Changing American Families

by Aulette, Judith R.

• ISBN13: 9780205484461
• ISBN10: 0205484468
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-01-01
• Publisher: Allyn & Bacon

Summary

Focusing on insights from feminist researchers and the role of gender in family life, this text explores both the structural features of society that shape families and the everyday personal experiences of individual family members--as well as the interplay between the two.

Table of Contents

Preface	xiii
How to Study Families in the Twenty-first Century	1	(23)
Analyzing Social Life	2	(1)
The Sociological Imagination: Bridging the Gap between Individuals and Society	3	(3)
Micro- and Macrolevels of Analysis	4	(1)
Society Is a Human Invention	4	(2)
Families as a Political Issue	6	(4)
Families: Hot Issue in the United States	6	(2)
The Personal Is Political	8	(2)
Recent History of the Sociology of Family	10	(11)
Women's Liberation Movement	11	(1)
Revisioning Families	12	(1)
Challenging the Myth of the Monolithic Family	13	(1)
Appreciating Diversity	14	(1)
The Monolithic Family and the Denial of Historical Change	15	(1)
Observing That Families Are the Sites of Many Different Social Activities	16	(1)
Acknowledging Differences within Families by Gender and Age	17	(1)
Asking Whether Families Are Separate from the Rest of Society	18	(2)
Creating Families That Provide Both Love and Individual Freedom	20	(1)
Asserting the Need to Change Families So They Can Better Serve the Needs of Women, Men, and Children	20	(1)
The Question of Theory	21	(3)
A History of U.S. Families with a Focus on Euro-Americans	24	(28)
Studying the Social History of Families	25	(1)
Stages in the History of Euro-American Families	26	(22)
The Godly Family	28	(3)
Iroquois Families	31	(1)
The Modern Family, Stage I: The Democratic Family	32	(1)
The Split between Family and Work among Euro-Americans	32	(2)
The Cult of True Womanhood	34	(1)
The Ideal of Real Womanhood	35	(1)
Capitalist Industrialization and the Working-Class Family	35	(1)
The Problem of the Family Wage	36	(1)
Pioneer Families: Leaving Friends, Facing Hardship	37	(1)
The Modern Family, Stage II: The Companionate Family	38	(1)
The Twentieth Century and the History of Childhood	39	(1)
Families during the Great Depression	40	(1)
World War II and Families	40	(1)
World War II and Marriage	41	(1)
World War II and Divorce	42	(2)
Japanese American Families during the War	44	(1)
The Fifties	45	(3)
Periodicizing	48	(1)
The First-Wave Women's Movement	49	(1)
The Micro-Macro Connection	50	(2)
A History of U.S. Families with a Focus on African American	52	(28)
Diversity in American Families	53	(2)
Four Periods in African American History	55	(16)
Slavery	55	(2)
Family Life under Slavery	57	(2)
Family Organization and Black Women's Role in a Community of Slaves	59	(3)
Comparing White Middle-Class Women to African American Women in the Nineteenth Century	62	(1)
Reproduction	63	(1)
Sharecropping	64	(1)
Who Shall Control Women's and Children's Labor?	65	(1)
Gender Equality and Changes in Families under Sharecropping	66	(3)
Industrialization	69	(2)
African American Families in the Struggle for Equality	71	(2)
Latino American Family History	73	(4)
Split Households among Chicanos and Chinese Americans	73	(1)
Chicano Families	74	(1)
Chinese American Families	74	(2)
Salt of the Earth	76	(1)
Structuration Theory and the Importance of Agency	77	(1)
The Micro-Macro Connection	78	(2)
Families and the Economic System	80	(25)
The Critical Link between Families and the Economy	81	(1)
The Contemporary Economic Scene of the United States: The Great U-turn	82	(13)
Unemployment	83	(1)
Economic Decline and Poverty	84	(2)
More Workers per Family	86	(1)
Increased Debt and Decreased Savings	86	(1)
Immigration	87	(1)
Housing	87	(2)
Growing Homelessness	89	(1)
The Rich Get Richer	90	(1)
Economic Decline and U.S. Families	91	(1)
Homelessness	91	(1)
Shelters: An Inadequate Solution	91	(1)
Blue-Collar Layoffs	92	(2)
Downward Mobility in the Middle Class	94	(1)
Responding to Economic Crisis	95	(3)
Social Victims or Social Critics?	96	(1)
Altering the Social Context	97	(1)
Campaign for a Living Wage	97	(1)
What Is Behind the Great U-turn?	98	(4)
The First Revolution	98	(1)
The Second Revolution	99	(1)
Postindustrial Society: A Third Revolution?	99	(3)
The Micro-Macro Connection	102	(3)
Families and the Organization of Race, Class, and Gender	105	(30)
Systems of Stratification	106	(8)
What Is Social Class?	107	(1)
Race Ethnicity	108	(4)
Immigration	112	(1)
Gender	113	(1)
Social Class, Race Ethnicity, and Gender and Family Life	114	(5)
Upper-Class Families: Gatekeepers	115	(1)
Middle-Class Families	116	(1)
Geographic Mobility	117	(1)
The Black Middle Class	118	(1)
Working-Class White Families	119	(1)
Working-Class African American Families: The Moynihan Report and Its Historical Context	120	(7)
The Flats	122	(1)
Swapping	122	(1)
Bloodmothers and Other Mothers	123	(1)
Household and Family	123	(1)
Extended Network Families in Racial Ethnic Communities	123	(1)
Women's Domestic Authority	124	(1)
Immigrant Families	124	(1)
Mexican Americans	125	(2)
Vietnamese Immigrant Families	127	(1)
What Is a Family?	127	(6)
Renewed Interest in Poor Families	128	(2)
The Culture of Poverty	130	(1)
Social Structural Model	131	(1)
Do Families Contain the Seeds of Resistance?	131	(1)
The Mothers of East Los Angeles	132	(1)
The Micro-Macro Connection	133	(2)
Work and Family	135	(28)
Myth of Separate Spheres	136	(18)
The Study of Work and Family Is Distorted by the Concept of Separate Spheres	137	(1)
Young Women Speak of Work and Family in Their Future	138	(2)
Women in the Paid Labor Force	140	(1)
Why Have Woman Increasingly Entered the Labor Force?	140	(1)
How Do Women Choose to Work?	141	(1)
Chicanas and a Fifth Way of Choosing to Work for Wages	142	(1)
Why Do Men Work?	143	(2)
How Does Work Influence Families?	145	(1)
Absorption	145	(1)
Time and Timing	146	(2)
A Special Case of Timing: Working Parents and Their Children	148	(1)
Teenage Workers and Their Families	149	(1)
Retirement	149	(1)
Income	150	(1)
Exchange Theory	151	(1)
A Feminist Critique of Exchange Theory	151	(2)
Worldview	153	(1)
Emotional Climate	153	(1)
The Influence of Families on Work	154	(4)
Bringing the Family to Work	154	(1)
Managing the Contradiction	155	(3)
Can Families Put Pressure for Change on Employers?	158	(3)
Flextime	158	(2)
Family Leave	160	(1)
The Micro-Macro Connection	161	(2)
Housework	163	(27)
Housework, the Invisible Occupation	164	(3)
What Is It Like to Be a Housewife?	165	(2)
Who Does the Housework?	167	(11)
How Are the Tasks Divided?	168	(1)
Social-Class Variation	168	(2)
Children's Work in Families	170	(2)
Feeding the Family	172	(1)
Socialization Goals while Feeding Children	173	(1)
The Difference between Full-Time Housewives and Part-Time Housewives	174	(2)
High Tech and Housework	176	(1)
A Recent Addition to the Tasks of the Housewife	177	(1)
Why Is Housework Divided Unequally?	178	(5)
Socializing Housewives	179	(1)
Making a Rational Choice	180	(1)
Unequal Work and the Politics of Gender	181	(2)
What Can Be Done about the Inequality in the Division of Housework?	183	(5)
Negotiating New Ways to Divide Work	183	(1)
Mothers as Gatekeepers	184	(1)
Hiring a Maid	185	(2)
Solving the Problem of Housework through Policy Change	187	(1)
The Micro-Macro Connection	188	(2)
Love and Sex	190	(29)
What Is Love?	192	(2)
Historical Development of Love	192	(1)
Postmodern Romance	193	(1)
Human Sexuality	194	(14)
Sexual Standards	195	(1)
Sex and the Law	196	(1)
Problems in Sex Research	197	(1)
Ideas about Sex	198	(2)
Premarital Sex	200	(2)
Teen Romance	202	(3)
The Marriage Bed	205	(1)
Nonmonogamous Activity	206	(1)
HIV/AIDS	207	(1)
Some Theoretical Debates on Sexuality	208	(3)
Heterosexuality, Homosexuality, and Lesbianism	208	(2)
Explaining the Focus on Sex	210	(1)
Abortion	211	(7)
Debates about Abortion	215	(3)
The Micro-Macro Connection	218	(1)
Marriage	219	(30)
Characteristics of Marriage	220	(12)
Marriage Is a Legal Contract	221	(1)
Three Periods of Marriage and Family Law	222	(1)
Marriage Is an Economic Arrangement	223	(1)
Marriage Is a Sexual Relationship	224	(1)
Marriage Means Commitment	225	(1)
Marriage Is a Political Arena	226	(2)
Power in Communication	228	(1)
Religion, Politics, and Marriage	229	(3)
Statistics on Marriage	232	(11)
Age at First Marriage	233	(1)
Racial Ethnic Differences in Age at First Marriage	233	(3)
Marrying across Racial Ethnic Lines	236	(1)
Long-Term Marriage	237	(2)
Widowhood	239	(1)
Transition to Marriage	240	(1)
Cohabitation and Domestic Partnerships	241	(2)
Singles	243	(1)
Theoretical Debate on Marriage	243	(3)
Families We Choose	246	(2)
The Micro-Macro Connection	248	(1)
Divorce and Remarriage	249	(31)
How to Measure Divorce	251	(8)
Rates of Divorce	252	(1)
What Are the Correlates of Divorce?	253	(1)
Historical Changes in Divorce	254	(2)
Another American History of Divorce	256	(2)
Why Do Women Choose Divorce?	258	(1)
Divorce Transitions	259	(10)
Social Stigmatization	259	(2)
Economic Difficulties for Women	261	(3)
Divorce as an Opportunity	264	(2)
Remarriage	266	(3)
Children and Divorce	269	(8)
Child Custody	271	(2)
Child Support	273	(2)
Why Don't Men Pay?	275	(1)
Divorced Fathers	276	(1)
Finding Solutions: Where Were the Feminists?	277	(2)
The Micro-Macro Connection	279	(1)
Battering and Marital Rape	280	(28)
Prevalence of Violence in Families	282	(7)
Woman Battering	283	(3)
Murder by Intimates	286	(2)
Marital Rape	288	(1)
Measuring the Social Costs of Domestic Violence	289	(1)
Theories about Violence in Families	289	(11)
Why Does Violence Occur?	290	(1)
Explaining Woman Battering as a Result of Individual Characteristics	291	(1)
Violence-Prone Family Structure in Our Society	291	(3)
A Feminist Social-Structural View on Battering and Marital Rape	294	(3)
The Controversy over the Battered Husband Syndrome	297	(1)
Three Points of View, Three Strategies for Policy	298	(1)
The Discovery of Violence in Families	299	(1)
Finding Solutions	300	(7)
The Get-Tough-with-Abusers Campaign	302	(2)
The Battered Women's Movement	304	(2)
Violence against Women Act	306	(1)
The Micro-Macro Connection	307	(1)
Parents	308	(36)
Parents and Parenting	309	(3)
Parenting Role	310	(1)
Transition to Parenting	311	(1)
Mothering	312	(13)
Choosing Single Motherhood	313	(2)
Lesbigay Parents	315	(3)
Teenage Mothers	318	(4)
What Do Teen Mothers Have to Say about Motherhood?	322	(1)
Delaying Childbirth	322	(1)
High Technology and Mothering	323	(2)
What about Fathers?	325	(4)
Bringing Fathers into Parenting	326	(1)
New Fathers in Word and Deed	327	(1)
Single Fathers	328	(1)
Other Fathers	329	(1)
Coparenting	329	(5)
Childless by Choice	330	(2)
Grandparents	332	(2)
Is Biology Destiny?	334	(4)
What Is Wrong with the Sociobiological Model?	336	(1)
If Biology Is Not Destiny, Are Men and Women Identical as Parents?	337	(1)
Child Care	338	(5)
Lessons from History	342	(1)
The Micro-Macro Connection	343	(1)
Children	344	(35)
Postmodern American Children	346	(26)
Children as Learners of Adult Culture	346	(1)
Gender Socialization in Families	347	(3)
Social Interactionist Theory	350	(1)
Racial Socialization	351	(2)
Television Socializes Children	353	(3)
Children as Threats	356	(2)
The Positive Effects of Children on Parents	358	(3)
Children as Victims: Child Abuse	361	(1)
Mothers, Fathers, and Child Abuse	362	(2)
Incest	364	(2)
Radical Feminist Theory on Incest	366	(2)
Children as Victims: Poverty	368	(2)
Sisters and Brothers	370	(2)
Theoretical Problems in the Study of Children	372	(3)
How Do We Think of Children and Childhood?	372	(2)
How Accurate Is Our Image of Children?	374	(1)
Resistance against Child Abuse and Incest	375	(1)
PFLAG Does Real Family Values	376	(1)
The Micro-Macro Connection	377	(2)
Families, Family Policy, and the State	379	(26)
The Welfare State and Family Policy	381	(1)
Social Policy and Families: The Case of the Welfare System	382	(12)
Persistent Myths about Welfare Mothers	384	(2)
Welfare and Gender and Race	386	(1)
History and Trends for the Future in Welfare	387	(3)
Family Support Act	390	(1)
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act	391	(3)
Why Is There No Explicit Family Policy in the United States?	394	(6)
What Is a State?	396	(1)
The State and Inequality	397	(3)
Resistance to the Welfare System	400	(4)
The Micro-Macro Connection	404	(1)
References	405	(44)
Index	449