparate findings may stem from past studies not taking into consideration the gender of both the deceased parent and the bereaved child. Method Analyses are based on three harmonized waves of quantitative and qualitative data collected from 654 adult children nested within 303 families as part of the Within‐Family Differences Study. Results Multilevel models revealed that for daughters, but not sons, mothers' deaths in the past 5 years were associated with increases in sibling tension, whereas fathers' deaths did not predict changes in either sons' or daughters' sibling tension, regardless of timing. Qualitative analyses showed marked differences by child's gender in perceptions of patterns of shared work and support surrounding parents' deaths. Typically, sons expressed solidarity with siblings when mothers died and felt that the division of caregiving prior to mothers' deaths and arrangements following their deaths were fair. In contrast, daughters expressed increased solidarity with sisters surrounding mothers' deaths and disdain toward brothers who failed to contribute caregiving, support, or instrumental tasks. Conclusion These findings underscore how gender of both parents and adult children differentially shape changes in adult children's relationships with their siblings in the face parental deaths, much as they do in other contexts across the life course.
... Universities are more likely to provide paid parental leave than paid leave options for faculty members who need to care for parents, partners, or other family members in need of support. Given that faculty members of color and first-generation faculty members are more likely to have care responsibilities to extended families and community members (Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2012), some institutions have implemented broader leaves covering diverse care responsibilities, similar to the unpaid U.S. Family and Medical Leave Act, which allows for care for other family members (Hollenshead et al., 2005). Without paid care leaves, faculty with more intensive care demands are disadvantaged in assessments of their productivity in much the same way that faculty who cannot access paid parental leave are disadvantaged. ...
... COVID-19 has disproportionately affected Black communities in the US, with higher mortality rates of Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people compared to white people (Anyane-Yeboa et al., 2020;Erete et al., 2021;Pirtle & Wright, 2021). Care burdens are also greater for faculty of color, who often have more responsibility for their extended families than white faculty (Medden, 2021;Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2012). The combination of COVID-19 and a series of incidents of racial violence and police brutality against Black people created a "perfect storm" for Black and Brown communities, whose members joined together to protest systemic racism embedded in the US (Erete et al., 2021). ...
Article
Full-text available
In this paper, we theorize the intersectional gendered impacts of COVID-19 on faculty labor, with a particular focus on how institutions of higher education in the United States evaluate faculty labor amidst the COVID-19 transition and beyond. The pandemic has disrupted faculty research, teaching, and service in differential ways, having larger impacts on women faculty, faculty of color, and caregiving faculty in ways that further reflect the intersections of these groups. Universities have had to reconsider how evaluation occurs, given the impact of these disruptions on faculty careers. Through a case study of university pandemic responses in the United States, we summarize key components of how colleges and universities shifted evaluations of faculty labor in response to COVID-19, including suspending teaching evaluations, implementing tenure delays, and allowing for impact statements in faculty reviews. While most institutional responses recenter neoliberal principles of the ideal academic worker that is both gendered and racialized, a few universities have taken more innovative approaches to better attend to equity concerns. We conclude by suggesting a recalibration of the faculty evaluation system-one that maintains systematic faculty reviews and allows for academic freedom, but requires universities to take a more contextualized approach to evaluation in ways that center equity and inclusion for women faculty and faculty of color for the long term.
... This finding differs from research on racial/ethnic and SES differences in family involvement (e.g., offering advice and giving money), which reports similar levels of involvement among racial/ethnic groups from the same social class Sarkisian and Gerstel, 2012). Although related, coresidence is a qualitatively distinct type of support that may be determined, at least in part, by different underlying mechanisms than family involvement. ...
... Extended family embeddedness hypothesis. Several studies suggest that minority children are more deeply embedded in extended family networks compared to white children Margolis, Fosco, & Stormshak, 2014;Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2012;Taylor, 1986). Indeed, research on the extended family networks of Black Americans finds that this group is engaged in ongoing and reciprocal exchanges of practical, emotional, and financial support, and black families are more involved in practical support (e.g., help with household chores, transportation, and child care) than white families (Jayakody, Chatters, & Taylor, 1993;Stack & Burton, 1993;Taylor, Chae, Lincoln, & Chatters, 2015). ...
Thesis
Over the last several decades, the U.S. has undergone a major shift in its racial/ethnic landscape. Historically, American society has been majority white. However, higher fertility rates, increased immigration, and younger average ages among people of color have led to racial/ethnic minorities’ growth in the relative share of the population, and they are projected to constitute more than half the population by 2050. Accompanying this shift has been a growing recognition of the need for family-related research that reflects the racial and ethnic diversity of American society. Any such investigation would be incomplete, of course, without acknowledging the inextricable link between race and class in America and how it shapes family life. Unfortunately, however, research on family structure and child wellbeing frequently generalizes the experiences of white families to the broader population, without reference to how differences in social location, particularly race/ethnicity and social class may lead to distinct outcomes for youth. To address this limitation, this dissertation investigates racial/ethnic and class differences in family structure and their relationship to children’s educational performance. The first study examines the prevalence and predictors of an understudied but relatively common family structure, especially among minority and/or low-income populations—the extended family. The second study explores an important and unexplained finding: although children raised by both biological parents fare better academically than children raised in any other family structure, living apart from a biological parent is less negatively consequential for racial/ethnic minority children than white children. I test two hypotheses that have been posited to account for racial/ethnic differences in the association between family structure and children’s educational attainment: the socioeconomic stress and extended family embeddedness hypotheses. The third study explores intragroup diversity in family life. Specifically, I examine intraracial differences in family structure and family integration among Black Americans and their association with youths’ grades, grade repetition, and number of suspensions. Results from the first study indicate that contrary to popular and academic perceptions, extended family households are fairly common: 35% of youth experience this family structure during childhood. Black and Hispanic children are approximately 3 and 1.5 times more likely to live in an extended family than white children, respectively, and children whose parents have less education are substantially more likely to live in this arrangement. Additionally, the transition into an extended family is largely a response to social and economic needs. Findings from the second study show that that both socioeconomic stress and extended family embeddedness attenuate the effect of family structure on minority youths’ educational attainment, though the former to a much greater extent. These findings lend support for the socioeconomic stress hypothesis, which posits that the negative effect of familial disruption may be less independently impactful for groups facing many socioeconomic disadvantages to begin with. The third study demonstrates that there is significant within-group variation in family structure and integration among black families and that these factors have a more limited and inconsistent relationship with adolescents’ educational outcomes than implied by previous scholarship. Collectively, these findings advance a more diverse portrait of American families, which has been lacking in extant research. They also show that the consequences of family structure differ by race/ethnicity and social class. Thus, efforts aimed at promoting child wellbeing should consider this diversity in family arrangements and outcomes, and their implications for policy and practice.
... Today, the most common arrangement in the Western world is the household of the nuclear family: man, woman, and their children. Vast literature has demonstrated how the traditional division of labour, embedded in household and family structures, shapes unequal power relations between men and women, where in most cases, the men have greater power due to their positions as breadwinners, and women are considered as dependents, despite their participation in the labour market (Cooper, 2017;Ridgeway, 2011;Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2012). Alongside the arguments regarding the pervasiveness of gender power relations within households, history has taught us that different living arrangements might led to change in these power relations, specifically to an enhancement of women's power either within families or in society more generally. ...
... The second argument refers to the often-ignored experiences of racial and ethnic minorities as well as to class differences. Immigrants or poor families frequently rely on members of the extended family for help and provide assistance in return (Dow, 2016;Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2012). ...
Article
To what extend are poor single women today able to maintain an economically autonomous household? Scholars argue that current policy deliberately aims at re-establishing the family as the primary source of economic security and encourages a traditional model of gender relations where women have to depend on male breadwinners. In this article we suggest learning from the living arrangements of poor women in Mexico in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, namely the formation of sisterhood-housing arrangements that enabled these women to maintain autonomous households. By learning from history, this article offers insights that may enhance poor women’s economic and social conditions today.
... More specifically, multiple studies have researched financial help between non-coresidential kin members, most focusing on the receivers of help and emphasizing how assistance benefits them (Esping-Andersen 2007;Halpern-Meekin et al. 2015;Harknett 2006;Harknett and Hartnett 2011;Sarkisian and Gerstel 2012;Verdery and Campbell 2020). Recent works, however, have examined the providers of financial support and stressed that these individuals often stretch their resources and go against their own well-being in order to assist relatives in need. ...
... Additionally, our findings contribute to the literature on kin networks of support. This literature has long focused on receivers of support and emphasized that help from relatives is critical to recovery for those experiencing financial troubles (Esping-Andersen 2007;Halpern-Meekin et al. 2015;Harknett 2006;Harknett and Hartnett 2011;Sarkisian and Gerstel 2012;Verdery and Campbell 2020). More recently, however, studies have begun to examine kin support from the perspective of providers (O'Brien 2012; Pilkauskas et al. 2017). ...
Article
Full-text available
Credit card debt stands at over $1 trillion in the US and grows continuously. Scholars have argued that high (and growing) levels of credit card debt are attributable in part to rising economic vulnerabilities, combined with a thinning public safety net, credit cards being increasingly employed to make ends meet in this context. This paper extends this line of work by stressing that individuals and households do not rely on their credit cards only to mitigate their own financial hardships, but also those experienced by their non-coresidential kin members. More specifically, building on the notion that kin networks can constitute a source of negative social capital, we argue that individuals often accumulate credit card debt as they attempt to provide monetary assistance to their relatives in need. We also show that this effect is particularly strong in lower-income groups and in African American communities, in which need levels are especially high. Based on random and fixed effects analyses of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, these insights extend scholarship on both kin networks of support and the sources of credit card debt.
... Family support, obligation, cohesiveness, and obedience seem to matter within the family system, and family members are expected to provide emotional, social and economic supports to other family members (Keefe, Padilla, & Carlos, 1979;Marin et al., 1987;Sabogal, Marín, Otero-Sabogal, Marín, & Perez-Stable, 1987). Hispanic individuals tend to understand their role and status within the familial relationship, prioritize the needs of the family over themselves, and have large families, often commonly living with three generations under the one roof (Sabogal et al., 1987;Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2012). Hispanic cultural norms appear to explain the high prevalence of coresidence with grandparents (Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2012;Taylor et al., 2010); however, few researchers have studied three-generation Hispanic family households in the United States. ...
... Hispanic individuals tend to understand their role and status within the familial relationship, prioritize the needs of the family over themselves, and have large families, often commonly living with three generations under the one roof (Sabogal et al., 1987;Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2012). Hispanic cultural norms appear to explain the high prevalence of coresidence with grandparents (Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2012;Taylor et al., 2010); however, few researchers have studied three-generation Hispanic family households in the United States. ...
Article
Despite the rising trends in three-generation family households and obesity risk among Hispanics, few researchers have examined the possible relationship between living in three-generation family households and adolescent weight gain. In this study, we investigated (a) whether living in three-generation family households is associated with Hispanic adolescent body mass index (BMI) trajectories from adolescence to young adulthood; and (b) whether the association varies by immigrant status. We employed data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent and Adult Health to obtain representative population estimates. The analytic sample consisted of 1,659 Hispanic adolescents. We used growth curve models to evaluate the changes in BMI as youths entered adulthood. Hispanic adolescents in three-generation family households had significantly slower rates of BMI growth than those who did not live in three-generation households (b = −0.12, p < 0.05). When the model was stratified by immigrant status, the results showed that adolescents living with three-generational families had significantly slower BMI growth over time than their counterparts in immigrant families (b = −0.15, p < 0.05). These findings suggested that living in three-generation family households may play an important role in reducing the risk of weight gain for Hispanic adolescents, especially in immigrant families. The positive roles that three-generation family households play are thus worth consideration in health strategies.
... Yet, some see nothing wrong with fatherlessness; in fact, they celebrate it. Sarkisian and Gerstel (2012) remark, "Historically and still today, women have served as the glue for extended families and community ties. . . . Neither young women or young men want traditional families-regardless of the type of family in which they grew up. ...
... Some scholars do not think so. For example, Sarkisian and Gerstel (2012) argue "that not only does a focus on marriage and the nuclear family miss a great deal of family life and denigrate poor and minority families., but it also facilitates social policies that discriminate against women, people of color, and the poor and thereby reduces the power of social policy to improve lives of Americans" (p. xii). ...
Article
Full-text available
The implications of fatherless families—be they single-mother households, same-sex marriages, or matriarchal cultures—has too often been a neglected (perhaps avoided) topic within the context of the local church. Consequently, there is a cacophony of secular voices competing for our attention. Some of these voices argue that the role of “male” fatherhood is superfluous; however, this essay will argue that fatherlessness is, indeed, a pervasive problem. Fatherlessness, an epidemic arising primarily from two root causes in the Western world: divorce-on-demand and unwed pregnancies, has severe implications regarding God's word, church, and world.
... Yet, some see nothing wrong with fatherlessness‫؛‬ in fact, they celebrate it. Sarkisian and Gerstel (2012) remark, "Historically and still today, women have served as the glue for extended families and community ties.... Neither young women or young men want traditional families-regardless of the type of family in which they grew up. Both say they Want egalitarian relationships" (pp. ...
... Some scholars do not think so. For example, Sarkisian and Gerstel (2012) argue "that not only does a focus on marriage and the nuclear family miss a great deal of family life and denigrate poor and minority families., but it also facilitates social policies that discriminate against women, people of color, and the poor and thereby reduces the power LAMB: Implicationsfor Gods Word, Church, and World of social policy to improve lives of Americans" (p. xii). ...
Article
Full-text available
I was invited by guest editor of the Christian Education Journal, Colleen R. Derr (President, Wesley Seminary at Indiana Wesleyan University) to submit this article on Fatherless to this special edition of CEJ focusing on Ministry with Today's Diverse Families. My thesis is that despite the seeming embrace of fatherlessness in matriarchal cultures, fatherlessness is a pervasive problem with implications for God's Word, church, and world. Tragically, despite the rising number of fatherless families, and the cacophony of secular voices competing for our attention, the topic of fatherlessness has too often been a neglected (perhaps avoided) topic within the context of the local church. The full article can be purchased and downloaded at: http://journals.biola.edu/ns/cej/volumes/14/issues/1/articles/99/
... His preferred solution is clear: to reduce poverty and crime and increase education and income, impoverished Black communities need to establish more nuclear family households. This perspective harkens back to culture-ofpoverty theorists who blamed communities of color for the challenges they faced (Sarkisian and Gerstel 2012). ...
Article
Full-text available
Acceptance of family diversity has increased. However, families that differ from the standard North American family (SNAF) are still confidently portrayed as the cause of numerous social problems, even when evidence may be lacking or mixed. This article describes and critiques five assumptions that inform advocates' claims: the belief that the heterosexual nuclear family is the most (1) real, (2) divine, (3) natural, (4) longstanding, and (5) functional form of kinship. These ideas, though dubious, can exert harmful influence on Americans in their personal lives and in public policymaking.
... For young people, studies have shown that relationships between youth and nonparental adults tend to be high quality, low conflict, and highly supportive (Attar-Schwartz, Tan, and Buchanan 2009;Beam, Chen, and Greenberger 2002). Moreover, extended family members are a central part of Black, Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, and lowincome family life (Gerstel 2011;Sarkisian and Gerstel 2012;Stack 1975). In one of the few studies of these LGBTQ family relations, Black and Latinx LGBTQ youth and adults are significantly more likely to describe maternal family members-mothers, othermothers, sisters, grandmothers, and aunts-as supportive figures that teach them how to be resilient (Collins 2013;Stone et al. 2020). ...
Article
Research on youth can miss important aspects of their lives if this work focuses only on the parent-child relationship. This focus can also overlook Black feminist interventions to understanding the roles of othermothers and can miss how nonparental relatives such as aunts may provide support, housing stability, and safety for youth. On the basis of a mixed-methods longitudinal study with 83 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth in South Texas and the Inland Empire of California, the authors intervene through examining how aunts’ supportive practices shape LGBTQ youth’s experiences of housing stability and safety. The findings empirically demonstrate how LGBTQ-supportive aunting practices, such as educating other family members about LGBTQ people and housing an LGBTQ nibling, actively challenge cisheteronormativity. This study moves forward research on family processes by not focusing on parent-child relationships or LGBTQ “families of choice” to instead examining how aunts can support LGBTQ youth, disrupt cisheteronormativity, and prevent LGBTQ youth from becoming unhoused.
... In part, this may be because individuals generally report stronger obligations towards nonresident nuclear than extended kin (Rossi & Rossi, 1990). But nuclear and extended family dynamics vary greatly across individuals and within individuals over the life course (Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2012;White, 2001). For these reasons, scholars have called to diversify the types of family members included in analyses (Bengtson, 2001;Cooke, 2008;Mulder, 2007). ...
Article
Full-text available
There are well‐documented associations between life course changes and migration; yet, the occurrence, order, and timing of reasons for migrating are growing increasingly diverse. Migration following adverse life events, such as a divorce or an involuntary job loss, may be qualitatively distinct from migration undertaken for other reasons. Moves, especially long distance moves, following adverse life events, may be defined more by seeking family and familiar locations. Moreover, a heightened probability of migration may occur not only immediately after an adverse life event but also in the years after. We explore these questions in the US context with longitudinal data from the 1983 to 2019 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, which provides information on residential locations, locations of family members, and adverse life events for individuals over time. We focus on five specific events: divorce, the death of a spouse, involuntary job loss, the onset of a chronic physical health condition, and the onset of a chronic mental health condition. Using multivariate regression, we find that divorce and job loss induce long‐distance moves, especially return moves and moves towards family. Chronic physical conditions deter moving in general but increase the chances of return moves (after a period of time) and moves towards family. These results have implications for understanding migration as a response to adverse life events, both immediately and over time.
... However, many students chose to respond to the question from a more subjective perspective, homing in on their individual response to the crises. Some provided single word responses, evoking specific emotions that they were presumably feeling or had felt, while others provided only slightly more detail regarding their personal struggles: Given the high response rate of women to the open-ended question, challenges resulting from having to balance study with other "shifts" (Sarkisian & Gerstel 2012) were also a common refrain. For example: ...
Article
Full-text available
The coronavirus pandemic and associated move to online learning for students in higher education has been disruptive and challenging. We report on the New Zealand arm of an international survey of higher education students (n = 147). Using quantitative and qualitative data from the survey, we find that students coped reasonably well with the disruption to their studies and were generally satisfied with how their lecturers and institutions responded to unanticipated lockdowns. In comparison with the global sample, New Zealand students demonstrated a higher level of satisfaction. New Zealand students reported the highest satisfaction with recorded video lectures, whereas the global sample preferred real-time teaching. Many New Zealand students felt that their studies were negatively affected, and vulnerable groups such as students with low financial resources were the most severely affected. Moreover, students reported a range of negative emotions during lockdown that suggest mental health impacts may be a concern. Our results indicate that clear communication from authorities, reducing the uncertainty for students, and ensuring that vulnerable groups are appropriately supported, may be the best avenues to reduce negative impacts on students during future significant disruptions to study, whether pandemic-related or otherwise.
... Notably, despite having a similar number of close friends as firstmarried adults, unmarried adults contact their friends more frequently and report both greater support and greater strain from friends, net of covariates. This finding supports the "marriage as a greedy institution" perspective that marriage tends to reduce engagement with other relationships, such as friends, and limits commitment to collective social life (Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2012. It also indicates that friendship may partially compensate for not having a spouse/partner (Guiaux et al., 2007;Ha, 2008) and that more interaction with friends may involve ambivalent feelings-senses of both support and strain (Hsieh & Liu, 2021). ...
Article
Full-text available
Previous research has suggested that unmarried persons may be disadvantaged in personal networks and social support. However, little is known about whether the quantity and quality of social relationships differ by marital status among older Americans. Using data from the 2006 and 2008 psychosocial questionnaires of the Health and Retirement Study, we examined the quantity and frequency of contact of three types of social relationships (i.e., friends, children, and family members) as well as the quality of these ties across six marital status groups (i.e., first married, remarried, cohabiting, divorced/separated, widowed, and never married). Our analytic sample included 13,087 respondents aged 51 and above. Multiple linear regression was used for the analysis. Our results show significant differences in social relationships by marital status. In terms of relationships with friends, compared to first-married persons, all the unmarried groups (except the cohabitors) had more frequent contact with their friends and reported greater support as well as greater strain from their friends, controlling for demographic covariates. Remarried persons and cohabitors were largely similar to their first-married counterparts except that both had fewer friends they felt close to, and the cohabitors also reported greater strain with their friends. In terms of relationships with children, all the unmarried groups except for widowed persons had fewer children they felt close to. All the unmarried groups were also disadvantaged in contact frequency and perceived social support from their children. Remarried persons were significantly disadvantaged compared to first-married persons in contact frequency and relationship quality with their children. These associations were largely robust when health and socioeconomic conditions were controlled for. In terms of relationships with family members, there were only a few significant differences across marital status groups. Our findings show the crucial role of marital status in shaping social relationships in later life.
... Black adults are theorized to be more deeply connected to their mothers (Ackert & Wilke, 2021;Bailey-Fakhoury, 2017;Collins, 1987;Dow, 2015), and Latine people are theorized to adhere to norms of "familism," which stipulate stronger social norms and obligations of intergenerational connection, than White people (Acosta, 2013;Schwartz, 2007). Supporting this point, empirical work shows Black and Latine individuals have higher rates of coresidence with their parents and a greater degree of contact than White people (Goldman & Cornwell, 2018;Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2012). Black and Latine families also experience more interpersonal strains due to multiple types of racism (e.g., vicarious, institutional) that may impact fatherhood in particular via the mass incarceration of Black men, Black men's lower wages, and educational access due to systemic economic oppression (relative to White men), and the resulting higher levels of non-residential fatherhood (Alexander, 2012;Mauer & King, 2007;Perry & Bright, 2012;Roberts, 2003;Williams & Perry, 2019). ...
Article
Objective: To provide nationally-representative estimates of parent-adult child estrangement. Background: Population-level research is needed on parent-adult child estrangement to understand the full range of family dynamics in the U.S. Method: We estimate logistic regression models using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Child and Young Adult supplement to determine estimates of estrangement (and subsequent unestrangement) from mothers (N=8,495) and fathers (N=8,119) by children's gender, race/ethnicity, and sexuality. We then estimate hazards of first estrangement from mothers (N = 7,919) and fathers (N = 6,410), adjusting for adult child's and parents' social and economic characteristics. Results: Six percent of respondents report a period of estrangement from mothers, with an average age of first maternal estrangement of 26 years old; 26 percent of respondents report estrangement from fathers, with an average age of first paternal estrangement of 23 years old. Results further show heterogeneity by gender, race/ethnicity, and sexuality; for example, daughters are less likely to be estranged from their mothers than are sons, Black adult children are less likely than White adult children to be estranged from their mothers but more likely to be estranged from fathers, and gay, lesbian, and bisexual adult children are more likely than heterosexuals to be estranged from fathers. The majority of estranged adult children become unestranged from mothers (81%) and fathers (69%) in subsequent waves. Conclusion: This study provides compelling new evidence on an overlooked aspect of intergenerational relationships, concluding with insight into the structural forces that unequally contribute to estrangement patterns.
... Factors explaining this difference are the sharp decline in the birth rate in Europe and the repeated economic crises, which make it difficult to maintain the welfare system, thus reducing family size. By contrast, in other regions where inter-family and intra-family solidarity replaces state services (education, health, security), women's participation in the world of work beyond the home is limited and patriarchy hampers the democratisation of family relations, traditional family models remain in place (Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2012). ...
... Importantly, faculty of color often also have greater caregiving expectations to extended family members (Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2012). ...
Article
Full-text available
Climate studies that measure equity and inclusion among faculty reveal widespread gender and race disparities in higher education. The chilly departmental climate that women and faculty of color experience is typically measured through university-wide surveys. Although inclusion plays out at the department level, research rarely focuses on departments. Drawing from 57 interviews with faculty in 14 science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) departments, we compare experiences with inclusion among faculty in the same departments and rank who differ by race and gender. Women of color perceive their departments as least inclusive, followed by White women, White men, and men of color (largely foreign born). Yet the organizational context of departments strongly shapes faculty perspectives on climate. Analyzing multiple perspectives on the same departments reveals inclusive, improving, and marginalizing departments, as explained by perceptions of representation, collegiality, and democratic leadership. Faculty across race and gender largely agree when they are in inclusive or marginalizing departments. In improving departments, there is greater disagreement. By focusing on faculty who share the same department and rank, but differ by race and gender, we identify key approaches leaders can take to create more inclusive departments. Our focus on the department level helps develop new insights about how inclusion operates in university settings.
... While some institutions recognize the additional labor of caregiving, providing tenure delays and parental leaves, the systemic nature of gendered care (with women often providing more care than men) typically means that mothers are disadvantaged in academic careers (Mason et al., 2013;Misra et al., 2012). Importantly, faculty of color often also have greater caregiving expectations to extended family members (Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2012). ...
Article
Full-text available
Feminist scholars have long documented the complex, multiple ways in which academic institutions reproduce gender inequalities (National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, & Institute of Medicine, 2007). In times of crisis, institutional commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion may be sidelined (Tulshyan, 2020). Academia must enact responses to coronavirus disease (COVID-19) that retain and promote diverse women faculty who are already disadvantaged in their institution. This includes ensuring that structural shifts, such as policy changes, lead to deep, cultural change, embedding equity into the fabric of institutional norms and values. In this article, we outline a model for institutional change—the Thinking Ahead, Resource Provision, Evaluation, Equity (TREE) model—with the aim of informing diversity efforts in higher education more broadly during the pandemic.
... However, many students chose to respond to the question from a more subjective perspective, homing in on their individual response to the crises. Some provided single word responses, evoking specific emotions that they were presumably feeling or had felt, while others provided only slightly more detail regarding their personal struggles: Given the high response rate of women to the open-ended question, challenges resulting from having to balance study with other "shifts" (Sarkisian & Gerstel 2012) were also a common refrain. For example: ...
Article
Full-text available
The coronavirus pandemic and associated move to online learning for students in higher education has been disruptive and challenging. We report on the New Zealand arm of an international survey of higher education students (n = 147). Using quantitative and qualitative data from the survey, we find that students coped reasonably well with the disruption to their studies and were generally satisfied with how their lecturers and institutions responded to unanticipated lockdowns. In comparison with the global sample, New Zealand students demonstrated a higher level of satisfaction. New Zealand students reported the highest satisfaction with recorded video lectures, whereas the global sample preferred real-time teaching. Many New Zealand students felt that their studies were negatively affected, and vulnerable groups such as students with low financial resources were the most severely affected. Moreover, students reported a range of negative emotions during lockdown that suggest mental health impacts may be a concern. Our results indicate that clear communication from authorities, reducing the uncertainty for students, and ensuring that vulnerable groups are appropriately supported, may be the best avenues to reduce negative impacts on students during future significant disruptions to study, whether pandemic-related or otherwise.
... We believe the infrequency of large extended families may be a reflection of older Latina/os' own geographic migration away from family (Tienda & Mitchell, 2006) or their family members' migration. The more widespread prevalence of a Restricted Family type may also reflect older Latina/o's cultural adaptation toward more nuclear-family-oriented norms found in the United States (Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2012). ...
Thesis
Cultural values and socioeconomic disadvantage make social support networks crucial to older Latina/os’ health and well-being. Extensive research concerning social support in later life has demonstrated that the complex, multidimensional nature of older adults’ social support networks is influenced by many personal and situational characteristics. The convoy model of social relations is augmented with acculturation theory to assess the extent to which sociocultural characteristics relevant to immigrant groups, such as U.S. nativity status, language preference, and subgroup heritage, may be differentially associated with social network structure, function, and perceived quality among older Latina/o respondents (N=1355) using the 2012/2014 waves of the Health and Retirement Study. More specifically, the first study used a cluster analysis to explore what social support network types exist among older Latina/os. Four network types were identified, including Extended Family (7%), Co-Resident Family (30%), Restricted Family (37%), and Friends Focused (26%) types. Each type was assessed for differences across nativity status, language preference, subgroup heritage, and neighborhood social cohesion. Most older Latina/os in the Extended Family network were foreign-born or took the questionnaire in Spanish. Moreover, neighborhood social cohesion was significantly higher among older Latina/os in the Extended and Co-Resident Family types when compared to Latina/os in the Restricted and Friends Focused network types. Social support network types were also assessed in relation to three subfacets of loneliness. The most common network, the Restricted Family type, was consistently associated with greater loneliness. More acculturated Latina/os (U.S.-born or English questionnaire) reported greater emotional loneliness when they belonged to the Restricted Family group. However, less acculturated Latina/os (foreign-born or Spanish questionnaire) reported greater collective loneliness when they belonged to the Friends Focused network group the only network type not centered around the family. The second study also examined social support network types, but in relation to language preference and perceived positive and negative quality of the overall social support network. Positive social support was higher among older Latina/os who preferred Spanish compared to those who preferred English, but there were no differences in negative support. The Extended and Co-Resident Family network types were associated with greater positive support when compared to the Restricted Family and Friends Focused types, but again, there were no differences in overall negative support across network types. Additionally, there was no influence of language preference on the association between network structure and support. The third study investigated structural dimensions of support in association with ambivalence about emotional and instrumental support within three specific relationship types. Nativity status, language preference, and subgroup heritage were also examined as potential moderators. Being foreign-born, taking the questionnaire in Spanish, and being non-Mexican-American were associated with higher rates of reporting ambivalence versus positivity about support. Fewer social ties and closer geographic proximity to social ties was associated with a greater likelihood of ambivalence. Among foreign-born participants more specifically, reporting infrequent contact with relatives was associated with greater likelihood of ambivalence about support but patterns were inconsistent across relationship and support types. Findings suggest that older Latina/os' social support networks are heterogeneous and not uniformly satisfactory among older Latina/os. Factors associated with acculturation contribute to intragroup differences in structure, function, and perceived quality. This dissertation can inform culturally appropriate interventions aiming to bolster older Latina/os and their social support networks, particularly among Latina/os who are more vulnerable to experiencing inadequate support.
... (UN Women, 2020), as well as women's socialized responsibility for "household management," emotional labor, kin-keeping, and the maintenance of the emotional health of all family members (Gerstel & Sarkisian, 2012). ...
Article
Full-text available
Extensive research has explained women's pandemic-related workforce exodus as driven by the presumed pressures of gender disparate private, domestic burdens. The impact of gender asymmetries in academic labor on faculty well-being is less understood. We examined the effects of job-related factors on faculty mental health, a critical measure of precarity during the initial Spring 2020 ‘lockdown’ and transition to remote work. Faculty (n=345) were recruited via social media to participate in a survey on their work/life pandemic experiences. Women were over-represented in our sample, yet respondents at both the highest and the most tenuous ranks were underrepresented. Gender, teaching load, having dependents, and greater financial concerns were associated with higher depression and anxiety. Critically, women's heightened mental health risk was not explained by the other predictors. Results indicate women faculty's well-being and career advancement are threatened by disparate, obscured service burdens both within the academy and at home during the pandemic. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
... Over the last several decades, family scholars have documented the importance of multigenerational families for the health and well-being of members of each generation. (Bengtson, 2001;Fingerman et al., 2020;Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2012;Suitor et al., 2015). The COVID-19 pandemic poses unique challenges to support exchanges between the generations; however, the pandemic may provide opportunities for greater solidarity within families. ...
Article
Full-text available
Research documents high levels of instrumental, financial, and expressive support exchanges within multigenerational families in the 21st century. The COVID‐19 pandemic poses unique challenges to support exchanges between the generations; however, the pandemic may provide opportunities for greater solidarity within families. In this review, we draw from theoretical perspectives that have been used to study family relationships to understand the implications of the pandemic for multigenerational families: the Life Course Perspective, the Intergenerational Solidarity Model, and Rational Choice/Social Exchange Theory. We review literature on multigenerational relationships in the United States and discuss how established social support patterns and processes may be altered by the COVID‐19 pandemic. We reflect on how the impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic on multigenerational relationships may vary by gender, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Finally, we provide directions for future researchers to pursue in order to understand the lasting impacts of the COVID‐19 pandemic on multigenerational ties.
... Financial stability is the probable reason for the lower risk of teenage marital pregnancy in the nuclear family. [36] In modern societies, a real insight against teenage marital pregnancy is that the family restricts to a single level of parentage or alliance: the nuclear family. [37,38] Similar to education, poor wealth indexes were also associated with higher rate and hazards of teenage pregnancy, supporting the results of some previous studies. ...
Article
Full-text available
Introduction: Teenage marital pregnancy is a critical issue responsible for complex and life threatening health problems of both mother and children. This study aimed to determine various demographic, socioeconomic, and spatial factors responsible for teenage pregnancy in Bangladesh. Methods: This study used Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey 2014 data. A sample of 4,608 teenage (age<20years) married women were included in the analysis. Kaplan Meier Product Limit approach was used to estimate the mean and median teenage pregnancy, and the log-rank test was used to test whether two (or more) groups were equal or not. Finally, Cox proportional hazard model was used to determine the risk factors of teenage pregnancy. Results: Among participants, approximately 90% had experienced teenage pregnancy. The mean (±standard deviation) age of the teenage pregnancy was 17.7 (±2.79) years. Among the demographic and socioeconomic factors, women’s and their husband’s lower education, lowest wealth index, Islamic faith, unemployment, and no access to mass media were the risk factors associated with the teenage pregnancy. Furthermore, spatial variables, residence in Rangpur division, and rural areas also had higher odds of getting pregnant at teenage. Conclusion: Government should initiate different protective and preventive measures to minimize early marriage and pregnancy, including improvement of female enrollment and completion rate of education, encouragement of female employment opportunities to increase wealth index for women through financial support and technical skill development, and reinforcement family planning utilization using religious texts and knowledge among people at individual and community levels.
... Although a significant amount of research has addressed the gender divide in kin care, what of race and class? The narrow emphasis on the nuclear family and the omission of extended kin in the study of families and work means that our research and theory obscure the experiences of families of color or those with fewer economic resources who tend to rely more on kin than Whites or those more economically advantaged (Bell, Whitney, & Young, 2019;Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2012). There are useful empirical exceptions, however, that we can build on: Using a longitudinal survey, Maume (2016) showed not only that men's kin work increased over time but also that men in blue-collar occupations provided significantly more hours of care to their elderly relatives than men in white-collar occupations. ...
Article
In the second decade of the 21st century, research on work and family from multiple disciplines flourished. The goal of this review is to capture the scope of this work–family literature and to highlight both the valuable advances and problematic omissions. In synthesizing this literature, the authors show that numerous scholars conducted studies and refined theories that addressed gender, but far fewer examined racial and class heterogeneity. They argue that examining heterogeneity changes the understanding of work–family relations. After briefly introducing the broad social, political, and economic context in which diverse work–family connections developed, this review uses this context to address the following three main themes, each with subtopics: (a) unpaid work including housework, parenting as work, and kin work; (b) paid work including work timing and hours, money (i.e., motherhood penalty, fatherhood bonus, marriage bonus, kin care penalty), relationships (i.e., coworkers, supervisors), and work experiences (i.e., complexity, autonomy, urgency); and (c) work–family policies (i.e., scheduling and child care). Given the breadth of the work–family literature, this review is not exhaustive but, rather, the authors synthesize key findings on each topic followed by a critique, especially with regard to the analyses of differences and inequalities around gender, race, ethnicity, and social class.
... In some Westernized family systems that adhere to and promote SNAF ideology, intergenerational ties can be curtailed in favor of nuclear family independence. For example, the promotion of family values within the nuclear family typically reinforces self-reliance, individualism, and autonomy among family members, with less emphasis on the intergenerational familial experiences and practices sustaining extended kin ties (Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2016). Recently, family scholars have also suggested that the transmission of benefits among families also include financial, social, and racial privileges that bestow members societal benefits such as better treatment for being White and of European descent as compared to other ethnic/racial minorities (DiAngelo, 2018). ...
Article
In this article, we theorize a new conceptual framework of family strengths and resilience emerging at the intersection of indigenous and Western approaches to family systems. Our work acknowledges that there are universal tenets pertaining to family and family relations within many cultural paradigms, yet few family theories have included or integrated an indigenous lens. Here, we draw on ecosystemic and “wheel of life” worldviews to guide our work, recognizing that much of Western family science and indigenous ways of knowing view family life as relational, interdependent, and connected to larger ecosystems. To explicate our integrated framework of family strengths and resilience, we delineate five domains: family as a living organism, family connectedness to nature, family centering processes, family rituals, and transgenerational family relations. Last, we discuss implications of our conceptual framework for research and clinical family practice.
... Extended family embeddedness hypothesis. Several studies suggest that minority children are more deeply embedded in extended family networks compared to white children (Burton, 1992;Hunter, 1997;Margolis, Fosco, & Stormshak, 2014;Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2012;Stack 1974;Taylor, 1986). Indeed, research on the extended family networks of Black Americans finds that this group is engaged in ongoing and reciprocal exchanges of practical, emotional, and financial support, and black families are more involved in practical support (e.g., help with household chores, transportation, and child care) than white families (Jayakody, Chatters, & Taylor, 1993;Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2004;Stack & Burton, 1993;Taylor, Chae, Lincoln, & Chatters, 2015). ...
Preprint
Full-text available
Abstract: While an extensive literature has shown that children raised by both biological parents fare better academically than children raised in any other family structure, there has been little research to explain an important finding: living apart from a biological parent is less negatively consequential for racial/ethnic minority children than white children. To address this gap, I test two explanations that have been posited to account for racial/ethnic differences in the association between family structure and children’s educational attainment: socioeconomic stress and extended family embeddedness. I assess whether racial/ethnic variation in these two mechanisms explain group differences in the association between family structure and on-time high school completion and college enrollment for white, black, and Hispanic children. Results indicate that both socioeconomic stress and extended family embeddedness attenuate the effect of family structure on these two measures of educational attainment, though the former to a much greater extent. Differences in socioeconomic resources accounted for up to nearly 50% of the gap in these outcomes, and extended family embeddedness explained roughly 15-20%. These findings lend support for the socioeconomic stress hypothesis, which posits that the negative effect of familial disruption may be less independently impactful for racial/ethnic groups facing many socioeconomic disadvantages to begin with. Results are less consistent with the hypothesis that racial/ethnic minority children’s deeper embeddedness in their extended family network protects against the negative effects of familial disruption.
... This finding differs from research on racial/ethnic and SES differences in family involvement (e.g., offering advice and giving money), which reports similar levels of involvement among racial/ethnic groups from the same social class (Gerstel, 2011;Sarkisian and Gerstel, 2012). Although related, coresidence is a qualitatively distinct type of support that may be determined, at least in part, by different underlying mechanisms than family involvement. ...
Article
Full-text available
This study uses nationally representative longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, to examine the prevalence and predictors of extended family households among children in the United States and to explore variation by race/ethnicity and socio-economic status (SES). Findings suggest that extended family households are a common living arrangement for children, with 35 per cent of youth experiencing this family structure before age 18. Racial/ethnic and SES differences are substantial: 57 per cent of Black and 35 per cent of Hispanic children ever live in an extended family, compared with 20 per cent of White children. Further, 47 per cent of children whose parents did not finish high school spend time in an extended family, relative to 17 per cent of children whose parents earned a bachelor's degree or higher. Models of predictors show that transitions into extended families are largely a response to social and economic needs.
Article
Objective The current study asks how race, class, and the social pressure to care for children who are not one's own impact how childless Black women experience and make meaning of their parental status. Background While much of the existing qualitative research on childlessness has asked how white, middle‐class women experience social pressure to have children, this study shifts this focus to ask how Black women experience social pressure to care for children who are not their own. Method The study relied on virtual interviews with 40 class‐diverse childless Black women between 40 and 55. The recruitment strategy utilized a mixed‐method approach, including snowball sampling, online and physical advertising, and targeted outreach within online communities for Black women. Interviews were transcribed and iteratively analyzed to identify thematic codes and categories. Results The study identifies and terms “compulsory mothering” as a significant social pressure that leads childless Black women to assume caregiving roles within their kin networks, regardless of their parental status. This pressure is more pronounced among working‐class women, who engage more extensively in these roles compared to their middle‐class counterparts, highlighting how race and class intersect to shape their experiences of childlessness. Conclusion The study concludes that race and class influence women's experiences of childlessness. It also finds that childless Black women's relationships with their kin networks shape their experiences of childlessness and their reproductive preferences.
Article
Full-text available
This paper represents work in progress with aged communities, on a project to promote positive attributes of experience, wisdom, and leadership to counterbalance the perceived challenges of aging by changing negative perceptions of aged societies. We aimed to encourage positive ageing by harnessing the collaborative creative potential of this demographic through the introduction of concepts around the notion of deliberate creative practice. We wanted to make a case for how these communities are empowered to participate in identifying issues and challenges over a wide spectrum of social and community applications affecting their lifestyles and wellbeing, then generating new ideas to be disseminated through social media platforms.
Article
Objective This study documents the importance of grandparents for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) Latinx youth and how cisnormativity shapes these relationship dynamics. Background Most research on LGBTQ+ youth's family relations centers on the parent–child relationship. Grandparents are important for racially marginalized families, particularly Latinx families. Additionally, Latinx LGBTQ+ youth are impacted by precarious familismo—the disparate experiences with family members in which their gender and sexuality are simultaneously accepted and rejected. Method The data for this project are from the Family Housing and Me (FHAM) project, a landmark longitudinal study on the impact of non‐parental relatives on the lives of LGBTQ+ youth. This paper analyzes a subsample of 35 qualitative interviews with Latinx LGBTQ+ youth (16–19 years old) who live in South Texas or the Inland Empire of California, the majority of whom are transgender or nonbinary. Results Grandparents played an important role in the lives of Latinx LGBTQ+ youth interviewees, including providing many of the positive benefits of familismo. The youth also described “disparate experiences” of precarious familismo in how their grandparents simultaneously attempted identity support of their gender identities and reinforced cisnormativity. Youth often navigated these experiences by expressing low expectations that their grandparents would fully understand their gender identities, which we refer to as generational gender expectations . Conclusion Research on LGBTQ+ youth should integrate the study of non‐parental relatives to fully understand support networks and family systems for LGBTQ+ youth. Additionally, cisnormativity plays an important role in family life and familismo.
Article
Already in the 1980s, Black feminists contributed to political debates on the Dutch welfare state. Their intersectional analyses of social citizenship were directly based on the lived experiences of Black women in the Netherlands. However, then and now, these contributions have been largely overlooked in both Dutch politics and welfare state research, leading to social policies that do not correspond with the lived experiences of all women. Through archive research, and using the analytical framework of political claims-making, this article sheds light on the social rights claims of the Surinamese-Dutch feminist organization Ashanti that was active between 1980 and 1987. Their Black feminist perspectives provide important insights into the underlying mechanisms of in- and exclusion of the Dutch welfare state, from the standpoints of Dutch citizens and families that did not necessarily fit the picture of the “imagined citizens” for whom the Dutch welfare state was built.
Chapter
This paper represents work in progress with aged communities, on a project to explore the creative potential that can be harnessed from aged communities using social media platforms to assist in the articulation and dissemination of ideas developed through creative collaborative decision making. Our aim is to promote creative thinking and ideas through the introduction of concepts around deliberate creative practices within our aged communities. We wanted to make a case for how this could be instructive for how these communities are empowered to participate in identifying issues and challenges that are able to be actively disseminated through social media, demonstrating the application of creativity processes to decisions and policy impacting and influencing their lifestyles, health and wellbeing across a wide spectrum of social and community applications.
Article
Full-text available
Purpose: Multigenerational families are becoming increasingly common in the U.S. This trend is primarily driven by three-generation households with grandparents. The coresident grandparents play an important role in adolescents’ health and well-being. Thus, by focusing on three-generational households, this study examined the determinants of living in three-generational households among adolescents within the contexts of the social–economic, cultural, and family factors that influence grandparent co-residence by ethnic groups. Methods: This study used the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Wave I–III). The study sample included 10,093 adolescents, including White, African American, Asian, and Hispanic youth. This study conducted a series of logistic regression models to examine the associations between co-residence with grandparents and significant predictors in family structure, socioeconomic status, and cultural factors for youths in the U.S. by ethnic groups. Results: For White families, lower socioeconomic status was more pertinent to three-generational co-residence. However, the associations were in the opposite direction for Hispanic and African American households, indicating that higher socioeconomic status families were found to live with grandparents in those groups. For Hispanic families, adolescents from Spanish-speaking homes were more likely to live in three-generational households than those from English-speaking homes. Implications: These results suggest that family characteristics in three-generational households vary by ethnic group. Notably, family cultural factors were significant determinants of co-residence with grandparents in three-generational households, especially in Hispanic families. This study contributes to the sustainability discourse by examining the intersectionality of cultural maintenance, health and well-being, and aging society among three-generational households in the United States.
Chapter
Full-text available
Given that Mormonism is both a kinship and a religion, this chapter is about the contradictory pressures to marry both within and without one's kin group.
Article
Research highlights that mothers are often blamed for their child's exposure to domestic abuse and they are given a leave ultimatum. This article furthers discussion, guided by the question “how do (UK) mothers with violent partners experience social work interventions?” Nineteen mothers located around England and Wales were interviewed. Data were analyzed using deductive thematic analysis. The findings resonate with research from a decade earlier showing mothers felt blamed and were responsibilized for the violence they experienced and given the leave ultimatum by social workers. This article calls for a change in social work practice for mothers experiencing domestic abuse.
Article
Full-text available
By sacralizing the Western categories of gender and kinship and by exalting the husband-centric, nuclear version of family, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints not only alienated its transgender and feminist members, but also its Peruvian families. This study employs ethnographic encounters, kinterm linguistics, and home décor analysis to situate the existence of Peruvian Mormon matriarchies in the context of a phallocentric religion that spanned two strikingly different, patriarchal societies: one in the Southern Andes of Peru and the other in the US state of Utah. Thus situated, the article then dwells on the transcribed oral history of Ofelia, a Peruvian single mother who utilized the power of the male-only Mormon priesthood to preside over her household as the acting matriarch. Ofelia’s fealty to patriarchy during the very enactment of forbidden priestesshood brings to the fore the profound contradictions that some Peruvian Mormons in the late 2010s disentangled as they sought to become legible to their church as participants in eternal families.
Article
While racial and demographic changes producing a multiracial United States are well-acknowledged in the family field, insufficient attention is given to Latinos as a racialized population. As the Latino population continues to expand, it is essential for family studies to move beyond a Black/White binary. We call for making race and racialization central building blocks in research and analysis of Latino families. This paper provides an overview of research and thought on the racialization of Latino families, advancing a structural framing to reveal: (1) how race and intersecting inequalities shape families; and (2) how racialization processes use families to sustain and reinforce institutional inequalities. This structural framing encompasses a set of analytic premises for extending the study of family racialization to Latinos, thereby building a more comprehensive racial analysis of U.S. families.
Article
Full-text available
This article employs descriptive and explorative methods concerning father absence and missional parenting. It identifies numerous ramifications caused by father absence and the failing role of men. Father absence has been a serious social issue in South Africa, which has become more tenacious in post-colonial South Africa because of economic reasons, untold fatherhood, refused fatherhood, fatherhood accountability, divorce and dissolution of households. This social issue influenced and affected both family and society dysfunction and created a vicious cycle of poverty in many South African homes. This article aimed to lessen the predicament of fatherlessness by considering the role of missional parenting where the father and mother form a partnership and collaborate for the family’s progress and actualise God’s pre-eminent plan for families in South Africa. The literature review and methodology provided rich insights and considerable knowledge to help support families who do not have a father figure and men in their fatherly role. Missional parenting is gospel-centred and can be a detriment to father absence. Parents follow the example of Jesus Christ as saviour in missional parenting. Contribution: This article employed a descriptive and explorative modus operandi and explored a respective method to effectuate family disharmony in the context of South Africa. It endorses the journal’s focus on church and family in the field of Missiology and Practical Theology. A fatherless South Africa because of the social ill of father absence is a concerning issue.
Article
A half century after passage of the federal Fair Housing Act, studies continue to document racial discrimination in the housing market, which serves to reproduce racial inequality and residential segregation. Building on this work, we examine housing discrimination experienced by individuals belonging to multiple disadvantaged groups. Employing an online field experiment in 31 U.S. cities over 20 months, we investigate patterns of discrimination against female rental housing applicants at the intersections of race, ethnicity, family structure, and Section 8 housing voucher receipt. Consistent with prior work, we find discrimination against Black women and Section 8 recipients. We also find that only Black women and Latinas are penalized for being parents and for being single mothers to young children. Finally, examining the relevant policy landscape, we find evidence that state and local laws barring discrimination against Section 8 recipients may not be sufficient to protect voucher holders and their families and may instead prompt landlords to engage in subtler forms of discrimination (i.e., increased nonresponse). These findings reveal a dynamic pattern of multidimensional discrimination and support arguments for an intersectional approach to understanding and combatting inequality.
Article
Cadre de la recherche : Le vieillissement des populations induit des besoins de soutien, auxquels les services publics répondent de moins en moins. Il est dès lors pertinent d’explorer les stratégies d’adaptation mobilisées par les personnes âgées pour faire face aux défis qu’elles rencontrent, en les comparant aux autres groupes d’âge. Objectifs : Cet article met l’accent sur les difficultés de nature économique. Il examine leur prévalence et les stratégies de réponse à ce type particulier d’enjeux en fonction de l’âge. Les différences selon les types de milieux de résidence sont aussi examinées. Méthodologie : Les données proviennent de l’Enquête sociale générale (Statistique Canada, 2011). À partir de régressions logistiques, nous examinons le risque de vivre des difficultés à payer les factures ainsi que le recours à différentes stratégies d’adaptation selon l’âge et le type de milieu. Résultats : Les difficultés financières sont moins communes chez les personnes âgées comparativement aux groupes plus jeunes. Lorsqu’elles sont confrontées à ces défis, les personnes âgées tablent moins souvent que les plus jeunes sur les emprunts aux proches et elles sont plus enclines à employer d’autres réponses. L’assistance financière par les proches est aussi moins fréquente hors des grands centres métropolitains qu’en leur sein. Conclusions : Les personnes âgées vivent moins de difficultés financières et elles s’ajustent différemment à ces situations comparativement aux plus jeunes, reflétant des divergences dans les contraintes et les ressources disponibles selon l’âge. Contribution : Alors que la littérature existante sur le vieillissement se concentre surtout sur les vulnérabilités de santé, notre étude attire l’attention sur les difficultés économiques. Contribuant aussi aux recherches sur l’entraide familiale et amicale, notre article souligne que l’assistance financière dispensée par la famille ou les amis semble moins mobilisée par les personnes âgées que par les plus jeunes au Canada.
Chapter
After spouses, children, especially daughters, are the most common source of elder care. We focus on sibling sets to examine the gender gap in caregiving labor for parents in a range of European countries. Using Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement (SHARE) Wave 6 (2015) data, we examine how brothers and sisters divide care, how that division varies across four welfare regimes—Social Democratic, Christian Democratic, Mediterranean, and Eastern European, and what social factors shape this division of labor. We examine separately any care provided by non-resident adult children as well as more intense, at least weekly care provided by either coresident or non-coresident children. We control for a wide range of child, sibship set, and parental characteristics and show, first, that daughters are more likely than sons to provide care of any frequency/intensity in Christian Democratic and Mediterranean countries, while there is no significant gender gap in Eastern European countries and even a gap favoring sons in the Social Democratic cluster. Second, examining frequent/intense care, we find that daughters are more likely to provide such care than sons in Christian Democratic, Mediterranean, and Eastern European countries, while the gender gap is non-significant in Social Democratic countries. Welfare regime explains most of the cross-national variation in gender gaps in intense care, highlighting the value of the welfare regime framework in studying gender gaps in caregiving. Cross-national variation in sibling division of caregiving labour demonstrates the power of social context to shape what some previously argued is an essential/invariant gender divide.
Article
Objective This study tested two hypotheses that have been posited to account for racial/ethnic differences in the association between family structure and children's education. Background Research has shown that children raised by both biological parents fare better academically than children raised in any other family structure. However, there has been little research to explain an important finding: living apart from a biological parent is less negatively consequential for racial/ethnic minority children than white children. Scholars have speculated that group differences in exposure to socioeconomic stress and embeddedness in extended family networks explain this finding. Method This study used nationally representative, longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (n = 2,589). It employed logistic regression analysis and decomposition techniques to assess whether racial/ethnic differences in these two mechanisms explained the differential association between family structure and children's on‐time high school completion and college enrollment for white, black, and Hispanic children. Results The results indicate that socioeconomic stress and extended family embeddedness attenuate the effect of family structure on these two measures of children's education, although the former to a much greater extent. The differences in socioeconomic resources accounted for up to nearly 50% of the gap in these outcomes, and extended family embeddedness explained roughly 15% to 20%. Conclusion Findings lend support for the socioeconomic stress hypothesis, which posits that the negative effect of parental absence from the home may be less independently impactful for racial/ethnic groups already facing many socioeconomic disadvantages.
Article
This article focuses family structures, sociological perspective of family and causes of disappearance of the extended family unit in modern societies.
Article
An extensive and long-standing literature examines the amount of time people spend on their jobs and families. A newer literature, including this review, takes that older literature as background and focuses on the social processes that shape our schedules: how we manage our time, accepting, negotiating, or contesting our shifting obligations and commitments. Research shows that time management is increasingly complex because unpredictable schedules are pervasive, and that gender, class, and race inequalities influence our ability to manage and control them. That lack of control and the unpredictability that accompanies it not only affect individual workers but also spread. A change in one person's schedule reverberates across a set of linked others in what we call a web of time. This review surveys and integrates research on hours and schedules of both jobs and families and concludes with attention to the policies that seek to address these issues.
Article
Full-text available
The purpose of this study is to consider how Indian immigrant families, who come from cultures that are shaped around culturally distinct forms of family, navigate and adapt to U.S. culture and institutions that are structured based on the idealized American family form. The main research questions being considered are: How is family defined by immigration policies? How are Indian immigrant families affected by these policies? An ethnographic methodological approach, including participant observation and semi-structured interviews, is used to gather data in the Columbus metro area in order to address the above questions. Observations and semi-structured interviews were completed with local Indian immigrants, as well as with service providers and community leaders who serve the Indian immigrant population . The data collected through observations and interviews is then compared to current research findings in the existing literature on immigration, gender, and family. Findings suggest that U.S. immigration policy both hinders and fosters the acculturation process of immigrants by restricting which family members can receive a visa and by utilizing a visa sponsorship system that encourages family connections. Findings also suggest intergenerational conflict within Indian families as a result of various agents of socialization. Finally, findings point to the role that ethnic enclaves play as coping mechanisms for Indian immigrant families as they deal with the stresses of immigration. Future recommendations include welcome support groups within local school and recreational services for immigrant parents, facilitated by non-immigrant citizens, as well as an increased availability of culturally consistent mainstream social services for immigrant families. Suggestions for future research include studies of other U.S. cities and the “match/mismatch” of available services and immigrant needs.
Article
This chapter provides a context for the entire volume. First, issues around language and labeling are presented. Next a general discussion is provided concerning larger lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans* LGBT communities. Then, more specific information is provided for Asian and Pacific Islander (API) LGBT communities, with a particular focus on issues of coming out, family life, and spirituality. This is followed by a discussion of the significance of API LGBT sexuality. Finally, the chapter ends with a presentation of how the rest of the book is organized.
Chapter
Relations between parents and adult children play an essential role across the life course. Three topics of particular importance in the study of relations between parents and adult children are relationship quality, exchanges of support, and caregiving in later life. Parent–child relations are closest when children share their parents' values, when children and parents have a history of support, and when parents' marriages are intact. Although relations are closest between mothers and daughters, these dyads also experience the greatest conflict. Gender also plays an important role in exchanges between parents, with daughters and mothers being the most likely to provide one another with support. Gender continues to shape patterns of caregiving when parents experience health declines and need assistance, support that is much more likely to be provided by daughters than sons. Research from Asia, Europe, and the United States shows both differences and similarities in patterns of parent–adult child relations by race, ethnicity, and nationality.
Article
Full-text available
Guided by an ecological perspective on family policy, this qualitative study used family life history interviews to document the legal and policy dilemmas faced by 26 grandparent caregivers residing in Montana. Most grandparents (n = 18) were caring for their grandchildren in informal or private care arrangements. Findings revealed four legal or policy contexts that hindered informal grandparent caregiving, including the lack of a kinship care navigation system, the lack of legal rights, fear of the child welfare system, and disparities between informal and formal kinship care policies. Future policy directions, including expanding subsidized guardianship programs and granting informal grandparent caregivers' legal authority over their grandchildren, are discussed.
Article
A leading expert on the family, Judith Stacey is known for her provocative research on mainstream issues. Finding herself impatient with increasingly calcified positions taken in the interminable wars over same-sex marriage, divorce, fatherlessness, marital fidelity, and the like, she struck out to profile unfamiliar cultures of contemporary love, marriage, and family values from around the world. Built on bracing original research that spans gay men's intimacies and parenting in this country to plural and non-marital forms of family in South Africa and China, Unhitched decouples the taken for granted relationships between love, marriage, and parenthood. Countering the one-size-fits-all vision of family values, Stacey offers readers a lively, in-person introduction to these less familiar varieties of intimacy and family and to the social, political, and economic conditions that buttress and batter them. Through compelling stories of real families navigating inescapable personal and political trade-offs between desire and domesticity, the book undermines popular convictions about family, gender, and sexuality held on the left, right, and center. Taking on prejudices of both conservatives and feminists, Unhitched poses a powerful empirical challenge to the belief that the nuclear family--whether straight or gay--is the single, best way to meet our needs for intimacy and care. Stacey calls on citizens and policy-makers to make their peace with the fact that family diversity is here to stay.
Article
Shadow Mothers shines new light on an aspect of contemporary motherhood often hidden from view: the need for paid childcare by women returning to the workforce, and the complex bonds mothers forge with the "shadow mothers" they hire. Cameron Lynne Macdonald illuminates both sides of an unequal and complicated relationship. Based on in-depth interviews with professional women and childcare providers- immigrant and American-born nannies as well as European au pairs-Shadow Mothers locates the roots of individual skirmishes between mothers and their childcare providers in broader cultural and social tensions. Macdonald argues that these conflicts arise from unrealistic ideals about mothering and inflexible career paths and work schedules, as well as from the devaluation of paid care work.
Article
This paper argues for a structural perspective on gender differences in caregiving. Using a broad definition of caregiving (to relatives, friends, as well as volunteer groups), we find that while wives give more than husbands, this can be explained, in part, by employment. Although employed wives give far more care than employed husbands, employed wives provide fewer hours of care to kin than do homemakers. Compared to wives employed in jobs unlike men's, wives employed in jobs like those of men give care in ways similar to men. This research provides evidence for theories that root women's caregiving in social structures confronted in adult life rather than personality formed in early life. While our findings suggest wives' employment may produce a certain weakening of extended families, employment may also produce a wider social integration, emphasizing voluntary rather than prescribed ties.
Article
We use a National Survey of Families and Households sample of 7,730 adults with siblings to test a model of perceived and actual social support among adult siblings. Despite low levels of actual exchange, nearly 30% of the sample would call on a sibling first in an emergency. Social support among siblings was higher for those with living sisters and for those without adult children, but African Americans and respondents with lower education and family income levels were less likely to be involved in actual exchange with siblings. Although weak support from siblings may simply represent a contraction of the support network to the "inner circle" of parents and children, these findings suggest caution in assuming that disadvantaged groups can rely on stronger extended family networks.
Article
Love is analyzed as an element of social action and therefore of social structure. Although the romantic complex is rare, a "love pattern" is found in a wide range of societies. Since love is potentially disruptive of lineages and class strata, it must be controlled. Since its meaning is different within different social structures, it is controlled by various measures. The five principal types of "love control" are described. Disruptions are more important to the upper social strata who possess the means for control. Therefore these strata achieve a higher degree of control over both the occurrence of love relationships and the influence of love upon action.
Article
Even good marriages can have some bad side effects, taking people away from other social connections.
Article
Using data from 80 in-depth qualitative interviews with women randomly sampled from New York City, I ask: how do women develop expectations about their future workforce participation? Using an intersectional approach, I find that women’s expectations about workforce participation stem from gendered, classed, and raced ideas of who works full-time. Socioeconomic status, race, gender, and sexuality influenced early expectations about work and the process through which these expectations developed. Women from white and Latino working-class families were evenly divided in their expectations about their future workforce participation, while the vast majority of white, Asian, African American, and Latina middle-class women expected to work continually as adults. Unlike their working-class white and Hispanic peers, all of the working-class Black respondents developed expectations that they would work continuously as adults. The intersections of race, class, and gender play a central role in shaping women’s expectations about their participation in paid work.
Article
Caregiving remains women's work far more than men's. Although women and men often attribute this difference to “nature,” this paper argues for the importance of structure, especially in employment. At least to some extent, women's employment—especially in jobs similar to men's—reduces the care work they do for kin, if not for friends. Examining the different amount and meanings that women and men—like Euro-Americans and African Americans—ascribe to care work, I suggest we view such care work as a survival strategy as well as a demanding labor of love. In this context, recent social policies should be seen as not only privatizing care but also producing growing inequality as well as a vacuum of care.
Article
This article uses qualitative and quantitative data for a recent birth cohort from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study to compare kin support patterns between African Americans and Hispanics. It focuses on financial and housing support from grandparents and other kin during the transition to parenthood. Qualitative analysis (n = 122 parents) uncovers distinctions in the way African American and Hispanic parents discuss their family networks, with African Americans emphasizing relations with female kin and Hispanics emphasizing a more integrated system. Consistent with these findings, quantitative analysis (n = 2,472 mothers and n = 2,639 fathers) finds that compared with Hispanic parents, African American parents are more likely to receive financial and housing support from grandmothers and less likely to receive support from both grandparents. Contrary to expectations that fathers would be the primary support recipients in Hispanic households, the authors find that mothers are the more common recipients of support among African Americans and Hispanics.
Article
Disorganization theories postulate that black men have largely abandoned their familial roles. Using the NSFH data, this article refutes the hypothesis of black men's familial disengagement by focusing on extended family integration. Black men are more likely than white men to live with or near extended kin, as well as to frequently see kin in person. Men are similar across race in terms of emotional and practical help, although black men are less likely than white men to provide financial assistance. The racial differences can be mostly attributed to the socioeconomic disadvantage of black men. The similarities emerge because blacks' economic disadvantage hinders their involvement, but cultural values and extended family structure bring their involvement to the levels of the more economically advantaged whites.
Article
Much of the literature on drug treatment for women demonstrates a need for gender-oriented, family-centered treatment. Based on observations of a treatment program for Latina women and life histories of female Puerto Rican substance abusers, we expand this argument by describing a trajectory of recovery for female Puerto Rican drug abusers that emphasizes their relationships with children, family, kin and treatment staff. We also identify dilemmas that arise when incorporating these trajectories of recovery into treatment programs. They include (1) the need to balance the interests of mothers with the interests of children; (2) the need to mediate kin and family dynamics that may be counter-productive to recovery, and (3) the importance of establishing treatment contexts that facilitate trust and personal connections without compromising professional distance.
Article
Organized groups are always faced with the problem of how best to harness human energies to their purposes. They must concern themselves with mechanisms which insure that people are sufficiently motivated to be loyal to them even in the face of competing appeals from other sources within the wider social structure.
Article
This paper examines racial differences in participation in voluntary associations. It extends past research by accounting for the influence of neighborhood poverty on participation. Using unique data from the 1993–94 Los Angeles Survey of Urban Inequality (LASUI), the analysis reveals that neighborhood poverty influences the number of associations to which individuals belong, even when considering differences in personal and other residential characteristics. Moreover, once the negative influence of neighborhood poverty is taken into account, blacks participate in more voluntary associations than do whites and other groups, while Asians participate the least. Evidence supports the ethnic community theory of blacks' greater participation, as blacks living in black communities participate in more organizations, particularly in ones that are political, than blacks who do not.
Article
This paper uses recent data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (N = 5,220) to explore gender differences in the extent to which adults in their 50s and 60s provide informal help to their adult children, elderly parents and friends We find that both men and women report very high levels of helping kin and nonkin alike, though women do more to assist elderly parents and women provide much more emotional support to others than do men. Men provide more assistance than do women with "housework, yard work and repairs." As they retire from the workforce, married men become significantly more involved in the care of their grandchildren, virtually eliminating any gender difference by the time they are in their 60s.
Article
Although it is well established that adult daughters spend more time giving assistance to their parents than do sons, the sources of this gender gap are not well understood. This paper asks: To what extent can this gap be explained by structural variation, especially the different rates of employment and kinds of jobs that women and men tend to hold? Using data from the National Survey of Families and Households (N= 7,350), the paper shows that both employment status and job characteristics, especially wages and self-employment, are important factors in explaining the gender gap in the help given to parents and that these operate similarly for women and men.